Antenatal depression has been suggested to be the strongest predictor of postnatal depression; and in turn postpartum depression has seemed to be the strongest predictor for parenting stress [1-4]. To date, some studies have suggested that maternal depressive symptoms during pregnancy are associated with postpartum depressive symptoms, especially those are depressed during the third trimester of pregnancy [1-4]. In our earlier small study [4], depressive and/or anxiety symptoms showed somewhere during pregnancy in 86% of the women who had depressive symptoms during postpartum. Therefore, early identification and treatment of perinatal depression has been suggested to be important [5, 6]. On the other hand, some women develop depressive symptoms during postpartum without any depressive symptoms during pregnancy [4]. Although we have tended to get caught up in the former as "high-risk approach", we must always keep in mind that the latter is present, because it is undeniable that they also have a potential risk of maltreatment. Based on these backgrounds, we examined the factors associated with the symptoms of maternal depression developing for the first time during postpartum by increasing the number of subjects. The protocol for this study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Japanese Red Cross Katsushika Maternity Hospital. Informed consent concerning retrospective analyses was obtained from all subjects. Between April 2016 and March 2018, we requested all Japanese nulliparous women (n = 1,131) who delivered single baby at term at our institute to answer the Whooley's two questions [7, 8], a self-administered questionnaire at first, second and third trimesters of pregnancy (8 11, 20 24 and 34 37 weeks of gestation) and postpartum (1 month after delivery). In this study, 29 women were excluded because of current mental disorders with psychotherapies and/or medications, and 1,097 women of the rest (/1,102: 99.5%) gave us analyzable answers. The Whooley's two questions have been reported to be used as a screening tool for adult depression including women at perinatal period [7, 8]. It consists of the following two questions: 1) Have you often been bothered by feeling down, depressed or hopeless during the past 1 month? 2) Have you often been bothered by having little interest or pleasure in doing things during the past month? If at least one of the two questions is "yes", the woman was rated as having depressive symptom. Using medical charts of the women who responded validly, we examined maternal age, history of mental disorders, delivery mode and the most troubled problem at 2 4 weeks after delivery such as feeling of insufficient breastfeeding, baby crying at night, wound pain, breast trouble, et al. "Crying at night" means that baby suddenly starts crying in midnight and does not stop crying for no reason. Table 1 shows the results of Whooley's two questions during pregnancy and postpartum. The prevalence of women with postpartum depressive symptoms was 13.9% (153/1,097). Of the 153 women who had depressive symptoms during postpartum, 128 women (83.7%) showed depressive symptoms somewhere during their pregnancies, while 25 women (16.3%) showed no depressive symptoms during pregnancy. As a result of examining their medical charts, seven of the 25 women (28.0%) were worried about baby crying at night as shown in Table 2. Based on the current results, antenatal depressive symptoms seemed to be an obvious predicting factor for postnatal depressive symptoms. The tendency was similar to that in our previous small study [4], and it will support some previous studies [1-3]. On the other hand, 16% of women who had postpartum depressive symptoms did not have depressive symptoms during pregnancy. The most common cause of their depressive symptoms was baby crying at night. Pregnancy/delivery is a life-altering event, and everybody is supposed to be aware of that raising baby is not a piece of cake. However, night time waking and crying have been frequently culturally constructed as behavioural sleep "problems" [9, 10]. Mothers are usually the principal caregivers, providing extensive body contact day and night and prolonged breastfeeding with immediate nurturant response to crying. However, separate sleeping arrangements and delayed response to crying have been recommended regManuscript submitted October 22, 2021, accepted October 30, 2021 Published online November 20, 2021


This article suggests a list of software engineering topics appropriate for the introductory computer science courses, CS-1 and CS-2. Teaching issues arising from the incorporation of this material include course, project and team organization and activities. Many of the ideas noted here have been applied successfully in our CS-2 class at the University of Texas at Austin. Descriptions of sample projects and courses from the literature illustrate ways other faculty have integrated these approaches. Problem areas such as course organization and handling team problems are discussed and a bibliography of resources is included.


Abstract An efficient method for the analysis of limited plasticity at stress raising features such as notches and holes in finite bodies has been developed. A network of stationary dislocations is used to simulate the plasticity and simple constant displacement boundary elements form the borders of the geometries. The notch or hole itself is implicitly included in the formulation by using specialized kernels for these features in an infinite plane, thereby improving the numerical efficiency. The cyclic plastic behaviour of an edge-notch in an infinite plane and a finite rectangular plate are analysed under elastic-perfectly plastic, plane strain conditions. Examples of the resulting stress state after stress redistribution and plastic shakedown are displayed which aid in the reliable prediction of component life.


We describe the use of 6 M HCl to remove the Boc group in solid-phase peptide synthesis. Three peptides, 4-10 amino acid residues in length, have been successfully synthesized using 6 M HCl and were found to be comparable in purity to the same peptides prepared using the standard 50% trifluoroacetic acid in dichloromethane method of N-alpha-Boc removal.


Due to its outstanding properties, diamond is considered as an advanced material that generates innovation in various applications belonging to many fields. A very short literature overview is proposed about its role in manufacturing engineering and in energy with a focus on some recent discoveries.


In coastal sandy soils, the establishment of a plant cover is fundamental to avoid degradation and desertification processes. A better understanding of the ability of plants to promote soil microbial process in these conditions is necessary for successful soil reclamation. The current study was to investigate the ability of four different plant species to regenerate the microbiological processes in the rhizosphere soil and to discuss which species were the most effective for the reclamation of the coastal zone. The rhizosphere soils were studied by measuring microbial abundance (bacteria, fungi, actinomycetes, and ammonifiers), enzyme activities (invertase, catalase, urease, and phosphatase) and their relationship. Microbial abundance greatly varied among rhizospheres of different plant species (p < 0.05). Phragmites australis supported the highest amount of bacterial, actinomycetes, and ammonifiers abundance, and Echinochloa crusgalli supported the highest fungi abundance. In addition, the significant differences in rhizosphere enzyme activities of different plant species were also observed. There was a significant linear correlation between rhizosphere soil microbial abundances and enzyme activities between bacteria and urease and between fungi and catalase, but no such significant relationship was found between all rhizosphere soil microbial abundance and phosphatases. It was concluded that different plant species in coastal areas have different rhizosphere soils due to the impact of the different root exudates and plant residues of the microbial properties. In addition, natural grasslands (P. australis and E. crusgalli) are the most effective for revegetating coastal sandy soils.


PurposeThe authors tested whether the effect of alcohol consumption during work hours on workplace aggression was influenced by the combined impact of individuals' job insecurity and love of the job.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed a time-lagged design whereby 325 working adults (166 men; 159 women) provided data at two time points. Respondents were asked to report their typical alcohol consumption volume in a workday, the extent to which they loved their job, and how insecure they felt about their job. Approximately one week later, respondents completed a workplace aggression measure.FindingsA substantial positive relationship was observed between the volume of alcohol consumed during work hours and the likelihood of aggressive acts. Beyond this preliminary finding, the authors found evidence for a three-way interaction. It appears that the fear of losing a beloved job creates a condition under which the drinking-aggression relationship is particularly strong.Practical implicationsBesides formal rules deterring alcohol consumption during work hours, managers may look to implement measures that nurture a sense of job love and job security, which can be beneficial in preventing aggression resulting from drinking in the workplace.Originality/valueBy examining alcohol consumption during a typical workday, the study captures the contextual and proximal effects of drinking, which are often not observed in workplace-focused studies that operationalize alcohol consumption in general terms. The findings also suggest that if employees who drink during work hours are afraid of losing the job they love, a particularly stressful situation is created in which workplace aggression is more likely to happen.


the relationship between production and safety is discussed;the development process of safety management is illustrated;the establishment of both domestic and foreign safety management system is introduced;finally,the connotation of intrinsic safety management is presented and the way of intrinsic safety enterprises development is proposed.


A partitioned, continuum‐based, internal fluid–structure interaction (FSI) formulation is developed for modeling combined sloshing, acoustic waves, and the presence of an initial pressurized state. The present formulation and its computer implementation use the method of localized Lagrange multipliers to treat both matching and non‐matching interfaces. It is shown that, with the context of continuum Lagrangian kinematics, the fluid sloshing and acoustic stiffness terms originate from an initial pressure term akin to that responsible for geometric stiffness effects in solid mechanics. The present formulation is applicable to both linearized vibration analysis and nonlinear FSI transient analysis provided that a convected kinematics is adopted for updating the mesh geometry in a finite element discretization. Numerical examples illustrate the capability of the present procedure for solving coupled vibration and nonlinear sloshing problems. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The paper deals with a series of noisy images generated from a moving object or several objects. An estimation procedure for the object lo-cation, shape and some other parameters is pro-posed that is based on the EM-algorithm. or is close to due


Alloys in the system Ni.95 S Fe exhibit uniaxial anisotropy which is similar in magnitude to the exchange. Ni.95 S is a non‐magnetic d‐band metal and iron a magnetic impurity, so the system bears some resemblance to an Ising spin glass. Anisotropy modifies the magnetic properties as compared with a normal spin glass, giving a susceptibility more like that of an antiferromagnet. The maximum in χ ∥ at the freezing temperature Tf retains its form but shifts to lower temperature with increasing field. A sharp increase in the parallel magnetization below Tf in a large applied field is identified as spin flop of iron in the weakest exchange fields.


Water resources and urban flood management require hydrologic and hydraulic modeling. However, incomplete precipitation data is often the issue during hydrological modeling exercise. In this study, gene expression programming (GEP) was utilised to correlate monthly precipitation data from a principal station with its neighbouring station located in Alor Setar, Kedah, Malaysia. GEP is an extension to genetic programming (GP), and can provide simple and efficient solution. The study illustrates the applications of GEP to determine the most suitable rainfall station to replace the principal rainfall station (station 6103047). This is to ensure that a reliable rainfall station can be made if the principal station malfunctioned. These were done by comparing principal station data with each individual neighbouring station. Result of the analysis reveals that the station 38 is the most compatible to the principal station where the value of R2 is 0.886.


The purpose of the study was to examine the association of students learning from experience and relationship with other members in the university such as lecturers, support staff and peers on the students identification with the University. Identifying the student's engagement to the University will help the University management to create a comprehensive academic content and conducive learning environment. Three hundred and seventy-nine students of a local private university participated. The results indicated that learning from experiences, relational satisfaction between the students-Lecturers, Students-Staff and Students-Peers has a significant relationship with University Identification and positive word-of-mouth. The findings of this study suggest that, to increase students' engagement and identification with the University, the management of the University need to obtain a favorable reputation held by students and cultivate a satisfactory relationship with the students through more hands-on experience and students' involvement in strengthening the name of the University into public eyes, while fostering identification of the Students with the University.


KIMOTO SHUBO is a traditional seed mash producing method in sake brewing. Yeast is cultivated vigorously in open systems without contamination by bacteria or wild yeast. In the process, contaminated microorganisms are inhibited from growing by a nitrite/nitrate system in the mother water and lactic acid produced by lactic acid bacteria. Finally, under the low pH condition, the sake yeast is grown predominantly in the mash. However, in the brewer's house, there is a phenomenon in which the nitrite is not eliminated in the mash. This factor was researched using model mash by sake koji obtained from sake brewer's houses. The microorganisms in the koji eliminated the nitrite in mash. Y-11393 strain was identified as Pichia angusta. The strain oxidized nitrite to eliminate it from the mash. It is believed that the yeast assimilated nitrate, which is a low toxic substance for yeast. The strain had tolerance against nitrite and could grow under 1-5mM nitrite conditions. It also eliminated nitrite up to 6-16% for 4 days. Moreover, the strain had acid tolerance and ethanol tolerance up to 5% ethanol and 1.1% lactic acid. The yeast eliminated nitrite in the model moto-mash. Also, the yeast cells between the mid-log phase and late-log phase thoroughly eliminated nitrite. It is obvious that the yeast has the ability to remove nitrite in the KIMOTO method.


The trend towards larger dairy herds which are confined on concrete surfaces for most of the cow's lactation has insured that bovine lameness treatment continues to be a significant part of most veterinarians' routine. A common practice to alleviate foot pain and encourage rapid recovery has been the application of various devices to the healthy claw, in an attempt to prevent the cow from bearing weight on the diseased claw until healing is complete. Published methods include attachment of a wooden block with acrylic adhesive,1 and building up the claw with a layer of plaster cast material.2 A plastic "elevator" slipper which is attached to the foot with nylon cord and tape which has a build up under the medial or lateral claw has been marketed.3


In this paper,a three-dimensional finite element model for a higher-lower tower of single-plane-cable-stayed bridge is created to analyze it's natural frequency and modes.Sum up the dynamic characteristics of such cable-stayed bridge and can serve as reference to the analysis of similar bridges.


Modeling human blobs in crowd for analyzing the behavior is an important issue for video surveillance and is a challenging task due to the unpredictability. Huge video dataset is captured by using various resources like surveillance cameras in many places including the public environment like railway station, airport etc. It is very time consuming to watch the whole video manually for forensic applications of analysis. Most of the computer vision algorithms are concentrating for real time solutions. But, still after the fact also, so many issues could not be analyzed well. For example, if one wants to analyze a specific activity in a video, watching the video for so many hours is hectic. In this paper, Video synopsis is used to represent a short video while preserving the essential activities for a long video. In the existing methodology, active objects are shifted along the time axis and hence the video is compressed much, it causes collisions among the moving objects. Therefore, compact video synopsis is proposed by using a spatiotemporal optimization, which will shift the active object along the space as well as time and thus avoid collision among them. This synthesized compact background is introduced by using multilevel patch relocation (MPR) method to provide a larger virtual motion space for shifted objects. The synoptic video is proposed here to detect if any anomalies of human crowd(s) is present in the scene in a quicker time. Experimental results obtained by using extensive dataset show that the proposed algorithm is effective in detecting anomalous events for uncontrolled environment of video surveillance.


The utilization of prior knowledge about anomalies is an essential issue for anomaly detections. Recently, the visual attention mechanism has become a promising way to improve the performance of CNNs for some computer vision tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel model called Layer-wise External Attention Network (LEA-Net) for efficient image anomaly detection. The core idea relies on the integration of unsupervised and supervised anomaly detectors via the visual attention mechanism. Our strategy is as follows: (i) Prior knowledge about anomalies is represented as the anomaly map generated by unsupervised learning of normal instances, (ii) The anomaly map is translated to an attention map by the external network, (iii) The attention map is then incorporated into intermediate layers of the anomaly detection network. Notably, this layer-wise external attention can be applied to any CNN model in an end-to-end training manner. For a pilot study, we validate LEA-Net on color anomaly detection tasks. Through extensive experiments on PlantVillage, MVTec AD, and Cloud datasets, we demonstrate that the proposed layer-wise visual attention mechanism consistently boosts anomaly detection performances of an existing CNN model, even on imbalanced datasets. Moreover, we show that our attention mechanism successfully boosts the performance of several CNN models.


In this paper, single tungsten oxide (WOx) nanotip has been welded on tungsten microtip by pulsed laser. Also, field emission characteristic and low resistance electrical contact were obtained using scanning electron microscopy (SEM)


Medical imaging is an indispensable tool for diagnosis of several complex disorders. In preceding years, advancement in medical imaging have aided in accurate diagnosis by capturing the anatomical images of the human organs without the necessity to surgically treat the human body. A radical medical diagnosis requires accurate results from the imaging modalities that are generally vulnerable to noises, resulting in a blemished image. In case of ultrasounds, the major noise is the speckle noise. Several tissues in the human body are hard that are accountable for producing multiple reflections of the ultrasound waves causing speckle noise which vitiates the quality of the ultrasound images. We present an efficient denoising method for the ultrasound images that will overcome the noising, particularly obtained through speckle noise. This paper adopts Anisotropic Diffusion for denoising of the image. This paper provides additionally the performance analysis of the denoising mechanism using the Teaching-Learning Based Optimization methods to achieve the targeted results. Also, HSOA algorithm is used for this purpose and the results from both the techniques are compared. The technique for denoising proposed in this paper has extensively enhanced the denoising mechanism used in ultrasound images of the liver. While the proposed system is considered to be effective, however the performance of the denoising carried out by the TLBO algorithm concluded that the denoising was over-filtering the image with the additional loss of data.


The desire to communicate with other beings that men consider as superior and sacred, for various purposes such as assuring and pleasing them before or during the steps they will take, led to the emergence of magic. By approaching the superior and sacred beings, they approached prophetic spells to get opinions that would make them feel safe in their social life or in the steps of their state. In this study, the syncretic structures of Hellenism and local cultures in the said region were examined with the help of papyrological and classical sources together with the explanation of concepts of magic and prophecy in the region mentioned in ancient Hellenic and Roman societies.


This paper considers a single facility scheduling problem for the fabrication of components supporting the subsequent assembly into products. Each product consists of two types of components, one is common to all products and the other is unique to itself. The unique components are processed individually and the common components are processed in batches, and a distinct setup is incurred for the production of a batch of common components. Under the so-called "batch availability" environment, we propose an efficient dynamic programming(DP) procedure for the optimal sequencing and batching schedule with minimum total completion times of products in the situation that each product is said to be complete if both common and unique components of the product are finished. Computational results show that the proposed DB procedure is more efficient than the previous work which has considered the same problem as this paper.


The article studies the legislative acts issued to administrate Siberia and Turkestan in the 1820s-1860s. The author made a comparison of the legislative documents that regulated various aspects of administration in the outskirts of the country. These were the Statute on Administration of the Siberian Provinces and the Project of the Statute on Administration of Semirechenskaya and Syr-Darinskaya Oblasts written by M.M. Speransky in 1822 and in 1867 respectively. Based on the comparative analysis, conclusions demonstrate the similarities and differences in administration of the territories. The administrative, military and diplomatic competences of the local administrations in the person of a governor-general are in the focus of the paper. The outskirts of the Russian Empire had always been under a special control of the Russian authorities. It was determined by the exceptional position of these regions that comes from their remoteness from the central part of the country; their location in the border territory; the Russian citizens were a minority both in Siberia and in Turkestan; the system of the civil service there had its specificity too and, as the contemporaries said, public officials went there to earn ranks and privileges. There were differences determined by the ethnic and confessional composition of the population, relatively developed economy and international trade, by the fact that there were such formations as the Khanate of Khiva, the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Kokand in Turkestan. The created Governor-Generalship model of governing resembled the administration of the British India. But Russian legislation in this field had its own peculiarities and remained in force (with some changes) up until the fall of the Empire in 1917. The analysis of sources shows that the Siberian administration model was applied in Turkestan. This model was used by the Government in the Caucasus as well. The paper is based on the legislative acts, research works of Russian prominent historians, archival sources from the funds of the Central State Archive of the Republic of Uzbekistan. The author studies the administrative, military and diplomatic competences of governors-general of those regions. It is worth mentioning that some of the directions of their activities were not provided with clear instructions. When the rules were infringed by these officials or they were accused of corruption, governors-general only had to prove their rightness and adduce reasons and evidence of their innocence. The research helps to determine the role of the Siberian experience in administration of the Central Asian outskirts and the competences of governors-general that were weakly regulated by law, so governors-general had almost unlimited rights.


The study aimed to analyze polymorphisms located in exon 4 of the CATHL5 gene encoding the BMAP-28 protein and in exon 4 of the CATHL6 gene encoding the BMAP-27 protein concerning milk performance parameters, such as milk yield, fat, protein, and lactose content and somatic cell count in milk. The PCR-RFLP method using the ACRS technique was used in the study to create a cleavage site for enzymes. Based on the results of genotyping, results for individual SNPs were obtained, with statistically significant differences at the P ≤ 0.05 and P ≤ 0.01. Between individual genotypes of the studied polymorphisms and selected traits of milk production.


Dysglycemia is a common and independent risk factor for poor prognosis in critically ill patients.[1] Little research on blood glucose (BG) management has been done in Intensive Care Units (ICUs) in China. Understanding current practice patterns, as well as concerns and beliefs surrounding BG control in critically ill patients, is essential for further research on this issue and future medical education in intensive care physicians. Therefore, we designed and conducted this survey of intensive care physicians' attitudes, knowledge, and practices concerning the treatment and prevention of dysglycemia, including hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, and/or marked BG variability.


This RIRDC report describes the development of a series of easy to use quality specifications for the major wildflower products traded on Australia's domestic and export markets (RIRDC Publication Numbers 10/028 to 10/059). These specifications describe the 'minimum acceptable' product specifications at market entry, using photos and easy to follow charts. As an additional component of this work, the manual "Postharvest Handling of Australian Native Flowers and Related Species: A Practical Workbook" (RIRDC 2001) was extensively revised. This report describes the information included in the updated edition (RIRDC Publication Number 10/027) and how the manual has been written to support the specifications.


Background and Aims: To reveal early signs of infringement of haemodynamics in kidneys at essensiales essenttial arterial hypertensia at children. Methods: 115 children 13–18 years,98 - boys, girls - 17 with arterial hypertensia (ÀH) are surveyed: stable 70(SAH), labile 45(LAH). Renal haemodynamics was estimated on ultrasonic after survey of kidneys in the B-mode. It was spent colour and spectral doppler at level of a trunk of a nephritic artery and segmentary arteries. Also changes of haemodynamics against in klinoortostatik tests were studied. Results: At surveyed children complaints a headache prevailed, more often arising against physical pressure or a psycho-emotional overload also was registered at 85% from SAH, 91%about the LAH. High-speed indicators in the basic trunk of a nephritic artery in both groups are raised: at the LAH Vmax = 0,81 ± 0,14sm s, at SAH —0,88 ± 0,2 sm s. At klinoortostatik tests decrease in high-speed indicators in both groups on a nephritic artery on25%(norm < 20%), and on23%(norm < 16 %) at level of segmentary arteries in group from SAH is marked. Conclusions: Research renal haemodynamics with carrying out klinoortostatik tests allows to define an involvement in patogenesis system renin-angiotensin-aldosteron as the leading pathogenetic mechanism of development of a secondary nephritic hypertensia, to reveal adverse criteria of defeat of kidneys at ÀH at children.


In recent years there has been a substantial increase in attempts to model radiative flux of ultraviolet radiation, UV. In this paper we present the development of an artificial neural network (ANN) model that can be used to estimate solar UV erythemal irradiance, UVER, based on optical air mass, ozone columnar content and broadband solar irradiance. The study was developed at seven stations in the Iberian Peninsula using data recorded at A Coruña, Málaga, Murcia and Santander, during 2000–2003; at Madrid in the period 2000–2002; at Valencia in 2000, 2001 and 2003; and at Zaragoza, from 2001 to 2003. The UVER observations are recorded as half‐hour average values. The measurements were performed in the framework of the Spanish UV‐B radiometric network operated and maintained by the Spanish Meteorological Institute. In order to train and validate the Multi‐layer Perceptron neural networks, independent subsets of data were extracted from the complete database at each station. The networks developed at each place when applied to an independent data set recorded at the same location provide estimates with mean bias deviation less than 1% and root mean square deviation below 17% for all the sites. The generalization network developed using data registered at A Coruña, Madrid, Murcia and Zaragoza provides estimates at all the locations with RMSD below 19%. According to these results, the use of solar broadband irradiances for the estimation of ultraviolet erythemal irradiance provides a tool that can solve the difficulties associated to the retrieval of appropriate information on the cloud field by human observers. In this sense, the proposed method seems appropriate to use the widespread networks of solar broadband irradiance to obtain ultraviolet erythemal irradiance data sets in places where this radiative flux is not measured or to extend back in time the existing data sets. Copyright © 2007 Royal Meteorological Society


ABSTRACT Steve Waters has suggested that climate change can be understood through the optic of classical tragedy. Building on Waters's interpretative frame, then, this article asserts that British society—a protagonist in the environmental drama—has authored its own downfall through destructive acts that were of our own making, though not necessarily our fault. Moreover, as we repeat, with the alacrity of the doomed, our fatal flaw—the catastrophe, it would seem—has become inevitable. Accepting and developing Waters's assertion, this article will consider notions of tragedy, folklore, nation and environment in relation to Jez Butterworth's 2009 play Jerusalem. The fall of great Johnny 'Rooster' Byron in this piece signals a fall of heritage, of nation, of man. It is presumably, therefore, no accident that great Shakespearean Mark Rylance was cast as this play's bleak hero. Furthermore, if, as Adrian Poole has noted, tragedy stages 'moments of crisis in a community's understanding of itself', then Jerusalem stages the destabilization of space, place and history. The play replenishes traditional modes of theatre-making with urgency and integrity. In this way, it marks a countermove to the dominant (and vital) preoccupation within 'political' theatre practice in recent years with formal experiment. The article, then, not only considers what position this play occupies within the new topography of British theatre but also interrogates local tales, national politics and global disaster. In short, this article asks if Jerusalem stages the end of hope.


The invention resides in the implementation of an antioxidant during the functionalization reaction of a (meth) acrylic acid in the dry state with side groups polyoxyalkylated, so as to improve the degree of grafting of the final polymer . The polymers obtained are a further object of the invention, as well as aqueous formulations that contain them.


The margin of the eyelid is histologically intermediate in position between the mucous membranes and the skin. At this site, staphylococci frequently cause a chronic superficial inflammation that often responds poorly to local antibiotic therapy. The eyelid margin has a fatty layer, secreted by the Meibomian glands in the tarsal plates. If the inflamed eyelid margin is thoroughly defatted, antibiotic therapy is often effective. There seems to be some relation between the ability of staphylococci to maintain themselves in the eyelid margin and the presence of this fatty layer. Therefore, the lipolytic activity of staphylococci isolated from patients with chronic inflamed eyelid margins and staphylococci isolated from the upper respiratory tract was compared. MATERIALS AND METHODS Organisms. A group of 50 strains of Staphylococcus aureus isolated from patients with chronic inflamed eyelid margins (ELM strains) was compared with a group of 80 strains of S. aureus isolated from the upper respiratory tract (URT strains). All strains were kept for at least six months on meat-infusion agar before being examined. Measurement of lipolysis. Hydrolysis of lipid subtrates was measured by a modification of the method of Smith and Willett (1968). The subtrates were triglycerides, containing fatty acids differing in chain length and degree of unsaturation, cottonseed oil (Nutritional Biochemical Corporation, Cleveland, Ohio, USA) and olive oil, which contain different combinations of triglycerides, and the synthetic detergent Tween 80 (Brocades-A.C.F., Holland). These were all prepared as 5 % (v/v) emulsions with 3.75 % (w/v) gum acacia in phosphate buffer, pH 8.0, and sterilised by flowing steam for 10 min. The stock emulsions were diluted 1 in 10 with medium giving a final concentration of (v/v) substrate 0.5%, and of (w/v) gum acacia 0.375 %, peptone 1-2%, NaCl 0.05 %, CaCl2 0.01 %, and Nutrient Agar no. 1 (Oxoid) 1.2%. Basal medium (8.6 ml), consisting of (w/v) peptone 1.2% and Nutrient Agar no. 1 was poured into a petri dish 9 cm in diameter and allowed to solidify. An overlay of medium containing lipid substrate (6.4 ml) was then poured over the basal medium. Diffusion wells were prepared by cutting cylinders of 9 mm diameter in the agar, and 0.1 ml of basal medium was added to each well. The plates were dried for 2 h at room temperature, and the wells were inoculated with 0-03 ml of an 18-h shake culture of the test strain. Each strain was tested in quintuplicate against each substrate. Plates were incubated for 3 days at 37"C, except those containing tricaprin, trilaurin, tripalmitin and Tween 80, which were incubated for 5 days at 37°C. Diameters of the zones of hydrolysis were measured with calipers.


Aging and physical inactivity are associated with an increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome (MetS). With the rising prevalence of MetS, it is important to determine the extent to which it affects cerebrovascular health. The primary purpose of this report is to examine the impact of MetS on cerebrovascular health (resting cerebral blood flow (CBF) peak velocity ( V¯P ), cerebrovascular conductance (CVC), and CBF responses to hypercapnia) in healthy older adults with normal cognition. A secondary goal was to examine the influence of apolipoprotein E (APOE) ε4 expression on these indices. In a sample of 258 healthy men and women older than 53 years, 29.1% met criteria for MetS. MetS, sex, and age were found to be significant predictors of CVC, and V¯P , MetS, and APOE status were significant predictors of V¯P ‐reactivity, and CVC‐reactivity was best predicted by MetS status. After controlling for these factors, participants with MetS demonstrated lower cerebrovascular measures (CVC, V¯P , CVC‐reactivity, and V¯P ‐reactivity) compared to participants without MetS. APOE ε4 carriers had higher V¯P ‐reactivity than noncarriers. These results provide evidence that cardiometabolic and vascular risk factors clustered together as the MetS predict measures of cerebrovascular health indices in older adults. Higher V¯P ‐reactivity in APOE ε4 carriers suggests vascular compensation for deleterious effects of this known risk allele for Alzheimer's disease and stroke.


Some novel multifunction biquadratic filters with voltage gain, each of which employs four current conveyors, two grounded capacitors, and three-five resistors, are presented. Each proposed circuit offers the following advantageous features: realization of different biquadratic filter signals from the same configuration, no requirements for component matching conditions, employment of only two grounded capacitors which are ideal for integration, orthogonal control of /spl omega//sub 0/ and Q and low sensitivities.


An algebraic variety $X$ is called a homogeneous variety if the automorphism group $\mathrm{Aut}(X)$ acts on $X$ transitively, and a homogeneous space if there exists a transitive action of an algebraic group on $X$. We prove a criterion of smoothness of a suspension to construct a wide class of homogeneous varieties. As an application, we give criteria for a Danielewski surface to be a homogeneous variety and a homogeneous space. Also, we construct affine suspensions of arbitrary dimension that are homogeneous varieties but not homogeneous spaces.


The paper investigates the myth about the birth of Huicilopochtli, the deity considered by the Spanish conquistadors to be the supreme god of the Aztecs. Aztec myths are even today usually interpreted diachronically, strictly following the sequence of events. Structural analysis, on the other hand, in attempting to uncover the message a myth holds, doesn't deem the sequence of events in the story important, but rather, studies the interrelation of chains of essential units of myth – mythemes. These two kinds of analysis provide two different interpretations of the same myth: while formal analysis gives a cosmological interpretation, structural analysis points to the powerful social contradictions which this myth tries to reconcile.


The long-period ordered phase (LPOP) formed in Fe-1.83 mass%C martensite during aging at room temperature has been investigated by the electron diffraction method. It was found that the LPOP formed at 298 K possessed an incommensurate superperiod of 10.7c (c is the length of the c axis of martensite), different from the previously reported 12c at higher aging temperatures. This indicated a temperature dependence of superperiod of the LPOP, which could not be explained by previous structure models of the LPOP. The above experimental finding show that the LPOP is consistent with an off-stoichiometric phase γ'-Fe x C(II) (x=4 ∼ 10), the superperiod of which can adopt 10c, 12c, and 14c at different temperatures. The coexistence of two of these structures at intermediate temperatures results in the nominal incommensurate superperiod. Computer simulated electron diffraction (ED) patterns based on this structure model remarkably resembled the observed ED patterns in every aspect.


The invention provides a point diffraction interferometer and comprises a light source module, a mask which can produce an ideal spherical wave, an optical diffraction component which can produce multi-level sub-diffraction light, an image sensor and an optical component. The measured optical component is arranged between the mask and the optical diffraction component and the diffraction light ofsome levels can permeate the optical component completely, wherein, the diffraction light of a certain level can permeate the optical component partly while being diffracted partly; the diffraction light of some levels can permeate the optical component completely, wherein, the diffraction light of a certain level can be diffracted or the optical component consists of a plurality of windows and aplurality of small holes; diffraction light of some levels can selectively permeate the window, however, the non-diffracted light can be diffracted through the small hole on the optical component. The point diffraction interferometer of the invention conducts measurement through a plurality of interference graphs which are produced at the same time and the sampling frequency is improved, moreover, the design and operation of the whole system is simplified and the motion error of a phase-shift component can be avoided.


To investigate the phenomena that occur at the growth temperatures, an MOVPE (metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy) growth system was installed in the X-ray diffractometer of the laboratory level. The present MOVPE system is capable of growing GaN and related materials that are advanced in the device applications but very little is known, especially experimentally, what is going on at the growth front and in the environment. Since MOVPE growth is conducted at an atmospheric pressure or at a low pressure, very limited tools can be used to probe the growing surface. It is demonstrated that the X-ray diffraction, X-ray CTR (crystal truncation rod) scattering, and X-ray reflectivity can be used even at 1000°C that is a normal growth temperature for GaN and related materials.


Elastic scattering differential cross sections were measured for the ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}{+}^{58}\mathrm{Ni}$ system at sub-barrier energies. The corresponding nuclear potential was compared with earlier results of systems like ${A+}^{58}\mathrm{Ni}.$ The present data also allowed the determination of the ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}$ nuclear density through an unfolding method. The experimentally extracted ${}^{28}\mathrm{Si}$ density values are compared with those previously obtained for the ${}^{4,6}\mathrm{He},$ ${}^{12}\mathrm{C},$ ${}^{16,18}\mathrm{O}$ nuclei. We present a critical discussion of the absolute precision obtained for the density parameters extracted from the data analyses.


An anonymous proxy signature is applied in the situation of a proxy signature that the proxy singer hopes to keep secret of his identity and when disputation is appearing, the verifier can reveal the real identity of the proxy signer with the help of the original signer. In this paper, we analyze Zhao et al.'s id-based anonymous proxy signature. We show that their scheme is not truly "ID-Based" and it is vulnerable to an attack similar to "Key Replacement Attack" in the certificateless signature. At last, we propose an enhanced ID-Based anonymous proxy signature scheme and analyze its security.


Background and Objectives- Symptomatic Primary Hyperparathyroidism (PHPT) is common in India in comparison to the western population. But there is very little data on the inuence of age on the presentation of PHPT. In the present study we aimed to analyse the clinical and metabolic prole among different age groups of symptomatic primary hyperparathyroidism. Methods: This retrospective analysis was done in PHPT patients who attended Department of Endocrinology, Gauhati Medical college and Hospital. Thirty-one PHPT subjects who presented to us over a period of last ve years were divided into three different age groups i.e, children and adolescents <18yrs, adults ≥18-50 years, and older group >50years. All major clinical, metabolic and imaging parameters were compared among these groups. Appropriate statistical methods were used to compare different variables. The age distribution ranged from 13 to Results: 72 years with mean age of 38.6±16.3years and with equal female to male ratio. Bony deformity (Rickets) as initial manifestation was seen in three adolescents and bone pain was common in adolescents(p=0.05). Prevalence of renal stones were higher in adult group(p=0.002), gastrointestinal manifestations were higher in older group (p=0.02). There was no signicant difference in fracture rate(P=0.17), brown tumours(P=0.56) and other symptoms among different age groups. Alkaline phosphatase(p=0.006) and iPTH(p=0.01) were signicantly higher in adolescent group. There was no signicant difference in serum calcium, phosphate, 25(OH)Vitamin-D3 and haemoglobin levels among different age groups. Age has substantial inuence on PHPT presentation. Bone Interpretation & Conclusion: pain and deformity was common in adolescents, while renal stones and gastrointestinal manifestations were common in middle aged and elderly group respectively


PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a pointing device for a computer and its method capable of improving the positioning accuracy and moving range of a cursor. SOLUTION: This computer peripheral device applies a signal for controlling the movement of a computer cursor to the computer. This device has a pointing device 20 for generating an input signal corresponding to detected movement and a gain control device 30 for expressing the ratio of the movement of the cursor in the x-axis and y-axis directions to the corresponding movement of the pointing device 20 in the x-axis and y-axis directions as gain and generating a gain signal. The gain signal is used for the scale adjustment of each corresponding input signal.


As one of the worst-affected European countries by COVID-19 experiences a slow return to normality, all eyes are on what lies ahead. The labor market implications generated by weeks of drastic lockdown might be far-reaching, and uncertainty about the future of jobs in Italy increases. In this time of significant changes, fleshing out a range of possible future developments could help mitigate part of the uncertainty by guiding decisions at an institutional level. This research employs an intuitive logics approach (IL) to scenario development, which is particularly suited to support decision-making (Kosow and Gaßner, 2008) by deriving the implications of different courses of action. Following the IL method, this study appoints 17 experts to qualify the driving forces of youth employoment in Italy according to their level of uncertainty and impact. The results of this paper are four plausible scenarios derived from the intersection of the two highly uncertain and impactful driving forces most likely to be affected by COVID-19: the state of the economy and a skills mismatch between labor demand and supply. Although all four scenarios foresee a negative impact of the crisis on the labor market, this work shows how the government, its agencies, and supranational institutions might mitigate adverse effects by designing and implementing youth skills interventions. This research contributes to the efforts of the academic community in response to the current emergency by improving our understanding of policy options in the Italian labor market context.


With the development of autonomous malware and autonomous anti-malware, command and control of cyber weapons is becoming an important part of cyber defence. In the present paper we discuss the dangers of deploying and controlling intelligent cyber weapons in a unified setting, considering these weapons as intelligent agents. Command and control of intelligent agents causes new threats that are difficult to avoid due to the complexity of behaviour of agents. Situation awareness of agents must be improved and verified, or at least carefully tested with respect to safety of their behaviour. Several possible dangerous behaviours of cyber weapons are discussed in the talk: misunderstanding of a situation, misinterpretation of commands, and loss of contact and formation of unwanted coalitions. A specific threat is the formation of unwanted coalitions by proactive weapons. This can happen if they get too much autonomy in decision making. A scenario of insubordination of agents is presented, considering a longer time perspective. General conclusions are the following: the more intelligent software becomes the more difficult it will be to control it; when designing and developing new cyber weapons, one has to guarantee the appropriate control over these weapons under any circumstances. It is practically impossible to use formal methods for verifying the safety of intelligent cyber weapons for their users. Setting strict constraints on the behaviour of cyber weapons and their careful testing are necessary.


This InSight publication is intended to guide readers through the processes necessary to implement a successful market intelligence program at an MFI. It highlights the activities and tools that ACCION has developed in each phase of the market intelligence process. It also walks the reader through two ACCION technical assistance projects, one in Latin America and the other in Africa, to demonstrate how these market intelligence tools have been applied in the field. Available for download from www.accion.org/insight


Streptomyces cattleya NRRL 8057 produces the jl-lactam antibiotic thienamycin (1a) and traces of N-acetylthienamycin (lb)1). A closely related carbapenem, PS-5 (2a) is produced by Streptomyces cremetis subsp auratilis.2,11)* The latter has recently been deacetylated with Lamino acid acylase from porcine kidney and Damino acid acylase from Streptomyces olivaceus affording a desacetyl compound NS-5 (2b).3) In addition, a European patent published in 1979 discloses the preparation of NS-5 (deshydroxythienamycin) via a lengthy chemical synthesis.') These compounds display very potent antimicrobial activity against Gram-positive and negative bacteria, as well as (3-lactamase inhibitory properties.a, s) We would like to report the production of carbapenems by two new mutants of S. cattleya NRRL 8057. One of these mutants, S-WRIM459 produces an N-acetyl carbapenem corresponding to N-acetylthienamycin (Ib) while the second, S-WRI-M5301 produces a deshydroxy analog of thienamycin corresponding to NS-5 (2b). This is the first report on the use of mutants of S. cattleya for the production of thienamycin analogues. These mutants should be useful in elucidating biosynthetic pathways leading to this interesting class of carbapenems. S. cattleya NRRL 8057 was incubated on N-Z amine agar') for 7 days at 27°C. Spores were harvested in TX buffer') and subjected to the mutagenic action of N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine at 1.0 mg/ml for 2 hours. The spores were collected via filtration, suspended in 0.1 M phosphate-buffered saline and plated on N-Z amine agar and incubated as above. Isolated colonies were transferred to N-Z amine agar slants. These stock cultures served as a source of seed for growth in flasks containing a thienamycin production medium (medium B)9' incubated on a rotary shaker at 210 rpm at 27°C for 48 hours. Samples from each fermentation were clarified via centrifugation and aliquots of the crude broths were subjected to chromato-


In this paper, we compare the knowledge subsystems in 11 countries from Central Europe and the varieties of knowledge capitalism distinguished by Bruno Amable. The varieties distinguished by Amable are represented by Germany, Italy, Sweden and Great Britain. Both the input and output empirical measures of knowledge subsystems are taken into account. The results are given as hexagons of similarity.


Objective
To investigate the changes of serum retinol binding protein 4 (RBP4) concentration in peripheral blood of normal gravidas at different stages during pregancy and the differential expression of serum RBP4 in gravidas with fetal growth restriction (FGR) in second trimester.

Methods
This study enrolled 80 gravidas who received routine prenatal examination and delivered in the Beijing Luhe Hospital Affiliated to Capital Medical University from January 2014 to January 2015. Forty gravidas were classified to FGR group as the birth weight of their fetuses was below two standard deviations or below the 10th percentile for the corresponding gestationas and same sex, or less than 2 500 g after 37 weeks. The other 40 gravidas who delivered newborns with normal birth weight (2 500 g < birth weight < 4 000 g) were used as control group. Levels of serum RBP4, plasma albumin, fasting blood glucose, triglyceride, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein-cholesterol (LDL-C), hemoglobin, fasting insulin and vitamin A were determined before pregnancy and at 12-16, 20-24, 28-32 and 36-40 weeks of gestation. Homeostasis model assessment-insulin resistance (HOMA-IR) was calculated. Independent sample t test or analysis of variance, Chi-square test or Fisher exact test was used for statistical analysis. Pearson correlation was used to analyze the relationship between peripheral blood RBP4 level and neonatal birth weight at 20-24 weeks.

Results
(1) Serum RBP4 levels in normal gravidas were (24.65±10.02), (29.86±23.40), (56.10±12.28), (65.80±20.56) and (53.71±24.17) μg/ml before pregnancy and at 12-16, 20-24, 28-32 and 36-40 weeks of gestation, respectively, showing a gradually increasing trend with gestational week until a peak at 28-32 weeks and then followed by a decrease (F=14.173, P<0.001). (2) The body mass index and placental weight of gravidas in FGR group were lower than those in control group [20.7±3.3 vs 22.9±2.1, (401.3±56.2) vs (501.3±64.7) g; t=22.590 and 2.487, both P<0.05]. (3) The fasting blood glucose, fasting insulin, HOMA-IR, RBP4 and plasma albumin in FGR group were lower than those in control group [(4.06±0.4) vs (4.38±0.4) mmol/L, (21.84±15.2) vs (31.76±1.5) μU/ml, 0.5±0.2 vs 0.7±0.2, (41.78±12.8) vs (65.80±20.5) μg/ml, (35.1±2.7) vs (36.5±2.3) g/L; t=3.419, 2.355, 3.419, 6.263 and 2.462, all P<0.05]. Maternal serum RBP-4 at 20-24 weeks of normal gravidas and FGR gravidas were positively correlated with the birth weight of newborns (r=0.717 and 0.748, both P<0.05).

Conclusions
Serum RBP4 of gravidas may be associated with the occurrence of FGR.

Key words:
Fetal growth retardation; Retinol-binding proteins, plasma; Pregnancy trimester, second; birth weight


After graduating in business studies from Cape Town, in 1992 I started a 4-month management traineeship programme with the Royal Bank of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. During this time, I came across the inspiring research of Professor Greg McLeod from Cape Breton University, written up in his Community Business Series booklets (and later, in From Mondragon To America Experiments In Community Economic Development). Having worked in community development for over 30 years, McLeod was concerned about rootless capital – the trend of companies funded by absentee investors with no stake in the communities in which the business operates.


This paper proposes and empirically validates four theories of why legal origin influences growth and welfare through finance. It is a natural extension of "Law and finance: why does legal origin matter?" by Thorsten Beck, Asli Demirguc-Kunt and Ross Levine (2003). We find only partial support for the Mundell (1972), La Porta et al. (1998) and Beck et al. (2003) hypotheses that English common-law countries tend to have better developed financial intermediaries than French civil-law countries. While countries with English legal tradition have legal systems that improve financial depth, activity and size, countries with French legal origin overwhelmingly dominate in financial intermediary allocation efficiency. Countries with Portuguese legal origin fall in-between.


Abstract.  The results of a phylogenetic analysis of Dermestidae (Coleoptera) based on the morphology of immature stages are presented and implications for the classification of the family are discussed. The monophyly of ((Orphilus) + (Dermestidae) + (Endecatomidae (Bostrichidae + Anobiidae))) is strongly supported. Dermestidae, excluding Orphilus Erichson, forms a monophyletic group. The phylogenetic position of the Orphilinae remains enigmatic. The hypothesized relationships of the remaining dermestid subfamilies are (Thorictinae (Dermestinae (Attageninae (Megatominae + Trinodinae)))). Phylogenetically informative morphological characters of larvae and pupae are illustrated and described. Character state transformations implied by the phylogenetic hypothesis are discussed. New morphological observations are provided, including the first records of the presence of gastric caeca in the larva of Dermestes L., and the first report of the number of Malpighian tubules and the number of abdominal ganglia in Dermestidae, Bostrichidae, Anobiidae, Nosodendridae and Derodontidae. The form of the mandibular base is described for the first time for Thylodriini Beal and Trinodini Beal. The fossil record and distribution of extant Dermestidae are discussed in the light of the phylogenetic hypothesis. The origin of the family is hypothesized to be in the Late Cretaceous.


This article presents the results of an opportunistic, cross-sectional, self-report survey of the well-being of staff working in prisons throughout the UK. The survey was completed by 594 participants in the early part of 2021 at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Self-report measures indicated concerning levels of burnout and 43.4% of participants were above the established cut-offs on the Generalised Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7) scale. Eighty-one per cent reported that their mental and physical health had deteriorated and many said emotional support was lacking. Further research is required to establish how typical and persistent these concerns are. © 2023 The Authors. The Howard Journal of Crime and Justice published by Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.


An optical in-fiber modal interferometer-based volume strain sensor for earthquake prediction is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. The sensing element is formed by wrapping a multimode-singlemode-multimode fiber structure onto a polyurethane hollow column. Due to the modal interference between the excited guided modes in the fiber, strong interference pattern could be observed in the transmission spectrum. Theoretical analysis verifies that the resonant wavelength shifts as a result of the volume strain variation caused by the column deformation with square root relationship. Sensitivity > 3.93 p, / με within the volume strain ranging from 0 to 1300 με is also experimentally demonstrated. By taking the response of bidirectional change of volume strain and the sluggish character of the employed sensing material into consideration, the sensing system presents good repeatability and stability.


Pregnancy in women with Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) has been linked with an increased incidence of adverse foetal outcomes when compared to women without haemoglobinopathies (HbAA). There's a paucity of data into foetal outcomes for infants born to women with SCD. Customised growth charts have been demonstrated to be better than populationbased growth charts at identifying unhealthy small babies. We analysed the mean birth weight and customised birth weight centiles of infants born to mothers with SCD versus mothers with HbAA genotype, to quantify the risk of having a smaller baby. Birth weight and birth weight centiles were analysed for 88 women with SCD (50 HbSS; 38 HbSC) and 176 controls (HbAA). Statistically significant differences were seen in the mean birth weight (P value = 0.004) and the mean birth weight centiles (P value = 0.016). We conclude that SCD is a risk factor for having a smaller baby. Introduction The clinical care for Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) has vastly improved the quality and longevity of those affected. Pregnancies in this cohort, however, still carry a greater risk of unfavourable pregnancy outcomes [1]. The major types of SCD are: Sickle Cell Anaemia (HbSS), Sickle cellHaemoglobin C disease (HbSC) and Sickle Cell β-Thalassaemia (HbSβthal) [2]. There is a paucity of data into foetal outcomes for infants born to women with SCD [3]. A meta-analysis of 26,823 SCD pregnancies (HbSS n = 1,523, HbSC n = 331, unspecified SCD genotype n = 24,969) showed a greater relative risk (RR) of small for gestational age (SGA) when analysed against women with normal haemoglobin (HbAA) (HbSS RR = 3.72, HbSC RR = 1.98) [1]. A Jamaican retrospective cohort of study of n = 118 HbSC and n = 110 HbAA pregnancies showed an increased rate of low birth weight (LBW) (HbSC 22.9%, HbAA 5.5%, p<0.0001) [4]. A UK nationwide cohort study of 109 SCD pregnancies (HbSS n = 55, HbSC n = 44, other SCD n = 11, unknown SCD genotype n = 3) based on data extracted from PLOS ONE | DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0165238 October 24, 2016 1 / 8 a11111


The viscoelastic behavior, order-disorder transition, and phase equilibria in mixtures of a block copolymer and an endblock-associating resin were investigated. The block copolymer was a polystyrene-block-polyisoprene-block-polystyrene (KRATON® D-1107, Shell Development Co.) copolymer. The endblock-associating resins investigated were two different grades of a commercially available random copolymer of poly(α-methyl styrene) and polystyrene, one with a weight-average molecular weight \[\bar M_{\rm w}\] of 710 (KRISTALEX® 3085, Hercules Inc.) and the other with \[\bar M_{\rm w}\] = 4100 (KRISTALEX® 5140, Hercules Inc.). Mixtures of various proportions of the block copolymer and the endblock-associating resin were prepared in toluene solvent. With the mixtures, measurements of dynamic viscoelastic properties were made, namely, dynamic storage modulus G″ and dynamic loss modulus G″ as a function of temperature from temperature scans of the samples using a Rheometrics Mechanical Spectrometer. The following observations were made. (1) The plateau modulus of the block copolymer increased with increasing amount of KRISTALEX 3085 or KRISTALEX 5140, indicating that the low-molecular-weight resin was associated with the polystyrene microdomains of the block copolymer. (2) When KRISTALEX 3085 (up to 30 wt %) was added to the block copolymer, the glass transition temperature (Tg) of the polyisoprene midblock of the SIS block copolymer was shifted toward higher temperatures, indicating that part of the KRISTALEX 3085 added had associated with the rubbery midblock of the block copolymer. Also investigated was the order-disorder transition behavior of the mixtures, using a rheological technique (log G′ versus log G″ plots) recently introduced by Han and Kim. It has been found that the order-disorder transition temperature Tr of mixtures of the SIS block copolymer and KRISTALEX 3085 decreased steadily with increasing amount of KRISTALEX 3085, whereas the addition of KRISTALEX 5140 increased the Tr of the block copolymer. It was found by light scattering and hot-stage microscopy that macrophase separation occurred in the KRATON 1107/KRISTALEX 5140 mixtures while microdomains of polystyrene were present in the block copolymer.


This paper is about using TV broadcasting satellites for the time scale synchronization. The advantages and disadvantages of satellite systems for precision clock synchronization are also discussed. The various algorithms for synchronization with the use of the satellites are presented as well.


A television signal processing device and a television signal processing method are disclosed in the embodiments of the present invention, wherein the television signal processing device includes a first signal processing unit, a television demodulator and a second signal processing unit. According to a feedback signal, the first signal processing unit performs a first signal processing on the television signal to decrease the distortion of the television signal, so as to generate a processed television signal. The television demodulator couples to the first signal processing unit to receive the processed television signal, and performs a demodulation processing on the processed television signal to generate a demodulated television signal. The second signal processing unit couples to the first signal processing unit and the television demodulator to receive the demodulated television signal, and performs a second signal processing on the demodulated television signal to generate the feedback signal.


The capabilities use of wood waste in the Ekaterinburg city, generated during the felling of trees and sanitation in the care of green plantations in the streets, parks, squares, forest parks was investigated in this study. In the cities at the moment, all the wood, that is removed from city streets turns into waste completely. Wood waste is brought to the landfill of solid household waste, and moreover sorting and evaluation of the quantitative composition of wood waste is not carried out. Several technical solutions that are used in different countries have been proposed for the energy use of wood waste: heat and electrical energy generation, liquid and solid biofuel production. An estimation of the energy potential of the city wood waste was made, for total and for produced heat and electrical energy based on modern engineering developments. According to our estimates total energy potential of wood waste in the city measure up more 340 thousand GJ per year.


The transfer pricing, the purposes of application it to transnational corporations and the history of legal regulation of transfer prices are considered in the article. The analysis and evaluation of the methods for determining prices for tax purposes are carried out. The author reveals methods based on an analysis of the transaction and profit analysis and determines provisions of the agreement about preliminary pricing.


SDIT Al-Kautsar is an Integrated Islamic Elementary School located in Cikarang that carries out online learning in teaching and learning activities during the Covid19 pandemic. The implementation of distance education cannot be separated from the use of technology. This is because in distance education there is no direct contact between teachers and students. The communication process between the two is carried out through the use of communication and information technology. There are many types of applications that support online learning technology. The purpose of this training is to provide basic knowledge to SDIT Al-Kautsar Cikarang teachers about online learning media, namely Google Classroom, Google meet and Zoom meetings so that this SDIT Al-Kautsar school is more developed in terms of information technology.


Deep-corrugated steel plate projects have been constructed in Canada since 1993. Over 30 bridges have been installed to date. This paper discusses the merits of three of these innovative bridge projects as follows: Hickory Creek Bridge - Forest, Ontario; CP Rail Overpass - Lethbridge, Alberta; McBain Brook Bridge - Taymouth, New Brunswick. Consideration was given to four of the most important criteria for bridge design today: Versatility, Cost, Installation time, and Durability.


Among many digital IF complex sampling techniques that had been proposed to achieve significant hardware reduction, 4-IF sampling methods are commonly used. In this paper, a novel phase com-pensate scheme has been presented to deal with the imbalance between I and Q channel. The modified 4-IFdigital down-conversion algorithm has been simulated and adopted in the DAB receiver chip design.


A2016 meta-analysis of 36 cohort studies (N51,061,555) determined the risk of developing type-2 diabetes in adults with different types of sleep disturbances. Of the 36 studies, 14 studies (N5583,263) looked at sleep duration. Patients included were approximately 42% male, body mass index (BMI) when reported was 24 to 33 kg/m with the majority less than 30 kg/m, and mean ages ranged from 36 to 70 years (overall mean, 62 years). Sleep duration was determined through selfreport and was categorized into short (#5 h/d or 6 h/d), normal (seven to eight h/d), and long ($9 h/d) durations. Follow-up was from two to 32 years. The primary outcome was the incidence of diabetes. The diagnosis was through self-report, medical chart review, or using blood tests (fasting plasma glucose [FPG], oral glucose tolerance test, or HbA1c). The risk of developing diabetes was increased for those with sleep durations of ,5 h/d and six h/d (14 studies, n5not provided; relative risk [RR], 1.5; 95% CI, 1.3–1.8; I581%and10 studies, n5not provided; RR, 1.2; 95% CI, 1.1–1.3; I555%). Two of the 14 studies used slightly different sleep parameters (normal duration was set at seven h/d and six to eight h/day), although the pooled RR were similar when these two studies were excluded. A 2017 prospective cohort study including 162,121 adults of 20 to 80 years evaluated the effect of sleep duration on healthy adults. Patients were 47% male with a BMI of 22 to 23 kg/m. Patients had no major diseases as determined by a baseline medical screening (obesity, impaired fasting glucose/diabetes, hypertension, thyroid disease, among others). All patients visited the MJ Health Management Institute in Taiwan periodically for medical screening throughout the study. The number of visits ranged from two to 19 with 99% going annually. Using self-reported sleep duration, patients were separated into three groups (19%with,6 h/d, 73% with six to eight h/d, and 8.6% with .8 h/d). At baseline, no significant differences were observed in demographic or cardiovascular risk factors among the three groups. The primary outcome wasmetabolic syndrome, including impaired fasting glucose and diabetes. Impaired fasting glucose was defined as FPG of 100 to 125mg/dL, and diabetes defined as FPG of$125 mg/dL. At the end of the 18-year long study, it was found that those in the ,6 h/d group were more likely to develop impaired fastingglucoseanddiabetes (adjustedhazard ratio, 1.1; 95%CI, 1.03–1.1). Thereweremultiple limitations to this study, including sleep duration obtained through self-report rather than through actigraphy or polysomnography. Insomnia was assessed through a single question that was beneficial for a large screening but did not quantify the severity of the insomnia. Potential confounders were not addressed such as variability inweekday-weekend sleep, contraceptive use, hormonal replacement therapy, household income, or number of children in the household.


At a time when international tourism in Russia has been decreasing since 2014, Finland and Estonia preserve the leadership among EU countries on number of trips there made by Russians. Neighbouring location of Russia assigning some geographical peculiarities to Russian tourist flow to the territories of these countries. The aim of the research is to identify both geographic peculiarities, as well as specific features of the distribution of tourist flow from Russia to the territory of Finland and Estonia. A cartographic analysis allowed to define the connection of the value of the Russian tourist flow at the territory of these countries with: 1) remoteness of the region from the border with Russia, as well as from St. Petersburg, which is the main supplier of Russian tourists to those countries; 2) the density of population in border zones, especially from the Russian side: 3) location and volume of annual traffic of multi-sided vehicle checkpoints at the border. Besides, an active transboundary tourist exchange at the part of Russian-Estonian border in Ivangorod (Kingisepp area of Leningrad region) and Narva (Ida-Virumaa county) is supported by ethnic population relationship on both sides of the border and the possibility to cross the border on foot along the bridge across the River Narva.


Very high energy (VHE) γ-ray emission from the flat spectrum radio quasar (FSRQ) PKS 1222+21 (4C 21.35, z = 0.432) was detected with the MAGIC Cherenkov telescopes during a short observation (∼0.5 hr) performed on 2010 June 17. The MAGIC detection coincides with high-energy MeV/GeV γ-ray activity measured by the Large Area Telescope (LAT) on board the Fermi satellite. The VHE spectrum measured by MAGIC extends from about 70 GeV up to at least 400 GeV and can be well described by a power-law dN/dE ∝ E−Γ with a photon index Γ = 3.75 ± 0.27stat ± 0.2syst. The averaged integral flux above 100 GeV is (4.6 ± 0.5) × 10−10 cm−2 s−1 (∼1 Crab Nebula flux). The VHE flux measured by MAGIC varies significantly within the 30 minute exposure implying a flux doubling time of about 10 minutes. The VHE and MeV/GeV spectra, corrected for the absorption by the extragalactic background light (EBL), can be described by a single power law with photon index 2.72 ± 0.34 between 3 GeV and 400 GeV, and is consistent with emission belonging to a single component in the jet. The absence of a spectral cutoff constrains the γ-ray emission region to lie outside the broad-line region, which would otherwise absorb the VHE γ-rays. Together with the detected fast variability, this challenges present emission models from jets in FSRQs. Moreover, the combined Fermi/LAT and MAGIC spectral data yield constraints on the density of the EBL in the UV–optical to near-infrared range that are compatible with recent models.


The trimethylsilyl (TMS) derivative of sterigmatocystin showed high response to a electron-capture detector, so the micro analysis of sterigmatocystin in cereals was investigated by gas-liquid chromatography with electron-capture detector (ECD-GLC).The sterigmatocystin was extracted with a mixture of methanol and 1% Sodium chloride solution (55:45) from sample and was re-extracted with chloroform.After cleaned up by silica gel plus Florisil column chromatography and Sephadex LH-20gel permeation chromatography, it was silylated with N, O-bis (trimethylsilyl) trifluoroacetamide in ethyl acetate. The TMS-derivative was determined by ECD-GLC with a column (3mm×50cm) of 2% OV-17 on gas-chrom Q.The limit of detection by the present method was about 10ppb and recoveries of sterigmatocystin added to various cereals at the level of 40ppb were 82.3-92.0%.


Justification for reporting the following typical case of epidemic herpes zoster ophthalmicus lies in the fact that the patient was 5½ years of age. The earliest age at which any patient with this disease had been seen theretofore at the Mayo Clinic was 12 years. The attack occurred on the left side in that instance, and there was no involvement of the nasociliary nerve, nor were there any of the more infrequent complications. It is well known that the disease almost exclusively affects adults, including the aged; however, several cases have been reported in which the patients were children, 1 but it is remarkable how few such reports can be found on search of the literature. This is especially note-worthy when one considers the reported clinical evidence associating herpes zoster with chickenpox. 2 REPORT OF CASE A white boy 5 years and 6 months of age, of Irish-American descent, was


Facial reanimation around the orbit remains a challenge in plastic surgery. Platysma has been shown to be an ideal muscle for transfer as it is structurally similar to orbicularis oculi. The aim of this study was to investigate the neurovasculature of the platysma muscle to identify if there was a common site for the neurovasculature stem to be identified at for transfer.
Platysma was dissected in two male formaldehyde fixed cadavers (84 and 88 years old) with no craniofacial abnormalities, in accordance with relevant legislation. To confirm structures identified at dissection, we performed histological analysis of all structures.
We have shown that platysma is densely innervated by the cervical branch of the facial nerve, and has a rich vascular network. The arterial supply typically arises from the submental branch of the facial artery, and the venous drainage is to the external jugular vein. There is a predominance of the neurovascular structures at the postero-superior and antero-inferior aspects of the muscle.
As such, this muscle is an ideal candidate in terms of structure and dense neurovascular innervation for orbital reanimation, but does not have a single site where these vessels and nerves are typically found.


Pressor response to injection of renin is reduced or abolished during adrenal insufficiency without concurrent change in response to angiotonin and other drugs. Selective loss of response to renin is considered to result from depletion of available renin-substrate by endogenous renin; when release of endogenous renin is precluded by nephrectomy, adrenalectomy does not cause diminution of response to renin. The increase in response to angiotonin and renin that follows nephrectomy is not prevented by adrenalectomy.


Up to two thirds of ischaemic stroke survivors develop cognitive impairment, predominantly impacting executive and attentional processing. Animal models are essential for effective translation and development of therapies. However, accurately modelling cognitive dysfunction in animal models of stroke has been limited. To address this, we aimed to longitudinally examine changes in attentional processing, spatial working memory and processing speed using two rodent ischemic injury models: the middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) in C57BL/6J mice and the endothelin‐1 injury in Long Evans rats.


The Hungarian data of Nyctalus lasiopterus are reviewed, taking all published, unpublished data in consideration, including the new results of the authors. The paper summarises the data of 102 individuals of N. lasiopterus and data of occurrences without notes on the numbers of specimens. Data after 1990 are more significant and discussed according to geographic areas of Hungary. Lactating females were mist-netted at five localities, which proved the existence of nursery colonies in Hungary. Most of the specimens were mist-net- ted in the Matra Mountains and in the Bukk Mountains, parts of the Northern Hungarian Mountain Range. All captured specimens were mist-netted near small lakes and streams in or near woodlands. These water bodies are important elements of the species's habitat as drinking places. The known Hungarian population of the species is located to a few points of mountain woodland habitats. Intensive logging in these habitats are threat- ening the nursery colonies of Nyctalus lasiopterus, resulting the considerable possibility of local extinctions.


Many of the current popular diets are carbohydraterestricted, which is in sharp contrast to the fat-restricted diets of Health Canada's official diet recommendations. It is troublesome that the intent of many of these popular diets is not good nutrition and that they conflict with diet principles aimed to lower cardiovascular risk. There is, however, evidence suggesting carbohydrate-restricted diets may actually lower cardiovascular risk factors by raising high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and lowering triglycerides; thus the low-carbohydrate diet can no longer be dismissed.


Ceramic tiles provide lightweight, reusable insulation for spacecraft thermal protection systems but are vulnerable to orbital debris impact damage. Because a wide range of impact conditions that may be experienced in orbit cannot be duplicated in the laboratory, design for orbital debris impact effects must include analytical or numerical modeling. Recent research has developed and validated a new computational approach to the simulation of orbital debris impact on porous ceramic thermal protection systems. Simulations using the validated formulation suggest scaling rules for application in spacecraft design.


cjn Abstract: In thispaper,we presented a Recently, Jonathan Robinson etal.(5,6)presented practical andeffective imagecompressionan imagecompression schemebasedon the systembasedon Wavelet SupportVector discrete cosine transform (DCT)andsupport vector Machine (WSVM)with Morlet wavelet kernelformachines (SVMs),whereSVM learning was compressing still images.The algorithmapplied toanimageafter transforming theimage combines WSVMlearning withdiscrete wavelet intofrequency domain. Thisalgorithm achieves decomposition technique. Compression is better imagequality thanthebaseline JPEG achieved byapproximating wavelet coefficients algorithm forcompression ratios greater than at eachsubbandseparately usingWSVM around 20:1. However, thereconstructed image has regression. Results demonstrate incomparisonblock artifacts athigher compression ratios because withJPEG,SPIHTandSVM withGaussian ofthenature ofits procedure. Itisknownthat DCT kernelalgorithm, theproposed algorithmintroduces blockartifacts athighcompression increases compression ratio foragiven image ratios thatmanifest themselves as annoying quality; conversely itgives better imagequality discontinuity between adjacent blocks. Thisisa foragiven compression ratio. direct result oftheblock discrete cosine transform andquantization ofeachblock whichfails totake


Abstract : This thesis focuses on the problem of evaluating the performance of a Data Base Management System (DBMS). In this study, DBMS performance evaluation is treated as a subset of computer performance evaluation, and in doing this, the performance parameters unique to a DBMS were developed and merged with the performance parameters associated with a general purpose computer system. Based on this approach, a generalized design for a DBMS performance monitor was developed. This design emphasizes the use of existing performance tools such as software monitors and accounting packages, and it takes the performance monitoring requirements of different types of DBMS users into consideration. Additionally, the design is applicable to any type of DBMS regardless of the underlying data model. The generalized design was implemented on a a VAX 11/780 computer for the TOTAL dbms. The results of the implementation showed the generalized design was viable and capable of measuring many different types of DBMS. However, existing performance tools were only capable of providing a high level picture of DBMS performance. A specialized tool called an instrumentation utility had to be developed to gather detailed performance information. Originator-supplied keywords include: Systems analysis, VAX 11/780 computers, High level languages.


Economic activities on both the public and the private sectors are contributing substantially in countries Gross Domestic Products (GDP). However, past studies revealed that, many business activities in the private and public sectors in Africa previously struggled to compete with the world best as a result of the lack of use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). Countries in Africa lacked access to ICT that could have assisted decision makers to maximise profit and deliver the required services to organisations and citizens in order to remain very competitive in the market. As a result of the above, many African governments have introduced ICT policies in their strategic plans to support businesses both in the private and public sectors. This article is set to explore the role that ICT plays in shaping businesses in Africa through sound policies. These policies are strongly supported by the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the African Union (AU). This paper argues that, governments and established businesses in Africa should invest extensively on ICT if they aspire to deliver well deserved services to tax payers and to remain competitive in the markets through profit maximisation in the sustainable manner.


We report our first experience with the use of contrast-enhanced ultrasonography (CEUS) to differentiate between a complicated hemorrhagic renal cyst and a cystic renal cell carcinoma in a 50-year-old man diagnosed with autosomal dominant polycystic kidney disease undergoing hemodialysis for end-stage renal disease. CEUS could successfully differentiate between a complicated hemorrhagic renal cyst and a cystic renal cell carcinoma, as opposed to computed tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which could not distinguish between the 2 disease conditions. CEUS is comparable diagnostic tool as CT or MRI to distinguish between benign and malignant cystic renal masses. (Korean J Urol Oncol 2018;16:42-45) 󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏󰠏


© May 2010, New Zealand Department of Conservation. This paper may be cited as: Rowe, S.J. 2010: Conservation Services Programme observer report: 1 July 2007 to 30 June 2008. DOC Marine Conservation Services Series 4. Department of Conservation, Wellington. 97 p. 6 Rowe—CSP observer report 2007–2008


To deal with the structuring element optimization of mathematical morphology filter,an optimization design method of mathematical morphology filter based on quantum genetic algorithm was proposed. The quantum genetic population was initialized according to the characteristic of mathematical morphology structuring element parameters. The population evolution was realized by quantum crossover,variation and quantum rotation gate based on expansion coefficient,thus obtaining the best parameters of the mathematical morphology filter. The performances of optimization algorithm under different proportions of random noise and power frequency interference noise were studied. The simulation results show that the performance of mathematical morphology filter is greatly improved after being optimized. The signal-to-noise ratio of the signal with random noise is improved from- 0. 98 dB to 5. 23 dB,and that of the signal with mixed noise is improved from- 3. 05 dB to 0. 41 dB. It means that the optimized mathematical morphology filter could remove both random noise and mixed noise with power frequency interference effectively.


Two cases of Ph1‐positive AML, and one case of Di Guglielmo's syndrome are reported. A review of the literature reveals that the occurrence of a Ph1‐chromosome has been observed in a number of cases with these diseases, indicating that the Ph1‐chromosome is not solely specific for CML. By correlating cytogenetic and histologic bone marrow data, some evidence is presented that the process leading to the genesis of a Ph1‐chromosome may affect the bone marrow cells either at or beyond the stem cell level.


The ceramic printing and dyeing waste-water was treated by catalytic wet oxidation. The catalytic oxidation reaction was carried out under the conditions of 50 mg/L metal ion concentration, 180 °C of reaction temperature, 2.5 MPa of oxygen partial pressure and 500 rpm of stirring speed, and the time of catalytic oxidation was set at 90 min. Comparing the effect of structural auxiliaries and blank group on COD removal rate of effluent, the structural auxiliaries have no effect on effluent, that is, no catalytic effect; Comparing the blank group without adding catalyst, the copper nitrate has the highest cod removal rate of 72.5% for waste-water, so it can be used as the best homogeneous catalyst to treat waste-water. The order of catalytic effect from high to low is: Cu(NO3)2 > CuSO4 > Fe(NO3)3 > Fe2(SO4)3 > Co(NO3)2 > Cr(NO3)3 > Ni(NO3)2 > AgNO3 > Zr(NO3)4. Among the nine types of homogeneous catalysts, the most effective Cu(NO3)2•H2O catalyst treated the ceramic printing and dyeing waste-water, the COD decreased from 3775 mg/L to 1038 mg/L and the COD removal rate reached 72.5%, when the catalyst was not added under the same operating conditions. The COD removal rate of water samples was increased by 32.9%.


Children born after assisted reproductive technology (ART) are at slightly increased risk for prematurity, low birth weight, and congenital malformations, but information about long-term risks for rare but serious diseases is sparse. In a population-based study, investigators linked data on all children born after ART in Britain from 1992 through 2008 with national registry data on …


Ebselen is a seleno‐organic compound currently in clinical trials for the treatment of ischemic stroke and subarachnoid hemorrhage. Its putative mode of action as a neuroprotectant is via cyclical reduction and oxidation reactions, in a manner akin to glutathione peroxidase. For this reason, we have investigated the effects of ebselen on the redox‐sensitive NMDA receptor. We have found that ebselen readily reversed dithiothreitol (DTT) potentiation of NMDA‐mediated currents in cultured neurons and in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells expressing wild‐type NMDA NR1/NR2B receptors. In contrast, ebselen was unable to modulate NMDA‐induced currents in neurons previously exposed to the thiol oxidant 5,5′‐dithiobis(2‐nitrobenzoic acid) (DTNB), or in CHO cells expressing a mutant receptor lacking the NR1 redox modulatory site, suggesting that ebselen oxidizes the NMDA receptor via this site. In addition, ebselen was substantially less effective in modifying NMDA responses in neurons exposed to alkylating agent N‐ethylmaleimide (NEM) following DTT treatment. Ebselen also reversed DTT block of carbachol‐mediated currents in Cos‐7 cells expressing the α2βδε subunits of the acetylcholine receptor, an additional redox‐sensitive ion channel. Ebselen was observed to significantly increase cell viability following a 30‐min NMDA exposure in cultured neurons. In contrast, other more typical antioxidant compounds did not afford neuroprotection in a similar paradigm. We conclude that ebselen may be neuroprotective in part due to its actions as a modulator of the NMDA receptor redox modulatory site.


Grid Computing is a collection of nodes (Computer Resources) from various administrative domains those are working for a common goal. When a num-ber of nodes are connected with each other for a common goal and sharing of resources takes place between them, a method is required for managing the resources and balancing the load between the nodes connected with each other. Managing the resources and balancing the load between them is a challenging task for that a number of methods have been proposed by which we can increase the throughput and maximum utilization of the resources. Grid computing is a very challenging area compares to other computing methods because of its features like heterogeneity autonomy, scalability, and adaptability and resource selection these features makes grid computing more hard. We require such methods by which we can manage the resources efficiently and balance the load between the nodes. In this paper we are trying to develop an approach by which we can minimize the execution time by balancing the load in tree architecture in which the load firstly balanced at local level then upper level and at last Grid Level.


Concrete has been shaping humankind and civilisation for over two thousand years since the Romans first used it to construct bridges, buildings and complex networks of aqueducts, culverts and tunnels. More recently, precast concrete products and structures have been continuing to shape the way we live in the UK, arguably revolutionising the building and construction industries over the last 50 years.


Nemaclinus atelestos occurs at depths between 27-110 m and has been collected from the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Virgin Islands, Martinique, St. Lucia, Nicaragua and northern Gulf of Mexico. It is most similar to the clinid genera Haptoclinus, Malacoctenus, Starksia and Xenomedea. A table is presented comparing certain characters of the five genera. Nemaclinus is readily distinguished from all other clinids by its greatly elongated ninth pectoral-fin ray.


A THESIS IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ACCOUNTING STUDIES EDUCATION
SUBMITTED TO THE SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL
FULFILLMENT
OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE AWARD OF THE DEGREE OF
MASTERS IN BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
(ACCOUNTING OPTION)
IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION WINNEBA
AUGUST, 2017


Introduction Non-surgical periodontal therapy consisting of scaling and root planning has been shown to be effective in the improvement of glycaemic control in patients with diabetes with periodontitis for up to 3 months. However, questions remain about this beneficial effect over a longer period of time. This systematic review and meta-analysis aims to determine the long-term effect (at least 6 months from the therapy) of non-surgical periodontal therapy with or without adjuvant on glycaemic control of patients with diabetes with periodontitis. Methods and analysis This systematic review will include randomised control trials with a follow-up period of at least 6 months after initial therapy, with measurement of glycated haemoglobin as the primary endpoint. A literature search will be conducted in MEDLINE, CENTRAL, EMBASE, CINAHL, The Cochrane Oral Health Group Trials Register, and the US National Institutes of Health Trials Registry: ClinicalTrials.gov, from inception to 30 June 2020. Selection of studies, data extraction and bias assessment will be conducted independently by two reviewers. A DerSimonian-Laird random-effect meta-analysis will be conducted to pool studies deemed to be homogeneous. A subgroup analysis will be conducted in case of substantial heterogeneity. Egger's test and observation of the funnel plot will be used to assess publication bias. The statistical analysis will be done using R V.4.0.0 software. Ethics and dissemination Since primary data are not collected, ethical approval is not required. The final report will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. PROSPERO registration number CRD42020192635.


The adoption of Microservice architectures deployed using containers has increased over the last years. This deployment and operation stack brings new challenges in exploiting Cloud elasticity. Currently, the generation and maintenance of configuration rules that specify when and how to scale containers are human-driven—thus error-prone—and wholly decoupled from continuous delivery pipelines. Considering frequent changes, the deployed Microservice might diverge from its elasticity configuration rules which either inquires unforeseen costs or degrades its performance. We tackle this problem by leveraging declarative performance approaches to keep elasticity configuration artefacts aligned with the deployment and their requirements through the entire software development life-cycle. In this paper we propose an extension of a state of the art approach for declarative performance test definition, to enable practitioners to continuously and automatically obtain feedback on Microservices elasticity, to be used to update scalability rules for the given workload and context.


Like other competitive bridge erection techniques, incremental launching is a highly vulnerable process that entails considerable risks to persons. In steel and composite bridges, in particular, patch loading and other mechanisms that induce instability must be avoided. Considerable uncertainties are associated with both resistances and support reactions during launch operations due to the broad range of factors involved. Nonlinear finite element (FE) analysis is very useful for the explicit verification of both local and overall system stability during steel structure launching. Monitoring, in turn, may be a very powerful tool for reducing the risks associated with such operations. Further research is needed both to establish safety levels for temporary structures and on-site activities and to develop a suitable design format for nonlinear FE analysis. However, in everyday practice, engineers and builders must deal with much more basic problems, often related to the interaction between the structure under construction and the ancillary resources used, as exemplified in the case study described in this contribution. The lessons learnt from such incidents are extremely useful for improving the strategies presently in place to reduce construction-related risks.


Phage display technology has been utilized to select target molecules against circulating antibodies. The aims of this study were to isolate a peptide that binds with serum from Crohn's disease (CD) patients and to examine its diagnostic and pathogenic significance. A phage display library was constructed using cDNA from Caco‐2 cells. Affinity selection using this cDNA library and serum samples from patients with CD was then performed. Phage clones that specifically reacted with the CD sera were then selected using a phage enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). After the DNA sequences of the selected phages were determined and converted to amino acid sequences, the synthesized peptides were examined using an ELISA. The effect of the synthesized peptides on cytokine release from cultured blood mononuclear cells was investigated. An ELISA analysis for TCP‐353 demonstrated that while 61·7% of the samples from CD patients were seroreactive, seroreactivity was less common among patients with ulcerative colitis (7·3%), acute colitis (0%) or colon cancer (11·4%) and among normal subjects (2·8%). The induction of interleukin (IL)‐1β, IL‐6 and tumour necrosis factor (TNF)‐α release, but not IL‐10 release, in response to TCP‐353 peptide was enhanced in CD mononuclear cells only. We isolated a novel peptide that specifically binds to CD sera and stimulates the proinflammatory responses of CD mononuclear cells. TCP‐353 may have diagnostic, pathogenic and therapeutic significance with regard to the treatment of CD.


Heart sound is a faint signal which is difficult to be acquired.This paper presents the methods for the heart sound acquisition used electret microphone,including the heart sound extraction project,principle,rules and the impedance conversion of microphone.In order to acquire the useful heart sound,the microphone is shielded by a special device.The clinical experiments have indicated that the first and second heart sound can be almost acquired by the microphone,but it is difficult for the third and fourth,which are affected by sex and bodily form.


The present invention discloses an error code conversion method, system, PPPOE server and mobile terminal, comprising: PPPOE PPPOE server to resolve the error code generated during dialing, according to pre-set on the PPPOE PPPOE server error code conversion rule table, converting the error code PPPOE extended error code, and the extended error code to the mobile terminal; mobile terminal receives the extended error code, set in advance in accordance with PPPOE on the mobile terminal error code conversion rule table, the extended error code is translated into plaintext particular, displayed to the user. The present invention enhances the PPPOE server and the mobile terminal of the error handling capabilities, and the mobile terminal to facilitate operator control PPPOE dialing process, more efficient use of user PPPOE dial function WIFI.