We investigate the electronic and magnetic properties as well as lattice dynamics and spin-phonon coupling of $\beta$-Na$_{0.33}$V$_2$O$_5$ using temperature-dependent Raman scattering, dc-magnetization and dc-resistivity, x-ray photoemission, and absorption spectroscopy. The Rietveld refinement of XRD pattern with space group C2/m confirms the monoclinic structure. The analysis of temperature-dependent Raman spectra in a temperature range of 13--673~K reveals an anharmonic dependence of the phonon frequency and full width at half maximum, which is accredited to the symmetric phonon decay. However, below about 40 K, the hardening of the phonon frequency beyond anharmonicity is attributed to the spin-phonon coupling. Interestingly, the estimated effective magnetic moment $\mu_{\rm eff}=$ 0.63~$\mu_B$ from the magnetization data manifests a mixed-valence state of V ions in 4+ (18$\pm$1\%) and 5+ (82$\pm$1\%). A similar ratio of V$^{4+}$ to V$^{5+}$ is also observed in the x-ray photoemission and x-ray absorption near-edge spectra and that is found to be consistent with the sample stoichiometry. In addition, the V$^{4+}$ ions are distributed between different vanadium (V1 and V3) sites. The analysis of extended x-ray absorption fine structure at different V-sites gives the corresponding V--O bond lengths, which are utilized in the assignment of Raman modes. Moreover, the temperature-dependent resistivity resembles a semiconducting behavior where the charge carrier transport is facilitated by the band conduction at higher temperatures and via hopping $\le$260~K.


Variable selection has been highly successful in big data analyses, and regularization approaches are commonly used methods, which can automatically select important variables while constructing machine learning models. Due to the real datasets have complex relationships between relevant variable groups, many group-sparsity regularization approaches are proposed recently. However, these approaches usually are non-convex and sensitive to hyper-parameters. Therefore, optimization of the regularizations is a challenging task. In this paper, we present a novel memetic algorithm with the complex harmonic regularization (MA-CHR), which combines EC algorithm for hyper-parameters (global search) and complex harmonic regularization with path seeking strategy for the group-sparsity variable selection (local search). We further introduced a novel genetic individual representation (intron+exon) to efficient obtain the global optimal solution of this group-sparsity regularization. Simulation and five real data experiments demonstrate that the proposed MA-CHR method performs better than the state-of-the-art regularization methods in selecting groups of relevant variables and classification.


The choice of error model used for robustness evaluation of operating systems (OSs) influences the evaluation run time, implementation complexity, as well as the evaluation precision. In order to find an "effective" error model for OS evaluation, this paper systematically compares the relative effectiveness of three prominent error models, namely bit-flips, data type errors and fuzzing errors using fault injection at the interface between device drivers OS. Bit-flips come with higher costs (time) than the other models, but allow for more detailed results. Fuzzing is cheaper to implement but is found to be less precise. A composite error model is presented where the low cost of fuzzing is combined with the higher level of details of bit-flips, resulting in high precision with moderate setup and execution costs.


In terms of institutional and territorial concentration of the banking system security the Russian Federation banking services is achieved through the existence of large credit institutions with the center in Moscow and a wide network of branches in the regions multi-branch banks. For an adequate assessment of credit risk and improve the efficiency of multi-branch banks in the economic inequality of regions has special significance assessment of the credit risk of banking activities in the regions of Units multi-branch banks. In the article the author's model of linguistic evaluation of the credit risk of the banking activity in the regions of Russia. The proposed model has the following characteristics: 1) the use of objective methods of formation the methods of fuzzy sets and methods of mathematical statistics, which eliminates the drawbacks of the subjective methods of expert assessments; 2) Taking into account the effect of the level of development of the regional banking system as a factor determining the value of an integrated credit risk in the region, which increases the value of the complex credit risk assessment. As a result of the proposed mathematical model implemented comprehensive credit risk assessment of bank activity in the Russian regions, and formed a typology of Russian regions in terms of credit risk.


approved: John S. Selker Abstract approved: Jonathan D. Istokapproved: Jonathan D. Istok Efficient use of water in agricultural production involves accurate assessment and control of the quantity and spatial uniformity of excess percolation. Passive Capillary Samplers (PCAPS), which sample water from the vadose zone have shown potential to provide superior estimates of soil water flux compared to alternative methods. In a four-year study, 42 PCAPS installed in 21 commercial agricultural fields in Lane County, OR, USA were monitored monthly to evaluate their operational characteristics and ability to estimate soil solution flux. The PCAPS showed little evidence of technical failure, with only two of the 42 installed samplers found to operate inefficiently. Installation of 10 of the 42 samplers in locations susceptible to high or perched water tables resulted in submersion of the samplers, rendering them inoperable. On average, the PCAPS measured soil water flux 25% greater than that obtained from a water balance estimate. This discrepancy was attributed to a possible inaccuracy in water balance evapotranspiration estimates, along with a violation of the PCAPS design assumptions which suggests over-sampling would occur in the presence of high water tables. Analysis of the PCAPS collection ability indicates that Redacted for Privacy Redacted for Privacy to estimate the mean yearly recharge at each site with a 30% bound on the mean at the 0.05 confidence level, eight PCAPS are required. This number corresponds closely to the results of Brandi-Dohrn et al. (1996a) and is thought to be due to intrinsic variability of percolation. Spatial uniformity in irrigation water application is essential to reducing excess percolation. Twelve sprinkler irrigation systems used under commercial crop production in Lane County, OR were evaluated for equipment wear and performance. Field measurements of sprinkler nozzle size and discharge rate were recorded for each system and used to estimate water application patterns. New sprinkler nozzles were installed on six of the 12 irrigation systems to compare potential application rate and uniformity with existing system performance. Despite reducing the coefficient of variation in discharge between sprinklers from 10% to 2%, little increase in water application uniformity was attained by replacing the nozzles. A 13% decrease in mean water application rate was documented when new nozzles replaced worn parts. The over-application due to worn or mismatched nozzles gives rise to the potential for increased surface redistribution and deep percolation, resulting in water and nutrient


Objective To construct and identify the recombinant adenoviral vector co-expressing connexon 43 and green fluorescent protein.Methods The Cx43 gene was amplified by PCR from eukaryotic expression vector pcDNA3.0-Cx43 and cloned into the shuttle plasmid pAdTrack-CMV which expressed the report gene GFP.Then the recombinant shuttle plasmid was transformed into BJ5183 bacteria to recombine with backbone vector pAdeasy-l.The recombinant plasmid pAd-Cx43-GFP was confirmed with single digestion by PacⅠ.Further,the plasmid pAd-Cx43-GFP was transfected into 293 cells,and the expression of Cx43 and GFP in 293 cells were respectively detected by fluorescent microscopy and Western blot.Results(1)The single fragment which length approached to Cx43 was obtained using PCR;(2)Double digested with restriction endonucleases NotⅠ/XhoⅠ,the recombinant shuttle plasmid pAdTrack-Cx43 was confirmed by two products which length were respectively about 9kb and 1kb;(3)Two fragments of about 31kb and 4kb were obtained,after the recombinant plasmid pAd-Cx43-GFP was digested with PacⅠ,which suggested a successful homologous recombination;(4)After transfected by pAd-Cx43-GFP,the expression of GFP was monitored by fluorescent microscopy in 293 cells;(5)In contrast to no-transfection group,higher expression of Cx43 in 293 cells transfected by pAd-Cx43-GFP was detected by Western blot.Conclusion The recombinant adenoviral vector Ad-Cx43-GFP was successfully constructed.


The invention relates to a navigation air cushion liquid magnetic compass which comprises a compass cabinet, a compass cabinet internal clapboard, an external convex plate, compass deviation correction devices, a compass base, a correction ball, a compass ball connecting line, an upper gimbal, a lower gimbal, a magnetic force direction indicator and the like, wherein the compass deviation correction devices are respectively arranged on the compass cabinet internal clapboard and the external convex plate, the compass base is fixed at the upper part of the compass cabinet through the upper gimbal, the correction ball is fixed at the lower part of the compass cabinet through the lower gimbal, and the compass base and the correction ball are connected together through the compass base connecting line. The invention has the advantages that the compass has the advantages of simple and compact structure, attractive and transparent appearance, low cost, convenience for use and maintenance, reliable and stable performance, more remarkable advantages, little friction force of an indication system, small friction error even be ignored, and excellent performance; and when a ship navigates in wind waves, the compass has good indication stability, and can be matched with a radar, an automatic steer, and other navigation aid apparatuses.


In this paper we propose a meta-model for architectures with heterogeneous multimedia components. Currently, a generic solution does not exist to automatically deploy a distributed architecture based on multimedia components. The description of the incompatibilities between components is a need in such approaches. Indeed, software architectures validate the functional aspects, which are not sufficient to guarantee a realistic assembly. For instance, the problem of heterogeneity related to the exchanged data flows. In order to highlight these incompatibilities and to find solutions, a model-based approach called MMSA (Meta-model Multimedia Software Architecture) is proposed. It enables the description of the software architectures expressing a software system as a collection of components which handle various types and formats of data, and interacts between them via connectors including the adaptation connectors.


The data of sources of information on the organization of physical education in higher education institutions are analyzed and generalized. Problems in the system of organization of physical education concerning the normative-legal base, material-technical, theoretical-methodical and staffing are revealed. Today, higher education is being reformed and integration into the world space, higher education institutions have been given autonomy, which provides for independent decision-making on the organization of the educational process. In such conditions, there is a situation when in some educational programs is no educational component of "Physical Education". In some higher education, physical education classes are held only during the first- second year of study. It is proposed to conduct extracurricular classes lasting two hours twice or thrice a week in extracurricular time. One of the directions of improving the system of organization of physical education is the use of a personalized approach based on individual morphofunctional, psychophysiological features, including personal motives and situational factors.


Abstract Four types of 3 × 3 Latin squares differing in nonprotein nitrogen source and protein percent were used with 4-wk periods and 36 Holstein cows grouped in trios. Basal rations (9.0 to 10.6% crude protein) high in citrus pulp and pelleted cane bagasse, were equalized in estimated metabolizable protein, ignoring urea fermentation potential, by adding raw urea, extruded corn-urea, or soybean meal at three percents. Corresponding rations of higher protein (12.1 to 13.4%) contained a soybean meal increment partially replacing corn. Mean daily feed intake was lower for basal than soy-increment rations (18.0 versus 19.3 kg) as were milk and solids-corrected milk yields (16.0 to 18.3 kg and 12.8 to 14.8 kg). All-soy controls were superior in milk production by 1.35 and .92 kg. Liveweight changes and milk composition were little affected by treatments. Milk fat and protein percents averaged 2.71 and 2.92 overall. Molar porportions of rumen acetate in Period 3 were relatively low, but not acetate/propionate ratios. Increased rumen ammonia concentrations resulted from higher protein, higher nonprotein nitrogen, and urea exceeded extruded corn-urea exceeded soybean meal.


Missed call alert system and method of the present invention during the user arrears down discloses an analysis based on signaling, the system comprising the following modules: signaling acquisition module, a signaling correlation analysis module, stop the user management module, missed call generating module , missed call information push module, down the drain, then business management platform system. Based on listening and analysis of the communications network signaling, mobile phone or fixed-line subscribers get lost in the stop state of the call, when user fees back to normal use, to throw away during a phone user downtime aggregated, and with SMS, MMS or otherwise pushed to the user. Implementation of the invention, solves the traditional problem can not be missed call reminder of the lost phone when the user temporarily stop providing services that dramatically improves the user experience and bring direct economic benefits to telecom operators.


The common average power spectrum estimation algorithm may cause the loss in detection performance because power spectrum amplitude is simply squared. The statistical properties of FFT of the segmented observations are analyzed,and a novel algorithm using frequency domain phase compensation for detecting line-spectrum in Gaussian noise is proposed. The phase compensation factor is estimated using Monte Carlo method. The sporadic and continuous outliers are removed by using difference and TPM method. Finally the statistics is checked by using generalized likelihood ratio. The detection performances of AVGPR,GPR and the proposed algorithm are theoretically compared. The simulation results show that the detection performance of the proposed algorithm is improved by 5 dB under a certain false alarm rate compared to AVGPR algorithm. It fully utilizes the phase information of the signal and has the advantagesof simple and exact parameter estimation and good robustness.


In these guidelines we considered some special types of overuse injuries, associated mainly with increased joint ROM in lower extremities, for representatives of types of motor activity associated with the art of movement. Therefore, more and more researchers note that the physical activity in athletes' rehabilitation can be achieved using various physical exercises performed in the aquatic environment


The utilization of koji of storage for 3 months and six months with the ratios of 4:6,3:7,2:8,1:9.is tested.The results show that the best quality is obtained at the ratio of 1:9.


Pursuing an object detector with good detection accuracy while ensuring detection speed has always been a challenging problem in object detection. This paper proposes a multi-scale context information fusion model combined with a self-attention block (CSA-Net). First, an improved backbone network ResNet-SA is designed with self-attention to reduce the interference of the image background area and focus on the object region. Second, this work introduces a receptive field feature enhancement module (RFFE) to combine local and global features while increasing the receptive field. Then this work adopts a spatial feature fusion pyramid with a symmetrical structure, which fuses and transfers semantic information and feature information. Finally, a sibling detection head using an anchor-free detection mechanism is applied to increase the accuracy and speed of detection at the end of the model. A large number of experiments support the above analysis and conclusions. Our model achieves an average accuracy of 46.8% on the COCO 2017 test set.


Human resources or employees working in Islamic banks are one of the determining factors for the increase and development of the performance of Islamic banks. This is because the performance of an Islamic bank is an accumulation of the individual performance of the employees who work at the Islamic bank. Islamic bank employees must have strong organizational commitment, one of the factors that influence organizational commitment is the application of Islamic work ethics by Islamic bank employees. By understanding the concept of Islamic work ethics and applying it as a whole, the performance of Islamic bank employees will increase and of course the performance of Islamic banks will be better and finally able to take the potential possessed by Islamic banks themselves. This research is descriptive research using survey method. The sample in this study were 100 employees who worked at Islamic banks in Riau Province. The sampling technique uses simple random sampling of the population used in this study on the sample's perspective on the application of Islamic work ethics. The instrument of this research is to use a research questionnaire. The data analysis technique of this research uses the percentage technique of the respondents' answers to the research questionnaire. The results of this study indicate that all Islamic bank employees generally comply with all dimensions of Islamic work ethics. Nevertheless, employees need to increase their efforts because this dimension is the least found. Future research is suggested to combine the dimensions of Islamic work ethics with organizational performance


The Setting.- The Valuation of Foreign Currency Options and Exchange Rate Dynamics.- Noise Trader Trigger Rates, FX Options, and Smiles.- Exchange Rate Policy and FX Options.- Conclusion.


Two or three pairs of nichrome steel electrodes (20μ) are inserted into each of two or three turns of the cochlea of guinea pig. One electrode of each pair is in scala tympani, one is scala vestibuli. Such "differential" leads record nearly pure cochlear microphonics from segments of the cochlear partition only about 1 mm long. Low tones evoke microphonics from all four turns; but as the frequency is increased (holding the response from the basal turn constant by adjusting the intensity of sound), the microphonic ceases, first at the apical turn, then at the third turn, and finally at the second turn. The normal space pattern for each frequency as revealed by its cochlear microphonic is a long plateau rising slowly from the basal end but with a much more abrupt fall toward the apex. The locus of this abrupt fall is characteristic for each frequency. The space-time pattern of an acoustic signal is a decelerating traveling wave moving from base toward apex. The velocity of a 500-cycle wave falls from about ...


Tatra National Park and Berchtesgaden National Park – a comparative study of tourist facilities. The elements distinctive for Tatra and Berchtesgaden National Parks include principally: tourist accommodation, food service, tourist information points, parking areas, cableways, ski infrastructure. Both considered national parks are abundant with public and environmental accommodation facilities, which operate all year or seasonally. Additionally, this article takes into consideration accommodation prices per night and catering services. Essential elements of tourist development include mountain trails, which lengths in both parks are similar. However, the network of tourist information points is found to be denser in Berchtesgaden than in Tatra National Park. Mountain cableways and ski infrastructure are also considered in this study as most typical elements of tourist facilities. Finally, the distribution of all infrastructure and facilities is challenged with existing protected zones in both considered parks.


A division route planning algorithm for the shortest distance is proposed in the paper. The algorithm promotes searching efficiency and shortens calculating time. This paper first introduces the division road network which is different from traditional road network. The division road network model divide a road network into several division road networks. Vehicle navigation system can be accomplished in these division road networks. These division road networks are connected by TransferNodes and TransferLinks which are defined in ISO 19133 and extended in the division road network model. These division road networks can combine into an integrated road network or be divided further. Topology relationship of the road network is still integrated. The division route planning algorithm for the shortest distance is based on the division road network. The division route planning algorithm constructs the division searching strategy to shorten the route planning time by dividing the road network. A practical application example of the algorithm in real-time vehicle navigation systems is given. And the experimental results show that the result is correct and the time for calculating the shortest path between two arbitrary points within the road network can be shortened efficiently.


ver the last few years data warehousing, data mining and analytical online processing emerged to form a new paradigm for the storage and analysis of data in business environments and increasingly in scientific environments. With the use of these technologies in a wide variety of application, the necessity for highly scalable and fast data management tools capable of handling multiple terabytes of data in a data warehousing environment became apparent. Additionally, the growth of the Internet and Grid computing lead to the re-emergence of distributed, parallel computing platforms and to a trend to perform computing task in a decentralized manner, efficiently utilizing resources in multiple geographic locations. All this led to the emergence of research on the implementation and management of very large data warehouses and now includes such areas as zero-latency data warehousing for simulation and forecasting, distributed data warehouses and data mining for medical applications as well as for high energy physics and web warehousing as a foundation for the development of searchable archives of web content. O


With the introduction of the NXE:3400B scanner, ASML has brought EUV to High-Volume Manufacturing (HVM). In this context, ASML is pursuing a dual-path approach towards zero reticle defectivity: EUVcompatible pellicle or zero particles towards reticle by advanced particle contamination control. This paper will focus primarily on the approach of advanced particle contamination control and on the understanding of EUV-induced plasma to control both release and transport of particles within the scanner. This paper will present our advancements in understanding and control of particle forces related to the EUV-induced plasma, for EUV sources up to 250W and beyond. This will combine models and simulations with off-line experiments as well as in-situ scanner tests. It will be shown that our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of plasma-induced release and transport of <1um particles enables us to manage defectivity levels down to be compatible with HVM requirements for sub-10nm node lithography.


The concept of brand personality proposed by Aaker (1997) consists of five dimensions: sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and ruggedness. This concept was drawn from the development of products in general so as to describe personality of brands, and has been widely applied to research on a range of products available in the market. However, relatively few studies have utilized this concept in the context of an area, a country or a city. The present study thus aims to investigate how the brand personality concept can be applied in the city context. In so doing, this research has employed a quantitative method with a factor analysis in order to identify personality traits and dimensions of a city in relation to the brand personality concept. Results reveal that city brand personality is comprised of 37 traits in five dimensions whereas brand personality consists of 42 traits in five dimensions. Therefore, this study has exhibited a significant finding that the brand personality concept can explain a city as a product, which serves as a useful guideline for further developing a scale of city personality


The problem of back analysis of initial seepage field is solved by direct method based on orthogonal test and ν-SVR.By orthogonal test,the general information of initial seepage field is obtained;ν-SVR is used to study the relationship between water level and parameters;the connotative expression between them is established and used to substitute for FEM program;finally,optimal initial seepage field is obtained.Through engineering example study it,is proved that the method is efficient and suitable for solving nonlinear complicated problems of rock and soil.


Debates over the content of recent EU directives and U.S. statutory amendments related to consumer protection highlight the importance of such regulation. Criticism calling for a return to freedom of contract in both regions reflects a tension between social ideals related to equality between private parties, and a deep distrust of state intervention and market regulation. With the rise of private sources for transnational commercial standards and practices, there is an opportunity for states to facilitate self-regulation in lieu of producing public substantive regulations. This approach seems to satisfy a well-established need for consumer protection without exacerbating government intervention in private contracts.


Electricity distribution to households and business is the final step in the electricity generation, transmission and distribution value chain. Redistributed energy by municipalities to the South African domestic market is key to planning energy demand and supply. In this study we use the concept of vector regression modelling in forecasting total domestic hourly load profiles. Vector regression is done by aligning the time series so that days and hours match across the time period. A linear model is then fitted across this vector [1]. MSE, MAD and the MAPE are used in the study to evaluate model accuracy. Results from this study show that domestic load profiles are seasonal with peaks in the morning and in the evening around 8pm. Also winter months show high usage compared to the other seasons and this domestic load is by far the most dominant profile shape of netenergy sent out from generation.


A series of nanoscale ReB2/ TaN multilayered coatings were prepared by ultra-high vacuum RF magnetron sputtering system at 20℃.The influence of modulation period(Λ) on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the film was investigated by SEM,XRD,surface profiler and nano-indenter.The results showed that ReB2 and TaN layers exhibited hexagonal structure in films.ReB2/TaN multilayers have superhard effects with a modulation period from 8-12nm.At Λ=9.6nm,ReB2/TaN multilayered possessed the highest hardness of 28.8GPa and modulus of 345.9GPa with lower residual stress.


As a gerontologist and geriatrician for decades I can think of few more difficult issues than those in the heading of this editorial. To begin with even concepts and definitions of health, disease, old age and a 'healthy' lifestyle are not at all clear-cut. Symptoms of disease and manifestations of ageing intermingle in the elderly. It is not always obvious what is normal ageing and disease in old age—the border is not razor-sharp, and symptomatology, and thereby the making of diagnoses, becomes more difficult. It can be argued that for the average elderly person it may be unimportant if observed functional changes depend on ageing processes or disease. However, diseases demand more of traditional prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation than ageing, which should also, however, be addressed in a preventive way. Diagnostic procedures are of great importance to avoid underand over-diagnosis. Many diagnostic difficulties exist in old age, such as changed reference values, and changed signs and symptoms [1]. Well-known examples of conditions that are likely to be under-diagnosed include depression. It is true that diseases demand mostly medical treatment and that most manifestations of ageing are inevitable. However, in the attempt to influence manifestations of ageing a variety of factors have to be discussed—the most obvious regarding nutrition and physical activity, but also psychosocial factors such as the social network, where it has been shown by several authors including Hanson and collaborators [2], that there is a direct effect of social network and social support on mortality, only partly mediated through the effects of, for example, dietary factors, physical activity and other lifestyle factors. In old age where the prevalence of diseases is high, and sometimes uncompensated ageing coexists, factors such as those mentioned above become increasingly important. What are their roles? Can they be changed to prevent disease and even ageing processes? Then, what is health? The WHO definition from 1948 is widely used, i.e. 'a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity'. Not many elderly people can be argued to possess health with that definition! Maybe one of the best measures of health is subjective and self-rated health (see for example reference [3]). In this edition of Age and Ageing authors from the SENECA group present an important paper that addresses items briefly touched upon above [4]. SENECA is a European multi-centre study, which started in 1988 to study dietary patterns and lifestyle factors affecting health and performance. The sample comprised at baseline over 2,500 elderly persons from 19 European towns with a variety of living conditions including dietary patterns. There were follow-up studies in 1993 and 1999, and nine towns in Belgium, Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland completed the whole study. In this broad study SENECA could convincingly confirm that diet, physical activity and smoking habits were related to survival and health status. The endpoints of the SENECA study were survival and health status, and the factors studied were diet, physical activity and smoking. Interestingly, a strong relation between different functional measures in elderly populations has been reported. For example, Österberg and collaborators [5] showed significant associations between oral health on the one hand and a great variety of functional parameters such as spirometry, reaction time and muscular strength as well as mortality on the other. It could, thus, be anticipated that many factors could be markers for functional capacity and survival in the elderly. Diet, physical activity and smoking habits are obviously among them. Some markers may have different significance in different age groups. For example, the overweight/ mortality relationship is different in old age compared with that in middle-aged individuals [6]. A low body mass index and weight loss are much more related to subsequent mortality than being moderately overweight [7]. On the other hand, the relation between overweight/ obesity and morbidity seems to be more similar to that in middle-aged individuals; for a review see reference [8]. Knowledge about the relation between diet and other lifestyle factors on the one hand, and morbidity/ mortality on the other, should also be looked upon as dynamic rather than static. Tempora mutantur, nos et mutamur in illis ! What is true today may not be so in the future. In the gerontological and geriatric population studies in Göteborg, Sweden (H70), we have shownmarked cohort differences over a couple of decades regarding for example anthropometry, cognitive function, dietary habits, Age and Ageing 2003; 32: 365–366 Age and Ageing Vol. 32 No. 4 # 2003, British Geriatrics Society. All rights reserved.


Abstract: We do not understand light. I argue that a terascale photon collider is necessary to determine the structure of the photon at 100 GeV. Uncertainties in photon parton distribution functions lead to cross section predictions that vary by a factor of 5. This limits our ability to predict how well we can perform precision measurements, e.g., extracting the width of Higgs into two photons. These uncertainties will only be resolved by measuring the gluonic structure of the photon in situ.


A 39-year-old man with no visual complaints was noted on routine examination to have unusual yellowish lesions in each midperiphery. He had no medical history other than mild hypertension. He was taking no medications and had no family history of poor vision. His visual acuity is 20/20 in the right eye and 20/32 in the left eye. Intraocular pressure was 14 in each eye. The anterior segment examination showed clear anterior chambers, without any evidence of inflammatory cells. On fundus examination, there were yellowish linear lesions in each retinal midperiphery (Figure 1, A and B). Fluorescein angiography showed that these lesions were, for the most part, associated with areas of pigment epithelial window defect (Figure 2). The patient is presented for a discussion of these midperipheral lesions.


With gold's persistence performance over erratic periods since the catastrophic event of global financial crisis in 2008, attention is focussed on gold to substitute stock market investments in the times of crisis. Exploring such causal nexus between NSE NIFTY 50 index and Gold prices in Indiapost 2008 crisis is the main focus of the present research. The daily data of International Bloom berg Gold prices and NSE NIFTY 50 Index series has been used over the time period of November 13, 2008 to January 24, 2020. By applying unit root and Toda-Yamamoto granger causality test, study primarily shows stationarity of the variables at different order. The study evidenced the significant bidirectional short-run causal relationship in between NSE NIFTY 50 prices and International Gold prices. Hence, International Gold prices hold significant information which can be used to predict NSE NIFTY 50 returns and vice-versa. The results of present study can be used by Indian stock market policymakers to implement new structural restructuring to augment efficiency of Indian equity sector. Present study is limited in scope to account for gold's nexus with only stock market index which in future can be furthered by establishing association with other commodity markets, mutual funds, exchange rate, derivative, etc.


This text provides a useful contribution to the marketing communications literature through an overview of some of the rapid changes occurring in the sector, particularly with regard to new and emerging technologies. Particularly relevant is the discussion highlighting the probability that 'Western' models of marketing strategy and their accompanying assumptions regarding marketing communications will need to be reviewed and revised if marketers want to cater successfully to the demands of growing consumer power in emerging economies such as China. The treatment of the various topics covered is somewhat uneven and there is too much discussion, particularly in the early chapters, centred on stressing that the future will be very different from today without teasing out some of the major consequences of the tantalizing possibilities presented. For example, there is extensive albeit uncritical discussion of product placement, but limited discussion of the implications of the growing blurring between persuasive communication, education and entertainment. While there is discussion of growing consumer scepticism regarding persuasive communications such as advertising, the implications of the growth in technologies, such as personal DVDs and video on demand, by which they can actively avoid communications, receives very little focus. Interactive and digital television also receive limited discussion. Simultaneous media usage and media convergence are not discussed, nor is return on investment from marketing communications activity. This latter omission is surprising, given the considerable debate regarding the challenges of effective measurement of return on investment via traditional marketing communications tools, individually and in combination. With so much emphasis placed on evolving media forms, a corresponding discussion should have been included regarding the way in which the effectiveness of such activity could be measured. Surprisingly, in the current climate of strident calls for restrictions on advertising to children, the text contributors appear to accept young children as a legitimate target for marketers as being unproblematic. The consequences of more stringent regulation of marketing communications targeting this group and/or entire categories of products are largely ignored. Overall, the chapters are not well linked and therefore some of the content may be confusing for those unfamiliar with the topics or concepts discussed within them. For example, the discussion of Volkswagen, in Chapters 4 and 10, may be perceived as somewhat contradictory for those who are unfamiliar with Volkswagen's overall marketing strategy for its entire product range, including the two products discussed: the Passat and the Beetle. Journal of Marketing Communications Vol. 12, No. 2, 145–146, June 2006


The authors measured epigenetic age acceleration (EAA) during and after cancer treatment and its association with inflammation and fatigue, which is a debilitating symptom in patients with cancer.


The present study was done to analyze the antibacterial activity of different extracts of P. graveolens. Medicinal plants serve as potent antimicrobial agents. Here, the ethanolic, methanolic, choloroform, ethyl acetate and aqueous extracts of P. graveolens were examined for their antibacterial activity against gram positive and gram negative bacterial strains using disk diffusion technique.. It was observed that the extracts of P. graveolens possess antimicrobial potential against test bacteria used except Klebsiella pneumoniae ATCC 31488 and Klebsiella aerogenes ATCC 9621. Maximum zone of inhibition was observed for chloroform extract of P. graveolens against Enterococcus faecalis ATCC 29212 (29 mm) among gram positive bacteria. Whereas, among gram negative bacteria maximum zone of inhibition was observed in case of methanolic extract against Escherichia coli ATCC 11840 (20 mm).


Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19), caused by the SARS‐CoV‐2 novel coronavirus, has spread worldwide causing high fatality rates. Neither a vaccine nor specific therapeutic approaches are available, hindering the fight against this disease and making better understanding of its pathogenesis essential. Despite similarities between SARS‐CoV‐2 and SARS‐CoV, the former has unique characteristics which represent a great challenge to physicians. The mechanism of COVID‐19 infection and pathogenesis is still poorly understood. In the present review, we highlight possible pathways involved in the pathogenesis of COVID‐19 and potential therapeutic targets, focusing on the role of the renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system.


Nigeria is a country with wide spectrum of ethnic groups with a population of about 195 million. The country has been having security challenges such as Insurgency, Arm banditry, Cattle rustling, Kidnapping, Political thugs, among others which leads to loss of lives and properties. The most occurring and challenging is the insurgencies that spread into many parts (Borno, Adamawa, Yobe etc) of the country. It has been a quite challenge to the security forces to track down and/or to prevent any insurgency before it occurs. This proposal tends to address these challenges by analysing the phone conversations through telecommunication networks to prevent the attack before it occurs. The analyser engine is to be developed which processes the most common spoken languages (English, Hausa, Yaruba, and Igbo) in the country and passes it to inference engine for decision making. The inference engine qualifies the processed conversions as either threats or not. If found to be suspected, a notification will be sent to the security forces to investigate and/or prevent.


During the period 1966—1990 we studied the occurrence of different song dialects of the Ortolan Bunting in Sweden. Song dialects were identified for more than 420 males from about 150 different localities. We found that two regional dialects, one Northern Swedish and one Central Swedish, were prevailing. The characteristics of these two dialects are shown on melograms with one curve for fundamental frequency and one curve for relative sound pressure. The dialects can be identified and the differences clearly heard in the field without technical means. The Northern Swedish dialect is predominant north of the province of Hälsingland and the Central Swedish dialect south of that province. The two dialects meet and "overlap" in Hälsingland. The picture is supplemented by the occurrence of individuals with the foreign dialect, both dialects or a mixed dialect.


: Pear is one of the most important fruits globally; pear scab remains one of the most serious diseases afflicting this plant. However little work has been carried out on study on resistance mechanism of this disease in pear compared with other plants. Candidate genes responsible for pear scab resistance were explored in this study via whole-genome resequencing from two bulked segregate populations in BC1 group Yali × 03-04-034. Bioinformatic analysis of mine hub genes significantly related to pear scab resistance was used. The results indicated that seven hub genes including LOC103967201, LOC103938487, LOC103931625, LOC103929296, LOC103948157, LOC103947768 and LOC103932408 are related significantly to pear scab resistance, which is described as Nucleolar GTP-binding protein 1-like, Probable copper-transporting ATPase HMA5, CEN-like protein 2, Kinesin-like protein KIN-7F, Chaperone protein ClpB1-like, Polygalacturonase inhibitor-like and Haloacid dehalogenase-like hydrolase domain-containing protein 3. It is clear that these genes might contribute to scab resistance by participating in three pathways including protein processing in the endoplasmic reticulum as well as ribosome and protein export. The hub genes distribute within four key modules and collaborate with each other; this observation might explain our previous conclusion that pear scab resistance is controlled by four loci with recessive homozygous genotypes.


Large volume of data which is a combination of both structured as well as unstructured data is referred by the term Big Data. As the amount of data produced is very huge, it becomes really difficult and time consuming to manage this data. Hadoop is a Big Data technology that is extensively used for the manipulation and analysis of Big Data. The applications of Big Data introduce new scope to determine knowledge. In this paper, applications of Big Data in medical domain is presented. Also, the challenges and benefits of various tools of Big Data in various scenarios are discussed.


Gray mold caused by Botrytis cinerea is one of the most important diseases in tomato. It can be controlled effectively by demethylation inhibitor (DMI) fungicides, but their resistant status is unclear after long-term use in the field. Baseline sensitivity to difenoconazole of 142 B. cinerea isolates from China with no history of DMI usage was characterized, with a mean EC50 of 0.97 ± 0.50 μg/mL. EC50 values to difenoconazole of another 248 isolates collected in 2011 and 2016 ranged from 0.04 to 11.99 μg/mL, and the frequency of difenoconazole sensitivity formed a non-normal distribution curve. Detached fruit studies revealed that isolates with EC50 values of ~6.00 μg/ml were not controlled effectively. The mean EC50 of the resistant isolates changed from 6.74 to 8.65 μg/mL between 2011 and 2016. Positive cross-resistance was only observed between difenoconazole and two DMIs. One dual resistant and one triple resistant isolates were found among the difenoconazole-resistant isolates collected in 2016, associated with point mutations in corresponding target proteins of the fungicides azoxystrobin and fludioxonil. This indicated that B. cinerea not only showed higher difenoconazole resistance levels but gradually changed from single to multiple fungicide resistance over time. No amino acid variation was found in the CYP51 protein. In the absence of difenoconazole, the relative expression of CYP51 was not significantly different in sensitive and resistant isolates. Induced expression of CYP51 is an important determinant of DMI resistance in B. cinerea from tomato. However, nucleotide variants found in the upstream region had no association with the fungicide resistance phenotype. These results will be helpful for the management of B. cinerea in the field.


The Spanish System represents a minor reality in a context in which Western European Democracies have opted to exclude from their Constitutions the preventive provision of the so‐called state of emergency and the specific case of terrorism. After all, the events that affected Spain are well‐known. Since many years, Spain has been active in the conflict against the Basque Terrorism and the democratic dilemmas, because of the presence in the Parliament of parties linked to the terrorist group Eta. And exactly the well‐known Ley organic sobre los partidos politicos  6/2002, which outlawed the Batasuna Party and other political organizations connected to the Eta group.  Therefore, in the Spanish System the article 55, II clause, as well as the legislation related to the political parties tagged as anti‐system, represent the fundamental profiles of peculiarity in the field of anti‐terrorism legislation. Nevertheless, through this article we will try to demonstrate that the distinctive characteristic in the Spanish discipline does not lie on the provision of extraordinary measures in the Constitution. Instead, the main point is that this phenomenon has been disciplined by a legislation deliberately "fabricated" for a specific subject: Eta.


her as a "hysterical woman," Goldman jumped on to the stage, pulled a concealed horsewhip from under her cloak, and slashed Most about the neck and face. She then broke her weapon into pieces, flung them at the podium contemptuously and – pandemonium erupting – was spirited out of the hall by two comrades. Goldman and Berkman did not remain lovers who either cohabited or shared a sexual bond. A physical attraction had, it turned out, burned intensely but briefly in their time together. But the passion of a political union remained, articulated in the journals associated with their joint endeavours, Mother Earth and The Blast, published between 1906 and 1917. As lovers of liberty, Goldman and Berkman put their stamp on an era. They were the closest of comrades, inseparable even as they were geographically distant or arguing through differences. Mutually supportive, their affection for one another survived a series of harsh blows: exile from the America that Goldman loved and Berkman shunned; disillusionment with the Russian Revolution from which they had both expected so much; the imprisonment and even execution of fellow revolutionaries such as the McNamara Brothers, Matthew A. Schmidt and David Caplan, Tom Mooney, and Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti; and the rise of fascism. In their anarchist odyssey they left a legacy of principled struggles, decisive (if at times ill-advised) acts, and unshakeable commitment to values and ideals that ran defiantly against conventionality. Berkman's Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist and Goldman's Living My Life are texts of these times, revealing of the richness of dissent. Paul Avrich, who originally researched this history, and his daughter, Karen Avrich, who experienced a reconnection with her dead father through reworking his early drafts and drawing on his notes, interviews, and assembled primary sources, have produced a memorable book addressing a memorable couple, whose meanings, for life both private and public, seem unrivalled in their powerful articulation of the symbiotic nature of the personal and the political. On the occasion of Berkman's 65th birthday, Emma wrote to him. "It is fitting that I should tell you the secret of my life," she wrote, confessing, "True, I loved other men. ... Men have come and gone in my long life. But you my dearest will remain for ever. ... Our common struggle and all it has brought us in travail and disappointments hardly explains what I feel for you." In the end, for Emma Goldman, it was Alexander Berkman's presence in her life, "and the love and affection you have roused," that was "rooted in her being" like nothing else. Born in what has come to be a distilled designation – terror – was a human tenderness that managed to survive a much larger, routinized and deadly attack, the tyranny of inequality and its perpetuation through power. "Of all the letters I received," Berkman wrote back, "yours is the most beautiful. Naturally so, everything considered." (401) Bryan D. Palmer Trent University


The attitudinal effects of the television docudrama "The Day After," which depicted the aftermath of a Soviet nuclear attack on the Kansas City area, are analyzed through data from a panel conducted immediately before and after the program was shown. The effects of the program's byproducts (associated coverage and discussion) outweighed the effects of the program itself. The program seems to have had its greatest direct impact on the salience of and information about nuclear war rather than on attitudes as such.


Optimum conditions(ethanol concentration,extraction temperature,extraction time,the ratio of solid to liquid of extraction system) were determined by the experiments of single-factor.The total saponins from the Argyreia acuta Lour was treated with mixed liquid of 5% vanillin-acetic acid and perchlorate(1∶4).The absorption value of total saponins was determined by Ultrospec 722 spectrophotometer at 445 nm.The optimum condition was as followed: the solvent was 75% ethanol,the temperature was 75℃,the extracting time was 45 min and the solid-liquid ratio was 1∶20,the power of ultrasonc was 100 MHz.It was an economical,convenient,and pollution-free way to extract the total saponin from Argyreia acuta Lour.


In the general form for the equation of the electroelasticity the generalized structuralparametric model and the generalized matrix transfer function of the electroelastic actuator with the output parameters displacements are determined from the solutions of the wave equation with using the Laplace transform. The parametric structural schematic diagram and the transfer functions of the electroelastic actuator are obtained. The structural-parametric model of the piezoactuator for the transverse, longitudinal, shift piezoelectric effects are constructed. The dynamic and static characteristics of the piezoactuator with the output parameter displacement are obtained.


A guide to help you with the Policy Analysis Brief. Some aspects of the brief depend on outside research (outlined below) to supplement your course readings and your own analysis of the policy.


It presents and discusses the relevance of the implementation of the basin as a unit of study for territorial analysis and planning processes that take place inside. This is complemented by the premise that the basin can be used in conjunction with visual assessment, in order to offer a complete and comprehensive picture of the situation in the territory. The San Jose el Alto micro basin is an important area for the metropolitan area of Queretaro, due to its ecosystemic functions of air filtration, species habitat, water infiltration, among others. The objective of the present work is to generate a proposal of analysis of the landscape for this micro watershed, this as a contribution for the territorial planning. The methodology used is based on the application of instruments to perform a visual assessment of the landscape in 5 runoff units present in the micro basin, which resulted in the current state of the variables considered in the micro watershed related to soil quality, roads, water and some others. These results allow to offer a comprehensive diagnosis of the elements present in the unit of study. With these, it aims to broaden horizons regarding the instruments and ways of diagnosing the territory for the generation of planning processes of the territory.


The negatively charged silicon-vacancy center (SiV) in diamond is a potential high-quality single-photon source for quantum information processing and quantum electrodynamics applications[1]. The dipole moment of the SiV is aligned predominantly along its symmetry axis which connects the interstitial silicon atom and the two adjacent vacancies with 4 possible <111>-orientations. Since the SiV addressing is done optically the demand for efficient excitation and optical out-coupling is essential for realizing high-quality single-photon sources. In addition to relatively low extraction efficiency when embedded in bulk diamond, attributed to total internal reflection, in a <100>-oriented diamond, which is commonly used, each SiV possesses a dominant dipole component aligned normal to the diamond-air interface. Thus, resulting in a poor optical out-coupling since a dipole radiates primarily into the plane orthogonal to its axis.


Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an extensive economic production quantity (EPQ) model on the basis of previous research. Considering an imperfect three‐state production process, this paper makes contributions to an integrated model combining conceptions of quality loss and design of control chart based on EPQ model. The objective is to minimize the total production cost with the determination of EPQ and design parameters of control chart subjected to quality loss and other process costs.Design/methodology/approach – In this paper, imperfect process is defined as a three‐state process, and the quality cost corresponding to each state contributes to the eventual total expected cost formulation. Control chart is used to monitor the shift from the target value within whole process and its control limits are set to be related to the quality cost.Findings – The proposed integrated model conforms more closely to the real situation of production process considering the process shift as a random ...


The displacement system of planet detection vehicle is one of the key technologies for the study of planet detection vehicle.Whether its performance is good or bad would affect directly on the smoothly carrying out of the planet detection plan.The wheel typed planet detection vehicle to be regarded as the main stream of planet detection vehicles,its displacement system has becoming one the hotspots for the study of planet detection vehicle.This paper carried through summarization and classification on the displacement system of wheel typed planet detection vehicle at home and abroad and analyzed the relative merits on the performances of each displacement system,and finally the characteristics and its developing situation on the displacement system of wheel typed planet detection vehicle.


Pi-Conjugated polymers and small molecules are useful for their semiconductor properties in organic electronic devices such as organic photovoltaics, light emitting diodes, and thin film transistors. They also find application in chemical detection for their high sensitivity to fluorescence quenching species. Described herein are the syntheses of two new electron deficient monomer units for polymers and small molecules. 5-acetyl-1,3-dibromo-4H- cyclopenta[c]thiophene-4,6(5H)-dione was synthesized for the first time. It can be conveniently polymerized by Stille coupling to form polymers initially insoluble in common solvents, which can be rendered soluble by deprotonation with various organic amines. Solutions in methanol are highly fluorescent and show strong quenching when exposed to Ni2+ and Cu2+. Additionally, films can be cast from chloroform or dichlorobenzene solutions with triethylamine. New polymers and small molecules based on the recently reported thiophene substituted isoindigo were also synthesized and employed in photovoltaic devices reaching a maximum of 3.75 %power conversion efficiency, the highest yet reported for this unit. Also discussed is a series of low band gap small molecule semiconductors incorporating two diketopyrrolopyrrole units and their photovoltaic applications. The best power conversion efficiency for a molecule in this series was 2.22 %.


The revision of Romanticism in the last two or three decades went deeper than any other revolution in the canonization of western literature. Tom Wein (British Identities, Heroic Nationalisms and the Gothic Novel.1764-1824), Gary Kelly (English Fiction of the Romantic Period), Virgil Nemoianu (Taming Romanticism), or Michael Löwy and Robert Sayre (Romanticism Against the Tide of Modernity) demystified the uncritical association of this literary trend with the revolutionary political ethos in 1789 France, casting light on the conservative, pastoriented yearnings of the major representatives. Such considerations, however, do not apply to the American scene, where politics and poetics, unaffected, or at least not directly affected by the Reign of Terror and the Napoleonic wars remained faithful to the ideas of the French Revolution. Whereas Europe turned conservative, with the Great Powers forming suprastatal networks of influence (The Holy Alliance at the Congress of Vienna in 1815 bonding the Kingdom of Prussia, the Austrian and Russian empires, joined a few years later by France and the United Kingdom), America built a political system grounded in the rights of the individual and pursued " dreams" of personal and national assertiveness (the "city on the hill," "from rags to riches") in opposition to the European "concert of nations" model. Our paper is pointing to a necessary dissociation of meliorist plots and narratives of healing in the romantic canon on either part of the Atlantic instead of subsuming them under a common poetics/politics heading.


The positions of the IRAS counterparts to the 420 OH/IR stars in the Arecibo sky (0° < δ < +38°) are usually accurate to better than 10″. But every star has recently been observed by the Two Micron All Sky Survey (2MASS), which provides ∼0.″2 quality positions, while those with |b| ≤ 4.°5 have also been observed by the Midcourse Space Experiment (MSX), which provides ∼2″ quality positions. We use the MSX and/or IRAS coordinates to guide us to 2MASS counterparts for the 134 Arecibo OH/IR stars with images in the second release of the 2MASS Point Source Catalog. An unexpected by-product of having the J-H versus H-Ks plot generated from the 2MASS fluxes is the realization that most (∼85%) of the redder OH/IR stars have detached circumstellar shells. We identify five objects that probably, by contrast, have "normal" shells, and we confirm the status of AU Vul as a protoplanetary nebula.


OBJECTIVE:To evaluate hypothermy effect of Chaige lotion balneotherapy in the treatment of children exopathogenic fever.METHODS:76 children with exopathogenic fever met the diagnostic standard were randomly divided into 2 groups.On the basis of conventional symptomatic and supportive therapy,treatment group was given Chaige lotion for cooling,and control group was treated with Xiaoer resuqing oral liquid.The hypothermy effects of two groups were compared.The changes of systemic symptoms and fever were observed as well as adverse drug reactions.RESULTS:There was significant difference in overall efficacy,onset time and total cooling time(P0.05 or P0.01),those of treatment group was better than control group.CONCLUSION:For therapy of children exopathogenic fever,Chaige lotion is characterized with quick hypothermy effect,stable effect,simple method and easy to accepted by children.It is worthy of spreading in the clinic.


In recent years, although there has been a significant decline in construction occupational disasters, construction and labor safety planning are still the focus of the government's vigorous promotion. According to the data from the Institute of Labor and Occupational Safety and Health of the Ministry of Labor, the construction industry has the highest occupational accident rate per thousand people, indicating that construction occupational safety still needs to be greatly improved. BIM has been widely used in construction projects. Its visibility, coordination, and simulation characteristics should be able to find construction hazards that are relatively invisible on general 2D construction drawings. Thus, this study uses BIM to assist in analyzing the construction risks of the bridge and researches on construction activities of relatively high risks with a bridge project as an example, to reduce the risks that may occur during actual construction activities. The research results indicate that the weight of each part of the main bridge tower is obtained by the BIM model, and the crane is selected after the rated load is calculated. This process prevents the weight of hanging objects from exceeding the rated load of the crane, thereby reducing the possibility of objects flying off from the crane. Two software packages, namely SketchUp and Fuzor, are used to simulate the movement line of the crane and the gyration radius of a hanging operation in advance. This process reduces (1) the risk of collision between cranes due to an overlap of their gyration radii and (2) the risk of collision between the crane and construction personnel who enter into the gyration radius during hanging operations.


Finite difference schemes of various eigenvalue problems are used to generate size, rotation, and translation invariant sets of features for shape recognition and classification of binary images. These feature sets are based on the eigenvalues of the Dirichlet Laplacian, the clamped plate problem, and the buckling problem. The stability and effectiveness of these features is demonstrated by using them in the classification of 6 types of computer generated and hand-drawn shapes. The classification was done using 4 to 20 features fed to simple feed-forward neural networks trained using the backpropagation algorithm. All features performed very well and correct classification rates of up to 99.7% were achieved on the computer generated shapes and 97.2% on the hand-drawn shapes.


This item is a postcard sent to Clare Gass in Shubenacadie. Senders name is not legible. The image on the front of the postcard is of a ships in Yarmouth, from Breydon Water, with the image of St. Nicholas Church in the distance.


The model of a single file system shared by all users of a computer is not only convenient but expected by most computer users. It seems natural to extend this model across multiple computers so that all users on a collection of computers share the same file system, thus forming a distributed file system. Similarly, the model of a collection of threads of control sharing the same address space as they cooperate in a computation is a convenient means for exploiting concurrency. This singleaddress-space abstraction is certainly the natural model for use on a sharedmemory multiprocessor. Its convenience for programming is so compelling that it is used increasingly to take advantage of parallelism on distributed systems, where it is called distributed memory. Primarily because of the ubiquity of Sun's Network File System (NFS), programmers have become accustomed to distributed file systems; they realize how much more convenient such a system is than explicitly copying files across machines. While distributed memory is not so commonplace (existing implementations are research projects), it shows great promise for taking advantage of the collective power of a network of computers for computationally intensive problems. In both distributed file and memory systems, the usual implementation model is one of clients obtaining data from servers. Clients typically maintain a cache of data recently obtained from servers: if data has been fetched previously, reads (in the case of file systems) and loads (in the case of memory systems) can often be satisfied directly from the cache without contacting the server. Writes (in the case of file systems) and stores (in the case of memory systems) can be applied to data in the cache and only later made visible to others by updating the server. For the case of file systems, servers are typically distinct from clients and files are permanently assigned to servers, so that clients always contact the same server for the same file. However, an approach pioneered with distributed memory systems [Li and Hudak 1989] has the server role distributed among all the clients: the "home" of a sharedmemory segment is the client who last modified it. This approach has recently been adopted for distributed file systems [Anderson et al. 1995]. Our primary concerns are performance, how (and whether) the clients' views of the data are kept consistent, and how machine crashes and network outages are handled. Among the performance concerns are minimizing both network traffic and the latency of responses to user requests. If the data necessary to handle a user request (such as a read operation on a file or a load from memory) are available locally, latency is minimal, but if not, it can be considerable. However, data can now be transferred over high-speed networks faster than from disks. Thus it may be quicker to obtain data over the network from the primary storage of a server machine than from a local disk. In either case, since the impact of network traffic on overall performance is more dependent on the number of messages being transmitted than on their size, it


The need for a revolutionary change in how we generate energy, and why the Green Economy leaves us better off


As part of the physicochemical and biochemical quality analyses (Moisiture, pH, conductibility, acidity, HMF, quantitative and qualitative analysis of sugars by HPLC, diastase, prolin and protein) local honey, ten samples of honey are collected in east of Algeria and studied. The different statistical analyses show that local honey is good quality in comparison with imported honey and according to international norms. However, the honey coming from Bougous (Taref) and the sample of SoukAhras show the best quality comparison with all studied honey. Such as sugars analysis by HPLC watch as our samples contain sugars in dozen of the absence of sugars:trealose, melibiose and melezitose are a good indicator of miellat honey. This honey is therefore of origin nectar. The analysis of the report Fructose/glucose (F/G) shows that the honey of Skikda E4 (F/G = 0,99) crystallizes faster than other studied honey. Any times, the quality of the honey is affected by different elements on whom quality depends: Botanical and geographical origin, the climatic conditions, conditions and the methods of extraction, the conditions of stocking and transport, the food of the honeybee and the botanical wealth of the region where from interest to take into account these parameters.


We consider an aggregation-diffusion model, where the diffusion is nonlinear of porous medium type and the aggregation is governed by the Riesz potential of order s. The addition of a quadratic diffusion term produces a more precise competition with the aggregation term for small s, as they have the same scaling if s=0. We prove existence and uniqueness of stationary states and we characterize their asymptotic behavior as s goes to zero. Moreover, we prove existence of gradient flow solutions to the evolution problem by applying the JKO scheme.


Mass rearing of the sugarcane borer, Diatraea saccharalis, (F.), Was attempted on a limited scale in the laboratory. Larvae were cultured in cotton-stoppered Erlenmeyer flasks containing sugarcane tops or artificial agar-base diet. Rearing was done under aseptic conditions.

From series of experiments in which the amounts of each ingredient in an artificial diet called the "standard diet" were varied, an "improved diet" was formulated. This improved diet contained corn plant powder(an acetone extract from corn plants, 10.0 grams), sucrose (5 grams), cholesterol (0.2 gram), Wesson's salts (1.0 gram), yeast extract (2 grams), Bacto-agar (3.5 grams), and distilled water (125 milliliters).

Results from several experiments indicated that the optimum amount of sugarcane tops for mass rearing should be 15 grams per insect, and that 7½ grams per insect of the improved artificial diet should be adequate for the complete development of sugarcane borer larvae. Ten insects were reared in each 2.50-milliliter Erlenmeyer flask containing the sugarcane tops. Sugarcane tops appeared to be slightly superior to the improved artificial diet for rearing sugarcane borers.


Conventional comparisons of national industrialization strategies place a strong emphasis on the cultural development of a modern ethic of work performance as an important component of effectively attaining industrial growth. In the case of Czarist and Soviet Russia, most studies maintain that Russian workers are exceptional inasmuch as they have always lacked a modern work ethic and therefore remain necessarily less productive than the more ethically disciplined work forces of Europe, Japan, and North America. However, such studies fail to deal with the problems of Soviet industrialization and distort the actual historical processes of Western capitalist industrialization. This analysis argues that a modern work ethic has developed within the Soviet workplace since 1917. it maintains that the social origins of this cultural code of disciplined labor are to be found, in large part, in the cultural values and group practices of the radical Russian intelligentsia before 1914, a group that provided the concrete class bases of the Bolshevik reconstitution of Marxism as a culture-transforming ideology for industrializing Russia.


Based on finite-time stability approach, a terminal block backstepping control with perturbation estimation scheme is proposed in this paper for a class of multi-input systems with matched and mismatched perturbations to solve regulation problems. The design procedure of the proposed control scheme mainly contains two parts. The first part is the design of pseudo-control inputs, the second part is the design of control input functions. In order to eliminate the problem of 'explosion of complexity' and overcome the problem of singularity, a derivative estimation algorithm embedded in the controller is utilised to estimate the perturbations. The control efforts are capable of suppressing the mismatched perturbations in most cases effectively so that the controlled states are able to reach zero within finite time. A numerical example is also given for demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed control scheme.


Abstract A simple sufficient condition for ergodicity of Markov chains that possess transition kernel of the type P(x, A) = ∫ A p(x, y)ν(dy) + r(x)1 A (x) is presented. Applications includes the convergence of several MCMC algorithms: Metropolis-Hastings, Simulated Annealing and Expectation Maximization (EM).


A simplified simulation method to calculate the transmission and diffraction of oblique incident light through a thin two-dimensional layer is presented. The algorithm, based on a ray-tracing technique, uses the Extended Jones-calculus and neglects diffraction within the layer. The algorithm is applied to an in-plane switching liquid crystal display. The transmission at the display surface and the diffracted field at a large distance from the display are compared with the more accurate reduced grating method. When the thickness of the layer is sufficiently small and the variation in liquid crystal orientation is slow, our method gives accurate results.


Although more competitive forms of authoritarianism and electoral democracy are today prevalent in most African countries, democratisation has slowed and in some places reversed. This coincides with an ever-growing rift between African citizens who are demanding further democratic rights and rulers who want to preserve their prerogatives. Western actors need to support those who hold the greatest democratic aspirations more fervently: African citizens themselves.


The overall research architecture of this study used the relationships between environments and the individual as the reference and theme and traumatic experiences as the research source to observe changes in the psychological levels of the researcher as a research core. I develop a series of creations as the conclusion and guide and construct the framework and foundation of this study through step-by-step self-descriptive realization and the confines regarding surrounding society. These methods compose continuous creative development and the records and statements of my psychiatric changes, which allow me to identify observation methods for my present spatio-temporal situation and directions for the future. How should we live our lives? What are our life values? How can we overcome life's challenges? What attitudes should we apply in viewing the world and ourselves?People living in today's world face these questions. Regardless of their occupation or age, people experience the ranscendence of various key periods. Therefore, writing is a personal record and documentation of questions and answers, and guidelines.Through searching and repeated inferences, we can analyze ourselves and resolve our questions. Additionally, we can examine our dark and unclear conditions, the limitations of environments, self-oppression, and internal wounds, to finally construct ourselves. This demonstrates the contradictory correlation between environments and individuals. I further discovered that performance of the emptiness and instability underlying prosperity and the tragic essence of life facilitated an opportunity for dialogue between personal observation aspect and society. After establishing my personal subjectivity, I explored the mental conditions modern people have toward the environment and developed the concept of"see-through morbidity" to assess and describe fake phenomena. By analyzing psychiatric or mental conditions that manifested after interactions between individuals and external environments, I constructed creative thinking and interpreted the psychiatric traumas and mental effects resulting from mutual oppressions of self-environments and environments-the public I observed, subsequently developing and interpreting these ideas into my creations. I followed the creative concept of "see-through morbidity" as my standard and used "reconstruction and deconstruction"as a creative model to propose and develop methods, such as image penetration, symbol concatenation, and self-subjective melting. For this study, I employed a series of works and discourse perspectives to present my stories as the creator and understand the world through multiple dimensions.


The paper gives a description of physical teaching model's basic attributes on areas of its theory,stability,visual,overall optimization,correspondence,evaluation and so on,which are benefit of combining physical theory and teaching practice,grasping the laws or essences during the teaching course,fully reflecting the intuitive and workable of the teaching model,and improving teaching and research capacity of the PE teacher.It would have positive meaning of applying correspondent teaching system,and in optimizing teaching procedure,depending on physical teaching model what are studied or pointed out from further physical teaching procedure research under certain educational mind and theory guide.


Daily Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) values from the MODIS Aqua and Terra satellites were compared with on-the-ground camera observations at five locations in northern Alaska. Over half of the spring rise in NDVI was due to the transition from the snow-covered landscape to the snow-free surface prior to the deciduous leaf-out. In the fall after the green season, NDVI fluctuated between an intermediate level representing senesced vegetation and lower values representing clouds and intermittent snow, and then dropped to constant low levels after establishment of the permanent winter snow cover. The NDVI value of snow-free surfaces after fall leaf senescence was estimated from multi-year data using a 90th percentile smoothing spline curve fit to a plot of daily NDVI values vs. ordinal date. This curve typically showed a flat region of intermediate NDVI values in the fall that represent cloud- and snow-free days with senesced vegetation. This "fall plateau" was readily identified in a large systematic sample of MODIS NDVI values across the study area, in typical tundra, shrub, and boreal forest environments. The NDVI level of the fall plateau can be extrapolated to the spring rising leg of the annual NDVI curve to approximate the true start of green season.


Small-town auto mechanic Benny has devoted his life to caring for his schizophrenic sister, Joon. Her behavior drives away all of her caretakers, and Benny is informed by Joon's psychiatrist, Dr. Garvy that it is time to consider placing her in a group home. The following day, Joon is picked up in the street by the police after Benny leaves her at home unattended to go to work. Benny brings Joon to his poker game, as he can't leave her alone. The days' events diminish Benny's sense that he can take care of Joon, and his friends later add to his dilemma by telling him about all the things he could be doing with his life if it weren't for Joon. Director: Jeremiah S. Chechik RATED PG Proof (2005)


Electronic version of a chapter published in Encyclopedia of Two-Phase Heat Transfer and Flow IV, pp. 233-301 (2018). doi:10.1142/9789813234444_0004 © copyright World Scientific Publishing Company, https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/9789813234444_0004


In this paper, an application of heuristic vs. meta-heuristic approaches to the design of an office building is presented. The building was first optimized by a heuristic approach based on the designers' expertise, prior experiences and intuitions with the use of a whole building simulation tool, EnergyPlus. Then, a meta-heuristic approach was completed in MATLAB platform where EnergyPlus and Genetic Algorithm (GA) were coupled. M-script files were developed to automate execution of EnergyPlus simulation runs (reading output files and overwriting input files of EnergyPlus) in integration to GA. Based on a comparison between the heuristic and the meta-heuristic approach, it is shown that GA performs much better in finding a global optimum even under a constrained search space than the heuristic approach. The heuristic approach has advantages, such as reflection of a design context in decision-making and fast communication between stakeholders.


... Declaration Acknowledgements... List of Tables ............ List of Figures... pKa Complexing capacity and s toichiometry of complex formation Results ...........lV ...........vi ......... vii ........ viii ........ viii Chapter


ABSTRACT FIELD drying of navy beans is a dynamic process controlled by local weather conditions. A knowl-edge of pod and grain moisture con-tent is essential for decision making during the harvest period to assure a complete harvest and a quality prod-uct. Pod drying depends upon the initial moisture content, the rate of change of temperature and the dif-ference between pod and grain moisture content. Grain moisture content can be estimated from the pod mois-ture content, but not from macro-environmental weather variables.


Both lower and higher plants have been shown to possess efficient transport systems for the uptake of sugars across the plasmalemma. Genes encoding transport proteins for both mono- and disaccharides have been cloned recently. The main cloning strategies — differential screening, complementation cloning in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and heterologous screening — are briefly summarized. The relationship of plant sugar transporters to a superfamily of more than 50 uni-, sym-, and antiporters cloned so far is discussed.

Various possibilities for heterologous expression (in Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Xenopus oocytes) of plant sugar transporters are described and compared. Eight D-glucose transporters (from yeast to Arabidopsis to man) only possess 7% identical amino acids. First site-directed mutations of the Chlorella HUP1 transporter indicate that at least transmembrane helices 5, 7 and 11 line the D-glucose specific path through the membrane. The genomic structures of two plant transporters are outlined; the glycosylation of transport proteins as well as their tissue specificity is discussed.


[1] The physics of steady driven magnetic reconnection at Earth's subsolar magnetopause is addressed. Three-dimensional, global magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) simulations of the magnetopause are compared with analytical solutions of the resistive MHD equations [Sonnerup and Priest, 1975] corresponding to magnetic field annihilation driven by an incompressible stagnation point flow. The simulations demonstrate that under steady southward interplanetary magnetic field conditions and when the plasma resistivity is spatially uniform, subsolar magnetopause reconnection occurs in long, thin Sweet-Parker current sheets via a flux pileup mechanism [Sonnerup and Priest, 1975; Priest and Forbes, 1986] (rather than in Petschek slow shock configurations). Magnetic energy piles up upstream of the magnetopause current sheet to accommodate the sub-Alfvenic solar wind inflow. The scaling of the pileup with Lundquist number, S, is consistent (approximately ∝ S1/4) with that predicted by the analytical, incompressible stagnation point flow solutions (though there are small corrections due to plasma compressibility in the simulations). Since there is a finite energy in the magnetosheath available to drive the magnetic pileup (and associated rapid magnetic reconnection), we expect the pileup to saturate and the reconnection rate to drop as the upstream plasma pressure drops to accommodate the pileup. Thus we expect the reconnection to stall, the rate vanishing in the limit S → ∞. We discuss the role of Hall electric fields in allowing the magnetic pileup to saturate before the reconnection begins to stall, permitting Alfvenic reconnection to occur in thin current sheets in the limit S → ∞.


Background Since its emergence in China, SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 240 million people worldwide, including in regions where dengue virus (DENV) is hyperendemic such as Latin America and Southeast Asia, including Indonesia. Diagnosis of COVID-19 in dengue endemic regions as well as DENV and SARS-CoV-2 co-infection can be challenging. Case Presentation We describe a 68-year-old woman with diabetes mellitus type II who was admitted to the Tangerang District Hospital on 14 April 2020. She lived in a neighborhood where a few people were contracting dengue fever. She presented with five days of fever, malaise, anorexia, nausea, myalgia, and arthralgia. Hematology revealed anemia, thrombocytopenia, normal leukocyte count, increased neutrophil proportion, and decreased lymphocyte proportion and absolute lymphocytes. Her chest X-ray showed right pericardial infiltrates. Although dengue was clinically suspected, she was also tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection as she met screening criteria. After being confirmed SARS-CoV-2 positive by RT-PCR, she was treated with ceftriaxone, paracetamol, azithromycin, oseltamivir, and chloroquine. She was clinically improved four days later and discharged from the hospital on 25 April 2020 after SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR was negative on two consecutive samples. Dengue was diagnosed retrospectively based on sero-conversion of dengue IgM and a very high dengue IgG index (ELISA, Focus Diagnostics®, Cypress, CA, USA), and sero-conversion of dengue IgM and positive IgG (Rapid test, PanBio ®Dengue duo cassette, Inverness Medical Innovations, QLD, AU), which was equivalent to high Hemagglutination Inhibition (HI) antibody titer (≥1280) found in secondary dengue infection. Conclusion The overlapping clinical presentations of COVID-19 and dengue; limited diagnostic capacity of laboratories in resource constrained settings; and complexities of interpreting results make identification of COVID-19 in the dengue endemic setting challenging. Clinicians in endemic areas must be aware of diagnostic challenges and maintain a high index of suspicion for COVID-19 coinfection with DENV and other tropical pathogens.


Allergy results from immunological reactions and the active moieties have to be identified amongst immunogenic molecules which are mainly proteins. Those compounds which are extractable under natural conditions when meeting the host's mucosa may act as potential sensitizers. Allergens, causing Type I allergy, are defined as molecules which specifically bind IgE in at least one serum from a group of humans with clinical symptoms of allergy towards the specific allergen source. All antigenic components may be regarded as potential allergens. In general, the search for potential allergens can be reduced to the proteins extracted by aqueous solution, simulating physiological conditions of ionic strength and pH (8). Allergenic extracts derived under such conditions are a complicated mixture of antigenic components, and the number of detectable antigens varies and may be underestimated due to the limited sensitivity of the analysis performed (8, 9). All potential allergenic sources (airborne proteinaceous material) do not have equal allergic sensitizing activity, and there may also be a relationship between actual exposure levels, duration and frequency of exposure, and allergic reactions w, 10-13). The optimal criteria for standardised allergenic extracts should include: all the potential allergens in the relevant ratios in native forms excluding irrelevant material. The potential allergens are those components against which some patients, allergic to the allergen source in question, have IgE antibodies. The relevant ratio means that the ratio between amounts of extracted components should be similar to the ratio anticipated during a natural exposure to the patient's immune system, In nativeform means that the allergenic molecules should remain in a state identical to that of natural exposure to the patient, with no denaturation, degradation or polymerization introduced by processing or handling. IrreZevant material is any molecules without immunogenic properties, potentially causing non-specific, non-immunological reactions, or antigens from another irrelevant allergen source. Standardisation of allergenic extracts has been increasingly required by allergists and regulatory authorities, following their introduction for diagnostic procedures and immunotherapy. At first, this standardisation was limited by the lack of biochemical information about allergenic extracts, which only included skin testing for potency measurements and some rather simple physicochemical data, such as weightholume (w/v), and protein nitrogen unit (PNU) determinations. With increasing knowledge of the allergenic extracts and the development of the in vitro assays on the allergens and allergenic extracts, more relevant standardisation became possible. Emphasis has been laid on the clinical relevance of allergen standardisation using biological methods. The FDA required Allergy Unit (AU) is based on the intradermal erythema method, where the resulting flare diameters are compared by parallel line bioassay (14, 15). Biological Unit (BU) is based on parallel line assay and relates the size of a reaction to 10 mg/ml histamine to 10,000 BUM (16-18). The activity of the allergenic extracts is one Histamine Equivalent Prick (HEP) when the extract produces a wheal equal in size to that produced by 1 mgml histamine (19). The AU and BU are biological units which reflect a biological equilibration of an inhouse reference preparation on selected patient material, and provides the possibility for all users in clinical practice to check the potency of the extract they have received. The labelled extracts are generally highly consistent from batch to batch (20). The allergen extracts used for diagnostic tests, as well as for treatment, must be compared with clinically, qualitatively and quantatively relevant standards (2 1). The main difference between extracts tested for diagnostic purposes and extracts used for therapy is the pharmaceutical formulation, which varies according to the specific intended use. These dispensing forms differ, therefore, in final composition, affecting storage conditions and stability. The stability of allergen extracts during storage has been examined using in vivo skin tests, RAST inhibition, crossed radio-immunoelectrophoresis and isoelectric focussing (22-25). When the antigen was stored at 35°C in Coca's solution (NaC1 0.5%, NaHC03 0.275%, and phenol 0.4%0), only half the allergenic activity remained after 1 week.


The present invention is a cash dispenser (ATM) or a card existing ATM system or the MS to change a card system with or without replacing the user ID to authenticate the security system ID security card or ID security code in the security system of the card using a billing query in addition, even if it is an existing bank credit or debit card or password was exposed about the security system and a method for reducing the incidents of debit or credit card by blocking unauthorized person using a secure ID system dramatically.


A systematical laboratory study is made of the effects of dosage and concentration of H 2SO 4, particle size of perovskite and reation temperature and time on acidolysis ratio of titanium in perovskite. At a H 2SO 4 concentration of 90%, suitable experiemental conditions for acidolysis of perovskite are as follows: a perovskite to H 2SO 4 ratio of 6∶35 02, a reaction temperature of 100 ℃ and a reaction time of 1 5 h. Under such conditions, acidolysis ratio of titanium in perovskite is up to 100%, and formation of TiO 2 precipitate and hytrolysis of TiO 2 2+ can be avoided. The dependence of acidolysis ratio of tianium on time under the above conditions is imitated. The imitation equation is X=-2 27×10 -3 t+5 27×10 -4 t 2-4 2×10 -6 t 3 .


ABSTRACT To investigate the interactive effects of elevated CO2 (e[CO2]), nitrogen (N) supply and irrigation regimes on tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L., cv. Elin) yield, water use efficiency (WUE) and fruit quality, potted plants were grown in glasshouse compartments with CO2 concentration of 400 and 800 ppm, separately, with 0 or 0.5 g N kg−1 soil. Since anthesis, the plants were subjected to three irrigation levels (I1, I2 and I3 – irrigated to 35% soil water content (SWC, v/v), 30% SWC and 25% SWC, respectively). e[CO2] had a slight effect on fruit yield and sugar, acid, soluble solids content (SSC) and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) in fruit juice, while it enhanced Mn, B and Fe contents in fruit biomass. WUE was improved by e[CO2] and I3 irrigation, but reduced by N supply. Though N supply lowered SSC, TAC, K+, Ca2+ and Mg2+ in fruit juice, it increased micro-nutrient (Mn, Mo, Cu, Zn, Fe) contents in fruit biomass. Most notably, principal component analysis revealed the best comprehensive quality of tomato fruits was found for plants grown under e[CO2] with sufficient irrigation and N supply, suggesting optimal irrigation and N fertilization are essential for good tomato quality in glasshouse production under CO2-enriched environment.


Significant changes in population and cultivation of farmland in Western U.S. over the past 200 years has required the use of extensive irrigation to sustain crop growth in the region. This irrigation has altered the land surface processes in the region and subsequently the local climates by increasing soil moisture levels higher than they naturally would be if no irrigation had taken place. Analysis of feedback processes show both positive and negative feedbacks are present and impact climate parameters such as surface temperature, precipitation, and albedo. Literature suggests that in the western plains the dominance of positive or negative feedback is determined by the intensity, spatial scale, and duration of irrigation, as well as synoptic scale patterns. The intermediate model QTCM was used to simulate irrigation of Western U.S. growing season (May-Nov) over the period of 1990-1999. Monthly climatological sensitivity experiments were conducted over a range of irrigation forcings from realistic values to near saturation of the soil. The results show a slight climatic response to realistic forcing and a significant climatic response to saturated forcing. All experiments indicated a positive feedback and agree with previous studies of large scale increases in precipitation, decreases in surface temperature, and increases in albedo over irrigated regions. Additionally simulations suggest that the QTCM model has a threshold of sensitivity to the irrigation forcing of 1.0 mm/day. Any forcing greater than this does not show significantly further climatic impact in the model. Future work for refining the accuracy of irrigation forcing would include using non-uniform distribution of irrigation in a higher resolution model, considerations of altitude, refining of seasonal dependence of crop growth, and a trend analysis. Globally research of regions such as China and India have not been well explored and experience even more irrigation than Western U.S. Irrigation raster maps could be incorporated into a GCM to simulate global irrigation and study climatic impacts of realistic forcings.


Measuring user's trust in technology in real-time using psychophysiological signals depends on the availability of stable, accurate, variance sensitive, and non-bias trust classifier model which can be achieved through ensembling several algorithms. Prior efforts resulted to fairly accurate but unstable models. This article investigates what ensemble method is most suitable for developing an ensemble trust classifier model for assessing users trust in technology with psychophysiological signals. Using a self-driving car game, a within subject four condition experiment was implemented. During which 31 participant were involved, and multimodal psychophysiological data (EEG, ECG, EDA, and Facial-EMG) were recorded. An exhaustive 172 features from time and frequency domain were extracted. Six carefully selected algorithms were combined for developing ensemble trust classifier models using each of the four ensemble methods (voting, bagging, stacking, boosting). The result indicated that the Stack ensemble method was more superior, despite voting method dominating prior studies.


The present study was conducted to determine the dietary salt requirement for Asian seabass fingerlings reared in fresh water. Fingerlings (3.3 g) were fed salt-rich diets prepared by adding 5%, 6%, 7%, or 8% salt to a commercial pelleted fish feed. The feed was ground and re-pelleted after addition of the salt. The highest (p<0.05) growth and survival rates were obtained in fish fed the 6% salt-rich diet, followed by fish fed the 5% and control (no salt enrichment) diets. The best feed conversion and protein efficiency ratios were also obtained in groups fed the 6% diet. Fish fed the 8% salt-rich diet had the lowest growth and survival rates. Incorporation of salt in the diet was not detrimental to the fish.


Uncertainty is significant when assessing a risk of certain health care facility conditions especially the facility that prone to the COVID 19 risk. One solution to deal with an uncertainty in health situation assessment is through fuzzy inference system. For that reason, this study aims to develop fuzzy assisted system to assess the safety of dental care related to the sets of patient and environmental conditions. The fuzzy system allows assessment based on the patient body temperature, travel history, dental care ventilation rate, and disinfection frequency. The fuzzy system incorporates several steps including fuzzification, fuzzy regulation, and defuzzification. As a result of this study, the fuzzy system is able to assess and identify the risk of dental care according to the patient health status and hygiene conditions of dental care as well. To conclude, fuzzy system used in this study has offered the advantage of assessing at any situation as for patient and environmental factor predicts the safety of dental care.