Background: The aim of the present study was to monitor the incidence and pattern of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) in cardiac care unit at Hakeem Abdul Hameed (HAH) Centenary Hospital. Methods: Study was conducted with the permission of Institutional Ethics Committee. Patients visiting medicine outpatient department, cardiac clinic, medical ward, and emergency departments over a period of 15 months were recruited. ADRs were recorded on the prescribed form. Causality assessment was done using Naranjo probability scale. 223 patients of hypertension and stable coronary artery disease were enrolled of which 48.9% were males and 51.1% females. The most common prescribed drugs were ace-inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blocker, and beta-blockers. Other prescribed drugs were calcium channel blockers, statins, nitrates, and antiplatelets. Results: A total of 44 ADRs were recorded. 26 ADRs were seen in females and 18 in males. Statins were the commonest drug associated with ADRs (29.5%) in our study. The most common organ system associated with ADRs in the present study was central nervous system followed by skin 15.9% each. The incidence of ADRs was about 20% of which 20% ADRs were probable, and 80% were possible. Maximum ADRs occurred in patients prescribed statins followed by beta-blockers and angiotensin receptor blockers. Conclusion: There is a need for conducting such studies in more and more patients to see the pattern of ADRs in cardiac patients. More information will help in reducing the ADR occurrence and making drug use more rational and safe for patients.


The deterministic cellular automaton 184 (the one-dimensional asymmetric simple-exclusion model with parallel dynamics) is extended to take into account injection or extraction of particles. The model presents the traffic flow on a highway with inflow or outflow of cars. Introducing injection or extraction of particles into the asymmetric simple-exclusion model drives the system asymptotically into a steady state exhibiting a self-organized criticality. The typical lifetime of traffic jams scales as \( \cong L^{\nu}\) with ν=0.65±0.04. It is shown that the cumulative distribution N m ( L ) of lifetimes satisfies the finite-size scaling form \(N_{m} (L) \cong L^{-1} f(m/L^{\nu})\).


In order to measure the three-light-axis parallelity of laser telemeter,we use CCD to get laser spot image and then capture and process the image to calculate the position error between the center of white light cross line and that of the spot and explain selected image processing arithmetics.Besides,different attenuators are applied to measure the sensitivity of receiver.We select LabVIEW as software to develop virtual instrument systems to gain the center of laser axis and control the attenuator.This system is intuitionistic and convenient to use and can be reused in different applications.


This paper describes about the kinematic error model and calibration procedure of the 3D robot teaching instrument. 3D teaching operation, using a real robot is not efficient work. The 3D teaching instrument has been developed for the robot teaching tasks. Articulated type teaching instrument has high mobility, but it is necessary to calibrate precisely to realize high positioning accuracy. In this report a method to identify the base point of measuring coordinate system and offset angle of the joint, numerically by Powell method is proposed. A calibration method of link parameter errors, using the SVD (Singular Value Decomposition)is presented. By the experimental results, this calibration procedure is proved.


Rachel Kennedy (U. South Australia), in her opening Keynote address, provided a context for the day by raising the issue of trust in new research methods . She listed the four key principles for research to be trustworthy – repeatable, predictive, transparency, actionable – and then used these to assess the current learning from the fields of biometric, virtual shopping methodologies and big data . I won't dwell on the concerns she raised as we hope to publish a summary of her address as a Conference Note in the next issue . Suffice it to say that caveat emptor rules apply in all three cases, and that market researchers may need to rethink their skill sets and competencies in order to engage with developments in these fields and marketing techniques in general .


Providing individuals with effective information, programs, and educational materials about "exotics" or non-indigenous species is generally not a very effective way to get people to act to control, eliminate, and restore damage from exotic species to native ecosystems. Information tends to inform the motivated and educated. Educational research and marketing research agree that information is not enough to motivate most people to action. The key ingredients to engaging people to act are (1) to develop a sensitivity (deep feelings for) to the environment and to the specific problem; (2) to develop knowledge about the environment (ecosystems), the specific problem (invasive exotics), and how people have successfully controlled or eliminated them; (3) to develop a set of skills related to how to take effective action; ( 4) to develop a sense of "ownership" of the problem (a personal recognition that he/she or their property is being impacted by invasive exotics); (5) to provide an opportunity to act (available resources, time, and support are present); and (6) to nurture a locus of control that is internalized. Research in education, learning, and cognitive science affirms that not all people perceive or process external stimuli in the same way. These unique differences among people may be associated with characteristics labeled as learning styles, brain dominance, cognitive processing, and personality traits. The point being that a single approach to engaging a community of people addresses a diverse audience and is not as likely to succeed as one that is designed and produced in format to reach the community's diverse members or to segment the community into subgroups. The key remains to create a supportive environment in which each person believes he/she can make a difference because he/she internally believes he/she is prepared to act with a reasonable chance for success.


Rapid intermixing of Ge deposited onto a Si substrate during 900 °C rapid thermal annealing was analyzed using secondary ion mass spectroscopy. In undoped Ge samples, a 50 nm thick graded Si1−xGex layer was formed in 1 min, consuming 30 nm Ge and 20 nm Si. Negligible profile change was seen after an additional 1 min anneal. With dopants inside the deposited Ge layer, the extent of the intermixing is increased: For B doping, 30 nm Ge and 30 nm Si are consumed; for As doping, 5 nm Ge and 100 nm Si are consumed. In the case of B, Ge–B codiffusion from the Si1−xGex/Si heterojunction edge was also observed. The p-n junction depth difference between the two dopants can be explained by the difference in their solubilities, while the Ge–B codiffusion is attributed to excess vacancies generated during the initial intermixing.


We report, for the first time, the observation of a shear-induced decomposition of boron carbide into B50C2 and nanocrystalline graphite at pressures from 1.0 to −3.5 GPa. It is proved that shear u...


An implied volatility index reflects the market expectations for the future volatility of the underlying equity index. This study tests and documents the information content, regarding both the realized volatility and the returns of the underlying equity index, of all publicly available implied volatility indices across the world. The empirical findings suggest that implied volatility indices include information about future volatility beyond that contained in past volatility. In addition, we show that there is a statistically significant negative and asymmetric contemporaneous relationship between implied volatility changes and the corresponding underlying equity index returns. Furthermore, this study contributes to the international equity market integration studies by investigating the linkages among major stock exchanges; the basis of the integration analysis is the implied volatility of each market, as proxied by the corresponding implied volatility index and the findings suggest that there is significant integration with respect to market participants' expectations about future uncertainty.


The Mute Immortals Speak: Pre-Islamic Poetry and the Poetics of Ritual is a vital new entry in the Myth and Poetics series, which is committed to the exploration of interaction between myth and ritual in the poetics of traditional societies. Combining various approaches derived from anthropology and literary theory, this book examines from a comparative perspective one of the most difficult and challenging genres in Arabic literature, the pre-Islamic qa~ldah. Suzanne Stetkevych's application of a wide range of reading and research in this area has made it possible for specialist and nonspecialist alike to grasp the mythic dimension of Arabic poetics-a dimension largely overlooked in previous scholarly writings on the subject. What is more, the author succeeds in showing the importance of the tradition of the Arabic qa~ldah for comparative research on the nature of lyric.


While exhibiting the aesthetic value of art, cultural art derivatives bear the function of inheriting regional culture, which can not only maximize economic benefits, but also play a good propaganda role. This paper analyzes the influence of regional culture on cultural art derivatives, and proposes the development and sales strategy of cultural art derivatives based on regional cultural symbols. The development strategy includes: diversification of the development methods of cultural art derivatives, focusing on the development and innovation of cultural art derivatives, focusing on the extraction and integration of regional cultural symbols, and the establishment of specialized teams engaged in the development of cultural art derivatives. The sales strategy includes: establishing a customer relationship management system, using new media to enhance the value of cultural art derivatives, strengthening the brand building of cultural art derivatives, and optimizing the sales channels of cultural art derivatives.


According to today's marketing understanding, the primary objective is not to sell a product, but to develop customer loyalty so that new products, or the same product can be sold to the same customer more than once. Therefore, marketing goods has become the most important organizational issue for businesses. In global markets, most significant effects of globalization on marketing strategies are such that products are shaped along with the market needs, and constituents like advertisements and packaging are prepared as per customer demands. Contacting customers individually, marketing products through e-mails, blogs, podcasts, and forums, manufacturing products that reflect customer needs, and producing advertisements that influence perception besides senses are some new techniques that businesses should adopt to last in the global market. In this study, by investigating the most common marketing practices of our age, the role of globalization in the emergence and application of these techniques have been explored.


Lawvere's notion of completeness for quantale-enriched categories has been extended to the theory of lax algebras under the name of L-completeness. In this paper we introduce the corresponding morphism concept and examine its properties. We explore some important relativized topological concepts like separatedness, denseness, compactness and compactification with respect to L-complete morphisms. Moreover, we show that separated L-complete morphisms belong to a factorization system.


It is carried out a determination of whether an expected signal (SVT) is received in a vehicle not by a module for tracking a stolen vehicle. In case of non-reception of the expected signal, an operating parameter of the vehicle is determined at least, and on the basis of at least one operating parameter of the reason for the absence of the expected signal is determined. Based on the detected reason for the absence of the expected signal is then determined whether or not an alarm is to be output.


We present CONDOR, a tool for managing constraints towards improved data quality. As increasing amounts of heterogeneous data are being generated, integrity constraints are the primary tool for enforcing data integrity. It is essential that an accurate and up-to-date set of constraints exist to validate that the correct application semantics are being enforced. We consider the widely used constraint, functional dependencies (FDs). CONDOR is an integrated system that identifies inconsistent data values (along with suggestions for clean values), and generates repairs to both the data and/or FDs to resolve inconsistencies. We extend the set of FD repair operations proposed in past work, by (1) adding a set of attributes to an FD; (2) transforming an FD to a conditional functional dependency (CFD); and (3) identifying redundant attributes in an FD. Our demonstration will showcase the visualization and interactive features of CONDOR to help users determine the best repairs that resolve the underlying inconsistencies to improve data quality.


Calcium in brine of salt lakes was determined by both atomic absorption spectrometry and flame emission spectrometry at the wavelength of 422.7nm.The influences of acid and other ions on the results were discussed.The influence of acid in the method of absorption was slighter than that of emission and the sensitivity with flame emission is higher than with atomic absorption.The RSD's of two methods are both less than 2%,and the recoveries are in the range of 103.7% to 107.2%.


Statistical machine translation (SMT) offers many benefits over rule-based and example-based machine translation especially ease to train and robustness. It represents state-of-the-art in machine translation (MT) but it has to deal with certain issues that are not trivial to solve in a statistical framework: correct distortion, correct agreement, morphology issues, etc. In order to solve distortion issues, different models were proposed: syntax-based MT, enhanced distortion models, clause restructuring. All of these define more complex distortion models than monotonic distortion models (which favor lack of word reordering). But these proposed models don't completely solve the issue of easily adding linguistic knowledge into the MT decoder. The dissertation proposed a model designed to augment SMT models with linguistic knowledge, either in a rule-based fashion or in a probabilistic fashion. The theoretical framework proposed in this dissertation was implemented in Phramer statistical phrase-based decoder and tested using various levels of knowledge—surface (only punctuation), Part-of-Speech, constituency parse trees. The experimental results showed improvement in the quality of the translation for language pairs that were tested (English-to-French, English-to-Spanish, French-to-English, Arabic-to-English). The improvement was observed in automatic metrics (BLEU score, Word Error Rate and Position independent word Error Rate) and manually, by inspecting the differences in translation. As expected, the differences were less in the lexical choice and more in word ordering that can be observed in the precision of higher-order n-grams that is used in the computation of the BLEU metric.


a. This chapter will cover basic biophysical and biological effects of ionizing radiation in order to form a foundation for understanding the clinical aspects of radiation injury discussed in Section IV of Chapter 6. This extended discussion of radiation does not imply that nuclear radiation will be the most important cause of casualties after a nuclear explosion. Blast and thermal injuries in many cases will far outnumber radiation injuries. However, radiation effects are considerably more complex and varied than are blast or thermal effects and are subject to considerable misunderstanding. As a result, a more detailed discussion is warranted. Since data from human experience are limited, much of the information in this chapter is based upon experimental information from animal studies. b. A wide range of biological changes may follow the irradiation of an animal, ranging from rapid death following high doses of penetrating whole-body radiation to an essentially normal life for a variable period of time until the development of delayed radiation effects, in a portion of the exposed population, following low dose exposures. The nature and severity of these changes will depend upon a great variety of biological and physical factors. There are significant variations in response to irradiation associated with differences in species, age, and other biological factors, as well as the physical factors of dose, dose rate, or nature of the radiation. However, the biological responses to radiation are not unique. They fall within the range of standard tissue responses seen following other types of injury and occur as a result of similar biochemical and/or cell kinetic disturbances. As a result, the wide range of effects which is possible can be organized into a predictable scheme, the details of which form the basic material of this chapter.


The present article is a rejoinder to Douglas Kammen recent study "Queens of Timor" (Archipel 84, 2012). Studying the numerous small polities ("kingdoms") of Portuguese Timor, Kammen found a remark ...


The use of desalting technology to supplement the water resources in semiarid areas of the United States indicates the need for more detailed information on the quantity and quality of saline groundwater supplies. The disposal of brine, a waste product of all desalting processes, poses a formidable problem at inland plant sites. Present work indicates that solar evaporation ponds and subsurface injection are the preferred methods of disposal. The latter method, if employed, would require more data and information on the geologic and hydrologic features of subsurface formations. Systems studies relating the intake and brine disposal facilities with the desalting process are being conducted to achieve optimum system economics.


Anna Rutherford, Founding Editor of Kunapipi and Director of Dangaroo Press, former Chairperson of European and World ACLALS, died in Sydney on 21 February 2001. Bernard Hickey, her fellow-pioneer of Australian and Commonwealth literary studies in Europe, and John Thieme, who worked closely with her on the executive of EACLALS (European Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies) and ACLALS and on the setting up of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, have contributed these tributes.


Objectives: In Ethiopia, there are no data which reflect the current prevalence of iron deficiency (ID) or iron deficiency anemia (IDA) at national or regional levels. The 2014 Ethiopia The prevalence of ID will be determined by measuring serum ferritin (SF) and transferrin receptor (sTfR) from venous blood samples using an automated electro-chemiluminescence immunoassay (ELISA) and immuno-turbidimetry technique. Iron deficiency be defined by SF<12.0 µg/L and sTfR>6.0 mg/L for 6-59 SF<15.0 Results: The national and regional prevalence of iron deficiency and IDA will be presented with and without inflammation among children 6-59 months and non-pregnant women 15-49 years of age in Ethiopia. Conclusions: This survey will provide national and regional data for anemia control and fortification programs in Ethiopia.


Václav František Červený became the founder of the Austro-Czech tradition of manufacturing chromatic brass instruments, which represented in their day an alternative to Adolph Sax's system. Červený's innovations were realised successively from the 1840s through the '80s. Many of these instruments are still being made and used mainly in the successor states of Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, and eastern Europe. The study focuses on Červený's main innovations. Thanks to the solving of the technical problems associated with instrument bodies with a conical bore, Červený succeeded at creating a complete family of wide-bored instruments ranging from the flugelhorn to the contrabass tuba. These instruments became the foundation of Austro-Czech wind music and of its style of instrumentation.


In the context of Cyber-Physical System (CPS), analyzing the real world data accumulated in cyberspace would improve the efficiency and productivity of various social systems. Towards establishing data-driven society, it is desired to share data safely and smoothly among multiple services. In this paper, we propose a scheme that services authenticate users using information registered on a blockchain. We show that the proposed scheme has resistance to tampering and a spoofing attack. key words: blockchain, authentication, Internet of Things, pseudo-random function, service cooperation


Objective:To decrease the occurrence of postoperative complications by performing predictive nursing for patients over 80 years old in maxillofacial department.Methods:47 patients over 80 years old were evaluated with caring program in 2010,nursing plan was made according to existing or potential problems in nursing process.Results:It could effectively decrease the occurrence of complications and promote recovery by performing preventive caring for elder patients.Conclusion:Preventive caring for senile maxillofacial surgery patients can prevent the postoperative complications,improve the operation effects and accelerate the recovery.


This study investigates whether low cohesion within an organization's Top Management Team (TMT) can have a negative impact on the aggregated turnover intentions of employees, via two mechanisms. First, since low TMT cohesion presents a non-social and uninspiring leadership role model, such behavior may reduce the transformational leadership of managers. Second, when employees become disappointed and frustrated by low TMT cohesion, a negative and corrosive atmosphere may arise across the organization through contagion. Analyses of a dataset of 19.212 respondents from 101 organizations support these expectations. The results also show that managers can reduce the detrimental effects of a corrosive atmosphere on employee turnover intentions through transformational leadership. By demonstrating the above this study provides new insights into the wide-ranging, and potentially detrimental, impact which TMT's can have on their organization.


Sustainable development within a sharing economy requires close cooperation between participating organisations, while a more complicated management problem involves how to improve the cooperation performance between such organisations. This paper researches multi-organisational cooperation under a shared economy model to analyse the impact of the organisation's revenue distribution plan, the organisational members' characteristic abilities and other factors on the cooperation performance among organisations and core enterprises' profit performance. It aims to provide a theoretical basis for core enterprises to rationally formulate revenue distribution strategy and the promotion of sustainable development of the shared economy. The research results reveal that under the shared economy model, the core enterprise's revenue-distribution method based on fixed revenue and revenue-sharing can improve cooperation performance among organisational members to some extent. Moreover, the barriers and obstacles in organisations' cooperation process are small, which will positively increase system profits, core enterprise profit and the proportion of core enterprise profits, but does not necessarily improve system profit margins. The core enterprise should control the cooperation costs between organisations through different incentive strategies to achieve better system profits and system profit margins.


ABSTRACT AN experimental study was conducted to determine the evaporative efficiency of conventional low pres-sure misting systems commonly employed in poultry housing facilities in the Southeast. Variables considered to effect efficiency for a fixed nozzle pressure were air and water flow rates, and initial air humidity ratios. A predictive relationship is developed from the experiment-al data. In general, evaporative efficiencies are 20 to 25 percent for low pressure misters, but can be increased to approximately 37 percent by increasing water line pres-sure to 1380 k Pa (200 psig). Stirring fans did not improve the evaporative efficiency of the low pressure misters.


The patterning of modal phrases in non-factual conditional sentences shows that there are two classes of modal verbs. However, the formal criteria for the classification of auxiliaries and for the distinction of modals from other auxiliaries do not provide for the sub-classification of modals, nor do the definitions of modals found in most transformational grammars. Moreover, in the existing literature it is not recognized that only one class have a complete paradigm. In order to sub-classify modals, the syntax of non-factual conditional sentences is analysed. Modals are studied as expressing modality and mood. Modals are found to belong to two sub-classes, which differ syntactically. Members of both sub-classes express modality, a lexical feature. However, only one class are modal auxiliaries since they realize modal mood and have a complete paradigm. Furthermore, it is demonstrated that in English there are five finite and two non-finite verb paradigms, and that the realization of perfect/non-perfect and not tense is the obligatory choice for all verb forms. According to the present analysis, only indicative forms realize tense.


Full-scale burning tests were carried out to study cabin fire under sprinkler and mechanical smoke exhaust.Smoke temperature and CO concentration in cabin were obtained.Results showed,some critical combinations of the pressure and fan extraction rate were found on controlling or extinguishing the fire.Smoke temperature in cabin could be reduced in effect under sprinkler to suppress flashover,but much smoke mixed with vapor was produced.Smoke temperature in cabin descended continuously under extinguishing fire,but remained stable during a period of time,then descended slowly under controlling fire.After sprinkler was operated,CO concentration increased sharply.There were two peaks under controlling fire,but one peak under extinguishing fire.The pressure of sprinkler was the key factor,and the fan extraction rate was the secondary factor.The effects of these two systems were contrary.CO production rate increased with increasing sprinkler pressure,and decreased with increasing extraction rate of the fan under controlling fire.All these offered the basic experiment data for the design of cabin's sprinkler system and mechanical smoke exhaust system in large space building.


Recently, on the territory of the Russian Federation, and in particular in the Belgorod region individual and private construction is well developed. Not enough attention is paid to problems of impact sound isolation for floor construction in free-standing residential buildings. Actually, solution of these problems concludes in balance between physical and mechanical properties, efficiency, environmental friendliness as well as resistance of heat transmission in builds. Application of concrete based on granular nanostructured aggregate as damping material for the constructing of a floating floor is proposed.


In this paper we examine the physical and economic nature of beaches. We argue that these resources can be appropriated for private use in much the same way water is treated as marketable property in the arid regions of the United States. We show how rights to sand can be allocated according to the American Doctrine of Prior Appropriation, a rule for allocating water in the Western deserts. We develop a set of constitutional principles that facilitate the efficient allocation of nearshore sediment and submerged lands.


Hepatic artery (HA) reconstruction in living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) is technically demanding due to the smaller diameter of the graft HA, and it remains a crucial step that is vital to graft function in the postoperative period. Vascular complications are not uncommon after LDLT and are reported to occur in up to 15% of recipients. HA complications such as hepatic artery thrombosis (HAT) can lead to primary nonfunction of the liver allograft and septic hepatic infarction, which is often fatal in the absence of retransplantation. The common recipient-related factors that can lead to anatomical HA reconstruction difficulties are as follows: HA intimal dissection during the recipient hepatectomy, HA scarring from a previous operation, and poor caliber of the HA due to multiple transarterial chemoembolizations (TACEs) for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In such situations, an arterial conduit other than a native recipient HA, termed as extra-anatomic, remains the most suitable alternative. An arterial conduit can also be used if a complication of the HA occurs, ie, HA stenosis or HA aneurysm. Extraanatomic HA revascularization can be achieved by using the recipient right gastric artery, right gastroepiploic artery, left gastric artery, or splenic artery without an interpositional vascular conduit. However, gastroepiploic arterial flow may not be adequate for liver grafts with higher graft-to-recipient weight ratio (GRWR). Similarly, the splenic artery of the recipient or the celiac trunk is not a suitable alternative for the partial liver graft. Hence, when HA anastomosis cannot be accomplished using the abovementioned arterial sources, interpositional vascular conduits are used for HA reconstruction from the recipient celiac trunk or from the aorta as an aortohepatic conduit. Aortohepatic conduits can be vital extrahepatic alternatives for HA reconstruction in situations of failure in using the recipient HA for reconstruction. The safety of the aortohepatic conduit when used for HA reconstruction in either the infrarenal or supraceliac location has been proven. However, the experience of the aortohepatic conduit in LDLT has not been discussed. In deceased donor liver transplantation (DDLT), the graft HA has considerable length to be used as a conduit, either supraceliac or infrarenal. However, in LDLT to establish the extra-anatomical HA anastomosis, a vascular conduit is required. A supraceliac aortohepatic conduit using an interposition graft, such as a saphenous vein, can act as an ideal alternative. Herein, we describe our successful experience of using the aortohepatic conduit for HA anastomosis in LDLT.


Repeated alcohol exposure leads to changes in gene expression that are thought to underlie the transition from moderate to excessive alcohol drinking. However, the mechanisms by which these gene expression changes are mobilized to a maladaptive response are not well understood. One mechanism could involve the recruitment of transcriptional co‐regulators that bind and modulate the activity of several transcription factors. Our results indicate that the transcription cofactor LMO4 is one such candidate regulator. Previous results demonstrate that knock down of LMO4 in the basolateral amygdala (BLA) decreased alcohol consumption and preference as well as reduced conditioned place preference to alcohol. To identify transcriptional targets of LMO4 in the BLA we carried out unbiased transcriptome profiling of the BLA in WT and Lmo4gt/+ mice, in which LMO4 expression is reduced by approximately 50%. Our analysis revealed a number of genes whose expression was significantly up or downregulated in the BLA of Lmo4gt/+ mice compared to WT. We took a systems approach to identify gene networks that were responsive to LMO4 downregulation in the BLA. Weighted gene co‐expression network analysis revealed genes related to the extracellular matrix and the kappa opioid receptor (KOR) as putative transcriptional targets of LMO4 in the BLA. Chromatin immunoprecipitation studies indicated that LMO4 bound to the KOR promoter elements in the amygdala and that infusion of Nor‐BNI, a selective KOR antagonist into the BLA reduced alcohol consumption. Further, knockdown of LMO4 in the BLA attenuated the ability of U50,488, a KOR agonist to enhance alcohol consumption. Studies are currently underway to determine if restricting LMO4 knockdown to KOR cells in the BLA using intersectional strategies will reduce alcohol consumption and reward. In summary, our results reveal a functional interaction between LMO4 and KOR in the BLA in regulating alcohol consumption.


Molecular-dynamics simulations of dense gases at 297 K (reduced temperature ${T}^{*}=\frac{T}{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}=1.47$) have been carried out using a Lennard-Jones (LJ) (6-12) pair potential and a truncated LJ potential. Our objective was to study the effects of continuous potentials, with and without attractive forces, on density fluctuations in dense fluids, and to interpret recent neutron scattering measurements on krypton gases which revealed significant deviations from results for hard-sphere fluids. We compare our results with experiments and other studies using molecular dynamics and kinetic theory, but which employed hard-sphere potentials. In particular, predictions of the full width at half maximum for $S(q,w)$ show improved agreement with experiments for values of $ql{q}_{0}$ where ${q}_{0}$ is the position of the first diffraction peak in $S(q)$, when the full potential is used. This satisfactory agreement verifies the sensitivity of the width of $S(q,w)$ to potential-dependent effects.


The authors survey the current state of knowledge-based and database management systems and suggest possible research directions for their integration into a knowledge-base management system. They define the requirements for the architecture and realization of such a system, and analyze methods for knowledge acquisition, knowledge verification, knowledge communication, configuration management, and knowledge processing. Several possible research strategies are analyzed: enhancements of existing systems, coupling of independent systems, and technology integration to develop a new class of systems.<<ETX>>


This paper aims to bring to light the need, with an example, for the intervention of the government agencies in developing regulations for ventilation in buildings to prevent airborne diseases. The authors have highlighted the missing areas in the current regulations in India and prepared a public interest litigation. This plea was filed in the Delhi High Court, and the court responded positively and instructed the authorities to treat the plea as a representation and work out solutions to the problem. In India, the right to a healthy environment has become a Fundamental Right under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The petitioners, as researchers in the area themselves, send the message of immediate public intervention through their research, especially if it is an area of urgent attention. This piece is written to encourage researchers across the world to become active in making sure their research is put into action.


A recent article in Correlation is criticised for applying an inappropriate methodology in attempting to verify astrological accounts of human motivation. It is argued that astrology can offer only partial explanations of human motivation and behaviour, just as no single variable identified by social and psychological science can explain such behaviour with any more than partial success. Two case histories from a longitudinal study illustrate the complexity of making predictions, and explaining human behaviour. The potential role for astrology and astrological counseling in this process is discussed.


In land investigation, it is often required to extract plant and vegetation information from land covers, especially when plants are sparsely dispersed. To avoid the expensive ground survey, hyperspectral remote sensing image is adopted due to its narrow spectral bandwidth and high spectral resolution. However conventional unsupervised classification techniques often suffer from requiring priori as input parameter and sensitiveness to interference. This paper proposes an Independent Component Analysis (ICA) based unsupervised classification algorithm. ICA is a technique that stems out from the Blind Source Separation. In hyperspectral data processing, ICA projects data vectors to the space where the items of the vectors are mutually statistically independent, and therefore is capable of extracting various kinds of plant information. So as to strengthen the contrast of the resulted independent components, histogram adjustment and mathematical morphology post-processing procedure are appended after ICA decomposition. Through real hyperspectral data experiments, our algorithm has been verified to have better performance for classification than K-means and ISODATA. Besides, computation efficiency and noise robustness have also been improved by a noise filtering preprocessing procedure.


In this study a new method is proposed in order to improve the harmonic suppression efficiency of Active Power Filter for the problems caused by the distorted and unbalanced voltages with unbalanced load currents in control strategy. The proposed control method gives an adequate compensating current reference even for non ideal voltage and unbalanced current conditions. The results of simulation study are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control technique in this study.


In the following paper we intend to present some preliminary results for a self-field MPD thruster obtained with a new algorithm developed for solving the resistive magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equations. The numerical method is based on the well known PISO algorithm and make use of AUSM-MHD scheme for flux calculation. The model is based on a single fluid approach and, in order to obtain a more realistic and stable solution, an equation of state for real gas is also included.


Abstract : The objective of the project was to develop an alternate manufacturing method for spiral bevel gears used in Army helicopters. The report covers the technical description of a program to develop high velocity forging techniques to produce spiral bevel gears to pre-grind tolerances. Initial objectives were to obtain as-forged gears with .005 inches excess material on the side of each tooth for finish grinding after the heat treating. The report includes a discussion of die design parameters, the manufacturing techniques for dies, forging parameters, dimensional checks of the forged gears, machining techniques for determining as-forged geometry and macroscopic and microscopic metallurgical data showing grain flow and micro-structure. Also included is a discussion of difficulties experienced and recommendations for future investigations.


This paper considers the application of the statistical bifix approach for the optimization of frame lengths and flags used as frame delimiters in data communications, when bit-stuffing technique is used. It is shown that the flag structure represented through bifices influences the probability of flag occurrence in random data and the sequences with more bifices are less probable, which leads to better link utilization


This chapter challenges the Identification Thesis. The Identification Thesis considers our conceptual practices with respect to the term 'authority' and states that they entail that an institutional normative system cannot be legitimate unless it is conceptually possible for a subject to determine what its norms require without having to decide themselves what they ought to do. If our conceptual practices with respect to using the terms 'law' and 'authority' are determined by what competent speakers typically believe and say about law and authority, then those ordinary linguistic practices allow for the possibility of a legitimate legal system with moral criteria of validity. Our conceptual practices are thus inconsistent with the Identification Thesis. As the Identification Thesis expresses the core of the service conception of authority, the service conception is inconsistent with the concept of authority as it is defined by our conceptual practices.


The scale inhibiting and corrosion inhibiting performances of humic acid sodium (HA-Na) are evaluated. The result shows that HA-Na is an excellent water treatment agent with bright prospect.


The field of serious games (SGs) focuses on the design, development, application, and use of games for other purposes beyond entertainment. Education and training are the main application areas, but SG has been successfully used in different domains such as health, research, planning, emergency situations, advertising, and military for different purposes. However, despite the evidence of their effectiveness, displayed also in this IEEE RITA issue, there is still limited use of SG. There could be many reasons behind this (e.g., cost), but we think it has mainly to do with social issues and preconceptions about using games for serious purposes. Therefore, initiatives like the SEGAN network are very relevant because they address the need to systematize approaches to SG. SEGAN is a community of practice that promotes the exchange of ideas and experiences related to SG. We think it can be the right place to continue and extend the discussion on the high-quality articles that we present in this special edition about innovative approaches to SG.


We report on total-energy electronic structure calculations in the density-functional theory performed for the ultra-thin atomic layers of Si on Ag(111) surfaces. We find several distinct stable silicene structures: 3 × 3 ?> , 3 × 3, 7 × 7 ?> with the thickness of Si increasing from monolayer to quad-layer. The structural bistability and tristability of the multilayer silicene structures on Ag surfaces are obtained, where the calculated transition barriers infer the occurrence of the flip-flop motion at low temperature. The calculated scanning tunneling microscope (STM) images agree well with the experimental observations. We also find the stable existence of 2 × 1 π-bonded chain and 7 × 7 dimer-adatom-stacking fault Si(111)-surface structures on Ag(111), which clearly shows the crossover of silicene-silicon structures for the multilayer Si on Ag surfaces. We further find the absence of the Dirac states for multilayer silicene on Ag(111) due to the covalent interactions of the silicene-Ag interface and Si-Si interlayer. Instead, we find a new state near the Fermi level composed of π orbitals located on the surface layer of 3 × 3 ?> multilayer silicene, which satisfies the hexagonal symmetry and exhibits the linear energy dispersion. By examining the electronic properties of 2 × 1 π-bonded chain structures, we find that the surface-related π states of multilayer Si structures are robust on Ag surfaces.


The invention discloses a preparation method of D-glucosamine hydrochloride. Citric acid waste residues obtained after production of citric acid through a fermentation method are taken as raw materials, a mixed acid consisting of hydrochloric acid and acetic acid is taken as a hydrolysis reagent, and the D-glucosamine hydrochloride is finally obtained by the following steps: hydrolysis of the mixed acid, filtration, decolorization, suction filtration, crystallization, drying and the like. According to the preparation method, as the mixed acid consisting of the hydrochloric acid and the acetic acid is adopted as the hydrolysis reagent for hydrolysis reaction during the preparation process, the using amount of the hydrochloric acid during the hydrolysis by using the hydrochloric acid alone is further effectively reduced, the corrosion degree of production equipment is further reduced, and the final yield of the D-glucosamine hydrochloride achieves 5.0-5.2%. Meanwhile, the preparation method has the characteristics of rich raw material sources, no limitation on production resources and low production cost.


Children with esophageal atresia (EA) are at risk for anastomotic stricture that may ultimately need surgical resection. No studies have examined the relationship between anastomotic diameter at the time of initial postop endoscopy and treatment outcomes.

 A retrospective chart review was performed of patients with EA who underwent a Foker procedure for repair of long-gap esophageal atresia (LGEA), primary repair of EA, or stricture resection for refractory stricture who were seen between January 2016 and May 2018. A refractory stricture was defined as one requiring ≥5 dilations ≤5 months after surgery. The anastomosis diameter was estimated by the endoscopist. We divided diameter sizes into the following groups: 1–2.9 mm, 3–4.9 mm, 5–6.9 mm, 7–8.9 mm, 9–10.9 mm, and 11–14 mm. The Wilcoxon rank sum test and Fisher's exact test were used.

 Forty-five patients who had a Foker procedure, 37 who had primary repair, and 58 who had stricture resection were identified. The first EGD occurred a median of 22 days (IQR 21–28) after surgery. Among all EA patients with initial diameter of <3 mm, 82% developed refractory stricture and 41% required stricture resection. Of all patients with initial diameter <5 mm, 74% developed refractory stricture and 33% required stricture resection. Of patients who underwent a Foker procedure with initial diameter <3 mm, 56% required stricture resection; of these patients with initial diameter <5 mm, 53% required stricture resection. Among all EA patients, refractory strictures were significantly more likely in patients with smaller initial diameters (P < 0.001), from 18 patients (82%) with stricture 1–2 mm to 0 patients (0%) with stricture 11–14 mm. Patients with smaller anastomoses were more likely to need stricture resection (P = 0.020); 9 patients (41%) with size 1–2 mm underwent stricture resection, while none (0%) with size 11–14 mm needed stricture resection. These differences remained statistically significant for patients who underwent a Foker procedure (P ≤ 0.001 for stricture resection and refractory stricture).

 Endoscopy performed shortly after EA repair or stricture resection can help predict which patients are more likely to develop a refractory stricture or require a stricture resection.


In this study, it is aimed to investigate the effect of organizational ambidexterity subdimensions on entrepreneurial orientation subdimensions for the service and production sector. Snowball sampling was used as sampling method and online survey form was created as data collection tool. The questionnaire link was directed to the sector managers who can be reached via LinkedIn social media platform. The data collection process took place between April 5, 2019 and June 7, 2019. The sample included 378 service and 324 production sector managers. In data analysis SPSS 21 program was used. In the result of study, for both sectors, it has been concluded that exploration and exploitation ambidexterity are the organizational ambidexterity dimensions that have the greatest impact on risk taking and autonomy. Also, it has been determined that exploitation ambidexterity for the service sector and exploration ambidexterity for the production sector are the organizational ambidexterity dimensions that have the greatest impact on innovativeness, proactiveness and competitive aggressiveness. The aim of this study is to examine the effects of organizational ambidexterity sub-dimensions on entrepreneurial orientation sub-dimensions for service and production sector participants. The research attempted to collect data by using one of the A questionnaire form created over was used as a collection tool. used the participants.


We consider multiobjective combinatorial optimization problems handled by means of preference driven efficient heuristics. They look for the most preferred part of the Pareto front on the basis of some preferences expressed by the Decision Maker during the process. In general, what is searched for in this case is the Pareto set of efficient solutions. This is a problem much more difficult than optimizing a single objective function. Moreover, obtaining the Pareto set does not mean that the decision problem is solved since one or some of the solutions have to be chosen. Indeed, to make a decision, it is necessary to determine the most preferred solution in the Pareto set, so that it is also necessary to elicit the preferences of the user. In this perspective, what we are proposing can be seen as the first structured methodology in facility location problems to search optimal solutions taking into account preferences of the user. With this aim, we approach facility location problems using a recently proposed interactive evolutionary multiobjective optimization procedure called NEMO-II-Ch. NEMO-II-Ch is applied to a real world multiobjective location problem with many users and many facilities to be located. Several simulations considering different fictitious users have been performed. The results obtained by NEMO-II-Ch are compared with those got by three algorithms which know the user's true value function that is, instead, unknown to NEMO-II-Ch. They show that in many cases NEMO-II-Ch finds the best subset of locations more quickly than the methods knowing, exactly, the whole user's true preferences.


tolerance test (OGTT). Individuals with a diabetic OGTT and those with a normal OGTT based on World Health Organization criteria were selected at random. In the cohort of diabetic patients, individuals with marked insulinopenia were excluded (e.g., those with slow IDDM and rapid-onset NIDDM). The diabetic cohort consisted of 96 NIDDM patients, and the nondiabetic control group consisted of 94 individuals. DNA was isolated from peripheral blood and examined for the presence of the Gly-Ser mutation in the glucagon receptor gene according to the procedure of Hager et al (3). In these two groups, no carriers of the mutant allele were detected. This finding indicates that if the glucagon receptor variant is present among Dutch diabetic patients, its gene frequency is much lower than in France and Sardinia. To examine the possibility that the glucagon receptor mutation is associated with an insulinopenic diabetic subtype, a third group of 126 randomly selected insulin-using diabetes patients was examined. No carriers were found. Since we were unable to detect the mutation in two diabetic groups from the Netherlands comprising a total of 222 diabetic individuals, we conclude that the Gly-Ser mutation in the glucagon receptor gene is not widespread among diabetics in northwestern Europe (gene frequency <2%, P = 0.05) and may cluster in regions around the Mediterranean Sea.


Abstract Efficient encryption techniques are essential to multimedia data security for the distribution of digital images, since digital data has huge amount of data and real-time processing is often required. Contents providers hesitate to disclose the original data due to the illegally copied problem, which result in the serious impediment to distribute digital images. This paper provides a method of scrambling image data for confidentiality, which turns image datum into scrambling ciphers by using Vector Quantization Codebook Processing (VQCP) in order to solve this problem. We present analysis results showing that through VQCP composed of the two key techniques to ensure the security, i.e., VQ-index conversion and VQ-pasting location conversion, the security is achieved without sacrificing the image compression performance and the computational speed. Its high-speed transformation enables real-time scrambling/de-scrambling, thereby preventing illegal copying. As a result, it has become possible to scr...


The Conventional acoustic echo canceller encounters problems like slow convergence rate (especially for speech signal) and high computational complexity as the identification of the echo path requires filter with more than a thousand taps, non-stationary speech input, slowly timevarying systems to be identified. The demand for fast convergence and less MSE level cannot be met by conventional adaptive filtering algorithms. There is a need to be computationally efficient and rapidly converging algorithm. The LMS algorithm is easy to implement and computationally inexpensive. This feature makes the LMS algorithm attractive for echo cancellation applications. The results show that the steady state value of the output estimation error increases with increasing the step size parameter and the optimality of the LMS algorithm is no longer hold. The results also reveal that choosing the smallest value of the step size parameter guarantees the smallest mis-adjustment but might not meet the convergence criteria. General Terms Adaptive Filtering Algorithm, Acoustic Echo-cancellation.


This paper deals with the comparison of parameter estimation methods in a 3-parameter Kappa distribution which is sometimes used in flood frequency analysis. Method of moment estimation(MME), L-moment estimation(L-ME), and maximum likelihood estimation(MLE) are applied to estimate three parameters. The performance of these methods are compared by Monte-carlo simulations. Especially for computing MME and L-ME, three dimensional nonlinear equations are simplified to one dimensional equation which is calculated by the Newton-Raphson iteration under constraint. Based on the criterion of the mean squared error, L-ME (or MME) is recommended to use for small sample size( n100) while MLE is good for large sample size.


The utility model provides a hot press mould for a bogie side beam, which belongs to the technical field of metal stamping and is used for solving the problem of stamping on the bogie side beam. The utility model adopts the technical scheme that the mould is made up of a lower mould body, a female mould insert, an upper mould body and a male mould, wherein, the female mould insert is embedded in the side wall of the groove at the upper part of the lower mould body to form a female mould, the male mould is embedded in the lower part of the upper mould body, and upon the completion of improvement, a knock-out device is arranged on the upper mould body, while a discharging device is arranged on the lower mould body. The knock-out device arranged on the upper mould is rapid and convenient in removing a work piece bound on the male mould due to cooling shrinkage from the male mould, so consideration to bevels is unnecessary in processing the male mould. The utility model has the advantagesof high machining precision and long service life, and is capable of improving the machining efficiency and significantly cutting the cost involved in side beam production.


A surface-micromachined focusing mirror with variable focal length, which is controlled by adjusting the mirror's curvature, is fabricated and characterized. The bowl-shaped micromirror, which is fabricated from the micro bilayer circular plate, focuses light beam through thermal actuation of the external heat source. Both the initial and operational curvatures are manipulated by the residual stresses in two layers of the mirror. Improper stresses would lead to the failure of the bowl-shaped structure. We analyze and design geometrical dimensions for simultaneously avoiding the structure failure and increasing the tuning range of the focal length. The interferometer has been used to measure the focal length and the focusing ability. Mirrors with nominal focal lengths approximately 730 μm, and tuning ranges of about 50 microns were demonstrated. The measurement directly through optical approach has also been tried, but requires further investigation, because the laser beam affects the focusing of the micromirror seriously.


Abstract Experimental studies on the influences of orientation on the elastic behaviour at 20°C and 950°C and the low cycle fatigue creep properties at 950°C of the single crystal nickel base superalloy SRR99 are described. The elastic response at 20°C is found to be in good agreement with predictions from the properties of pure nickel. At 950°C the orientation dependence is shown to be well correlated with a simple orientation function, which is also found to be insensitive to temperature. Similar correlations are shown for the single crystal nickel base superalloys PWA1480 and RENE N4 at high temperatures. The low cycle fatigue properties for fully reversed strain controlled cycles of SRR99 are shown to be strongly dependent on crystal orientation. Similar results from earlier work for RENE N4 are also illustrated. It is shown that by modifying the applied total strain range to take into account the influence of orientation for elastic deformation, essentially orientation-independent low fatigue cycle curves for SRR99 and RENE N4 are obtained.


Deep learning is a recently developed feature representation technique for data with complicated structures, which has great potential for soft sensing of industrial processes. However, most deep networks mainly focus on hierarchical feature learning for the raw observed input data. For soft sensor applications, it is important to reduce irrelevant information and extract quality-relevant features from the raw input data for quality prediction. To deal with this problem, a novel deep learning network is proposed for quality-relevant feature representation in this article, which is based on stacked quality-driven autoencoder (SQAE). First, a quality-driven autoencoder (QAE) is designed by exploiting the quality data to guide feature extraction with the constraint that the potential features should largely reconstruct the input layer data and the quality data at the output layer. In this way, quality-relevant features can be captured by QAE. Then, by stacking multiple QAEs to construct the deep SQAE network, SQAE can gradually reduce irrelevant features and learn hierarchical quality-relevant features. Finally, the high-level quality-relevant features can be directly applied for soft sensing of the quality variables. The effectiveness and flexibility of the proposed deep learning model are validated on an industrial debutanizer column process.


In this paper, we propose a new algorithm for a mobile robot that avoids obstacles autonomously by using local information. In this algorithm, a robot follows a preplanned path as much as possible, and if it detects an obstacle on or near the path, it autonomously changes its direction and controls speed to avoid the obstacle. These steering angle and control speed are decided by using the relative position and velocity between the robot and the obstacle. This algorithm is simple, and doesnpsilat use any complex calculations. So it is proper for real-time applications. The greatest distinction from other real-time collision avoidance algorithms is that this algorithm can be used in environments where obstacles move, as well as where obstacles don't move. Simulation results in several conditions indicate that by using this algorithm, a robot can avoid obstacles in both static and dynamic environments smoothly.


Collaborative transportation has been widely studied due to its high efficiency, and interesting research problems., specifically in trajectory planning. In this paper, a new trajectory planning scheme for collaborative transportation by tethered multi-UAVs is proposed to avoid obstacles. Firstly, the dynamics and configuration of the system is analyzed to derive the tethered force acting on each UAV, and define the angle between the rope and the vertical direction is calculated. Then the kinodynamic path search method is used to search an initial trajectory of the payload, and the initial trajectory of each UAV is solved. Finally, nonlinear optimization is used to optimize the trajectory of each UAV and the payload to achieve the effect of obstacle avoidance. Both numerical simulations and practical experiments are completed to verify the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed planning scheme.


This study presents an analysis of warping that occurs in the laminated object manufacturing process. Based on the study of thermal-mechanical behavior of the adhesive and its effect on the laminated materials, the cause of warping, the relationship between temperature and adhesive viscosity, and the adhesive connecting intensity is investigated. A heat transfer mathematical model and finite difference solution algorithm was developed to calculate the intralaminar thermal force induced by the material addition in the processing of laminated object manufacturing. The results of the model prediction were compared to available experimental data. Simulation of intralaminar thermal force and case studies show that the processing parameters, such as roller temperature, speed, and contact pressure, the mechanical properties of laminated material and adhesive will all contribute to the formability and warping of the laminated prototype. An optimal combination of the processing parameters may reduce the undesired warping effect. @DOI: 10.1115/1.1403447# Dimensional accuracy and optimal processing have always been the research topics in the development of rapid prototyping techniques @1‐3#. In laminated object manufacturing ~LOM!, the process is often interrupted by warping and delamination of the prototyping part, especially when fabricating a large-sized object @4,5#. In some cases, the effect of warping is severe enough to lead to the failure of the prototypes @6#. Recent research has been reported on studying the effect of the processing parameters on the thermal-mechanical behavior of LOM processing. For example, Pak and Nisnevich @7# investigated the influence of rolling, the roller temperature, and speed to the strength of laminated bonding. Sonmez and Hahn @8# developed a 2-dimensional finite element model to study the relationship of heat transfer and pressing stress during a heating and pressing working cycle and presented the temperature distribution and pressing stress in the vicinity of the roller contact region. Flach, Klosterman and Chartoff @9# and Flach et al. @10# used finite difference modeling to analyze the thermal behavior of the LOM process and simulated the iterative process of the layer addition. Their finite differential model was also used to investigate the effect of the process parameters, including the temperatures of the roller, the base plate and chamber environment, the speed of the roller, and the laser cutting time in the LOM process. All the previous studies reported that the poor adhesion, which results from low temperature and insufficient pressure, would cause the delamination. But no quantitative predictions were given in their presentations. In addition, the research addressing the warping of the LOM prototypes, its cause and relationship to the LOM processing parameters, and to material addition has not been established. This paper presents a study of the warping analysis for the LOM process. Section 2 describes the mechanism of warping based on the study of the thermal-mechanical behavior of adhesive and its effect on laminated materials. The relationship between temperature and adhesive viscosity is investigated and the connecting intensity of the adhesive is defined. A onedimensional heat transfer mathematical model is established in Section 3 to predict the intra-laminar thermal force induced by the addition of the material in the LOM process. A finite difference approach is used to develop the solution algorithm. Results of the prediction and comparisons to the experimental data are all presented in this section. Section 4 presents two case studies which simulate the intra-laminar thermal forces and explain the mechanism of laminate warping. Finally, Section 5 summarizes the results of the study and presents some discussion and conclusions.


It is analysed that the current conditions of the soil erosion and soil and water conservation, and it is forecast that the additional soil erosion for the railway being built. The various biological and engineering measures that will be taken are discussed scientifically for the sake of the safety of the railway and its neighbouring rigions, and the soil erosion is avoided.


Most of Chinese students are lack of effective language production ability even after learning English for many years. In order to solve the problem, scientific and interesting English course design is urgently needed. Combining the online Corpus of Contemporary American English and other selected online resource into the traditional classroom teaching will motivate the students' interest in English learning and encourage their participation in the classroom activities. The design of the blend learning can be based on production-oriented approach (POA). It is conducive to the cultivation of students' language production ability through motivating, enabling and assessing.


Numerous models and working schemes have been proposed through decades for the successful recognition of the objects. Significant contributions are notable in the field of object recognition. However, near accurate recognition is still a challenge in this domain. In this research, we considered the Caltech-101 dataset having 102 diverse and imbalanced classes i.e., people, animals, landscapes, structures, furniture, etc. which made the recognition more complicated. We proposed and utilized modified InceptionV3 and modified EfficientNetB6 architectures for the recognition of objects which obtained 99.65% and 99.72% overall accuracy respectively. We further showed via experimental analysis that the softmax-averaging technique can further boost the accuracy to 99.85% and all three proposed procedures suppressed the previous studies by a notable boundary as well.


The notion of symmetry is dened in the context of Linear and Integer Programming. Symmetric linear and integer programs are studied from a group theoretical viewpoint. We show that for any linear program there exists an optimal solution in the xed point set of its symmetry group. Using this result, we develop an algorithm that allows for reducing the dimension of any linear program having a non-trivial group of symmetries.


Clothing imports into Zimbabwe has grown steadily since the trade liberalisation measures were introduced in 1991. Asia has grown in importance as the source of imported yarns, fabrics and clothing. In addition, there is growing concern in the clothing sector of the continuous growth in the second-hand clothing market and illegal imports from within the SADC region. All these factors have crippled the textile and clothing industry in Zimbabwe leading to the reduction in the market share of locally manufactured products, factory closures and retrenchments. This paper discusses the work carried out to assess the impact of the imported new and second-hand clothing on the Zimbabwe Textile and Clothing Industry. Results show that most of these cheap imports don't come into the country through the formal borders and pose unfair price competition to local products due to their cheapness and perceived superior quality. The slow recovery of the textile and clothing industry is also due to other contributory factors such as lack of foreign currency, cost of borrowing money, brain drain, power cost and supply, heavy import duty rates, etc. which when all are summed up, together have led to the decline of the textile and clothing industry in Zimbabwe.


In article possibilities of use of mathematical program Mathcad are considered at the decision of problems after the electrical engineer.


Interval constraint propagation methods have been shown to be efficient and reliable to solve difficult nonlinear bounded-error estimation problems. However they are considered as unsuitable in a probabilistic context, where the approximation of a probability density function by a set cannot be accepted as reliable. This paper shows how probabilistic estimation problems can be transformed into a set estimation problem by assuming that some rare events will never happen. Since the probability of occurrence of those rare events can be computed, we can give some prior lower bounds for the probability associated to solution set of the corresponding set estimation problem. The approach will be illustrated on a parameter estimation problem.


Abstract Background Outcomes in patients with left ventricular (LV) dysfunction after coronary revascularization are influenced by multiple factors; however, it is difficult to compare a direct relationship between LV dysfunction and mortality due to the presence of confounding variables, so we attempted to observe the influence of risk factors on outcomes in severe LV dysfunction patients after revascularization and delineate if any of them have an effect on one-year mortality of such patients. Methodology This is a single center prospective study, where the studied population were severe LV dysfunction patients who underwent percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) and followed-up for one year and at the end of one year, impact of gender, age, type 2 diabetes mellitus (DM), hypertension (HTN), obesity, chronic kidney disease (CKD), cerebrovascular accident (CVA), hypothyroidism, smoking and alcohol on one-year mortality and MACE (major adverse cardiovascular events), which included reinfarction (nonfatal), recurrence of angina, repeat percutaneous intervention (PCI) or coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) and heart failure. The above factors were analyzed and statistically approached to observe the impact of those risk factors on one-year mortality and determine whether the timing and mode of revascularization, and number of coronary arteries involved, had any influence on mortality or MACE events. By comparing different parameters of the study with respect to mortality, a regression analysis was made at the end of one year Results As many as 152 patients of severe LV dysfunction (ejection fraction < 30%) were enrolled in the study, among which 115 (75.6%) patients were males, and 37 patients were females (24.3%), with a mean age of 57.6 years; 89 (58.5%) patients were hypertensive, 80 (52.6%) patients were diabetics, 42 (27.6%) patients were smokers, 20 (13.1%) patients were alcoholics, 9 (5.9%) had CKD, one (0.6%) patient had hypothyroidism and one (0.6%) patient had a history of CVA; 46 (30.2%) patients presented with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and 106 (69.7) patients had chronic stable angina (CSA); 144 (94.7%) patients underwent PTCA (percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty), while eight (5.2%) patients underwent CABG. At the end of one year, mortality was six patients (3.94%). At the end of one year, regression analysis was done for all the confounding variables by observing their influence on the MACE or mortality; none of them showed statistically significant influence (p > 0.05). Conclusion At the end of one year, after revascularization in patients with severe LV dysfunction, no significant relationship could be ascertained between the mortality or MACE events and gender, age, DM, HTN, CKD, and alcohol or smoking. MACE or mortality may be attributed directly to LV dysfunction itself, and the observed mortality was higher than that of normal LV Function. Hence, in our study, LV dysfunction is the cause of mortality in the study population but not the other confounding variables.


Recent work has shown that standard training via empirical risk minimization (ERM) can produce models that achieve high accuracy on average but low accuracy on underrepresented groups due to the prevalence of spurious features. A predominant approach to tackle this group robustness problem minimizes the worst group error (akin to a minimax strategy) on the training data, hoping it will generalize well on the testing data. However, this is often suboptimal, especially when the out-of-distribution (OOD) test data contains previously unseen groups. Inspired by ideas from the information retrieval and learning-to-rank literature, this paper first proposes to use Discounted Cumulative Gain (DCG) as a metric of model quality for facilitating better hyperparameter tuning and model selection. Being a ranking-based metric, DCG weights multiple poorly-performing groups (instead of considering just the group with the worst performance). As a natural next step, we build on our results to propose a ranking-based training method called Discounted Rank Upweighting (DRU), which differentially reweights a ranked list of poorly-performing groups in the training data to learn models that exhibit strong OOD performance on the test data. Results on several synthetic and real-world datasets highlight the superior generalization ability of our group-ranking-based (akin to soft-minimax) approach in selecting and learning models that are robust to group distributional shifts.


Dioxygen stretching (voo) Raman band was observed for the oxy form of Pseudomonas putida cytochrome P-450 (P-450,,,) generated at room temperature under catalytic conditions, that is, in the presence of Dcamphor, &NADH, putidaredoxin, and putidaredoxin reductase, by using the mixed flow transient Raman apparatus. At the same time the visible absorption spectra were monitored for the transient species. It was found that the voo frequency is little altered by binding of putidaredoxin to P-450,,,, although the reduction rate of the oxy form becomes faster. Another intermediate with an oxygen isotope-sensitive band was not found in a time region until 2 s after mixing of the reduced enzyme with oxygen.


Significance The generation of haploids is the most powerful means to accelerate the plant-breeding process. We elucidated whether point mutations in the centromere-specific histone H3 variant CENH3 could be harnessed for the induction of haploids. We identified plants with impaired centromere loading caused by a mutation in the centromere-targeting domain (CATD). The same mutation results in reduced loading of CENH3 in transgenic Arabidopsis and sugar beet. Arabidopsis plants carrying this single point mutation in wild-type CENH3 were used as haploid inducers. Because the identified mutation site is highly conserved and because point mutations can be generated by mutagenesis or genome editing, the described method offers opportunities for application in a wide range of crop species. The chromosomal position of the centromere-specific histone H3 variant CENH3 (also called "CENP-A") is the assembly site for the kinetochore complex of active centromeres. Any error in transcription, translation, modification, or incorporation can affect the ability to assemble intact CENH3 chromatin and can cause centromere inactivation [Allshire RC, Karpen GH (2008) Nat Rev Genet 9 (12):923–937]. Here we show that a single-point amino acid exchange in the centromere-targeting domain of CENH3 leads to reduced centromere loading of CENH3 in barley, sugar beet, and Arabidopsis thaliana. Haploids were obtained after cenh3 L130F-complemented cenh3-null mutant plants were crossed with wild-type A. thaliana. In contrast, in a noncompeting situation (i.e., centromeres possessing only mutated or only wild-type CENH3), no uniparental chromosome elimination occurs during early embryogenesis. The high degree of evolutionary conservation of the identified mutation site offers promising opportunities for application in a wide range of crop species in which haploid technology is of interest.


Three-dimensional whole body scanning is an emerging technology for anthropometric assessment in epidemiological studies. We recently analysed 3D whole body scanning data of nearly 10,000 participants collected from the adult population of Leipzig. We were able to aggregate the body measures provided by the scanner into meta-measures, each representing one relevant dimension of the body shape, and to identify distinguishable clusters of body shapes. In the next step, we now study specifics of the so-called body types upon ageing to understand how meta-measures change during ageing. Further we investigate the distribution of participants in the body types with regard to stratification by age and gender. It becomes clear, that age significantly influences body shape, embodied by characteristic changes of the meta-measures representing systematic shifts in body proportions upon ageing, and by a marked developmental trajectory of body typing.


We studied the development status and problems of the existing environmental detection market in the area of environmental monitoring.Also we discussed the necessity of the regulation of social testing agents and technicians based on the establishment of a complete evaluation system,including requirement of employment,continued education on techniques and skills,experience and credibility evaluation.Meanwhile,we highlighted that the regulations of social testing agents would make them serve better and become a beneficial supplement to public environmental monitoring departments.


Physical model studies have been undertaken for optimising the location of a new jetty and the size and alignment of a breakwater to provide protection for the Fishing Fleet and Wharf at Currie, King Island.


In this paper, we consider linear q-difference systems with coefficients that are germs of meromorphic functions, with Newton polygon that has two slopes. Then, we explain how to compute similar meromorphic gauge transformations than those appearing in the work of Bugeaud, using a q-analogue of the Borel–Laplace summation.


A new high-temperature diffraction system has been developed to collect accurate and precise single-crystal diffraction data at high resolution levels. The high-temperature apparatus is composed of two devices of a hot nitrogen gas blower and its duct which are located very close to the specimen so as to avoid heat dissipation to the other parts. The apparatus is attached to the CCD diffractometer to enable fast data collection at high temperatures up to over 1000 oC with a stability of less than 1 oC. The apparatus places no geometrical restriction to the diffractometer, allowing measurements up to 120o in 2θ. High temperature diffraction data were collected for the α-Al2O3 single crystal at 300, 600 and 900 oC within 3 hours for each measurements. The merge R factors were less than 0.019 and the fi nal agreement factors between Fo and Fc were less than 0.031 in the range 1o < 2θ < 92o. The Al atom was found to be gradually displaced with increasing temperature so that the Al-Al repulsion force across a pair of face-sharing octahedra can relax. The system will contribute to the electron density studies of functionally important inorganic materials at elevated temperatures.


This study has investigated the relationship between the adoption attitude towards usage of automatic pusher box system in rubber plant industry. The study was conducted in a rubber factory under Felda Global Venture (FGV) which is located in Negeri Sembilan, Malaysia. This company strive to be the global leader in natural rubber processing offering high quality products and services through good manufacturing and eco-friendly practice. Therefore, automatic pusher box system is one of the new technologies that is used in the company. Furthermore, this automatic pusher box it is suitable for saving manual labor hours and labor costs by replacing the current semi-automated system.


summer 2013 models of sexuality. specialists in decadence will find several chapters illuminating: not only the reading of Huysmans and Darwin and the metaphor of decadence in relation to scientific discourses of evolution, but also the chapter on Arthur schopenhauer. more broadly, the book's genealogy of Winckelmannian aesthetic theory will be highly informative for those concerned with Victorian aesthetics. I can imagine readers objecting to a certain lack of unity. The book makes no effort to conceal its origins as a series of independent essays, and its gestures of unification often seem like afterthoughts (usually appearing in parentheses, even). I, for one, found that a welcome relief from thesis-driven academic books. The vast range of reference and the often daunting level of abstraction mean that it can be difficult to track the consequences of the reservations one (inevitably) has about small points along the way. That range, and the sometimes diffuse style of argument, make it a difficult but thrilling book to read. Kevin Ohi Boston College


The aim of this research is to prepare a site & laboratory studying to define the distresses and the pavement condition for one of the main roads in Hilla city by defining pavement distresses and their arising causes by standard American Pavement Condition Index (PCI) method without any Pavement laboratory tests and compare Pavement condition definition with the familiar classical method after executing different tests which is required much efforts & cost, also the research is including how to repair the arising distresses with the recent technics which have to be employed during road pavement design or at distresses repairing to decrease or to prevent their arising. (50) road sectors were required for one of the Asphaltic road directions with(5.0)km length,(7.0)m width and listing their different pavement distresses by site inspection using (PCI) method to find the pavement condition index (PCI) values for each sector to define the pavement sectors condition. A selection of (10) asphaltic samples by core test and another(10) samples of road pavement from same locations to execute different tests. The (PCI) method values results showed that (30) sectors are in fair conditions, (20) sections are poor and the pavement include (8) distresses from a (19) standard distresses in this method which is supported by test results of classical method for Pavement condition definition and its distresses arising due to bad site execution of road pavement layers, inefficient wearing course to resist traffic loads and these distresses should be repaired by spraying emulsion fog seal, adding sandy seal layer with fine gravel some times and removing with repaving wearing course in some locations.


59 Indian Journal of Dermatology, Venereology and Leprology | Volume 86 | Issue 1 | January-February 2020 Declaration of patient consent The authors certify that they have obtained all appropriate patient consent forms. In the form, the legal guardian has given his consent for images and other clinical information to be reported in the journal. The guardian understands that names and initials will not be published and due efforts will be made to conceal identity, but anonymity cannot be guaranteed.


Objective. This study sought to characterize the use of Birth Control methods by women users of Healthcare Service Provider Institutions in Colombia, who wer...


A coaxial double-tube hot-gas duct with an internal insulation layer is to be used for the High-Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR), a gas-cooled reactor designed by the Japan Atomic Energy Research Institute. A full-scale simulation of part of the hot-gas duct was constructed to verify its structural integrity. No hot spot was detected on the inner tube under HTTR operation conditions after 7,700 h. Natural convection was negligible in the internal insulation layer. An experimental correlation of the effective thermal conductivity for the internal insulation layer was also obtained.


In order to optimize performances of shunt active power filter of harmonic compensation,attenuation ratio for switching ripple,stability and power losses,an improved LCL filter topology was presented based on the analysis of the frequency characteristics of the LCL filter,in which a switching-ripple shunt branch and a series-inductor were adopted to the damping resistor to reduce the power losses dramatically.With the improvement,the active power filter inherits both static and dynamic excellent performances.Simulation results validate the correctness and feasibility of the proposed topology.


Chromium toxicity affects redox reactions within plant cells, generating detrimental reactive oxygen species. Glutathione is an antioxidant peptide and also a substrate for the production of phytochelatins, which are chelating peptides reported to mitigate Cr3+ toxicity in plants. In this study, Brachiaria brizantha (B. brizantha) and Brachiaria ruziziensis (B. ruziziensis) seedlings were evaluated for physiological responses and glutathione production following the addition of zero or 5 mg L-1 Cr3+ to the nutrient solution. Glutathione levels were determined by colorimetric analysis at 412 nm using 5,5'-dithio-bis(2-nitrobenzoic acid) as a chromophore reagent and recovery with glutathione reductase (with evaluations at days 10 and 20 of continuous growth). The assessments were carried out in a completely randomized design with 2 authentic replications, and arranged in a 23 factorial. Cr3+ caused an average increase of 0.76 mg g-1 in the initial glutathione content. However, by day 20 there was an average reduction of 3.63 mg g-1. Chromium-affected physiological detrimental responses, albeit detected in both species, were less-pronounced in B. ruziziensis, along with a much higher level of glutathione. This study indicates that B. ruziziensis has a greater tolerance for chromium toxicity than B. brizantha, and that glutathione is likely to be involved in the mitigation of chromium stress in B. ruziziensis.


Service quality is believed to be the key factor that successfully attracts consumers to make repurchases, and assisting enterprises in establishing a competitive advantage that distinguishes enterprises from other competitors in the service-oriented society. In this study, a questionnaire survey targeting the consumers of the chain restaurant industry was conducted. The fuzzy Kano and Fuzzy refined Kano model were adopted as the analysis methods in order to explore the critical service quality attributes of the chain restaurant industry. The results show that the chain restaurant industry should exclude "care-free quality" items, use "high attractive quality attributes" to strengthen the focus on improvement-as these attributes are able to strengthen the advantages of chain restaurants and strive to maintain "high value-added quality attributes" and "critical quality attributes." To enhance and maintain customer satisfaction, the abovementioned attributes are combined with potential quality attributes as a strategic weapon to highlight competitive advantage. For service quality centered on "concentrate here," "critical quality attributes" and "high value-added quality attributes" are currently most in need of improvement. As "high attractive quality attributes" and "potential quality attributes" do not directly affect consumer satisfaction, they can be viewed as a second priority for improvement.


Optical control and / or display unit for household appliances such. Example, for a hob, with an at least partially light-transmissive front plate (1) and, arranged behind the printed circuit board (3), the imaging with openings for passage of light sources (5) outgoing light, and with a one or more symbols of a display device array of light-transmitting recesses is provided, wherein the recesses (6) as the light-passage openings within the circuit board (3) are arranged, and wherein the light sources (5) to that of the front panel (1) side facing away from the circuit board (3) are arranged, characterized in that that the circuit board (3) immediately above the a bottom of the front plate (1) planarizing coating (2) on the front panel (1) rests.


It has been observed that a higher mutation load could be introduced into the genomes of children conceived by assisted reproduction technology (fertilization in-vitro). This generates two effects — slightly higher mutational pressure on the whole genetic pool of population and inhomogeneity of mutation distributions in the genetic pool. Computer simulations of the Penna ageing model suggest that already a small fraction of births with enhanced number of new mutations can negatively influence the whole population.


E.I. Molokhovets is the author of one of the most popular cookery books of the 2nd half of the 19th — early 20th century "Gift for young housewives", which went through 29 editions. This book is still being reprinted with the same success among modern readers despite the fact that even during the life of the author, it was subjected to partly fair criticism for some "elitism" of the recipes presented. Not everyone knows nowadays her other, more modest, cooking book "A Simple, Public Cooking", the first edition of which was published in 1884. This is book in the article. "A Simple, Public Cooking" is a collection of recipes that fully lives up to its title. The recipes for all the dishes presented in the collection are very simple both in terms of the composition of the necessary products and the methods of their preparation, which makes this book relevant for modern culinary lovers. The article provides a detailed comparative analysis of different editions of the collection published during the life of E.I. Molokhovets (in total, six editions were published from 1884 to 1911), and also examines its publishing fate in the Soviet and post-Soviet times.


Target of this work is to refresh knowledge of semi-conductors and basic semi- conductors devices. Also there is a chapter which is dealing with power regulations which we can use in our common life and dimmering of modern lighting and it's remote controlling.


Long-term, ecosystem-specific fire regime information improves natural community restoration and management by providing a basis for scientifically reasoned fire management prescriptions. Historical fire regimes can be reconstructed to sub-annual resolution using fire-scarred trees, and while such reconstructions have become increasingly prevalent across the eastern USA, little information regarding how they vary at landscape scale is available. Most studies report fire regime characteristics (i.e., frequency, seasonality) at site-composite levels, commonly at ≤1 km spatial resolution. In this study, we analyzed the historical spatial variation of fire regime characteristics over the past four centuries (1620 CE to present) in a red pine/oak landscape (30.75 km) in north-central Pennsylvania, USA. Fire event data were reconstructed based on fire scars and locations of 192 living and dead red pines. The spatial and temporal distributions of fire scars revealed a historical fire regime dominated by frequent, dormant season fires most often detected at relatively small spatial extents and by relatively few trees. There was, however, evidence of less frequent, relatively large fires that scarred high percentages of trees. These fire regime characteristics likely resulted in a spatially and temporally transient patchwork of varying vegetation age and structures resulting in a heterogeneous landscape. At the landscape scale, fire frequency changed with human cultures, while fire spatial extent and scarring patterns appeared to be modulated by drought conditions. Results from this study show historical precedence for landscape-scale burning across a broad range of drought conditions and spatial extents, which should be considered when designing fire-management and ecosystem restoration objectives.


Through a diachronic contrast,this paper analyzes the regularity of errors by foreign students who have studied Chinese for eight months.First,there is a tendency from syntactical errors to semantic errors and then to cohesive errors.Second,it is a trend from syntactical incorrectness to semantic inaccurateness and then to cohesive impropriety in nature.Third,errors mainly come from interlingual transfer,intralingual transfer,linguistic interpretation and extralingual influence.But the inner cause is the psychological strategy.The TCFL teacher should understand the regularity of errors to have a correct orientation in teaching.


Evidence: American Organization of Nurse Executives (2005) states managers at all levels must be competent in knowledge of healthcare environment, which includes an understanding of EBP. Fineout-Overholt (2005) stated that leaders allocate the human and material resources. Evidence shows leadership support is imperative for the implementation of EBP. The specific competencies leaders must possess are not well documented. According to Gifford, Davies, Edwards, Griffin, and Lybanon (2007), nominal evidence exists on what constitutes effective nursing leadership.


The thesis aims to answer the question 'could the Lebanese Intifadha al-Iqtad have been predicted?' In order to do so, it first of all tries to define the political event, in terms of features, dynamic, and outcome. Secondly, it outlines the epistemological assumptions on which a scientific prediction of the future could be based. Thirdly, it puts forward a framework for foreseeing the future organised on different levels and divided into macro-categories. Finally, it analyses the Lebanese Intifadha al-Iqtad according to the proposed framework.


By using the test of the SRC under the cyclic reversed loading and analysis by the ANSYS 3D nonlinear finite element program, the hysteresis properties of the SRC column and steel beam joint is derived. An equation to calculate ultimate shear-resistant capacity of SRC column and steel beam joint is discussed.


[1] Absorption cross sections of ozone in the Wulf-Chappuis band at 759–768 nm have been determined using cavity ring-down spectroscopy at 215–298 K. Precise measurements at 762.07 and 764.47 nm revealed a slight temperature dependence of the absorption cross sections: (762.07 nm, 298 K) = (2.86 ± 0.04) × 10−22 cm2 molecule−1; (762.07 nm, 215 K) = (2.62 ± 0.04) × 10−22; (764.47 nm, 296 K) = (2.70 ± 0.03) × 10−22; and (764.47 nm, 214 K) = (2.44 ± 0.03) × 10−22. Results at 762.07 nm are indistinguishable within the experimental uncertainties from those reported by Burkholder and Talukdar [1994]. Results from the present work facilitate a more accurate retrieval of atmospheric temperature, cloud height, and cloud coverage data from satellite measurements of absorption by O2 in the A band around 761 nm.


Five Babcock and Wilcox-designed Mark B (15 x 15) pressurized water reactor fuel assemblies were irradiated to extended burnups in Duke Power Company's Oconee Unit 1 reactor. An assembly average burnup of 40,000 MWd/mtU, which is about 29% greater than previous discharge burnups at Oconee 1, was attained. The nondestructive examination of these five assemblies, which have been irradiated for four fuel cycles, was begun. Data obtained included fuel assembly and fuel dimensions, water channel spacings, fuel rod surface deposit samples, and holddown spring preload forces. Visual examination of the assemblies indicated that good fuel performance was maintained through four cycles of irradiation.


Tired of having your claims rejected by payers who seem to be looking for any reason under the sun not to pay you? Try these "claims scrubbing" tools to reduce, and appeal, those denials.


This study was aimed at investigating the contamination of grains, which are grown and used for animal diets by Slovene farmers. A total of 107 samples were examined for mesofilic aerobic molds and yeasts. The leading contaminants among molds were from Fusarium spp., detected in 73 samples, mostly in maize (50). In accordance with the European Feed Microbiology Organisation criteria, 68% of all tested samples were of the quality level I, with normal microbiological flora, and 9% of samples were estimated as quality level IV and not suitable for animal feed. Using liquid and gas chromatography methods, the presence of various mycotoxins (expressed as 12% of moisture content) was found in 77% of all samples; mostly deoxynivalenol (71%) in concentration of 150–14,420 µg kg−1, followed by zearalenone (32%, 20–640 µg kg−1), fumonisin B1 (31%, 10–4863 µg kg−1), fumonisin B2 (22%, 10–1629 µg kg−1), while HT-2 and T-2 toxins were found in low concentration in two samples, and aflatoxin B1 and ochratoxin A in one sample. By statistical evaluation, significant positive correlations were noted between the presence of deoxynivalenol and zearalenone as well as between fumonisin B1 and B2.


The sinter-diffusion bonding method of assembled inner and outer green compacts consists of same compositions except for lubricants based on Fe-Cu-C materials was investigated. Green compacts added some amount of zinc stearate as lubricants for compaction show large thermal expansions at higher temperature more than 873K in the rising process during sintering in RX-gas atmosphere. Applying this phenomena, high bonding strength can be obtained by assembling inner green compacts consist of Fe-Cu-C added of zinc stearate as lubricants with outer green compacts consist of same compositions as inner except for lubricants materials which do not contain any zinc, and by sintering in RX-gas atmosphere.


Under the framework of smoothed and long range second-moment approximation of tight-binding, a realistic interatomic potential was first constructed for the Cu-Zr-Hf ternary metal system. Applying the constructed potential, Monte Carlo simulations were carried out to compare the relative stability of crystalline solid solution versus its disordered counterpart over the entire composition triangle of the system (as a function of alloy composition). Simulations not only reveal that the origin of metallic glass formation but also determine, in the composition triangle, a quadrilateral region, within which metallic glass formation is energetically favored. It is proposed to define the energy differences between the crystalline solid solutions and disordered states as the driving force for amorphization and the corresponding calculations pinpoint an optimized composition locating at an composition of Cu55Zr10Hf35, around which the driving force for metallic glass formation reaches its maximum, suggesting that ...