9 10.1586/EOP.10.5 "If approved, we believe this would be the first drug approved for the t reatment of this condition," announced Dan Myers, president and CEO of Alimera Sciences, Inc. (GA, USA). The FAME study consists of two Phase III pivotal clinical trials (trial A and trial B) for the use of Iluvien in the treatment of d iabetic macular edema (DME). Iluvien is an investigative, extended-release intravitreal insert for the treatment of DME. Each Iluvien insert is designed to provide a therapeutic effect of up to 36 months by delivering sustained sub-microgram levels of fluocinolone aceto nide. The p rimary efficacy end point for the FAME study is the difference in the percentage of patients whose best-corrected visual acuity (BVCA) improved by 15 or more letters, from baseline, on the ETDRS eye chart at 24 months between the treatment and control groups.


Binuclear Copper(II), Nickel(II) and Oxovanadium(IV) complexes of new tetradendate Schiff base ligand derived from the condensation of 3,3',4,4'-tetraminobiphenyl with pentane-2,4-dione have been synthesized and characterized by analytical, spectral, thermal and electrochemical methods. The complexes were found to have the general formula [M 2 (L)]X (where M = (Cu(II), Ni(II), and VO(IV) X=ClO 4-, SO 4 2-L = binucleating tetradendate ligand). The interaction studies of complexes with CT-DNA were carried out using cyclic voltammetry and viscosity measurements. The result shows that the complexes were bind to CT-DNA by intercalating way. The pUC18 DNA cleavage study was monitored by gel electrophoresis method. From this study, it was found that the complex cleaves pUC18 DNA in presence of the oxidant H 2 O 2. The invitro antimicrobial activities of the synthesized compounds have been tested against the gram negative and gram positive bacteria. A comparative study of minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) values of the Schiff base and its complexes indicate that the metal complexes exhibit higher antibacterial activity than the free ligand.


During 1974–1975 a network of sea level stations was installed on islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean to monitor the changing topography of the sea surface for the study of ocean dynamics and short-term climatic variations. Data from this network provided conclusive evidence for the large adjustments of the sea surface during the 1976 and the 1982–1983 El Nino events. They also demonstrated the large space and time scales associated with low-frequency sea level changes and the potential of monitoring ocean current by means of sea level differences was established. This project was started with grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is currently being continued with joint funding from NSF and the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).


Few interventions address social cognition or functioning in individuals at clinical risk (CR) for psychosis. Theatre Improvisation Training to Promote Social Cognition (TIPS) is a manualized intervention based on drama therapy. We aim to describe TIPS, evaluate feasibility and acceptability, and present a preliminary investigation of outcomes in a quasi‐experimental design.


There are several explanations for the inequality upswing in the literature: rising globalization, the institutional re-structuring of the nation-states, as well as changes in the relation between the demand for and the supply of skills. Concerning demand changes, Kuznets and Lewis identified two inequality affecting mechanisms with regard to the agriculture-to-industry transition: sector bias — that is, inequality within sectors — and sector dualism — that is, inequality between sectors. In this article it is analyzed whether there are analogue effects on inequality from the sectoral change to the knowledge society. Following the strategy of a most-similar design and a variable oriented approach the hypotheses are tested cross-nationally and longitudinally in 19 OECD countries between 1970 and 1999. To verify sectoral effects, error component models are computed regressing the Gini-coefficient on a globalization measure, the union density, the educational attainment as well as the employment and income differential in the knowledge sector. The results show that some amount of the inequality upswing in the last few decades can be explained by the sectoral change to the knowledge society.


Sleep sound-activities including snore, cough and somniloquy are closely related to sleep quality, sleep disorder and even illnesses. To obtain the information of these activities, current solutions either require the user to wear various sensors/devices, or use the camera/microphone to record the image/sound data. However, many people are reluctant to wear sensors/devices during sleep. The video-based and audio-based approaches raise privacy concerns. In this work, we propose a novel system TagSleep to address the issues mentioned above. For the first time, we propose the concept of two-layer sensing. We employ the respiration sensing information as the basic first-layer information, which is applied to further obtain rich second-layer sensing information including snore, cough and somniloquy. Specifically, without attaching any device to the human body, by just deploying low-cost and flexible RFID tags near to the user, we can accurately obtain the respiration information. What's more interesting, the user's cough, snore and somniloquy all affect his/her respiration, so the fine-grained respiration changes can be used to infer these sleep sound-activities without recording the sound data. We design and implement our system with just three RFID tags and one RFID reader. We evaluate the performance of TagSleep with 30 users (13 males and 17 females) for a period of 2 months. TagSleep is able to achieve higher than 96.58% sensing accuracy in recognizing snore, cough and somniloquy under various sleep postures. TagSleep also boosts the sleep posture recognition accuracy to 98.94%.


The first suggestion that there might be an undescribed palm belonging to tribe Cocoeae in Madagascar came in 1984 from Dr M. E. Darian, a palm enthusiast from Vista, California. Dr Darian had made frequent trips to Madagascar to collect palm seeds to grow in his garden in California, being helped while in the north east of the island by Dominic Halleux and Gerard Jean. It was clear from the tantalising fragments of palms brought back by Darian, that there were several unusual undescribed palms in Madagascar, but only in one instance was material sufficiently representative for description (Dransfield & Uhl 1984). One of the curiosities shown to Natalie Uhl and myself was a palm endocarp, collected by Gerard Jean and given to Darian, said to be from the 'Forest Coconut', a tall palm with the habit of a coconut. The endocarp, extremely thick and heavy, resembled strongly the endocarp of members of subtribe Attaleinae (Dransfield & Uhl 1986). This however was all that could be deduced from the empty dead endocarp. Obviously it would be a high priority to find and make proper collections of the 'Forest Coconut'. When David Cooke (Kew) and I, accompanied by P. P. Lowry II and J. H. Beach (Missouri Botanical Garden) and Armand Rakotozafy (Parc de Tsimbazaza) arrived in Maroantsetra in October 1986 for field work on the Masoala Peninsula, the possibility of finding the 'Forest Coconut' was uppermost in our minds. However, all the localities known by Gerard Jean seemed to be at least three days' walk away. The most accessible locality was said to be near the village of Ambanizana, but even this locality would require a trek into the interior of the Peninsula for three days followed by three days for the return. In Ambanizana itself, however, we were very fortunate to meet villagers who had seen the palm nearer to the coast, in a much more accessible area near to Antalavia, and it was this locality that Gerard Jean, two villagers, David Cooke and I reached on 17 October 1986. Two mature individuals of the palm were discovered and we were fortunate that inflorescences and mature fruit were available, so that the affinities of this remarkable palm can be clarified. The Malagasy name for the palm is 'voanio-ala', literally 'forest coconut'; this vernacular name is taken up here as Voanioala for the Latin name of a most distinctive new genus. In doing so I follow the long-established precedent of latinizing Malagasy names (e.g. the palm genera Vonitra, Raphia, Marojejya, Masoala and Antongilia). The specific epithet chosen recognizes the person who must be regarded as the real 'discoverer' of the palm.


Research results from the National Lung Screening Trial revealed that screening for lung cancer with low-dose CT (LDCT) reduces lung cancer mortality in heavy smokers by 20% compared to radiography. While this study does show the efficacy of CT-based screening, radiologists often face the problem of estimating the malignant likelihoods of pulmonary nodules detected on LDCT screening for maximizing patient survival and for preserving lung function. Spiculation is considered as one of the indicators of nodule malignancy and an important feature to assess requirements on a patient-tailored follow-up procedure. However, the spiculation is also observed in some benign nodules, particularly in tuberculoma. The elucidation of the spliculation morphology in 3D thoracic CT images is an important preliminary step towards developing the malignant discrimination strategies from benign nodules. In this study, we present a visualization method to reveal a spatial configuration of spiculation of pulmonary nodules in three-dimensional thoracic CT images. Applying the method to an example of malignant nodule with the spiculated margins, the visualizing preliminary result of the spatial configuration reveals the presence of membrane structures of spiculation.


Summary form only given. A prototype artificial neural network (ANN) which is capable of processing serial sections of the brain obtained from computed-tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) tomographs has been designed. The segmented, outlined images, representing internal brain structures, both normal and abnormal, are then used as an input to a 3-D stereotaxic radiosurgery planning software. The algorithm was implemented as a software simulation in a microcomputer, structured as three cascading subnetworks. The ANN performs very well in the overall task of obtaining automatically outlined and segmented brain slices, for the purposes of 3-D reconstruction and surgical planning.<<ETX>>


Correction for 'Hydrophobic silane coating films for the inhibition of water ingress into the nanometer pore of calcium silicate hydrate gels' by Jiao Yu et al., Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys., 2019, DOI: 10.1039/c9cp03266e.


Essential oil, endorsed as a natural cum powerful ingredient, encompasses incredible properties, and various approaches have been proposed and spurred over the last decades. One among them is the nano-emulsification of the essential oils, and the sub-micron size provides prolonged shelf life, ease of formulation and handling, nullification of the stated obstacles, as well as the augmentation of the essential oil antimicrobial activity. This chapter primarily reinforces and is well-articulated on (1) the components and its precise concentration adequate to fabricate nanoemulsion; (2) critical analysis on the experimentally inferred antimicrobial mechanism and the extent of contribution granted by the optimal concentration of the components in the nanoemulsion; (3) scrutinization of the possible impact rendered by the components on the other characteristics of nanoemulsion aside from antimicrobial potency. Altogether, the importance of careful formulation of the essential oil-loaded nanoemulsion is emphasized extensively.


Improper waste management can harm oneself and the community. Garbage is a breeding ground for germs that become a source of infection that can transmit disease through food and drink. In addition, garbage can interfere with humans' cleanliness, beauty, and smell. With this community health service, it is hoped that it can provide an overview to the community, especially in Kayuwatu Village, so that they can be aware of waste management problems and solve them.


This work focuses on the linear regression model with functional covariate and scalar response. We compare the performance of two (parametric) linear regression estimators and a nonparametric (kernel) estimator via a Monte Carlo simulation study and the analysis of two real data sets. The first linear estimator expands the predictor and the regression weight function in terms of the trigonometric basis, while the second one uses functional principal components. The choice of the regularization degree in the linear estimators is addressed.


We introduce the NU-MBROLA project as an extension of the MBROLA project for designing large NU-MBROLA databases exhibiting the same properties as MBROLA diphone databases, without the restriction of being composed of diphones. The accompanying NU-MBROLA synthesizer implements the MBROLA algorithm on speech segments only defined by their starting and ending points in natural speech files. It is distributed with the same terms and conditions as in the MBROLA project. The terms and conditions for the creation of NU-MBROLA database are slightly different from those related to the creation of MBROLA databases, mainly in that no speech segmentation is required, and in that we leave it to providers to distribute their NU-MBROLA databases.


Tabātabā'i is one of the greatest philosophers in the contemporary Islamic world. In this paper, his significant contribution to Islamic philosophy, namely the theory of iʿtibāriyyāt, is discussed. He divides all knowledge into two categories; haqīqī, originating from the external world, and iʿtibārī, constructed out of human needs. The latter kind of knowledge is unreal in the sense that it originates from the soul rather than from the world. Yet it is real in the sense that its effects are visible in the world. Iʿtibāriyyāt can be further classified into categories. More importantly, they are formulated in terms of either being formed before a society is established, i.e., pre-society iʿtibāriyyāt, or being formed when there is already a society around, i.e., post-society iʿtibāriyyāt. The following section of the paper presents the application of Tabātabā'i's theory in the context of his political philosophy. As we will explain, he seems to favour a religious regulating system when it comes to the content of laws. In contrast, he seems open to a non-religious form of political system insofar as he sympathizes with democracy.


The Plectranthus species (Lamiaceae) have been used in traditional medicine in several places around the world, including Brazil, to treat different diseases. P. grandis and P. ornatus, growing in north-eastern Brazil, were collected at four different times of day and the essential oils from the leaves were analysed by GC–MS. The oil of P. grandis contained mainly trans-β-caryophyllene (31.3–40.2%), germacrene D (12.5–24.5%) and eugenol (15.4%) and the oil of P. ornatus contained trans-β-caryophyllene (9.6–62.4%), eugenol (38.0%) and thymol (14.1%) as the major components. The oils were submitted to DPPH antioxidant assay. The oil of P. ornatus showed a higher antioxidant activity than that of P. ornatus, probably due to its higher yield of the phenolic compounds eugenol and thymol. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Communicative approach,once was called functional approach,notional approach or functional-notional approach,is a teaching approach focusing on language functions with an aim to cultivate students' communicative competence.Based on an exploration into problems in English teaching practice with communicative language teaching approach,this paper put forwards some countermeasures.


Recently, the importance of fractional differential equations in the field of applied science has gained more attention not only in mathematics but also in electrodynamics, control systems, economic, physics, geophysics and hydrodynamics. Among the many fractional differential equations are kinetic equations. Fractional-order kinetic Equations (FOKEs) are a unifying tool for the description of load vector behavior in disorderly media. In this article, we employ the Hadamard fractional integral operator via Mellin integral transform to establish the generalization of some fractional-order kinetic equations including extended (k,τ)-Gauss hypergeometric matrix functions. Solutions to certain fractional-order kinetic matrix Equations (FOKMEs) involving extended (k,τ)-Gauss hypergeometric matrix functions are also introduced. Moreover, several special cases of our main results are archived.


Summary: The research presented here has developed within the project "Atl@s of historical cadastral and topographic maps of Lombardy (2009-2011)" funded by 'Fondazione Cariplo', involving 'Politecnico di Milano - BEST Dept.' (project leader), 'Archivio di Stato di Milano', 'Agenzia del Territorio', 'Centro Studi PIM', 'Regione Lombardia', 'Comune di Gorgonzola' (partners). The first release of the geo-portal (www.atlantestoricolombardia.it), has been presented to the public on 19 th January 2010 after a year's work. Conceived in the form of a modern Atl@s, it has been designed with a double level access to the historical cadastral series available by ASMi ('Catasto Teresiano', 'Lombardo Veneto', 'Cessato Catasto'), together with samples of 'Impianto in conservazione' by AdT (Italian Cadastral Administration): besides a catalogue approach level based on classical research keys (the application, Divenire©, has been inherited by ASMi from the Archive of Venice), an open geographic level has been implemented by the research group of Politecnico, with ongoing functionalities, based on a territorial regional basis, obtained experimenting and georeferencing small scale topographic maps, principally here focused on the historical chorographic maps. The methodologies, the reliability and feasibility of the georeferenced output, and the overall potentiality to use them as a gate to access the local scale represented by the spread diffusion of the cadastral series, are the topics discussed. Due to the high number of historical cadastral sheets, the generation of a systematic GeoDB on the local cadastral series - with a rigorous georeferencing method, already documented within the research – shall be faced by government policies and by algorithm automation, to become sustainable in the next years, in terms of time and costs. Thus, in the mean time, few functionalities are being tested to allow an agile user access, based on a geographic approach to the non georeferenced sheets, straightening the immediate content of the geographic language to a large public demand, respect to the simple key queries, through Web Mapping Services (WMS) developed on the small scale map: ASMi is going to share - over this project through the portal - more than 28.000 sheet units, that can find a challenge in the geographic fruition. Flying the territory of the past with the small scale synthesis, its political assets and physical elements, such as the hydrographic network, can offer interesting thematic cultural opportunities to knowledge dissemination of 'our territory' and its preservation.


We study how municipal amalgamation affects local government spending, taxation, and service provision in the Netherlands. Employing different models, different control groups, and a number of robustness tests, we find no significant effect on aggregate spending or taxation, although spending on administration is reduced. We explore whether this finding might hide amalgamation effects working in opposite directions for different types of municipalities (e.g., small versus large, or homogeneous versus heterogeneous), cancelling each other out. This does not seem to be the case. We also investigate whether amalgamation leads to better public services instead of lower spending, but find no evidence.


Excerpt To the editor: Dr. David Sonneborn's description of thrombocytopenia in adult iron deficiency anemia (Ann Intern Med80:111, 1974) prompts us to describe an additional case of particular imp...


A Comment on the Letter by R. V. Duncan, G. Ahlers, and V. Steinberg, Phys. Rev. Lett. 58, 377 (1987).


: With the change of the relationship between supply and demand in cities, sports events play an important role in the political, social, economic, cultural and environmental aspects of cities. By holding influential sports events, the economic structure of different fields and industries in cities can be adjusted, and the connotative development of scale, functionality and value of cities can be promoted. It is planned that Chengdu will develop into a domestic first-class and internationally renowned international competition city with leading stadiums and gymnasiums, internationally renowned sports events, highly developed sports industry, sports resources radiating all over the world, and popular sports and fitness. I will analyze the interaction between sports and urban development from the perspective of coupling theory.


Anaerobic digestion of lignocellulosic fractions of biogenic resources in biogas plants performs slowly and incompletely leaving fibrous residues. Thus, this work focused on a combined mechanical and enzymatic pretreatment of maize and grass silage to achieve a partial hydrolysis of the substrates and a higher biogas yield. To get an intensive disintegration, the refiner technology was used. For subsequent enzymatic hydrolysis, several commercially available enzyme preparations were tested, and their effect on solid substrate degradation, viscosity and pumpability of the suspensions was investigated. Experiments were performed in laboratory fermenters as well as in pilot scale (1 m3) at a biogas plant. The most promising enzymatic pretreatments with respect to their effect on the fermentation process were tested in 20‐L semicontinuously operated laboratory scale digesters. On maize silage, a dry mass (DM) reduction up to 40% with an amylase‐based preparation was achieved. Equal results were obtained with a cellulase preparation on grass silage. Yet, due to the high demand of enzyme, the economical feasibility was doubtful. Laboratory semicontinuous fermentation experiments, therefore, were performed on maize silage. At a substrate load of 1.5–2.0 kg organic DM (oDM)/(m3 d), a good biogas yield of about 0.7 LN (liter norm)/g oDM and methane yield of about 0.4 LN/g oDM were obtained. However, at the chosen fermentation conditions at 37°C and 25 days hydraulic retention time, no positive effect of the enzymatic prehydrolysis on the biogas yield of fine grinded substrate could be established.


Robyn Lambley says she has ended up with her dream job as Health Minister, after her resignation from the Deputy Leadership sparked a chain reaction of major Cabinet reshuffles.


The possibility of justifying a formal diachronic semantic on the basis of the theory of Ferdinand de Saussure is shown in this paper; the demands of the theory towards the formal shape are formulated with respect to the elaborated constructivistic point of view of Ferdinand de Saussure. The formal part is just informally skeched. The starting-point is the examination of the element 'time' in the theory of language and the theory of linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure. Special interest is drawn to the definition of language change via the term 'valeur', enabeling the deduction of a semantic after being entirely introduced.


The genus Streptomyces is the most extensively studied group within actinobacteria, which are widely used for the production of antibiotics and other metabolites. Streptomyces bacteriophages attract a lot of interest to study phage-host coevolution. One of the probable interactions is a bacteriophage-mediated horizontal transfer of genes encoding bacterial metabolites, which are important for humans. In this study, a search for Streptomyces bacteriophages having capacities necessary for efficient horizontal transfer was performed. Groups of bacteriophages of actinobacteria and their plasmids with relatively long GC-rich sequences containing both genes related to viral morphogenesis and plasmid-associated genes were revealed by comparative genome analysis. In one of these groups, homologs of proteins of DNA packaging into a capsid of Punavirus genus phages, that representatives are capable to perform a horizontal transfer of genes with high frequency were identified. Taking it into account, as well as the peculiarities of their genomic structure, horizontal gene transfer by this group of viruses and plasmids was assumed to occur. Considering the genome length and GC-content, it is thought that these viruses could be useful for producers construction. Moreover, some given examples showing the chimerical origin of phage-plasmids allow suggesting that recombination events between considered phages-plasmids occur at high frequency. New representatives of viruses with low similarity to known phage genomes were also detected among plasmids. A wide diversity of actinobacterial phage-plasmids that is related to their variability and a probable existence of a great number of sequences of this type of viruses in databases were found out.


There are several advantages to viewing ethics as ratio nal choice in this broader sense. It provides a conceptual framework that allows you to analyze complex business decisions that involve multiple stakeholders (as nearly all do). It offers a style of argument that can appeal to all parties, since rational choice, by definiti o , considers all points of view. It provides a vocabulary with which you can articulate an e thical position and defend yourself from pressure to compromise.


The growth of technological revolutions and the subsequent acceptance of smart devices has increased the influence of sustainable marketing activities in the tourism industry. Due to the explosion of mobile technologies (e.g., smartphones, tablets) and social media adoption, consumers have been able to use these technologies at any time for destination marketing. However, understanding consumers' sustainable marketing experiences from a destination perspective is a complex issue. At the moment, very few studies have focused on the effectiveness of smartphone-based social media in destination marketing. Hence, the main purpose of this study is to explore how consumers interpret and utilize smartphone-based social media for sustainable destination marketing. This study proposes an integrated framework that consists of the mobile technology acceptance model (MTAM) and the social media-based interaction, trendiness, and electronic-word-of-mouth (e-WoM). A questionnaire survey was used to collect data (n = 365), and valid data were analyzed by the structural equation modeling (SEM) technique. The findings revealed that interaction, trendiness, and e-WoM indirectly affected satisfaction through mobile usefulness and mobile ease of use. At the same time, mobile usefulness and mobile ease of use directly affected satisfaction, which then significantly influenced the intention to utilize those factors towards sustainable destination marketing. This study highlights the technological affordances and the satisfaction of smartphone-based social media in sustainable marketing. Furthermore, the results can be used in the resource allocation process to ensure the success of the vision and mission of sustainable destination marketing efforts.


The presence of numerous local optima makes optimization of fed-batch reactors a challenging problem. In addition, the low sensitivity of the performance index on the control policy makes it very difficult to determine the optimal control policy accurately. As an alternative to iterative dynamic programming, we consider the application of the direct search optimization procedure of Luus and Jaakola (AIChE J. 1973, 19, 760-766) with the recent refinements involving the use of a quadratic penalty function with a shifting term to handle equality constraints. In using the optimization procedure in multipass fashion, we use the extent of variation of the variables in a pass to provide the region size for the beginning of the subsequent pass. In establishing the optimal control policies for three fed-batch reactor models, we show that this approach provides a good way of solving such optimization problems.


Objective:To research the efficacy and safety of Endostar combined with transcatheter liver arterial chemoembolization and thermotherapy for the treatment of primary liver cancer.Methods:Thirty patients with primary liver cancer were divided into two groups and assigned randomly to a control group(15 cases) and a study group(15 cases).Transcatheter liver arterial chemoembolization combined with thermo-therapy were applied to the control group.Endostar combined with transcatheter liver arterial chemoembolization and thermotherapy were applied to the study group.The efficacy,negative rate of alpha-fetoprotein(AFP),side affects,and general conditions were observed after four weeks,in which patients underwent two treatment cycles.Results:The general conditions,short term effective power.and negative rate of AFP in the study group were higher than those in the control Group,but no significant differences were found in adverse events in the two groups.Conclusion:The method of Endostar combined with transcatheter liver arterial chemoembolization and thermotherapy is obviously better than transcatheter liver arterial chemoembolization combined with thermo-therapy in the therapy of primary liver cancer.This method is effective and safe,worthy of clinical application and further study.


The utility model discloses a premelting pot system, which enables aluminum-zinc liquid in a runner to maintain better flowability and comprises the runner connected with a premelting pot, wherein a gas heating device is arranged at an opening of the runner and comprises a gas delivery pipe and a combustion pipe communicated with the gas delivery pipe; the combustion pipe extends in the length direction of the runner; and gas spray ports are uniformly distributed on the combustion pipe. The combustion pipe comprises at least two sections; a gas branch pipe is arranged between the gas delivery pipe and each section of the combustion pipe; and an adjusting valve is arranged on the gas branch pipe. A cover plate is paved on the opening of the runner; and an air sucking port is formed on the cover plate. The cover plate comprises a support structure and a heat-insulating layer in the support structure. The premelting system is applicable for a production line for continuous hot-dip aluminum-zinc coating.


We study the behaviour of iterations of the difference operator delta on streams over {0,1}. In particular, we show that a stream sigma is eventually periodic if and only if the sequence of differences sigma, delta(sigma), delta(delta(sigma)), ..., the `delta-orbit' of sigma as we call it, is eventually periodic. Moreover, we generalise this result to operations delta_d that sum modulo 2 the elements of each consecutive block of length d+1 in a given 01-stream. Some experimentation with delta-orbits of well-known streams reveals a surprising connexion between the Sierpinski stream and the Mephisto Waltz.


Electronic packages are multi-layered structures with a large number of interfaces. Under certain conditions, some interfaces could delaminate, resulting in failures. Reliability tests on flip chip assemblies of L8AA daisy chain die on insulated metal substrate (IMS) have revealed that the lifetime is mainly determined by the material interfaces. The dominating end of life failure mechanism is interfacial fracture between underfill and passivation layers. A fundamental understanding of these failure mechanisms and the experimental characterization of associated material properties are a key requirement in order to develop an optimal package design with an extended life time of the interconnect system. For flip-chip assemblies, packages with LMS substrate are much more prone to interface delamination than packages with FR-4 substrate. Cracks in the packages with IMS substrate are not catastrophic. In this paper, finite element approach, incorporated with interface fracture mechanics method, has been used to investigate the interface failure phenomenon. Excellent agreements have been obtained between experimental data and the simulation results.


On January 26 2002, the thirtieth anniversary of the creation of the first Aboriginal tent embassy was celebrated. In 1972 the tent embassy emerged from the Black Power movement as a manifestation of the call for recognition of Aboriginal sovereignty and the right to self-determination. These claims have been raised continually by some prominent Aboriginal activists, but the main answer given by the government has been the creation of Aboriginal policies and sections for Aboriginal people within the Australian political system. The government, by different means, has brought Aboriginal activists within the system and has diverted attention from their aspirations. What I would like to point out in this article is that the government has answered claims for a dialogue with an imposed monologue. I would also like to stress that some activists have found ways to take advantage of the circumstances imposed upon them and have developed a dialogue from within governmental institutions. I do not pretend to give a full description of the different means used by Aboriginal people to gain recognition of their rights; I aim only to give an account of some strategies utilised by Indigenous Australians in their fight against political marginalisation. In 1972, the first response of the government to Aboriginal political claims was radical: the police simply expelled the Aboriginal embassy from the lawn of what is now old Parliament House. This action generated much publicity for the Aboriginal cause. The following answers to Indigenous political claims were more moderate and, above all, less visible. In 1973, the Whitlam government used some of the rhetoric of the embassy protests when introducing what was called the selfdetermination policy. Prime minister Whitlam declared: 'The basic object of my Government's policy is to restore to the Aboriginal people of Australia their power of self-determination in economic, social and political affairs'.1 The selfdetermination policy was in fact self-management; far from what was asked for by Aboriginal activists, as it meant only greater participation in Aboriginal policy as defined by the government and not what is meant by the international definition of self-determination, which is the right to exercise a free political choice.


pre-eclampsia and COVID-19 is the presence of anti-phospholipid antibodies (aPLA). aPLA is a well-known major risk factor for pre-eclampsia and one study found that 52% of COVID-19 patients had elevated aPLA levels. Alpha-1-antitrypsin (AAT) has been shown to prevent apoptosis as well as reduce oxidative stress and inflammation in endothelial cells. AAT has been shown to be a protective factor in pre-eclampsia through activating Smad2 and inhibiting DNA binding 4 in both an animal model and human placenta tissue. AAT also inhibits TMPRSS-2, the host serine protease that is required for processing of the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2 before the virus binds to its receptor to gain entry into the cells. The shared pathophysiology between COVID-19 and preeclampsia should be further studied and may lead to novel therapeutics which may include AAT.&


The invention relates to a transfer device (103a, 103b, 103c) for a measurement device (101a, 101b, 101c), comprising a raw data interface (102a, 102b, 102c) for direct access to the raw measurement data of the measurement device (101a, 101b, 101c), an identification device (204) for identifying the raw measurement data with a measurement device identifier, and a transmission device (105a, 105b, 105c) for transmitting the raw data that have been identified to an external evaluation device (106). The external evaluation device (106) is arranged externally to the measurement device (101a, 101b, 101c) and/or externally to the transmission device (105a, 105b, 105c), and the measurement device identifier allows the external evaluation device to associate the raw measurement data with the measurement device (101a, 101b, 101c) and/or the transmission device (103a, 103b, 103c), said raw measurement data being transmitted substantially unchanged.


The main objective of the paper is to study new integral inequality on time scales which is used for the study of some partial dynamic equations. Some applications of our results are also given.


This paper presents an improved Gene Expression Programming (GEP) algorithm Based on Multi-Phenotype Chromosomes (MPC-GEP). The populations in MPC-GEP are composed of chromosomes with multiple phenotypes. Each multi-gene chromosome corresponds to multiple expression trees. The new algorithm can find the optimal individual in less time than traditional GEP. Finally, experiments on the new algorithm against traditional GEP algorithm are conducted on several benchmark datasets. Results show that MPC-GEP outperforms traditional GEP in function finding in terms of speed.


We are concerned with models which are able to describe multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) non-linear dynamic systems. These models are represented in the form of rules and are known as Tagaki-Sugeno models. An identification algorithm for these models based on input and output data is presented. Parameter estimation is based on the calculation of model sensitivity functions with respect to their parameters. Some aspects of structure identification are also tackled, i.e. determination of local model orders and number of rules.


The problem of fracture mechanics for a strip (rod) weakened by a straight-through crack with end zones when the strip is under the influence of an uneven temperature field is considered. The determination of the forces in the connections between the sides is reduced to the solution of a singular integro-differential equation.


In this paper we are implementing a context based search engine for managing the personal Information of a user. Personal Information management includes finding the users previously search web history.PIM includes memory management unit as a context memory for managing the context information of a user. Keywords—context instances , context annotation ,PIM.


Runtime code analysis and optimization is becoming a main strategy used to face the ever extending and changing variety of processor architectures and execution environments that an application can meet. Particularly with the advent of multicore processors, efficient program optimizations, such as adaptive and speculative parallelism, require accurate and advanced runtime analyses, which inevitably incur a time overhead that has to be minimized. In this paper, we present VMAD, a virtual machine (VM) that handles x86_54 binary files, which are especially tailored at compile time to include instructions and data for code instrumentation and for the VM. VMAD enables low level profiling initiated by the programmer from the source code, through the insertion of a dedicated pragma delimiting the regions of interest. This approach provides the programmer a direct view of the actual execution behavior of the source code. To our knowledge, VMAD is the first proposal providing low-level instrumentation initiated from the source code, with almost negligible runtime overhead.


The phrase "research in education," when mentioned in the company of a group of professors of chemistry and physics, is apt to provoke sceptical smiles. Research to them means conclusions derived from the data obtained in controlled experiments. These experiments can be repeated by other workers and the truth or falsity of the conclusions established. But research cannot be so narrowly limited. There is research in history, in literature, in mathematics, even in philosophy and education. Any critical investigation in which the evidence is carefully weighed and evaluated is entitled to the name research. The main feature of research is care and accuracy—in fact scholarliness, and scholarliness is not confined to experimental findings, although it must be confessed that a reputation for scholarliness is easier to establish in physical and chemical laboratories than in most other places. But any investigation which brings into play those twin marks of the educated man, the weighing of evidence and knowing wh...


A new Saxifraga fortunei cultivar 'Eunhasoo' was bred by crossing between 'Baeksoo' with white (GW157A) colored petals and 'Yangwoo' with dark pink (RPN57B) colored petals. The selection of promising lines and characterization of flowers were conducted from 2004 to 2007 year in greenhouse of the Highland Agriculture Research Center, NICS, RDA. The flowering of 'Eunhasoo' occurred from September 30 during 26 days, The number of flowers per plant is 324.7 ea. with many flowering habit. The flower coloration was mixed light pink and white (RP65B+W155A) colors at the opening, The number of petals were 8.3 ea., and its width was 2.0 ㎝ and length of 2.2 ㎝. The flower stem length was 12.2 ㎝, number of flower stem was 4.3 ea., and number of leaves was 36.0 ea.. 'Eunhasoo' can be used for pot flower. Fifty percent shading is a good cultural practice against direct sunlight and soft rot disease would occurs usually by over-irrigation. 'Eunhasoo' was registered as a new cultivar with No. 3465 in Korea Seed and Variety Service in 2011.


Introduction. Laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy is one of the methods for obesity treatment. Aim. The aim of the study is to present different methods of postoperative pain relief in patients treated with this method worked out on the basis of their own experience. Material and methods. In the treatment of pain in patients undergoing tubular gastrectomy (sleeve gastrectomy) retrospective analysis of 62 patients who used three regimens of postoperative pain. The first group consisted of patients receiving tramadol 100 mg i.v. every 4 hours and metamizol 1 g i.v. every 6 hours (37 patients), the second group – patients who used morphine 10 mg s.c., What 4 h and metamizol 1 g i.v. every 6 hours (11 patients), the third group was used oxycodone 5 mg i.v., which 4 h i.v. 1 g of metamizol as 6 h (14 patients). Results. The best treatments used pain control was achieved in patients receiving oxycodone in combination with metamizol. Conclusions. The after-surgery pain treatment procedures, an effective and safe option seems to be combinations of 5 mg oxycodone dose every 4 h i.v. with metamizol 1 g every 6 hours.


Five-year-old rooted cuttings of the 'Washington' navel orange (Citrus sinensis) were induced to flower by subjecting the trees to 2, 4, 6, and 8 weeks of low-temperature, 8-h day (500 J.l.I:/m 2 16-h sec) at 15-18°C/l6-h night at 10-13°C, and then transferring the trees to 12-h day (500 J.l.I:/m2·sec) at 24°C/12-h night at 19°C. In addition, 16-year-old Frost Lisbon lemon trees (C. limon) on 'Troyer' citrange (C. sinensis x Poncirus trifoliata) under commercial production were induced to flower by subjecting the trees to 60 days of water-déficit stress of increasing severity and then rc-irrigating, Maximum bloom occurred 4 weeks after removal of either stress. Changes in photosynthesis and leaf concentrations of glucose, starch, nitrate, and arnmonia (as the combined pool of NH 3 -NH 4 +) were monitored prior to, during, and aftcr the stress treatrnent. The results provide strong evidence that floral intensity is dependent on both starch and arnmonia content, which are easily monitored in leaves. Threshold values for starch and arnmonia, critical to


The TEXAS Model for Intersection Traffic, Version 3.0 was used to simulate vehicle-presence detector placement strategies for an actuated four-phase overlap phasing pattern at a diamond interchange. Graeco-Latin Square and Latin Square designs were applied to study the optimum placement strategies under two symmetrical, and one lopsided traffic demands. The results indicate that vehicle interval, and the length of stop-line vehicle-presence detector together with its setback distance for arterial approaches had only secondary effects on minimising delay under balanced traffic demands. The results also indicate that the location of the freeway exit-ramp set-back detector had the most significant effect in minimising vehicle delay for the traffic demands studied. Language: en


The invention discloses a processing method and a processing device for network element states. The processing method includes the steps: obtaining a network element by monitoring network element performance parameters or receiving an operation request, wherein the network element is a base station or a cell or a subnet; obtaining target data corresponding to the network element, wherein the target data comprise at least one kind of data among trace data, minimized manpower pass measuring data, wireless link failure data, user equipment error report and alarm data and performance data; then judging whether the network element fails or whether the network element needs to be compensated by other network elements according to the target data; and lastly indicating whether the network gets into an energy conservation state when the network element fails or needs to be compensated by other network elements. The processing method and the processing device for the network element statues are suitable for the field of communication systems.


Abstract This study involved a small business workers continuing education according to characteristics and job satisfaction by comparing the development of effective continuing education programs to improve workers' skills is to derive the key indicators. Job satisfaction than those below 40 in the 20s incentives, skills development, human resource management, organizational commitment was higher throughout the 20 to 30 units from 40 to 50 single professionals and young workers compared to their job satisfaction is higher, the number of years worked less than 5 years working in a different number of years than those in group incentives, skills development, human resource management overall significantly higher, rank in the lower position due to differences in job satisfaction was higher than the upper position, technical, administrative two trades was higher than Therefore, by improving job satisfaction in the workplace contributes to strengthening the competitiveness of enterprises and workers must strive to improve the quality of life.


Purpose
The librarianship profession has gone through many changes over time, more so with the emergence of digital technologies. To thrive in the library and information science (LIS) profession, professionals must have knowledge, skills, competencies and abilities to perform their job duties. The purpose of this paper was to identify essential knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) for the LIS professionals.

Design/methodology/approach
The targeted survey group for the study were alumni of ten LIS schools in India, who are now working in various library sectors. A structured questionnaire was designed to seek their opinions, and the snowball sampling technique was adopted to collect the data. A total of 377 responses were received from the respondents.

Findings
Five broad areas of KSAs were identified: traditional library skills, research skills, computing skills, data management skills and soft skills. This study found that computing skills, library automation and library digitization are considered absolutely essential for the LIS professionals. The results also brought out the importance of "soft skills" for the LIS professionals. Prerequisite knowledge of library liaison services, technical services and foreign language were reportedly important only for working in special libraries.

Practical implications
This study identified 54 skills across five broad areas that are essential for the professionals working in library and information centres. The research findings will be helpful for the educators who want to design, develop and upgrade the LIS course curriculum in accordance with the skills that are in demand in the market.

Originality/value
This study establishes that though the participants expressed satisfaction with the practicum of the curriculum, the LIS course curriculum needs to be improved. It would be in the best interest of the LIS schools to identify and rectify the gap.


With the recent advancements in context aware systems and IoT technologies, rapid development is seen in smart appliances. These technologies are used in many domains (i.e. smart home, smart office etc.) to provide an enhanced user experience. In this paper, we present a semantic actuator platform architecture for an IoT indoor environment control using semantic web technologies. It enables user to intelligently control the actuators in his/her area. Our main focus is semantic actuator platform which is used for collection and storage of actuator information.


One of the mechanisms of angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitors in treating diabetic nephropathy is the reversal of renal hypertrophy. Hyperglycemia is the common denominator of all diabetic states. Thus, effects of captopril on high glucose (27.5 mM)‐induced alterations in LLC‐PK1 cells were studied as related to the facilitative glucose transporters. We found that high glucose (27.5 mM) inhibited mitogenesis and induced hypertrophy in these cells after 48 hours of culture concomitantly with decreased glucose transporter I messenger RNA expression. Captopril (1 mM) reversed the above effects concomitantly with enhancement of glucose transporter I and II messenger RNA expressions. We conclude that decreased expression of glucose transporter I may be associated with increased intracellular glucose and the resultant ill effects. Captopril reversed the above high glucose‐induced effects partly by enhancing glucose transporter I and II messsenger RNA expressions.


The concept of virtual enterprise capability is proposed based on the theory of virtual enterprise and enterprise capability. Virtual enterprise capability depends on project, so it is temporary, integrated and complex capability. The system of virtual enterprise capability is presented which is composed of project, organization, communication, process and environment. Virtual enterprise capability has three stratums: standard capability, systematic capability and complex capability. Virtual enterprise capability is dynamic in quantity and quality.


ABSTRACT A two-dimensional model is developed for the growth of ultrafine metal powders in a thermal plasma reactor. The model accounts for particle formation by nucleation, and growth by condensation and Brownian coagulation. Transport of particles occurs by convection, thermophoresis, and Brownian diffusion. The conservation equations for the moments of the particle size distribution are solved, coupled to the equation for the conservation of metal vapor. Elliptic conservation equations result from the consideration of both axial and radial diffusion of the particles. This allows for simulations in complex, recirculating flows, which are likely to occur for numerous reactor configurations and parameters. A progressive grid refining technique is used to accelerate convergence. The model is applied to the case of a typical thermal plasma reactor for the production of ultrafine iron powders. The fields of the macroscopic properties of the aerosol population and the contribution of the different mechanisms ...


Majority of Indonesian companies are family firms. Previous studies report that family firms have type II agency problem. Conservatism, as one proxy of financial reporting quality, facilitates the efficiency of the principal-agent contract. This study aims to examine the relationship of ownership structure and accounting conservatism. In this study, the population is all companies in manufacturing sector and listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (BEI) period 2011 - 2013. Analysis of data uses panel data and the best model is showed by fixed effect regression, rather than random effect and ordinary least square. The results of this study show that (1) there is a positive relationship between the largest shareholder or controlling shareholder and accounting conservatism; (2) there is a positive relationship between the family as the largest shareholder as well as the controlling shareholder and accounting conservatism; (3) there was no correlation between non-family as the largest shareholder and accounting conservatism, but there is a negative relationship when nonfamily become the controlling shareholder and accounting conservatism; (4) other blockholder presence was not related significantly to reduce the largest shareholder preferences regarding accounting conservatism on the whole sample or sub-sample of non-family, but there is a negative relationship in the sub-sample when the family became the largest shareholder.
Keywords: family ownership, non - family ownership, controlling shareholder, blockholder, accounting conservatism, agency theory


Under the background of "double high plan", higher vocational colleges combine the industrial background, strengthen the connection between industrial chain and professional chain. Therefore, colleges and universities delegate power to secondary colleges. Secondary colleges independently improve the grass-roots governance mechanism according to the logic of professional groups, which will help to optimize the power allocation mode, and strengthen the construction of professional organizations. The functions of professional resource allocation, power distribution and operation mechanism, so as to provide management guarantee for the construction of high-level professional groups.


Abstract We prove that if G is a group with a bound on the lengths of finite subgroups and G has finite Bredon cohomological dimension, then this dimension is bounded by the sum of the previous bound and the projective dimension of a certain ℤG-module.


The ways in which selected factors limit human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) prevention efforts in African American communities are discussed. Specifically, this discussion focuses on barriers to expanding the HIVprevention knowledge base such as (a) the stigma associated with the HIV/AIDS pandemic, (b) the overreliance on traditional models of health such as those used with adolescent pregnancy and substance abuse, and (c) the lack offunding for needed service delivery and research programs. Several dimensions of the African worldview are presented and these are used to illustrate ways to overcome the barriers just mentioned so that HIV prevention efforts might be more effective in African American communities.


In his 2006 After Finitude, Quentin Meillassoux presents a striking and far-reaching critique of what he calls correlationism: the view that there is no epistemological access to being as it is in itself, but only knowledge of being as it is for us. On the basis of his refutation of this doctrine, he comes to propose what he takes to be the fundamental principle of rational ontology: that there is no reason why things are the way they are, and they can change at any point, equally for no reason. "Time and Ground" argues that this principle of unreason elaborated by Meillassoux cannot be as fundamental as he claims, because all change and stasis presupposes a more profound temporal order.


To improve the electrical conductivity of the carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers produced by the continuous spinning method, conductive materials such as silver nanoparticles, gold nanoparticles, and silver nanowires were added. The structures of the CNT fiber/conductive materials composites were observed...


Carefully collected molecular data and rigorous analyses are revolutionizing today's phylogenetic studies. Althoughmolecular data have been used to estimate various invertebrate phylogenies lor more than a decade, this study is the first survey ofdifferent regions of mitochondrial DNA in isopod crustaceans assessing sequence divergence and hence the usefulness ofthese regions to infer phylogeny at different hierarchical levels. 1 evaluate three loci fromthe mitochondrial genome (two ribosomal RNAs (12S, 16S) and oneprotein-coding (COI)) for their appropriateness in inferring isopod phylogeny at the suborder level and below. The patterns are similar for all three loci with the most speciose suborders ofisopods also having the most divergent mitochondrial nucleotide sequences. Recommendations for designing an orderor suborder-level molecular study in previously unstudied groups of Crustacea would include: (1) collecting a minimum two-four species or genera thought to be most divergent, (2) sampling across the group of interest as equally as possible in terms of taxonomic representation and the distributionofspecies, (3) surveying several genes, and (4) carrying out preliminary alignments, checking data for nucleotide bias, transition/ transversion ratios, and saturation levels before committing to a large-scale sequencing effort.


Study Design Prospective case report series and detailed description of technique. Objectives To describe a surgical procedure designed to prevent fracture and cutting-through and pullout of screws in the adjacent segment after multilevel deformity correction in adults. Summary of Background Data Surgery of adult deformities has a high complication rate. One of the potential late complications is the development of fracture at the first mobile segment above a multilevel lumbar or thoracolumbar spinal fusion that necessitates further surgical intervention with extension of the instrumentation. Augmentation with bone cement of the last instrumented vertebra and the first mobile vertebra has the potential to prevent this pathology. Methods Three patients with degenerative thoracolumbar kyphoscoliosis and 3 with adjacent segment failure after correction surgery were treated. Cannulated and perforated pedicle screws were placed in the uppermost-instrumented vertebra. A vertebroplasty tube was inserted from 1 side at the center of the first mobile vertebra. Under C-arm control, vertebroplasty was performed in both vertebrae. Results Intraoperatively, there were no cement-related complications. Follow-ups at 6 and 12 (±2) months revealed there was no loss of correction, fracture or screw loosening in the augmented vertebrae. Conclusions Bone cement augmentation of the uppermost screws and the first mobile vertebra in multilevel adult deformity and revision surgery seems to be a safe and potentially effective method of preventing adjacent segment failure.


First principles calculations based on density functional theory were employed to investigate the structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of the ScxCr1-xN (x =0.0, 0.25, 0.50, 0.75, and 1.0) compound, in the wurtzite structure. We applied the full-potential linearized augmented plane wave (FP-LAPW) method as implemented in the Wien2k code. The analysis of the structural properties revealed that the lattice constant increases linearly with the increment of the Sc atoms in the structure, in accord with Vegard's law, whereas the bulk modulus decreases. The studies of the electronic density showed that the ternary compounds of ScxCr1-xN (x = 0.25, 0.50, and 0.75) exhibit a half-metallic behavior with magnetic spin polarization of 100% and a magnetic moment of 3 μβ/Cr-atom. The ferromagnetic behavior comes from a double exchange mechanism and hybridization of the Cr-d and N-p states that cross the Fermi level. These compounds are good candidates for applications in spintronics.


The effects of red grape, wild grape and black raspberry wines on the quality of ground pork during a 15 days refrigerated storage period were investigated. The levels of phenolic compounds were the highest in black raspberry wine (P 0.05). The addition of 5% and 10% wine influenced the quality of ground pork by decreasing pH, inhibiting the progression of lipid oxidation and the formation of total volatile basic nitrogen (TVB-N), and stabilizing the red colour of the ground pork compared to control samples to which no wine was added. In ground pork, addition of red grape wine led to lower concentrations of thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS, 0.19–0.39 mg kg−1) and TVB-N values (69.1–119.9 mg kg−1) than wild grape (0.16–0.43 mg kg−1 and 72.0–194.1 mg kg−1, respectively) or black raspberry w...


The propagation of a light ray in thin layer (film) within geometrical optics is considered. It is assumed that the ray is captured inside the layer due to reflecting walls or total internal reflection (in the case of a dielectric layer). It has been found that for a very thin film (the length scale is imposed by the curvature of the surface at a given point) the equations describing the trajectory of the light beam are reduced to the equation of a geodesic on the limiting curved surface. There have also been found corrections to the trajectory equation resulting from the finite thickness of the film. Numerical calculations performed for a couple of exemplary curved layers (cone, sphere, torus and catenoid) confirm that for thin layers the light ray which is repeatedly reflected, propagates along the curve close to the geodesic but as the layer thickness increases, these trajectories move away from each other. Because the trajectory equations are complicated non-linear differential equations, their solutions show some chaotic features. Small changes in the initial conditions result in remarkably different trajectories. These chaotic properties become less significant the thinner the layer under consideration.


By using the coincidence degree theory,the existence of solutions for boundary value problems at resonance of fractional differential equations was studied,and a sufficient condition of the existence of the solutions was gotten. An example was given to illustrate the result.


In the field of ICT4D, social movements have long been recognized as key collective actors in the process of social change. Social movements are contesting traditional centers of power and generating emerging forms of organization and well being while transforming the nature of political participation. Despite this recognition, the intersection between social movements and IC4D still remains an understudied area of inquiry. This paper helps expand existing knowledge on the relationship between youth, social media and social movements. In particular, it helps to better understand how the mediations of Facebook have broadened the participation opportunities of youth participants in Social Movement Organizations (SMOs) linked to the Immigration Reform Movement in the US. It also shows how youth participants have gained power within these organizations and in other sociopolitical scenarios and social movements. This paper also suggests that the interactions that SMOs' youth participants have through Facebook, have contributed to transform the SMOs interaction among the agents that encompass the SMOs and their stakeholders.


Cellular telecommunication is widely spreading around the world. Mobile handsets are often used in the vicinity of the human head. The continuous growth of wireless mobile services has forced the worldwide mobile handset manufacturers to consider the mutual interactions between the mobile terminals and human .The performance of mobile is altered due to the proximity of the human head due to SAR.Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) is a parameter which define the quality of the device lower is the value of SAR higher is the efficiency and lesser effects of RF on human body.The simplest method to significantly reduce SAR values is increasing the distance between the human head and the mobile handset antenna but using Planar Inverted F-Antenna (PIFA) is considered as one of the most appropriate antenna structures to reduce the SAR Now, the fourth generation of mobile communications, the Long Term Evolution (LTE), is expected to deliver multimedia services as a result usage and health risk has increased.This paper presents a novel and simple PIFA design for Long Term Evolution (LTE) mobile phone application.. The antenna consists of a rectangular planar element located above the Flame Retardant 4 (FR4) dielectric substrate. The ground plane is on the bottom side of the substrate. Total dimension of PIFA is 23.72 mm x 18.5 mm x 4mm and has been optimized to cover the LTE Band 7 application at 2600 MHz frequency. This antenna is suitable for mounting on the mobile phone due to its low profile, small size, and good gain. The proposed antenna is simulated using by CST Software. Its performance in term of return loss, VSWR, Gain and SAR.


Large parts of Surtsey are covered by sparse plant communities, with Honckenya peploides and Leymus arenarius as the key species. The objective of the present pilot study was to investigate ecosystem fluxes of moist and dry areas covered by those two species. Light saturated gross photosynthesis (GPP), expressed on soil surface area basis, was 45% higher in L. arenarius at dry sites, but similar for both species at moist sites. This may indicate that L. arenarius is better adapted to habitats with low water availability. When carbon fluxes were compared at moist and dry conditions across both species, it was clear that both ecosystem respiration and GPP were much higher at the moist site. This may indicate that periodic water stress due to low water holding capacity of the young volcanic ash may be an important limiting factor for biological activity on Surtsey, in addition to the low nutrient availability.


Photonics and microwave photonics are emerging as enabling technologies for advanced payload concepts with enhanced flexibility in future telecom satellites.


What did Yeongjo intend to teach the eldest son of the crown prince? Yeongjo wrote a lot for the education of the crown prince and his eldest son. Those writings include many admonition writings, such as 『Sanghoon(常訓)』, 『Jaseongpyeon(自省篇)』, 『Simgam(心鑑)』 and 「Choongoongyukjam(春宮六箴)」 and his continuous passion for writing made him publish 『Johoon(祖訓)』, 『Sokjaseongpyeon(續自省篇)』 and 『Gyeongsemoondap(經世問答)』 in his last few years. Besides the number of poetry and prose writings he composed to show to the eldest son of the crown prince was about two thousands. It seems that Yeongjo wrote and studied to consider the effective value by a sense of political purpose rather than to pursue genuine scientific values. The motive and purpose of writings reveals this point and the emotion and impression in his writings also suggest that. Education for the eldest son of the crown prince by Yeongjo focused on the royal prerogative. For this, Yeongjo always emphasized and confirmed that the eldest son of the crown prince would succeed the crown. What was in Yeongjo's mind all the time was a matter of a suzerain. Yeongjo wrote materials to exclude experience education, which was considered to be shallow and short of sincerity to Yeongjo, and give the first consideration to language from his sincere heart. for the education. The contents of the education are mainly classified into three categories. The first one was a matter of the orthodoxy of history and royal authority. The second one was a matter of filial piety and brotherly affection. Yeongjo, who admitted that he was a legitimate successor to the throne by strongly emphasizing and practicing duty of filial piety and brotherly affection, also tried to fix defects of the eldest son of the crown prince by clan rules. The third one was about love of the people. Yeongjo's mind to love the people was for meeting request of providence and ancestors. He especially encouraged the eldest son of the crown prince to pray for a fruitful year for the people. The succession between Yeongjo and the eldest son of the crown prince was unrighteous according to clan rules. To overcome the limitation, Yeongjo called the eldest son of the crown prince the crown prince and made him be a successor of prince Hyojang, That was the first step to secure the order of clan rules for succession to the throne. And then it was necessary to raise the position of Hyojang for the next step. This, somewhat, suggested the possibility of Hyojang to become the next king. As shown above, Yeongjo's awareness of royal authority was in securing the orthodoxy of royal authority and succeeding to ancestors' custom.


Gamow–Teller (GT) transitions are the most common weak-interaction processes in the Universe. They play important roles in various processes of nucleosynthesis, for example, in the rapid proton-capture process (rp-process). In the pf-shell region, the rp-process runs through neutron-deficient nuclei with Tz = −2, −1, and 0 mainly by means of GT and Fermi transitions, where Tz is the z component of isospin T defined by Tz = (N − Z)∕2. Under the assumption of isospin symmetry, mirror nuclei with reversed Z and N numbers, and thus with opposite signs of Tz, have the same structure. Therefore, symmetry is also expected for the GT transitions starting from and ending up in mirror nuclei. We have been studying the Tz = −2 →−1 and −1 → 0 GT transitions in β decays, while those from stable Tz = +2 and +1 nuclei by means of hadronic (3He,t) charge-exchange (CE) reactions. The results from these studies are compared in order to examine the mirror-symmetry structure in nuclei. In addition, these results are combined for the better understanding of GT transitions in the pf-shell region.


Specific binding sites for atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) were partially characterized in human fetal, neonatal and adult adrenal glands, using quantitative receptor autoradiographic techniques and ml-a-human ANP (1251-ANP). ml-ANP binding sites were concentrated in the fetal zone and fetal medulla of fetal and neonatal adrenal glands and in the zona glomerulosa of the adult adrenal gland. Inner zona reticularis (corticomedullary junction) was specifically labeled only in cases of Cushing's syndrome. The binding of 1251-ANP was saturable and with a single class of high affinity. In competitive experiments for 1251-ANP using ANP analogues, ANP binding sites in fetal zone and fetal medulla h'ad a high affinity for ANP(]03— 123), whereas in the adult zona glomerulosa, the affinity for ANP(l03-123) was low. Amiloride potentiated the ANP binding sites in the zona glomerulosa of adult but not in fetal zone and fetal medulla. These findings suggest that the ANP receptor in fetal zone and fetal medulla mainly corresponds to the ANP-R2 receptor, while the ANP receptor in the zona glomerulosa of adult mainly consists of the ANP-R1 receptor linked to amiloride-sensitive protein. Atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), isolated from cardiac atrial cells of mammals (6, l6), regulates diuresis, natriuresis and blood pressure (4). In the adrenal gland, ANP inhibits aldosterone secretion from adrenal zona glomerulosa cells (l, 7, 19) by inhibiting protein p-hosphorylation or by inhibiting the ability of endogenous cholesterol to interact with the side-chain cleavage enzyme (9) through interaction with specific membrane receptors for ANP (7). ANP-like immunoreactivity is also present in the rat fetal heart (8) and mammalian fetal plasma (3, 10, 26), and may be involved in fluid volume regulation in the fetus (3, 8, 10). Carr and Mason (5) reported that ANP inhibits the steroid secretion from fetal zone cells of the human fetal adrenal gland and ANP receptor was found by Scott and Jennes (23) to be localized over the entire rat adrenal gland, at day l6 of gestation. ANP receptors have been grouped into two subtypes; ANP-R1 coupled with guanylate cyclase and ANP-R2 uncoupled with guanylate cyclase (17, 20). The adrenal zona glomerulosa is an abundant source of ANP-R, receptors (20) and contains allosteric binding sites for amiloride (20), a diuretic drug linked to sodium transport (2). Little is known of the subtype of ANP receptor in the fetal adrenal gland. We make use of in wire quantitative receptor autoradiographic techniques (22, 24, 25), to investigate which subtype of ANP


Abstract This article discusses why business is concerned with the manner in which the Federal Trade Commission develops and announces rules for the market place as well as with the rules themselves. Government must obtain a better understanding of the role of the advertising agency and the practical limitations on its function and authority. The agency's responsibility under the FTC Act should be determined in the light of these realities.


The carbon diffusivity in tungsten is one fundamental and essential factor in the application of tungsten as plasma-facing materials for fusion reactors and substrates for diamond growth. However, data on this are quite scarce and largely scattered. We perform a series of first-principles calculations to predict the diffusion parameters of carbon in tungsten, and evaluate the effect of temperature on them by introducing lattice expansion and phonon vibration. The carbon atom prefers to occupy octahedral interstitial site rather than tetrahedral interstitial site, and the minimum energy path for its diffusion goes through a tetrahedral site. The temperature has little effect on the pre-exponential factor but a marked effect on the activation energy, which linearly increases with the temperature. Our predicted results are well consistent with the experimental data obtained at high temperature (>1800 K) but significantly larger than the experimental results at low temperature (<1800 K).


This study aimed to evaluate the accuracy of prehospital parameters, including vital signs and resuscitation (fluids, vasopressor), to predict trauma‐induced coagulopathy (TIC, fibrinogen <1·5 g/l or PTratio > 1·5 or platelet count <100 × 109/l), and a massive transfusion (MT, ≥10 RBC units within the first 24 h).


Mr. Mahaffy in his preface to The Empire of the Ptolemies states among other problems raised by Ptolemaic history the following: 'How far does the observation, that we only know of one crown-prince with a wife (Soter II.) account for the divorce of that wife after his accession, and for the other apparent heartlessnesses in Ptolemaic history? Is the hereditary title recognised in the princesses, which no doubt led to their marriages with their reigning brothers, a relic of Pharaonic ideas, or a mere imitation of the successful experiment of Philadelphus?' This article is an attempt to show that the former hypothesis is the true one, and that the marriages of the Ptolemies were dictated by their policy of conciliation, and were based on deeply rooted native prejudices.


Nanopantography is a method for massively parallel patterning of nanofeatures over large areas. Transfer of patterns defined by nanopantography using highly selective plasma etching of Si, with the native silicon oxide as hard mask, can improve patterning speed and etch profile. With this method, arrays of high aspect ratio (>5) ∼10 nm-diameter holes, as well as slots, were fabricated in silicon with no mask undercut. The ability to fabricate complex patterns using nanopantography, followed by highly selective plasma etching, was also demonstrated.


We report on results of a 96.7 ks Chandra observation of one of the youngest, most embedded, and most massive young stellar clusters studied in X-rays: RCW 38. We detect 460 sources in the field, of which 360 are confirmed to be associated with the RCW 38 cluster. The cluster members range in luminosity from 1030 to 1033.5 ergs s-1. Over 10% of the cluster members with over 100 counts exhibit flares, while about 15% of the cluster members with over 30 counts are variable. Of the sources identified as cluster members, 160 have near-infrared (NIR) counterparts either in the Two Micron All Sky Survey database or detected via Very Large Telescope observations. Of these, about 20% appear to have optically thick disks. An additional 353 members are identified through NIR observations, of which at least 50% possess optically thick disks. We fit over 100 X-ray sources as absorbed Raymond-Smith-type plasmas and find that the column to the cluster members varies from 1021.5 to 1023 cm-2. We compare the gas to dust absorption signatures in these stars and find NH = AV cm-2. We find that the cluster contains 31 candidate OB stars and is centered about 10″ (0.1 pc) west of the primary source of the ionization, the O5 star IRS 2. The cluster has a peak central density of about 400 X-ray sources pc-2. We estimate that the total cluster membership exceeds 2000 stars.


This paper describes the construction techniques for incremental launching (hauling) erection of continuous steel box girders over multiple lines of electrified railways.


: Mercury is a toxic heavy metal that is found naturally throughout the global environment. During the last 100 years, there has been a 70% rise in atmospheric mercury levels over the natural background measured prior to industrialization due to anthropogenic emissions. This increase in mercury levels represents a global threat to the health of ecosystems and humans worldwide. Atmospheric mercury chemistry is complex and its sources and sinks involve equilibrium interactions between the atmosphere, the hydrosphere


The threat of eviction from District Six clouds the Christmas season for Mrs Margaret Gesant, 74, seen here with her granddaughter, Mrs Eileen Europa, who also faces eviction with her five children.


The paper describes methods of operational and health data transmission from underground vehicles transport and self-propelled units to the mine dispatcher control panel (upper level). It is shown that technologies, including a combination of wireless and cable communication channels in one device, are becoming widespread. Two main trends are distinguished, i.e. discrete methods based on devices that read out data from moving vehicles and methods of continuous data transmission from moving vehicles to the underground communication infrastructure with subsequent data delivery to the upper level via a cable. A special attention is paid to the method of continuous data transmission from diesel-hydraulic locomotives in coal mines, based on the application of the SBGPS positioning system. A conclusion is made that this method can be used in ore mines to monitor the parameters of vehicles and their location, provided that the SBGPS communication infrastructure is available.


Review(s) of: Management of Disasters and Their Aftermath, W Angus Wallace, John M Rowles & Christopher L Colton, Published by BMJ Publishing Group, BMA House, Tavistock Square, London WC 1H 9JR


Antibiotics used to treat zoonoses, such as campylobacteriosis and salmonellosis become less effective, new data from the European center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) confirm this observation. Enterobacteria are the most common causes of community or nosocomial infections. Some of them produce beta-lactamases extended spectrum (ESBL) frequently associated with resistance to antibiotics. We conduct a retrospective study from positive levies of enterobacteria ESBL identified in adult patients hospitalized at the Quimper hospital, during the year 2016. 74 patients (48women) median age 80 years were included. 30% lifed in an institution, 21% had an history of infection of EBLSE, 62% had urinary tract infection, 12% intraabdominal infection, 9% respiratory infections. Distribution of Enterobacteriaceae was: E. coli (73%), E.cloacae complex (16%), K.pneumoniae (5.4%), Citrobacter freundii (2.7%), Citrobacter koseri(1.4%), Salmonella enterica (1.4%). Sensitivity profiles of antibiotics strains are presented. The strategies of antibiotic therapy are detailed and discussed. The most used molecule was ceftriaxone for probalistic treatment then fluoroquinolone, carbapenems and amoxicillinclavulanate for second line. The evolution was favorable for 64 patients, 8 deaths, 6 serious complications were notified.


Foreword T. Koopmans. List of Abbreviations. Introduction and Reflections A.E. Kellermann. Opening Session: Introductory Address W. Sorgdrager. Introductory Address M. vanden Abeele. Introduction F.G. Jacobs. Introduction L.A. Geelhoed. Reports and Comments. I: The Quality of European and National Legislation. The Quality of Community Legislation: The Viewpoint of the Council Legal Service J.-C. Piris. How to Improve the Quality of Community Legislation: The Viewpoint of the European Commission C.W.A. Timmermans. The Main Elements of the General Policy on Legislative Quality: Dutch Experiences J.H. van Kreveld. The Quality of European and National Legislation: The German Experiences and Initiatives P.-C. Muller-Graff. II: Simplification of Existing Legislation. Deregulation of the Taxi Market: The Swedish Experience J.E. Ljusberg. Organising a Simplification Programme L. Palm. Simplification in Statistics: The Intrastat Case J. Heimann. Lightening of Administrative Formalities in Tax Legislation J.N. van Lunteren. III: Assessment of Draft Legislation. The European Commission's Business Impact Assessment System R. Schulte-Braucks. Assessment of Draft Legislation in the Netherlands S. Formsma. Assessment of Draft Legislation in Finland S. Arkio. The Use of Cost/Benefit Analysis in Developing Environmental Policy: Revisions to the Large Combustion Plant Directive T. Denne. Good Regulation: Weighing-up the Risks L. Neville-Rolfe. How Can Administrative Burdens of Enterprises be Assessed? Different Methods: Advantages and Disadvantages B.I. van der Burg, A.F.M. Nijsen. Final Session: Concluding Address G.J. Weijers. Annex I: Relevant Documents of EC Institutions. Annex II: Documents of the OECD. Annex III: A Selection of Documents from EC Members States. Annex IV: Relevant Articles, Protocols and Declarations of the Treaty of Amsterdam. List of Participants.


This article employs a neighborly model of literary-historical relations to analyze two medieval accounts of the controversial King Pedro I of Castile and León. Utilizing the neighbor as a conceptual category at the interstices of history writing, literary representation, and geographic textual relations, the argument charts Pedro's textual unrest in Geoffrey Chaucer's tragedy of Pedro in "The Monk's Tale" and Pero López de Ayala's Coronica del rey don Pedro. Both Ayala's and Chaucer's accounts confront Pedro as their neighbor — a contentious figure whose ethical meaning is as forceful as it is unstable.


Foursquare Disaster Relief (FDR), in partnership with Foursquare churches and members in the Philippines, was able to respond quickly in Super Typhoon Mangkhut's wake to offer aid to those affected by the massive storm. There are plenty of volunteers, but funds are desperately needed for recovery efforts.


Legislative proposal is the first step of legislative procedure as well as a key link to reflect the democracy in legislation. Though it is supposed to represent public opinion, it receives severe interference both inside and outside the system in the practice. In light of this, some scholars have suggested that citizen should be the legislative proposal subject. Obviously, it is not feasible under the the People's Congress System. But at the same time we cannot deny that democratization of legislation is an unavoidable tendency, thus we should design relevant systems according to the real situation to guarantee smooth legislative proposal procedure and make law according to the public opinion.


The development of novel, Radical Purex, reprocessing technologies, leading to fission product waste streams with high levels of inert constituents, may mean that vitrification is no longer the optimum solution for the immobilisation of highly active wastes at the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. A ceramic phase assemblage is described which uses the inert constituents of the waste stream as a functional component of the waste form, permitting high waste loadings to be achieved and thus enabling waste minimisation considerations to be satisfied. The initial development of this phase assemblage is presented.


In this paper,The Gini coefficient of urban residents in 2002-2011 was calculated and disintegrated according to income source structure.The results show that,the urban residents Gini coefficient in recent years appeared volatility rising trend.The wage income has a positive effect on reducing the income gap among urban residents,but this role is decreasing continuously.In the non-wage income,operating income and property income have a negative effect on reducing the income gap among urban residents,and the effect is increasing.The transfer income has been playing a role in narrowing the income gap only in recent years,but the efficacy has been weakening and shrinking.


Ontologies are nowadays one of the most popular and widespread means of knowledge representation. They are also considered as a basis for new technologies of Semantic Web. Web ontologies are being developed mostly in OWL, a language whose one part is based on description logics. Since one of the steps in ontology development is domain modeling, it would be favorable to create a domain model exactly by means of description logic. Such an example of a university studies in Croatia domain modeling is presented in this paper.


An interview with Michael Weiss, a Holocaust survivor, conducted by Dr. Sidney Bolkosky, Professor of History at the University of Michigan—Dearborn. Born in Kascony, Czechoslovakia, Mr. Weiss chronicles his experiences under the Czechoslovakians, Hungarians and Germans, both prior to and during the Second World War. Mr. Weiss and his family were shipped to the Hungarian ghetto of Beregszasz (Berehovo) in 1944. From Beregszasz, the family was deported to Auschwitz where his mother was gassed by the Germans. From Auschwitz, Weiss and his father were sent to Buchenwald and then on to Zeitz, located approximately fifteen miles south of Leipzig in Central Germany.


The quadratic Casimir operator of the special unitary $SU(N)$ group is used to construct projection operators, which can decompose any of its reducible finite-dimensional representation spaces contained in the tensor product of two and three adjoint spaces into irreducible components. Although the method is general enough, it is specialized to the $SU(2N_f) \to SU(2)\otimes SU(N_f)$ spin-flavor symmetry group, which emerges in the baryon sector of QCD in the large-$N_c$ limit, where $N_f$ and $N_c$ are the numbers of light quark flavors and color charges, respectively. The approach leads to the construction of spin and flavor projection operators that can be implemented in the analysis of the $1/N_c$ operator expansion. The use of projection operators allows one to successfully project out the desired components of a given operator and subtract off those that are not needed. Some explicit examples in $SU(2)$ and $SU(3)$ are detailed.


We demonstrate that a nonzero strangeness contribution to the spacelike electromagnetic form factor of the nucleon is evidence for a strange-antistrange asymmetry in the nucleon's light-front wave function, thus implying different nonperturbative contributions to the strange and antistrange quark distribution functions. A recent lattice QCD calculation of the nucleon strange quark form factor predicts that the strange quark distribution is more centralized in coordinate space than the antistrange quark distribution, and thus the strange quark distribution is more spread out in light-front momentum space. We show that the lattice prediction implies that the difference between the strange and antistrange parton distribution functions, $s(x)-\bar{s}(x)$, is negative at small-$x$ and positive at large-$x$. We also evaluate the strange quark form factor and $s(x)-\bar{s}(x)$ using a baryon-meson fluctuation model and a novel nonperturbative model based on light-front holographic QCD. This procedure leads to a Veneziano-like expression of the form factor, which depends exclusively on the twist of the hadron and the properties of the Regge trajectory of the vector meson which couples to the quark current in the hadron. The holographic structure of the model allows us to introduce unambiguously quark masses in the form factors and quark distributions preserving the hard scattering counting rule at large-$Q^2$ and the inclusive counting rule at large-$x$. Quark masses modify the Regge intercept which governs the small-$x$ behavior of quark distributions, therefore modifying their small-$x$ singular behavior. Both nonperturbative approaches provide descriptions of the strange-antistrange asymmetry and intrinsic strangeness in the nucleon consistent with the lattice QCD result.


Electronic sensors and control units which are self-supporting with respect to power supply are gaining more and more importance. Among the possibilities of converting environmental energy into electrical energy, the classical electromagnetic principle is a convenient option in cases when mechanical movement is involved. In the contribution, the general requirements for biasing a microcontroller circuit are considered. The analysis starts from basic considerations and provides for a proof of principle by means of circuit simulation.


Laboratory capacity is an issue that has plagued education for more than a century. New buildings, late night classes, and virtual laboratories have offered transitory relief at great expense. Missouri University of Science and Technology is employing blended strategies to increase capacity and student success. Blended strategies expand learning workspaces so that learners conduct traditional laboratory activities in both traditional and nontraditional laboratory environments. This article focuses on the proof of concept pilot results from blending the first-semester general chemistry laboratory course, which validate the adoption of this strategy for increasing student volume.


The mudskipper Boleophthalmus pectinirostris is a commercially important fish in China.At present,this species is widely farmed in the southeastern coastal waters of China.Studies have been focused on early development and larval rearing.Early larval feeding habits have been documented.However,little is known about the digestive enzymes at the early stage of Boleophthalmus pectinirostris.The purpose of this study was to investigate the digestive enzyme activities of this species in order to know its nutritional requirements and establish the feeding protocols for optimizing larval mass rearing production.Changes of pancreatic,intestinal enzymes and pepsin activities in prelarva,postlarva,juvenile and early young fish of Boleophthalmus pectinirostris were investigated by means of enzyme analyses.In order to obtain pancreatic segment(PS) and intestinal segment(IS),juvenile and early young fish were cut into four parts: head,PS,IS and tail.The intestinal segments were homogenized to purify intestinal brush border membranes(BBM).The secretion levels of pancreatic enzymes were expressed as percentages of the segmental activity in the IS related to total activity(PS + IS).The establishment of an efficient intestinal BBM digestion represents the adult mode of digestion by enterocytes.And the degree of purified intestinal BBM was estimated by the enrichment factors and the activities of the intestinal enzymes.The results of this study show that the specific activities of four pancreatic enzymes(amylase,trypsin,chymotrypsin and carboxypeptidaseA) and eight intestinal enzymes(maltase,sucrase,luctase,trehalase,cellobiase,alkaline phosphatase,aminopeptidase and γ-glutamyltranspeptidase) are higher in the larval stage,decrease to the lowest levels in the juvenile stage,and increase rapidly in the early young stage.However,the total enzyme activities of individual increase with the development of larvae.Pepsin is initially detected in the postlarval stage,and then it continuously increases rapidly.The percentages of four pancreatic enzymes activities accounting for the total activities are significantly higher in the early young fish than in the juvenile in the intestinal segment.Only three enzymes(maltase,cellobiase and γ-glutamyltranspeptidase) are highly enriched in the intestinal brush border membranes in the juvenile.However,enrichment factors of seven intestinal enzymes in intestinal brush border membranes of the early young fish are all above 5.1 except for sucrase.In conclusion,in the larval stage,protein digestion depends on pancreatic enzymes;and when the larvae develope into the juvenile stage,pepsin plays an important role in protein digestion.The complete achievement of the secretion mechanisms of pancreas and maturation of enterocytes in the early young fish indicate the formation of an adult fish mode of digestion.


Recrystallization kinetics of 75% cold rolled Al- 6Mg alloy with ternary scandium is analyzed from the micro-hardness variation. Isothermally annealed aluminum alloy samples were also studied using JMAK type analysis to see if there exists any correlation between the methods. Recrystallization fraction between two methods, the scandium added alloys show the higher variation due to precipitation hardening and higher recrystallization behavior. From the microstructure it is also observed that the base Al-Mg alloy attained almost fully re-crystallized state after annealing at 400 °C for 60 minutes. 


We cluster asset pricing factors using the t-distributed Stochastic Neighborhood Embedding (t-SNE), one of the most empirically successful dimensionality reduction techniques. t-SNE endogenously separates the strategies into six distinct clusters. The first five clusters resemble the standard value, momentum, investment, profitability, and volatility strategies. The sixth cluster is new, and we denote it as the Firm cluster. We show that the first five clusters are low dimensional and are dominated by their corresponding first principal components, while the Firm cluster is intrinsically high dimensional.


To investigate the effect of space flight factors on lespedeza seeds, dry seeds of Lespedeza bicolor were loaded into recoverable satellite for space flight in 2003. After the retrieval, key agronomic traits were tested. Among the 65 plants we tested in the first generation (SP1), ten plants showed changed phenotype characters as prematurity, late-maturity, tall, dwarf, multi-ramify and etiolation. The mutation rate varied from 1.5 to 4.6% among different traits. 60 primers were screened in RAPD analysis to evaluate DNA variation between mutations and their ground controls. Results showed that 272 amplified bands produced by 55 primers. Among them, 12 primers amplified 41 polymorphic bands. Pattern of bands showed that absence of common bands were observed in mutated plants compared with the ground control. Moreover, similar band pattern was observed in the same mutation phenotype. Conclusion was that space flight factors could induce inheritable mutagenic changes on bush clover seeds, and verified these changes in genetic material in the mutants. These mutations may due to the breakage of chromosome fragments which was induced by complex traits of space flight, especially the cosmic radiation and microgravity. More work is being conducted to select the stable mutants with favorable traits and used them in developing new cultivars.


International Conference on Sustainable Built Environment (ICSBE-2010) Kandy, 13-14 December 2010 Abstract: Sustainability of a construction project is often considered as a very important parameter in evaluating the success of the project. Though the management of material waste that generated as a result of onsite construction activities were initially regarded as less important to the overall sustainability of the project, current trends proves it otherwise. Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) is one of those driving-forces that make the construction waste management an important sustainability indicator of a construction project. As a result of LEED as well as other assessment tools, construction waste management is very common in practice. However the effectiveness of the current management practices is questionable because prediction of waste material quantities is often neglected during the process. Therefore, to accomplish effective construction waste management (minimization, recycling, reuse, etc.) it is essential to predict quantities of construction waste which essentially depends on identifying the sources of waste generation and their relationships to quantity of waste. This paper presents the findings of a current research work on prediction of construction waste based on activity based construction waste generation method. The proposed activity-based construction waste generation modeling facilitates material waste predictions using several parameters including activity specific factors, environmental factors, worker related factors, etc. Statistical model that Predicts the drywall waste generation was presented in this paper. The study was based on the work carried out at several building construction sites in Calgary, Alberta. The findings can be incorporated into a planning tool which can essentially be used for the construction waste management process at sites.


The purpose of this research is to develop a business using the Business Model Canvas approach and provide a good business strategy proposal for UKM Brownies Cinta. The benefits of this study are 1) To provide an understanding of Business Model Canvas as a solution to make alternative business strategies for business people, 2) Able to communicate knowledge and insights about the sciences obtained during the lecture bench, 3) Provide references to future researchers. This study uses the Business Model Canvas method and SWOT analysis. The object of the research was conducted at the UKM Brownies Cinta on Jl. Muwardi, Badranasri RT /XI, Cangakan, Kab. Karanganyar. The data collection method is obtained by observation, interview, and questionnaire. The results showed that UKM Brownies Cinta was in quadrant II with IFAS value (0,795) and EFAS value (-0,027) indicating a strong organization but will experience a big challenges. The recommendation of the strategy given is Strategy Diversification, which signifies UKM Brownies Cinta in a steady state but will experience a number of severe challenges, it is estimated that the organization will have difficult to continue to run if it only relying on the previous strategy.. Therefore it is recommended to multiply the variety of strategies.


The credit system,as a measurement of student learning management system for teaching,has been accepted in many countries,and constantly be improved and developed.This paper,based on China higher education,the characteristics and reality perspective of credit analysis,proposed some specific measures to further improve the credit system.