Many live performance practitioners have explored the development of live gestural controllers in the hope of achieving natural and intimate interaction with their instrument. While the relevant literature offers a great deal of techniques for the development of mapping strategies that link physical gestures to sounds, resources and discussions on how these techniques have been used for the practical development of a live performance are, in comparison, less dense. The advantage of providing a detailed documentation that offers a clear picture as to how and why these strategies have been implemented in the context of a live performance would ultimately provide an additional and necessary tool for the proper analysis of the performance itself. This article presents, analyses and discusses the journey to the development of Agorá, a live sound theatre performance written for a custom-built data glove named 'Pointing-at'. The analysis of both the theoretical and practical elements of performance formed the basis for the development of an approach to the design of nuanced gestural performative actions that are both visually and sonically understandable by audience members. In that regard, the use of metaphors that are coherent to the theme of the performance have been found to be a useful tool that can enhance both the performer and audience experience of the live performance.


parietal lobes (bilateral) and occipital lobe (right), consistent with findings of our prior ROI-based analyses. Conclusions:Long-term PM2.5 exposures may accelerate loss of GM and WM in older women. To our knowledge this is the first report on neurotoxic effect of ambient air pollution affecting GM volumes in humans, consistent with growing experimental evidence for synaptic neurotoxicity of airborne particles.


Part of the life cycle of an ant colony is simple: a colony collects resources; these resources are converted into more ants, and these ants in turn collect more resources. Because more ants collect more resources, this is a multiplicative process, and the expected logarithm of the amount of resources (equivalently, geometric mean (Dempster, 1955; MacArthur, 1965)) determines how successful the colony will be in the long run. Over 60 years ago, Kelly (1956) showed, using information theoretic techniques, that the rate of growth of resources for such a situation is optimised by probability matching. Thus, in the case of ants the fraction of the colony foraging at a given location should be proportional to the probability that resources will be found there, a result widely applied in the mathematics of gambling. This theoretical optimum generates predictions for which collective ant movement strategies might have evolved. In this second of three papers, we show how colony level optimal foraging behaviour can be achieved by mapping movement to Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, specifically Hamiltonian Markov chain Monte Carlo (HMC). This can be done by the ants following a (noisy) local measurement of the (logarithm of) the resource probability gradient (possibly supplemented with momentum, i.e. a propensity to move in the same direction). This maps the problem of foraging (via the information theory of gambling, stochastic dynamics and techniques employed within Bayesian statistics to efficiently sample from probability distributions) to simple models of ant foraging behaviour. This identification has broad applicability, facilitates the application of information theory approaches to understanding animal cognition, and unifies insights from existing biomechanical, cognitive, random and optimality movement paradigms. At the cost of requiring ants to obtain (noisy) resource gradient information, we show that this model is both efficient, and matches a number of characteristics of real ant exploration.


Concerning the segmental mesodermal products the following subdivision is adhered to :— The term myotome is to be restricted to the whole rest of the protovertebra after the skeletogenous cells have been given off for the production of the sklerotomes.


AIM
Transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) is the treatment modality to the intermediate stage, or BCLC stage B hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the benefit to outcomes is still low. The aim of this study was to assess the outcomes of combined TACE and sorafenib to the patients with intermediate HCC.

METHODS
The patients with intermediate stage HCC, who were receiving TACE alone (the monotherapy group), or combined TACE and sorafenib (the combined therapy group), from January 2013 to June 2018, were enrolled.

RESULTS
There were 64 patients enrolled, including 34 and 30 assigned to the monotherapy group and the combined therapy group respectively. A prolonged time-to-progression (TTP) (mean 14.46 vs. 6.39 months, p=0.001) was noted in the combined therapy group compared with the monotherapy group. The overall survival (OS) (mean 18.96 vs. 15.44 months, p=1.000) between the two groups were not significantly different. After adjustment, there were neither significant differences of mortality rate at 12 to 18 months between these two groups.

CONCLUSION
The patients with intermediate stage HCC receiving combined TACE and sorafenib has a better TTP, but not OS, than those receiving TACE alone. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.


Contrastive learning has been widely applied to learning unsupervised sentence embedding. One major method is unsupervised SimCSE, which only uses random dropouts as noise to build positive pairs for contrastive learning. But token-level matching does not always properly represent the similarity between texts. Sentence-level semantic representation based on keyword-level could enhance the similarity matching performance between texts. To emphasize the contribution of keywords in sentence representation, we propose KESimCSE, which not only includes the constrastive learning of sentence embedding but also adds KL divergence of two elements to the loss function. One element is the dot product of each token embedding and the [CLS] embedding of the BERT outputs, as [CLS] generally captures the semantics of the whole sentence. The other element is the weight list of all tokens obtained through keyword extraction method. Our experiments show that the averaged Spearman's correlation of KESimCSE on semantic textual similarity tasks raises to 77.21%, which outperforms unsupervised SimCSE by nearly 1.30%.


The aim of this study was to determine the effect of drought on the accumulation and tolerance of energy willow (Salix viminalis L. var. 'Gigantea') to copper (Cu) and nickel (Ni) in the context of phytoremediation potential of the plant and biomass production under adverse water conditions. Drought was simulated with polyethylene glycol (PEG-6000. 5%), and metals were added at a concentration of 1 mM. Plants were cultivated in greenhouse conditions for 21 days according to the experimental variants: control, Cu, Ni, PEG, PEG + Cu and PEG + Ni. The results indicate high toxicity of Cu (chlorosis, necrosis, decrease in biomass, plant dehydration, increase in the content of proline and phenolic compounds), and PEG + Cu co-treatment increased the toxicity of the metal. Ni applied at the same concentration did not cause toxicity symptoms. The willow exhibits the ability to accumulate Ni, and mutual application of PEG + Ni increased Ni uptake to new shoots. Cu caused elevated accumulation of proline and phenolics in leaves accompanied with a decreased carbon and nitrogen content in roots in favor of young shoots. Both metals and drought led to disruption in the content of mineral nutrients (Ca, Mg, Fe). Due to high tolerance to Ni and drought, S. viminalis var. 'Gigantea' bears high potential for biomass production on Ni-polluted sites with accompanying metal uptake increased under water deficit.


Purpose: Previous reports have suggested that metastatic tumors to the thyroid gland are rare, with a poor prognosis, but many of their clinicopathological characteristics are still to be revealed. Herein, our clinical experiences are reviewed. Methods: The medical records for all patients pathologically diagnosed with metastatic tumors to the thyroid gland, between January 1986 and June 2003 at the Seoul National University Hospital were reviewed. The cases of direct invasion from adjacent tissues, and lymphoma or leukemia involving the thyroid gland, were excluded. The clinicopathological characteristics and survival rate of 11 eligible patients were evaluated. Results: The incidence rate of all the malignant thyroid tumors was 0.46%. The mean age at diagnosis was 44.75 11.73 (3361) years, and the male to female ratio was 4: 7. The most common presenting symptom was a neck mass (n=7). The common primary tumor sites were the lung (n=3) and breast (n=2). The mean follow-up period was 5.174.71, ranging from 0 to 13 months. Six of the ten patients that could be followed-up, died within 16 months. The females (P=0.04), some primary cancer sites, such as the breast, kidney and lung (P=0.04), and those having undergone a thyroidectomy (P=0.01) showed better survival rates. Conclusion: The incidence of metastatic tumors to the thyroid gland was very rare, and those tumors showed a very poor prognosis. There were various primary tumor sites, but the lung and breast were relatively more common. The females and some primary cancer sites, such as the breast, kidney and lung, showed better survival rates. Active surgical treatment might lead to a better prognosis.


We investigate the theoretical concepts of the Social Democratic Party concerning the communication of literature in the worker's press, the practice of literature communication and the reception of literature. Different types of press were used for content analysis: the 'Ber liner Volksblatt' (1884-189o) and the 'Vorw?rts' (1891-1933) rep resent the daily press; the 'Neue Welt' (1876-1887 and 1892-1919) represents the illustrated supplement and 'In Freien Stunden' (1897-1918/19) the fiction weekly. This report deals mainly with the results obtained for the fiction weekly.


Introduction The clinical and experimental repair of long ureteral defects remains a challenging problem. An ideal ureteral substitute should simulate the form and function of the normal ureter. The use of Fallopian tube as a conduit to replace ureter is suggested by the following features: (1) The anatomic proximity of the two organs. (2) The expendability of Fallopian tube. (3) The fact that both possess a mucosal lining and a muscular wall with peristaltic activity. (4) The manipulable blood supply of the tube, which need not be compromised when used as a pedicle graft to replace a segment of ureter. (5) The avoidance of problems of antigenicity and foreign-body reaction when an autogenous graft, rather than a homologous structure or an inorganic tube, is substituted for ureter. This report is concerned with the experimental reconstruction of long ureteral defects by the use of substitute Fallopian tube pedicle grafts. Method Nineteen


The topography of Karangasem Regency is very varied, in the form of plains, hills, mountains, namely the highest mountain in Bali (Gunung Agung). The location of Karangasem Regency which is close to Mount Agung causes Karangasem Regency to have a wealth of natural resources in the form of class C minerals, namely sand and rocks which are abundant compared to other regencies in Bali. The government of Karangasem Regency collects taxes on group C mining entrepreneurs. Exploitation of land in Karangasem Regency carried out by C mining entrepreneurs has a negative impact, namely environmental damage. The purpose of this study was to determine the implementation of Sustainable environmental management in overcoming the problem of land damage due to excavation c mining in Karangasem Regency. The research method used is the library research method. The results of the study showed that there was critical land due to mining business activities of C excavation which did not carry out land reclamation after post-mining. This is because the C mining entrepreneurs in Karangasem Regency do not carry out the basic principles of Sustainable Environmental Management, namely the principle of Intragenerational equity, the principle of intergenerational equity, the principle of preventive action, the principle of prudence, the precautionary principle and the polluter-pays principle.


Process improvement for 7A04 aluminum alloy has been attempted by using deep cryogenic treatment under several aging temperatures, in order to improve the homogenization of the precipitate phase and decrease the tendency of intergranular corrosion. The microstructure and intergranular corrosion resistance of the alloy were tested after the treatment under various conditions, and the effect of microstructure of 7A04 aluminum alloy on the intergranular corrosion resistance was examined. The results show that the intergranular corrosion resistance is the best as the sample is treated by water quenching combined with deep cryogenic treatment at the aging temperatures of 130℃.


Abstract A highly sensitive and selective voltammetric method was developed for the determination of curcumin using sodium dodecyl sulfate modified carbon nanocomposite paste electrode. The electrochemical performance for curcumin was characterized by the use of linear sweep voltammetry, cyclic voltammetry, and differential pulse voltammetry. These measurements showed that the sodium dodecyl sulfate modified carbon nanocomposite paste electrode provided excellent electrocatalytic enhancement for the oxidation of curcumin compared to an unmodified carbon nanocomposite paste electrode. Using the optimized conditions, the oxidation peak current showed a linear response from 2 × 10−7 to 1 × 10−6 M and 1.5 × 10−6 to 4.5 × 10−6 M with a detection limit equal to 2.7 × 10−8 M and limit of quantification equal to 9.2 × 10−8 M. The simultaneous determination of curcumin and vitamin B2 included a well resolved peaks, that provides rapid and selective analysis in the presence of vitamin B2. Moreover, the practical application of the developed electrode was performed for the analysis of a natural food supplement for curcumin.


Objective:To investigate the effect of interferon-γ(IFN-γ) on the expression of proliferating cell nuclear antigen((PCNA)) in rabbit lens epithelial cells(LECs).Methods:Extracapsular lens extration models were made in rabbits,and IFN-γ was irrigated into the capsular bag during operation.The rabbits were divided into 3 groups.Group A,the control group,was irrigated only with BSS during operation.Group B and group C,the treatment groups,were irrigated with IFN-γ,of concentration 10~3IU/ml,10~4IU/ml respectively.Three months later,the expression of PCNA in LECs were identified with immunohistochemical staining and automatic image analysis technology.Results:The expression of PCNA in IFN-γ group was lower than that of control group (P0.05).Conclusions:The experiment shows that IFN-γ can inhibit the expression of the PCNA in rabbit LECs,and the inhibition of IFN-γ on PCNA is concentration-dependent.


Transformation of a wave fluid flow into a unidirectional motion of solid particles suspended in the fluid is considered. Equations describing this type of the particle motion relative to the fluid are obtained in two limiting cases where the dominant force in the fluid-particle interaction process is accounted for by the added mass effect and where this force is accounted for by viscous drag obeying the Stokes law. For a number of particular wave fields, the characteristics of the particle motion are obtained, and the appearance of stable and unstable quasi-equilibrium positions of the particles is established. The stable positions are due to the particle localization effect and the unstable ones are due to the formation of advective motions. Unidirectional motions of rigid particles suspended in a carrying medium, their localization or advective motion near the saddle equilibrium positions have been repeatedly observed experimentally [1-3]. Some particular cases of such motions were studied theoretically for ideal [4, 5] and viscous [6] carrying media. In this paper, an approach originally proposed by the author in [7, 8] is described. According to this approach, the cases where the transformation of the wave fluid motion into the unidirectional motion of suspended particles occurs can be systematically established by a standard procedure based on the asymptotic methods of nonlinear mechanics [9, 10]. In the current study, this approach is applied to the simplest types of the carrying medium flow for which the particle motion can be described using the assumption of quasi-incompressibility. Using this approach, not only the mechanisms of transformation of the wave motion of the medium into the unidirectional particle motion obtained earlier by other authors could be re-established, but also some new mechanisms of such transformations have been identified, which can find practical applications/Examples have shown that in the wave fields, three particular modes of particle motion can occur: (i) unidirectional motion with respect to the carrying medium, (ii) particle localization related to the occurrence of stable quasi-equilibrium particle positions in the wave field, and (iii) advection caused by the presence of saddle equilibrium positions (when the phase space dimension exceeds 2 and doubly asymptotic Poincare's solutions [11] of the particle motion equations are not reduced to a separatrix).


Biodiversity maintains the ecological balance and is necessary for human survival and economic development It provides a large number of resources and services that sustain our daily lives. Biodiversityinformatics derives knowledge from computer analysis of biological data. It applies principles of information sciences and computing technologies to make the vast, diverse, and complex lifesciences data which became more understandable and useful. The Software's & Web based Technology with Biodiversity-Informatics were used for developing databases that facilitated the data exchange and compatibility in handling a large volume of data with required security. In this present work the main objective of researcher was to develop DBMS along with the images and to make them available electronically with Internet interface. Databases were normally developed with the help of MS-Access software, which was one of the MS office tools. Visual Fox-Pro, Visual basic, Oracle, etc. Databases can contain all kinds of information about organism, including their characteristics, economic importance, conservation and management. In this present study the biodiversity informatics tools were utilized. These features support to provide information regarding planning and implementation and utilization of these resources in a sustainable manner.


The paper presents the evaluation of thin dielectric layers using a tunable split-ring resonator-based metasurface in the THz frequency range. Tunable unit cells of a metasurface allow its resonant frequency variation using some external excitation. This can be done in various ways. In this work, the behavior of such a metasurface is investigated by monitoring the resonant frequency value when the unit cell geometry is changed. Such behavior is utilized for the quality evaluation of a thin dielectric layer placed in vicinity of a metasurface. A change in dielectric permittivity noticeably affects the resonant frequency of a metasurface. In order to examine the state of the material under test, finite element method simulations were made for a 15 µm thin layer. As a result, the approximation-based relations between resonant frequencies (obtained for various geometries of structural element—in tunability range) and dielectric parameters of the examined material were derived. These relations carry more information than in the case of just one resonant frequency (the case of a non-tunable metasurface) and can be utilized for permittivity evaluation.


A system comprising: a first distance sensor is set to detect a human; Logic that is coupled to the first distance sensor, wherein the logic adjusts a temperature threshold on the basis of whether a person has been detected, wherein the logic is configured to reduce the temperature threshold from a first threshold temperature to a second temperature threshold when the presence of a person is detected, and to reduce the threshold temperature from the second temperature threshold to a third temperature threshold, if after a predetermined period of time still the presence of a person is detected.


This ethnographic study aims to examine Syrian students' various experiences with belonging and identity while studying at Eastern Mediterranean University. The main objective of this study, which consists of the experiences of a sample group of students, is to examine in detail the subject of belonging and identity. The model of the study is ethnographic research, one of the qualitative research methods. Ten Syrian students participated in the fieldwork. The interviews were analyzed with a thematic analysis approach. As a result of the study, we see that Syrian students emphasize the similarities between the TRNC and Syria, such as food and climatic structure. However, in addition to this positive similarity, we found that differences in language and culture stressed the students. The relationship between Syrian culture and some of the variables, about both belonging and identity, is examined in detail and the results are given in the light of the literature as a result of this study.


Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) are expected to provide ancillary functions including reactive power generation and harmonics compensation. Meanwhile, multilevel inverters and two level converters with Optimal Pulse Width Modulation (OPWM) will be commonly used for DERs at high power levels. The challenge is to realize harmonic compensation with limited switching angles. This work presents a four equations based method to realize Selected Harmonics Compensation (SHC) and power generation with DERs. Since the power converter is requested to realize both harmonics filtering and power generation; limitations on harmonics compensation at the given power are discussed. Power Hardware-in-the-loop based verifications are shown at the end of the paper.


The aim of the present article is to compare and contrast the syntactic category of adjectives in three different languages: English, French and Berber Kabyle in order to delimit whether the members of the word class adjective are the same in the three languages, whether they share the same characteristics, whether they are formed through the same syntactic functions. Our study comprises a section where the three languages under discussion will be introduced as well as the status of the word class adjective in the three languages. We will devote a section to discuss the syntactic category of nouns since the latters have a direct syntactic relationship with adjectives and they form an imposing part in our work. We will also devote a section to the definition of adjectives, their origins and formation processes, their characteristics and their syntactic functions. A last section will be devoted to the comparison system in the three languages.


The present invention provides a medical device inserted in a subject apparatus for the skin. In one embodiment, there is provided a sensor comprising a body portion having a longitudinally aligned proximal section, the proximal section and distal section, and an intermediate section, the intermediate section from which at least lateral displacement of the distal end member and a gap is defined between a portion of the lateral displacement of the intermediate section and a distal section.


We construct cryptographic trilinear maps that involve simple, non-ordinary abelian varieties over finite fields. In addition to the discrete logarithm problems on the abelian varieties, the cryptographic strength of the trilinear maps is based on a discrete logarithm problem on the quotient of certain modules defined through the N\'{e}ron-Severi groups. The discrete logarithm problem is reducible to constructing an explicit description of the algebra generated by two non-commuting endomorphisms, where the explicit description consists of a linear basis with the two endomorphisms expressed in the basis, and the multiplication table on the basis. It is also reducible to constructing an effective $\mathbb{Z}$-basis for the endomorphism ring of a simple non-ordinary abelian variety. Both problems appear to be challenging in general and require further investigation.


W read with interest the study published by Santiago-García et al that correlates immune disorders with extrapulmonary tuberculosis (EPTB). Tuberculosis is a major public health problem, especially in developing countries as Brazil, a high endemic area of the disease. Disseminated Mycobacterium bovis is also a concern, since vaccination with Bacillus Calmette Guérin is universally performed in the first year of life in Brazil, often before the diagnosis of immunodeficiency. A retrospective review of cases of mycobacterial disease in children ≤ 18 years of age with primary immunodeficiency or exposed to chronic immunosuppressive therapy managed in a tertiary hospital in São Paulo, Brazil from January 2009 to December 2016, was performed. HIV-positive patients were excluded. During the study, 22 cases of mycobacterial disease in immunocompromised patients were identified. The median age at diagnosis was 8 years (9 months to 18 years). The main comorbidities were primary immunodeficiency (n = 8), rheumatologic diseases (n = 6), oncohematologic diseases (n = 4) and posttransplantion (n = 4). In all, 3 patients were diagnosed with nontuberculosis mycobacteria and were excluded from the following analysis. Among the 19 children with Mycobacterium tuberculosis, 5 were classified as confirmed tuberculosis (1 with EPTB) and 14 were classified as probable tuberculosis, using the same criteria as Santiago-García et al. Pulmonary tuberculosis (PTB) was diagnosed in 16 (84%) patients and EPTB in 3 patients. The sites of the EPTB cases were kidney (6 years old), abdominal (1 year old), and pericardium (16 years old), with the abdominal and pericardium cases associated with PTB. Tuberculin skin test was positive (≥ 5 mm) in 3 of 10 patients on whom it was performed. Only 1 of the EPTB children performed Tuberculin skin test, and the result was negative. Five patients had the source of infection identified, all in the PTB group. Evaluation of outcome revealed that 17 patients were cured and 2 had relapsing infection after initial successful treatment; 3 patients had moderate adverse reactions (2


Many institutions and researchers have conducted in-depth research on mobile/tele-health monitoring in recent decades. This paper designs and implements a high concurrent data communication server, improving the concurrent processing ability of health monitoring gateway, based on I/O Completion Port (IOCP) communication model. Meanwhile, improve the communication efficiency by elevating the aspects of duplex communication, session connection pool, dynamic cache. Finally, the paper analyzes the optimal server packet size and the best number of concurrent services, through the response time, throughput and other indicators.


Objective: To investigate the effect of methyltransferase inhibitor 5-Aza-dC (5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine) on the expression of FANCF (Fanconi anemia complementation group F) gene in ovarian cancer OVCAR3 cells, and examine its effect on the sensitivity to chemotherapeutic drug paclitaxel in ovarian cancer in vitro, and to explore the antitumor effect of 5-Aza-dC as a new target for treatment of ovarian cancer. Methods: The ovarian cancer OVCAR3 cells (methylated FANCF gene) and A2780 cells (unmethylated FANCF gene) were treated with 5-Aza-dC. The methylation status of FANCF gene and the expression levels of FANCF mRNA and protein in OVCAR3 and A2780 cells before and after the treatment with 5-Aza-dC were detected by MSP (methylation-specific PCR), RT-PCR and Western blotting, respectively. The proliferation rate of these ovarian cancer cells was detected by MTT method, and the apoptosis rate of these cells treated with paclitaxel was measured by FCM (flow cytometry). The xenografts were induced in nude mice transplanted with OVCAR3 cells or A2780 cells. The effect of 5-Aza-dC on the growth of the xenografts in nude mice was observed. The expression of FANCF protein in the xenografts was detected by immunohistochemistry. Results: DNA promoter methylation disappears in OVCAR3 cells after treatment with 5-Aza-dC, and the expression levels of FANCF mRNA and protein were increased in vitro. The growth of OVCAR3 cells was also slowed down. The volume and the weight of OVCAR3 ovarian cancer xenografts treated with 5-Aza-dC were both significantly decreased as compared with those of the untreated xenografts in nude mice; the expression of FANCF protein in the xenografts was increased after treatment with 5-Aza-dC. These changes were not observed in A2780 ovarian cancer xenografts in nude mice.  Conclusion: The methyltransferase inhibitor 5-Aza-dC may become a potential therapeutic drug in the treatment of ovarian cancer through inhibiting the proliferation of ovarian cancer cells, but it can also increase the risk of resistance to paclitaxel. DOI:10.3781/j.issn.1000-7431.2012.06.004


Partitioned fixed-priority scheduling is widely used in embedded multicore real-time systems. In multicore systems, spin locks are one well-known technique used to synchronize conflicting accesses from different processor cores to shared resources (e.g., data structures). The use of spin locks can cause blocking. Accounting for blocking is a crucial part of static analysis techniques to establish correct temporal behavior. In this thesis, we consider two aspects inherent to the partitioned fixedpriority scheduling of tasks sharing resources protected by spin locks: (1) the assignment of tasks to processor cores to ensure correct timing, and (2) the blocking analysis required to derive bounds on the blocking. Heuristics commonly used for task assignment fail to produce assignments that ensure correct timing when shared resources protected by spin locks are used. We present an optimal approach that is guaranteed to find such an assignment if it exists (under the original MSRP analysis). Further, we present a well-performing and inexpensive heuristic. For most spin lock types, no blocking analysis is available in prior work, which renders them unusable in real-time systems. We present a blocking analysis approach that supports eight different types and is less pessimistic than prior analyses, where available. Further, we show that allowing nested requests for FIFOand priority-ordered locks renders the blocking analysis problem NP -hard.


By continuing researches done by previous philosophic researchers on the behaviors of rationality and will,the author found that there is a "triple root" solution to the existence of will,which is neglected by people over a long period of time.Just like that there are an irrational root and a rational root for the existence of quadric equa-tions with one unknown,there is objectively a "triple root" solution for sports will: these three roots are unified root,rational root and irrational root.In this study the author considered that these three roots can all find their attributes or homes in terms of classification,and express more contents or connotations of will in a relatively complete way.Hence,there will be one relatively clear path and three directional attributes for the problem about our relatively one-sided understanding of sports will,which has confused us for a long time.


Gas barrier biaxially stretched polyamide resin film and a manufacturing method thereof. Film, the double at least one side gas barrier coat layer of biaxially stretched polyamide resin film is formed, a thickness of the gas barrier coat layer is 0.5 to 5 [mu] m, the amount of the extracted monomer of the polyamide resin film is 0.1 wt% or less it is. Manufacturing method, the monomer removal step of the unstretched polyamide resin film, biaxial stretching process, the lamination step of laminating process and the gas barrier coat layer of the anchor coat layer which is performed as needed, including in this order.


Turkmenistan is located in southwestern part of Central Asia. Many superlarge potash deposits are distributed in the late Jurassic Gaurdak marine potash basin. The main part of the basin is distributed in east Turkmenistan, while a small part of it extends into Uzbekistan. The total potash resources are nearly 20 billion tons, being 15 to 20 times China's known total potash resources. According to the estimation of the resources to be obtained by underground mining, the Karlyuk and Karabil deposits have total resources of 5.93 billion tons. According to the content of the useful component KCl , potash ores are divided into three types: rich ore (30%), pay ore (25%~30%) and base ore (22%~25%). The friendly relationship between China and Turkmenistan and the demand of rapid development of industry and agriculture for the absorption of large amounts of foreign capital in Turkmenistan bring a rare opportunity for investment and cooperative development of potash resources in Turkmenistan.


Perry Meisel's 1980 monograph The Absent Father: Virginia Woolf and Walter Pater remains the most substantial work on the relation between the two authors to date. In it Meisel engages in a 'psychoanalysis' of Woolf's texts in order to reveal Pater's repressed influence (1980, xiii), and his primary method is to identify affinities between Pater and Woolf's critical writing. Because of this, Meisel has provided a fairly comprehensive analysis of Woolf's criticism, but only a superficial analysis of her novels, identifying various points of correspondence, but paying little attention to how these relate to the larger meaning of each text. This thesis will supplement and sometimes challenge Meisel's observations, by examining texts from each major phase in Woolf's career: her early critical engagement with Pater in The Voyage Out, her mature appreciation of him in To the Lighthouse and Orlando, and her late ambivalence towards him in the last decade of her life.


Water sensitivity of asphalt concrete pavements is of great importance nationwide. Water-sensitive pavement may suffer damage that leads to reduced pavement life when subject to moisture. To alleviate this problem, various liquid antistripping additives have been developed. In this paper are presented the results of a study on the effectiveness of antistrip additives for materials used in the reconstruction of Nevada State Highway 207. Preconstruction mixtures containing various antistripping additives (liquids and solids), construction mixtures mixed in the field and compacted in the laboratory, and cores taken after construction were subjected to laboratory conditioning using vacuum saturation plus one cycle of freeze-thaw. Test results show that a slight reduction in water sensitivity was obtained in mixtures that contained the liquid antistrip additives in comparison with control mixtures without additives or mixtures containing portland cement as an antistripping material. Results of evaluation of mixtures during the preconstruction phase of the project indicate that mixtures that contain lime slurry exhibited significant reductions in water sensitivity. Test results of field cores show agreement with preconstruction mixtures in the prediction of water sensitivity. Test results of cores also indicate that no significant changes in mixture strength and water sensitivity have taken place during the first year of life. In addition, visual surveys have indicated that test sections that contain either the liquid antistripping additive or portland cement additive have performed well during the first year of pavement life.


Deep learning constitutes the state-of-the-art in machine learning, from data mining to computer vision and natural language processing. Energy-efficient matrix-vector multiplications (MVMs) [1] are key to bringing these capabilities to the edge, for both convolutional and recurrent neural networks. Since low precision multiplications with a limited level of noise can achieve relatively high accuracies [2], a compelling opportunity arises for mixed-signal hardware implementations to exploit in-memory computing paradigms [3– 6]. In this work, a matrix-vector multiplier is presented operating on ternary weights, 7-bit input (6-bit magnitude and 1-bit sign), and 6-bit output activations. Notable improvements in energy efficiency and peak compute throughput per unit area are exhibited by measurements on a test chip based on the GLOBALFOUNDRIES® 22FDX® FD-SOI platform, thanks to a novel SRAM-based compute cell with low "on" current, pulse-width encoded input activations, a clamp-free summation line, and efficient amortization of the ADC and DAC energies.


To develop an online treatment decision aid (OTDA) to assist patients with low‐risk prostate cancer (LRPC) and their partners in making treatment decisions.Navigate, an OTDA for LRPC, was rigorously co‐designed by patients with a confirmed diagnosis or at risk of LRPC and their partners, clinicians, researchers and website designers/developers. A theoretical model guided the development process. A mixed methods approach was used incorporating (1) evidence for essential design elements for OTDAs; (2) evidence for treatment options for LRPC; (3) an iterative co‐design process involving stakeholder workshops and prototype review; and (4) expert rating using the International Patient Decision Aid Standards (IPDAS). Three co‐design workshops with potential users (n = 12) and research and web‐design team members (n = 10) were conducted. Results from each workshop informed OTDA modifications to the OTDA for testing in the subsequent workshop. Clinician (n = 6) and consumer (n = 9) feedback on usability and content on the penultimate version was collected.The initial workshops identified key content and design features that were incorporated into the draft OTDA, re‐workshopped and incorporated into the penultimate OTDA. Expert feedback on usability and content was also incorporated into the final OTDA. The final OTDA was deemed comprehensive, clear and appropriate and met all IPDAS criteria.Navigate is an interactive and acceptable OTDA for Australian men with LRPC designed by men for men using a co‐design methodology. The effectiveness of Navigate in assisting patient decision‐making is currently being assessed in a randomised controlled trial with patients with LRPC and their partners.


In the research process of sorting problem, on the one hand is the development of the diversity of solving methods, on the other hand is the continuous generation of modern problem model due to the emergence of many practical problems, the basic assumptions of the classical sorting problem has been constantly breakthrough, a large number of modern sorting problems. The problem with time window constraint is studied. The sorting of only one machine workpieces is discussed, this paper designed a 3/2-approximation algorithm, the algorithm complexity is.


The present invention relates to an inner fin Stirling cycle apparatus including the heat sink, the housing and the fixing ring, interposed between the fins with the regenerator, said heat sink inserted into the cylindrical housing inner wall and to form a circular ring, and fixing by a fixing ring; said fins is foldable, and folded fin is shaped undulating; are in intimate contact with each other between each fold of the arc on the heat sink, the heat produced during folding sheet has pores, the pores distributed in two rows across the fins, and the porosity of the two rows of vertical displacement distribution; each of said fins is folded with the curvature of the housing inner wall in contact, each of between the folding radian are not in contact; folding each of the fin in contact with the fixed curvature of the ring, between which are each folded arc contact each other. Advantageous effects of the present invention are: by adjusting the compression process, can set the appropriate porosity; maximum contact area can cause side heat conduction.


PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of binary chemical reaction and activation energy on nano Casson liquid flow past a stretched plate with non-linear radiative heat, and also, the effect of a novel exponential space-dependent heat source (ESHS) aspect along with thermal-dependent heat source (THS) effect in the analysis of heat transfer in nanofluid. Comparative analysis is carried out between the flows with linear radiative heat process and non-linear radiative heat process.Design/methodology/approachA similarity transformation technique is utilised to access the ODEs from the governed PDEs. The manipulation of subsequent non-linear equations is carried out by a well-known numerical approach called Runge–Kutta–Fehlberg scheme. Obtained solutions are briefly discussed with the help of graphical and tabular illustrations.FindingsThe effects of various physical parameters on temperature, nanoparticles volume fraction and velocity fields within the boundary layer are discussed for two different flow situations, namely, flow with linear radiative heat and flow with non-linear radiative heat. It is found that an irregular heat source/sink (ESHS and THS) and non-linear solar radiation play a vital role in the enhancement of the temperature distributions.Originality/valueThe problem is relatively original to study the effects of activation energy and binary chemical reaction along with a novel exponential space-based heat source on laminar boundary flow past a stretched plate in the presence of non-linear Rosseland radiative heat.


Abstract 20 Marine aggregates are naturally formin g conglomerations of larvacean houses, 21 phytoplankton, microbes, and inorganics adhered together by exocellular polymers. In this 22 study we show in vitro that the bacterial pathogen, Vibrio vulnificus , can be concentrated into 23 laboratory-generated aggregates from su rrounding water. We further show that 24 environmental (E-genotype) strains exhibit signif icantly more integration into these aggregates 25 than clinical (C-genotype) strains. Experime nts where marine aggregates, with attached V. 26 vulnificus cells, were fed to oysters ( Crassostrea virginica ) resulted in greater uptake of both C- 27 and E-types, than non-aggregated controls. Wh en C- and E-genotype st rains were co-cultured 28 in competitive experiments, the aggregated E-ge notype strains exhibite d significantly greater 29 uptake by oyster than the C-genotypes strains. 30 Introduction 31 Vibrio vulnificus is a gram negative, halophilic bacterium capable of causing


PURPOSE
To report a case with giant retinal tear after pneumatic retinopexy. To our knowledge, this is only the second case of a giant retinal tear after pneumatic retinopexy reported.

METHODS
This is a descriptive case study.

RESULTS
A 43-year-old myopic man underwent pneumatic retinopexy for right eye rhegmatogenous retinal detachment. Postoperative course was complicated by a giant retinal tear, which was treated successfully.

CONCLUSION
Though rare, giant retinal tears can occur after pneumatic retinopexy. The likely mechanism is increased vitreous traction because of expansion of gas in a predisposed myopic eye.


The nascent field of indirect imaging is concerned with the recovery of information pertaining to objects that are beyond the line-of-sight (LoS) and hidden from view. Current approaches to indirect imaging are either limited in their ability to recover spatially resolved imagery (resolution of few centimeters at 1-meter standoff) or impose severe restrictions on the imaging geometry. The present work examines two approaches that recover spatial detail on hidden objects by exploiting spatial and spectral correlation in the light scattered by the objects. Experiments have demonstrated the ability to discern sub-millimeter spatial detail, on centimeter sized objects positioned 1-meter behind a wall.


ABSTRACT Cold metal transfer (CMT) additive manufacturing (AM) is widely used for its efficiency and low cost, in order to improve the efficiency the manufacturing,this study carried out CMT arc modes and interlayer cooling time depositions, and researched deposition stability, roughness, microstructure, and properties. Moreover, as the tensile anisotropy was a significant characteristic of arc AM, this study conducted tensile fracture metallographic test, and revealed the tensile anisotropic mechanism. The results showed that CMT mode was the most stable process, and CMT Plus Pulse (CMT+P) mode with an alternating of CMT and pulse processes had a finer grain and bigger hardness. Although an interlayer cooling time refined the grain size, it also increased the deposited time and roughness. Then, deposition efficiency of CMT+P continuous deposition was up to 87.9%, which realized the forming efficiency. The tensile fracture metallographic test indicated the deformed columnar grains were widened by horizontal stretching, and then the fracture occurred at the grain boundaries. However, no obvious grain deformation occurred under the vertical tension, and the columnar grain boundaries were the weak link of tensile fatigue. Thus, horizontal tensile strength with more grain boundaries was smaller than the vertical one.


Some twenty years ago Ruthemann and Lang shot a monoenergetic beam of electrons in the keV range through a thin foil of aluminum and measured the energy distribution of the emergent electrons. They noticed that while most of the beam penetrated the metal without an appreciable loss of energy, there was a distinct group of electrons which lost very nearly 15 eV. When a different metal was substituted for aluminum, the same phenomenon was observed except that the characteristic energy loss differed from metal to metal. The explanation of this effect was not long in coming. Some of the electrons lost a certain definite amount of energy by exciting longitudinal plasma oscillations inside the metal at a frequency ωp characteristic of the particular metal. This cost the electron a "quantum" of energy ℏωp, where ℏ is Planck's constant; Pines called this quantum the "plasmon". The experiment, and the Bohm and Pines theory of it, marked the beginning of research into the properties of solid‐state plasmas.


Image segmentation based on multiple texture features has significant issues in the areas of content based image extraction, image outline recognition, medical image processing, remote sensing, image segmentation through pattern identification and monitoring in crowded public places. Active contour color recognition methods were developed for detecting and tracking object in sequential images. However, the presence of dynamic shadows was a critical issue in foreground segmentation. Therefore, multitextured-based object segmentation (MTOS) technique is proposed in this study for improving the detection and tracking of moving objects. The proposed technique first locates the objects and boundaries of images with the same label distributed with certain visual characteristics. Next, preprocessing technique is performed using median filtering to reduce the distortion and noise in video frames. Then, texture-based segmentation is carried out using an adaptive threshold-based approach to avoid distortions while detecting moving objects. Detecting moving regions is accomplished by comparing the current video frame from a reference background in a pixel-by-pixel manner with multiple texture features. The effectiveness of moving object image segmentation through texture features is evaluated. The experimental results show that our proposed technique performs better in terms of segmentation accuracy, segmentation time, peak signal to noise ratio and object detection rate.


e main purpose of this research is to investigate the influence of integrated information systems (IIS) on the use of advanced managerial accounting techniques (AMAT). To analyze this relationship, we employed structural equation modeling (SEM) on empirical data obtained from a sample of 105 Croatian companies. Empirical findings obtained through SEM confirmed a significant positive influence of one of the IIS features, IIS analytical capabilities, on the application of AMAT. Other theoretically interesting independent variables (IIS age, IIS implementation quality, company size, and business environment uncertainty) were also included in the SEM; however, the evaluated SEM failed to provide a good fit to the data, and the parameters were not significant. e findings of this study provide useful guidance for both IIS developers and users, as they indicate that the implementation of IIS with a higher level of analytical capabilities results in a higher level of AMAT use.


Investors need to be fully conversant with the differences in the way that bonds are structured, valued and traded. Bond Market Securities contains a wide range of methodologies that will help the reader to gain a good understanding of fixed income securities and some of their associated derivatives. Bond Market Securities investigates the fundamentals of fixed income analysis, reviewing the latest research and presenting it in an accessible way that is suitable for practitioners and graduate students alike. The research is summarized in a way that allows readers to apply results to their individual requirements. Important subjects are covered in a straightforward style, using only essential mathematics, while further references are listed in full so that the reader may undertake further research. Topics covered include: * Bond mathematics * Spot and forward rates * Yield curve fitting techniques * Term structure models * Credit derivatives in the fixed income markets * Stochastic models and option pricing * Hybrid securities * Forwards and futures * Market trading considerations and techniques * Mortgage-backed securities. Written by a debt markets professional with many years' experience trading bonds in the markets, the book focuses on the international nature of these instruments, allowing you to apply the techniques and applications covered in the book in every debt capital market, irrespective of geographical location. Bond Market Securities provides a concise and accessible description of the main elements of the markets, the instruments used and their applications, and will be of valuable use to both the experienced practitioner and the bond market novice. "Bond Market Securities is accessible to both scholars and practitioners, but sacrifices little in quantitative rigour or institutional detail. It will be added to my graduate reading lists!" Professor Steve Satchell, Faculty of Economics and Politics, Cambridge University "In bond markets it is easy to overcomplicate things with too much jargon, too many technical terms and too many long mathematical formulae. Moorad's book brings refreshing clarity to the subject, helping show how (and why) these markets really work." Peter Matthews, Senior Credit Trader and Head of FRN Trading, ABN Amro Bank NV "Moorad is a rare combination -- technically and intellectually brilliant and blessed with the personality and ability to communicate effectively with the rest of us. He has the ability to demystify the seemingly most complex concepts and an enthusiasm for his subject that shines through his writing and captures the reader's interest." Martin Barber, Partner, KPMG Consulting


Our lab has observed that dopaminochrome (DAC), an oxidized form of dopamine, is cytotoxic to the mesencephalic cell line MN9D and induces an inflammatory response in the microglial cell line BV2. Dopamine is highly susceptible to oxidation and may form DAC when exposed to an oxidizing environment, leading to polymerization of DAC into neuromelanin, of which DAC is a major component. We believe the formation of DAC and its subsequent aggregation to neuromelanin may play a role in the progression of Parkinson's disease due to its proinflammatory and cytotoxic properties. In this study, we examined the effect of DAC in vivo. DAC (10 nmoles) was stereotaxically injected into the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc) of Sprague Dawley rats. Five, ten, and twenty days post‐surgery, the brains were harvested and assessed for inflammation and neurodegeneration. Results to date suggest that acute administration of 10 nmoles DAC is sufficient to induce activation of SNpc resident microglia without any apparent neurodegeneration. The profile of the resulting inflammation and the effect of microglial inhibition prior to DAC injection will be further assessed. (Supported in part by NIGMS 008306)


Due to harmonic distortion, voltage dips, voltage swells, and frequency variations, power quality is the most crucial problem in the distribution system. A device which is connected in series known as Dynamic voltage Restorer is smaller in size, has a higher energy storage capacity, and is more power-efficient than other specialized power devices, is used in this paper to compensate for voltage dips. In this study, the voltage drop at various dipped values is balanced using space vector pulse width modulation approach. Employing Fast Fourier Transform analysis, the Total harmonic Distortion values are also computed and analyzed for two different conditions that is having filter unit and absence of filter respectively is utilized in the DVR section. The analysis shows the improvement in the Total harmonic Distortion by incorporating the filter section is also assessed.


This research is aimed at describing motivational features, achievement goals, and the related affective positive outcomes of young athletes in Serbia. Also, we wanted to examine the extent to which achievement aims, according to AGT, and motivation, according to SDT, can predict affective positive outcomes. The sample consisted of young athletes (N=227), of both genders, aged 15-18 years, who train different individual and group sports. The subjects completed questionnaires assessing goal orientation, sport motivation, satisfaction with individual performance and ability utilization, positive and negative affects and a subjective vitality scale. The subjects in the Serbian sample manifested high levels of positive affective outcomes, higher levels of more autonomous types of extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation, and higher task aims in comparison to ego aims. Based on a multiple and hierarchical linear regression, the concepts of SDT were identified as significant predictors of affective positive outcomes, first of all intrinsic motivation and amotivation, while the concepts originating from AGT such as ego and task-aimed orientation, did not significantly predict affective positive outcomes. The results of this study highlight the importance of motivation for the realization of positive affective outcomes that the young can accomplish in sport, thus indicating the possibility of coach education.


Abstract Commercial human access to suborbital space tourism as a segment within the commercial space transportation industry has been rapidly evolving. This study uses a competitive analysis appro...


ALHONEN, PENTTI, HYVÄRINEN, TARJA and POGREBOFF, SERGEI: Rhythmically laminated sublittoral lake sediments in an eutrophicated bay. Bull. Geol. Soc. Finland 63, Part 1, 59—66. The annual rhytmic lamination of sediments is a widely known and throughly studied feature, but observations have mostly been made on core samples obtained from the deepest part of a lake basin or from a depth of at least 15 m. In Olkkolanlahti Bay and northern Tiirinselkä, which are hypertrophic water bodies and parts of the large lake Päijänne (Central Finland), clearly stratifed sediments have been found in the sublittoral zone at water depths of 1.2 and 2.2 m. All of the sediment cores obtained here exhibit light and dark laminae with varying diatom abundance. They may therefore be regarded as rhythmical laminations. Their thickness (+ 20 mm per couplet) was considerable in comparison to most laminae recorded in annually laminated sediments.


The shoot tip of konjac was used as explants for callus induction, bud differentiation and plant regeneration. It showed that the best shoot tip is stripped from the sterile material in vitro. The shoot tip was raised after 30 d, then was gave the wound all around it and cultured on MS + 0.6 mg/L 6-BA +0.1 mg/L NAA for callus induction. The callus was differentiated to bud on MS +2.0 mg/L 6-BA + 0.5 mg/L NAA for the callus induction. All adventitious buds rooted and formed whole plants in the rooting medium containing 1/2 MS + 0.1 mg/L NAA and 100% shoots can form a complete plant.


The aim of this research is to determine the level of anxiety experienced by the personnel for the 25 th Winter Universiade Coordination Center and to observe whether there is any reaction against some demographical factors. Spielberg State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) was implemented as pre-test and post-test on 79 women and 144 men, 223 in total working for the coordination 4 months and 4 days to the competitions to acquire data about the level of anxiety. Results. Frequency analysis for the SPSS program, independent samples t-tests and one way ANOVA were applied during the statistical evaluation of the acquired data. Conclusions. According to the data acquired, the study concludes that the trait anxiety level experienced by the personnel of the coordination decreased as days passed toward the beginning of the competition and in contrast, state anxiety level of them increased as the beginning of the competition approached.


The invention discloses a bionic wet-type haze-resisting light mask. Dry-type filtering of an original mask is changed into wet-type adsorption, and a dust removing principle is changed essentially. According to the bionic wet-type haze-resisting light mask, hydrophilic cellular materials are used for forming a wet frame, after a proper amount of moisture is absorbed, water adheres to the surfaces of holes, and a complex and zigzag space water surface system is formed. When air with dust haze passes through a zigzag hole channel, the dust haze can collide with hole walls and be adsorbed by the wet surfaces, the purpose of haze removing is achieved, and the function is similar to that of a respiratory system. In addition, under a high-humidity environment, the dust haze can be removed due to steam atomization. During air sucking, negative pressure is generated partially, a dew point can be lowered, fog generation can be promoted, and the function of dust haze removing can be enhanced.


ABSTRACT Advancing the performance of collaborations requires not only shared performance indicators, but also shared performance routines. Collaborative performance summits offer partners a routine for jointly explicating goals, exchanging performance information, examining progress, and exploring actions. However, summits can easily devolve into pointless talking shops or political warzones. Research has identified what ingredients shape a summit, but how exactly these ingredients interact and produce summit outcomes is less well understood. Through the systematic observation of eight summits, we identify and precisely describe 13 interaction patterns. These findings can be tested through future research and inform the design of summits.


This paper presents a sociolinguistics research on multilingual society which aims to describe
the language attitudes and language choice of the food sellers of Tegal food stalls (warteg) in
Semarang toward Tegal dialect of Javanese Language (TL). The language choice research was
also done to support the respondents' answer in language attitude questions. The data was
collected during June and July 2016 to warteg food sellers in Semarang as the respondents.
The questionnaires were assessed about their agreement or disagreement for 10 statements on
a five-point Likert type scale. The respondents were also being asked about the language used
to talk to others in their daily activities. Using mean score, Likert type formula and
Independent t test, the results indicated that the total 111 respondents still have positive
attitudes toward TL even though they live outside of Tegal area. They prefer to use TL than
other languages to talk to other Tegalese.


During the last decade, parallel programming has evolved in an unprecedent way. Fifteen years ago, the future of parallel computing seemed to consist on the advent of multicore processors composed by an ever-increasing number in the core count per CPU, and their interconnection to form larger clusters. Programming models, such as OpenMP1 that allows to transform sequential C and Fortran codes into parallel versions with low effort, without requiring to explicitly handle threads or to share memory among them, seemed to be the winner choice in a world where computers would include more and more cores inside a single chip. Message-passing paradigms, such as MPI,2 provided a solution to interconnect these computers in larger facilities. Suddenly, the use of dedicated hardware, originally designed to render graphics, to perform general computations, changed the rules of the game. The advent of GPUs as general computing device and their associated programming model, CUDA,3 steadily colonized the TOP500 supercomputing list.4 The success of this computing model, composed of very simple computational units that are orchestrated to perform the same operations on an increasing number of data elements, made the landscape of supercomputing much more interesting. Since GPU programming is not precisely an easy task, the last ten years saw the rise of new programming models for heterogeneous systems, which aim to offer a unified view of the different computational units. These proposals intend to reduce the complexity of parallel programming, while keeping the performance obtained by their manually programmed counterparts. To succeed, these proposals should pass the test of time, being extensible enough to include new computing devices that still do not exist. New computing architectures, such as the family of XeonPhi coprocessors,5 pose new challenges to the designers of these high-level parallel programming models. To raise the level of abstraction, parallel programming patterns have emerged as a way of expressing parallelism in existing sequential applications. Many algorithms match with parallel patterns, being easily exploitable by heterogeneous parallel architectures.6 Algorithmic skeletons are commonly used to express parallel patterns since the 90s.7 They abstract the application functionalities from the implementation details, allowing a common representation of algorithms in multiple and diverging parallel platforms. In this context is where the ''High-Level Parallel Programming'' conference takes place. Starting in 2001, HLPP has gathered specialists from all around the globe to discuss recent advances in the topic of how to develop better software frameworks that cope with this increasing level of complexity. The particular format of the HLPP conference, with informal proceedings distributed among its attendants, allows the presentation of cutting-edge, ongoing work that receive direct feedback from the audience, thus enriching the research carried out. In an era of big conferences that attract several hundreds of researchers that should compete for the attention of the audience, scattered among different tracks that take place in parallel, the HLPP series of workshop/symposia keeps the spirit of specialist meetings, where all the speakers are equally accessible and where interesting discussions are carried out after each presentation. This special issue of the International Journal of Parallel Programming contains revised papers, selected from those presented at The 10th International Symposium on High-Level Parallel Programming and Applications (HLPP 2017), held in Valladolid, Spain, July 10-11th, 2017. The program committee of HLPP 2017 accepted 14 papers out of 20 full paper submissions, covering both foundational and practical issues in high-level parallel programming and applications. Authors of several selected papers were invited to submit extended versions to this special issue. Nine papers went through the peer review process of Concurrency and Computation: Practice and Experience. Finally, seven papers were selected to be published in this special issue.


The aim of this paper is to present a comparative study, from the point of view of the stability, for the current and voltage controllers applied to the STATCOM. It is well known that the STATCOM is considered as a controllable AC voltage source behind a leakage reactance. But due to its shunt connection, the STATCOM can be also regarded as a controllable AC current source. Considering these characteristics, two kinds of control strategies can be utilized. The first one, acting on the current injected by the STATCOM and the second one acting on the voltage supplied by it. In the last one, there is only one manner to measure the feedback signal, whereas in the current control there are two ones. Additionally, either a typical PI (proportional integral) or a PR (proportional resonant) controller can be used for the purpose of enhancing the steady state response of the controller. A comparative study of these alternatives is presented, as well as computer simulations on PSCAD, so as to verify the performance of the controllers.


Promoter methylation of the O6-methylguanine-DNA-methyltransferase (MGMT) gene has been considered a prognostic marker and has become more important in the treatment of glioblastoma. However, reports on the correlation between MGMT and clinical outcomes in Chinese glioblastoma patients are very scarce. In this study, quantitative methylation data were obtained by the pyrosequencing of tumor tissues from 128 GBM patients. The median overall survival (OS) was 13.1 months, with a 1-year survival of 45.3%. The pyrosequencing data were reproducible based on archived samples yielding data for all glioblastomas. MGMT promoter methylation was detected in 75/128 cases (58.6%), whereas 53/128 (41.4%) cases were unmethylated. Further survival analysis also revealed that methylation was an independent prognostic factor associated with prolonged OS but not with progression-free survival (PFS) (p = 0.029 and p = 0.112, respectively); the hazard radios were 0.63 (95% CI: 0.42–0.96) and 0.72 (95% CI: 0.48–1.09), respectively. These data indicated that MGMT methylation has prognostic significance in patients with newly diagnosed high-grade glioblastoma undergoing alkylating agent-based chemotherapy after surgical resection.


Together with a friend, my mother's father left Sri Lanka (then, British Ceylon) in the second decade of the twentieth century and, having stopped off, so it is said in the Canary Islands and perhaps elsewhere as well, eventually found himself in Jamaica (then too, of course, a British colony). Who knows what motivation prompted this journey halfway across the imperial world. Who knows what imagined horizon he traveled toward. His name was T. H. Samil (the initials standing for Tana Hewage—his ge, or family name). In Jamaica, he became T. H. Samiel. He was Sinhalese, from a small town called Angulugaha in the south of the country, not far from the port city of Galle. I never met him. He died in 1956. I have little idea of who he was. His family in Sri Lanka, it appears, was in the jewelry business, and in Jamaica, Samiel established himself in the trade, opening a store in downtown Kingston, on Harbour Street, near the fabled Myrtle Bank Hotel. This was the great hotel of its age in Jamaica. It had been converted by the colonial government from an entertainment and social center of sorts into a grand hotel in preparation for the Great Exhibition of 1891. Like much else in Kingston, Myrtle Bank was destroyed in the 1907 earthquake, but by the time my grandfather arrived in Jamaica it had been rebuilt and sold to the United Fruit Company. For a while Samiel seemed to prosper in his business—enough, anyway, to support some members of the growing population of Indians in Jamaica and to send money back to Angulugaha, to build the house to which he must have dreamed of returning. But, alas, this was not to happen. He formed a union with a woman of Indian descent from Black River, St. Elizabeth, named Iris Black, with whom he had three children. My mother, Myrrol, was their firstborn. I never knew Iris either; she died in 1945. Samiel didn't marry her until after their second child, Arthur, was born. Only Lilavati was born in wedlock. What was he waiting for? Did he wonder what it would mean


'Curation', we are told in the publisher's notes for a new book (Bhaskar, 2016), 'is one of the most gripping and unignorable [sic] business ideas for our time'. At a time when the 'digital dark age' has entered public consciousness with its own Wikipedia entry, and when we are all supposed to be as much deluged with data as overloaded with information, the need for good data curation needs little emphasis. One question which needs to be addressed at the start is how best to understand the concept of data curation: specifically, how does it relate to seemingly more general ideas, such as digital curation, and also to more specific ideas such as research data management in which libraries are now very involved (Cox and Pinfield, 2014; Jisc, 2016). If a justification for such conceptual questioning is needed, it is provided by Cox and Harvey, who note, in a textbook of digital curation, that 'effective digital curation is based on the use of conceptual models' (Oliver and Harvey, 2016: 42). We do need to be clear what we are talking about. There are two general, and arguably complementary, ways of answering this question. One relies on the idea that all digital documents are, at root, files of binary data – bitstreams or bytestreams. Digital curation and data curation are therefore the same thing: simply 'the management and preservation of digital material' (Abbott, 2008). This viewpoint is expressed in definitions such as the UK Digital Curation Centre's understanding of data as 'any information in binary digital form', and the US Research Library Group's understanding of digital preservation as 'the managed activities necessary for ensuring both the long-term maintenance of a bytestream and continued accessibility of its contents' (Oliver and Harvey, 2016: 45, 56). The idea that digital and data curation are in essence the same is exemplified by the choice of material in the most comprehensive bibliography of the topic (Bailey, 2016); although the listing contrasted with a wider


This research aimed to explore information and communication technology (ICT) coordinators' discourse in relation to ICT integration in a sample of Irish post-primary schools. As ICT leaders in their schools, how they conceptualise ICT significantly influences school-based policy and use. The research involved semi-structured interviews with a sample of nine ICT coordinators in the Mid-west region of Ireland. The study found that the coordinators drew heavily on the prevailing policy discourse when justifying the use of ICT in schools. However, they tended to see the evolution of ICT as something beyond their control and perceived 'progress' only in relation to hardware acquisition. The findings suggest that the shift from 'electronic janitor' to pedagogical leader is in its infancy in Irish schools. Policy-makers may need to take greater cognisance of the importance of pedagogical leadership within a context dominated by a focus on acquiring hardware and resources. At a broader level, educators need to define their collective vision for ICT, rather than placing sole responsibility on a single agent of change.


The influence of globalization has changed the perspective of the organizations to their employees. Employees, who were seen as cost in the past, are now treated as shareholders, internal customers and most valuable capital. In this context, the organizational commitment of the employee in terms of organizations has become extremely important. While it is known that many factors influence employee commitment, it has been investigated in relation to these factors in social anxiety.


The article deals with the problem of implementing one-way object control with the help of X-ray radiation. Various geometries and materials of radiation detectors are considered. The efficiency of detection of scattered radiation by means of inorganic and organic scintillation detectors with various effective atomic numbers is estimated. Calculations and experiments to determine the signal-to-noise ratio for scanning systems with registration of the radiation beam reflected from the object were carried out taking into account dynamic blurring. Methods for manufacturing detectors that increase the collection efficiency of secondary low-energy quanta formed in the body of the scintillator and reduce the overall dimensions structure are considered. The conditions for achieving the maximum of the efficiency of detection of light photons are determined and the designs proposed for their practical realization.


School children face a lot of emotional issues during the period of development. India is home land to more than 243 million adolescents of the country's population. School children were reported high Stress for 37% and children of 16-19 years experienced more Anger. Addressing the impact of Stress and Anger, Thought Field Therapy helps the children maintaining a balance in emotional and behavioural factors. The researcher aims to exhibit the effects of Thought Field Therapy on Stress and Anger among School children. There are exiguous proportion of studies related to Thought Field Therapy on stress and anger among school children. Hence, the researcher has an interest in replication of Thought Field Therapy among school children to reduce Stress and Anger thereby maintaining good balance in emotional factors and promoting better academic performance.


The far‐IR spectrum of kappa‐casein, a giant molecular diode, has been obtained in the region 50–250 cm−1 and its electronic conduction properties have been determined. The conductivity is found to be four orders of magnitude higher in the F‐helix form than in a globule.


This digital book development research aims to see the level of historical awareness of high school students in the city of Pangkalan Kerinci, Pelalawan Regency, Riau Province, towards learning the local history of the Belian Traditional Ceremony, which is one of the medical traditions of the Animism and Dynamism of the Petalangan Tribe. The population of this study was all students Public High School Class 1 in the city of Pangkalan Kerinci, Pelalawan district, Riau province. Consisting of Public High School One Pangkalan Kerinci, Publich High School Two Pangkalan Kerinci, and Public High School of Bernas Pangkalan Kerinci. The sampling technique used is Observation, Interview, Distribution of Questionnaires, Documentation, and Tests. This study uses the Discovery Learning Model, Humanistic Approach, and Content Validity Test with the Aikens method and the Alpha coefficient Reliability Test with the ICC (Interclass Correlation Coeficient) method so as to get accurate and significant results. The results of this study indicate that (1) high school students in the city of Pangkalan Kerinci still lack awareness of local history, (2) history learning media is still very conventional, (3) students' historical awareness of local history preservation is still low and tends to be westernized.


Web users are spending more of their time and creative energies within online social networking systems. While many of these networks allow users to export their personal data or expose themselves to third-party web archiving, some do not. Facebook, one of the most popular social networking websites, is one example of a "walled garden" where users' activities are trapped. We examine a variety of techniques for extracting users' activities from Facebook (and by extension, other social networking systems) for the personal archive and for the third-party archiver. Our framework could be applied to any walled garden where personal user data is being locked.


The liquid lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) alloy is of great interest for applications in future nuclear reactors. The structure and clustering of alloying elements have been investigated on an extended range of temperature (125-720 °C) by high temperature X-ray diffraction (HT-XRD), XPS and scanning photoemission microscopy (SPEM) at the ELETTRA synchrotron in Trieste. After melting the short-range order in liquid metal corresponds to a cuboctahedral arrangement of atoms that progressively evolves towards an icosahedral one as temperature increases. Such process, which is completed around 720 °C, is accompanied by a micro-chemical re-arrangement of atoms with changes of cluster size and composition. At high temperature the atom distribution results to be more homogeneous and the average size of clusters noticeably smaller.


1ME Student, (E & TC) Signal processing, TSSM's BSCOER, Pune, Maharashtra, India. 2 Professor, (E & TC) Signal processing, TSSM's BSCOER, Pune, Maharashtra, India ---------------------------------------------------------------------***---------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract Car accidents and fatalities are a measure concern in today's world. Most of the accidents on highways are of type "front impact" which is because of un-ability of driver to identify / judge the front vehicle's movement due to lack of attention while driving. This project aims to address this issue by recognizing risk ahead of time and provide warning to user about the risk. Till today lot of work has already happened to tackle this problem and some of the projects are even implemented in high-end vehicles like VOLVO, BMW etc. Most of these projects use stereo vision algorithms and machine learning algorithms which are extensively resource hungry. So, these algorithms need expensive platforms like DSP or multi-core processors to implement and work at real time. Hence such products become expensive and out of reach from low range or mid range vehicle users. Current project will try to use simple Monovision algorithm to achieve same result without using resource hungry libraries. It does not depend on machine learning techniques hence not needed to have huge learning dataset. Project is written in C programming language and uses OpenCV as image processing library, CMake as building tool so as to be portable on any embedded platform. Project design includes design blocks like segmentation, blob extraction and validation and tracking on top of which FCW application works. This project provides valid audio-visual warning when any collision risk is identified in daylight conditions. As the project needs single camera and simple algorithm, it can be deployed on any low cost ARM controllers like Raspberry Pi. Hence overall product cost can be in within reach of low or mid range car users.


Are serious growth delays caused by malnutrition and neglect permanent or reversible? The effects of institutionalization and international adoption on children's physical growth are estimated with meta-analysis. Studies with sufficient data to compute differences between adoptees and the reference population (33 papers with 122 study outcomes) were collected through Web of Science, ERIC (Education Resource Information Center), PsycINFO (Psychological Literature), and Medline (U.S. National Library of Medicine) (1956–2006). The influence of pre- and postadoption care on height, weight, and head circumference was tested. Effect sizes (d) and confidence intervals (CIs) around the point estimate for the growth lag indices were computed. The more time spent in institutional care, the more the children lagged behind in physical growth (d = 1.71, 95% CI: 0.82–2.60, n = 893). At adoptive placement, the children showed large delays in height, weight, and head circumference (d = −2.39 to −2.60; n = 1331–3753). Although after adoption, they showed almost complete catch-up of height (d = −0.57, 95% CI: −0.87 to −0.27, n = 3437 adoptees) and weight (d = −0.72, 95% CI: −1.04 to −0,39, n = 3259 adoptees), catch-up of head circumference seemed slower and remained incomplete (d = −1.56, 95% CI: −2.27 to −0.85, n = 527). Later age at arrival was related to less complete catch-up of height and weight. International adoption leads to substantial catch-up of height and weight but not of head circumference, demonstrating differential plasticity of children's physical growth.


In this paper we will report on the use of real-time sound spatialization in Challenging Bodies, a trans-disciplinary performance project at the University of Regina. Using well-understood spatialization techniques mapped to a custom interface, a computer system was built that allowed live spatial control of ten sound signals from on-stage performers. This spatial control added a unique dynamic element to an already ultramodern performance. The system is described in detail, including the main advantages over existing spatialization systems: simplicity, usability, customization and scalability


We give astronomic interpretation to mythological statements, relating to origin of Moon, Mars as previous earth satellite, origin of Venus, origin of Red Spot and loss of Jupiter core, by impact with a large body, the Sumerian Nibiru


In this paper, a stochastic frontier production model is estimated on panel data, and technical inefficiency indices are computed for Tunisian manufacturing Þrms over the 1983-1993 time period. The most commonly used one-sided distributions of the inefficiency error term are speciÞed, namely the truncated normal, the half-normal and the exponential distributions. A generalized version of the halfnormal, which does not embody the zero-mean restriction, is also explored. For each distribution, the likelihood function and the counterpart of Jondrow et al. (1982) estimator of technical efficiency are explicitly stated. Based on our data set, formal tests lead to a strong rejection of the zero-mean restriction embodied in the half normal distribution. Our main conclusion is that the degree of measured inefficiency is very sensitive to the postulated assumptions about the distribution of the one-sided error term. The estimated inefficiency


Chapter 1.—In the 1970s, competition policy in the United States banking sector changed from exempting competition to liberalization and deregulation. Competition not only plays an important role in allocational efficiency but it is also essential for long-term economic growth. This chapter develops a model of banking contributions to evaluate to what extent banks affect the level of competition in the banking sector, and tests the model's predictions using a novel detailed dataset which includes all contributions made by banks from 1993 to 2010 in the United States. Controlling for banks' characteristics, the results are consistent with the model's predictions and show show that a higher level of contributions increases the Lerner index (as a measure of competition) or in the other words, decreases the level of competition. Chapter 2.—This chapter provides the first empirical evidence that market structure affects the electoral power of firms as special interest groups. Firms not only affect the election outcomes by making contributions to their preferred candidates, they also enforce social norms among their members by encouraging them to vote for the candidate with the most closely-aligned interests. This chapter uses a linear probability model to analyze 574 open-seat races for the House of Representatives in the United States between 1990 and 2014. The results show that, even when controlling for the total value of contributions made to a candidate, political donations made by firms with high market power have a positive effect on the candidates' probability of winning. The findings are consistent with the idea from collective action theory that concentrated industries are more likely to behave as an


246 focal mechanism solutions of ML≥2.0 earthquakes in Anhui and adjacent areas since 1974 are calculated using maximal vertical amplitude ratio of Pg and Sg.By using system clustering method,preponderant composite focal mechanism solutions of each subarea in different period is calculated to analyze the characteristic of regional stress field in each subarea.Statistic analysis of stress axes parameters shows that the predominant direction is approximate to the stress field direction in East China.The coherence parameter of focal mechanism solutions in Anhui Area drops obviously before mid-strong earthquakes.


An external cavity semiconductor laser configuration, which employs fiber grating as feedback is reported in this paper. The fiber grating is fabricated by UV light exposure, with reflectivity of 50%. At injection current of 50 mA, output is over 1 mW and the MSR is 42 dB. The laser wavelength is tuned by applying strain along the fiber grating and by heating the fiber grating. With the applying-strain method, the tuning range of 2 nm is obtained.


One community that has a complex marriage system is Toraja, it is one of the tribes in Indonesia who still maintains their ancestral cultural traditions in their social life. The institutions in the Toraja communities are always associated with aluk (teachings or rules of life). This study aims to describe the educational values and functions in the text ma'parapa (silence) in the procession of rampanan kapa' (wedding ceremony) in Tana Toraja. This type of research is qualitative research, and the research data is in the form of text quotations that describe the educational value contained in the ma'parapa text in the procession of the rampanan kapa' in Tana Toraja. The results of this study indicate that the educational value contained in the text ma'parapa in the procession of rampanan kapa' consists of 1) the value of religious education, namely to educate all people always to be grateful, to trust, and to exalt God's power, 2) moral education, namely to express respect or in the sense of asking for permission before doing something in front of others by saying the word tabe, 3) social education, which is useful for the community to foster life with its environment, 4) cultural education, namely inviting all people to always maintain and develop marriage customs in it there are procedures for getting married which contain many moral messages that need to be applied in everyday life. The educational function of the ma'parapa text in the procession of rampanan kapa' in Tana Toraja includes 1) the function of education for family and cultural groups, which is to encourage the younger generation to dare to speak in public, to be able to implement good behavior in daily life -day, and so that the younger generation can interpret advice, and relationships with God Almighty, and 2) to understand aluk rampanan kapa' as a very sacred level of the ceremony where if there is a violation it will be sanctioned by fellow humans and also from the Creator.


In this paper we consider the economic efficiency of multi-tiered resource allocation bidding systems where allocations are based on monetary bids leading to a competitive congestion game model. We consider resources that are priced and proportionally divided among the users. This paper focuses on two aspects: (i) the impact of wealth and (ii) the inefficiency of Nash equilibrium. Motivated by the recent debate on Net-Neutrality we consider the impact of two distinct categories of players, one with higher endowment than the other. We define Wealth impact factor (WIF) as the measure of disparity of pay-offs between the rich and the poor when the game is at NE. Surprisingly, improving WIF requires quadratic effort by the poor players. which shows the disparity between the rich and the poor when considering multiple tiers of service. We also consider the inefficiency of Nash equilibrium that arises in resource allocation. The inefficiency of utilities achieved in Nash equilibrium, measured by the price of anarchy, has been shown to be at least 3/4 by Johari and Tsitsiklis. Since the effective utilities of the players depends on the payments, we define the social objective as a function of pay-offs and express the price of anarchy in terms of a measure that we term as the economic efficiency factor (ECF). We show show that this inefficiency can be as large as n, the number of players for linear utilities. Interestingly, for strictly concave utilities the ECF is shown to be bounded, based on the behavior of the derivatives of the utility functions.


T138067 is a new compound synthesized on the basis of sulfonamide drugs. It becomes one of the hotspots in the anti-tumor drugs study because of its binding to microtubule uniquely. This paper reviews research advancement on the anti-tumor mechanism, anti-multidrug resistance of T138067 and its clinic research.


Family therapy is a relatively recent development. Consequently, there is still much confusion about it, as well as a dearth of systematic information on how it is currently being used. In this paper, a conceptual distinction is made between individual therapy (I.T.), family member therapy (F.M.T.) and family unit therapy (F.U.T.) in terms of their rationale, aims, the nature of the therapeutic relationship and confidentiality. Some types of F.U.T., which alone is viewed as novel, are briefly outlined, with special attention to their common core. This framework is further used in reporting the results of the first small scale survey of family therapy in Australia. Lastly, the implications of F.U.T. for health and welfare policies are considered, with specific recommendations for social action and further research on the F.U.T. approach.


Aiming at the lack of feeding precision and stablity,according to the drilling process of the hot fix rhinestone and the study of feeding mechanism,the drilling way of the hot fix rhinestone was determined and the research on the machine to avoid the resonance was done.The current loop,velocity loop and position loop ring control scheme were used in control system.Based on current loop controller and speed loop control parameters,the PID parameters of the position loop were determined.The performance of the systems was studied by the Matlab.The results of simulation show that the feeding system stable and meets the process requirements.


Microoptical components can be replicated in various thermoplastic materials, using micromolds fabricated through LIGA or alternative techniques like anisotropic etching of silicon or mechanical micromachining. The replication technique itself can be fulfilled on dedicated machines or on in-house fabricated tools. We report as demonstrators high aperture microlenses, diffraction gratings and microprisms, single or in arrays. The replication technique is well-suited for high-performance microfabrication in small size enterprises.


A simple model is proposed for predicting the fatigue life of three-dimensional (3D) fiber-polymer composite materials for certain cyclic load conditions. The fatigue life can be easily calculated using the model with three empirically determined constants: (i) the ultimate strength of the 3D composite, (ii) the ultimate strength of the two-dimensional (2D) laminate, which is identical in every respect to the 3D composite (e.g., same fiber layup pattern, fiber volume content) except for the through-thickness reinforcement, and (iii) the slope parameter (m) of the fatigue-life (S-log N) curve for the 2D laminate. It is shown that the S-log N curves for stitched composites under cyclic tension-tension and compression-compression loading and for z-pinned composites under cyclic bending loading can be accurately predicted using this model. This model can also approximate the tensile fatigue life of composite lap joints reinforced by stitches or z-pins. However, the model is not reliable in predicting the fatigue life of 3D composites in all cases. It is only accurate when the fatigue damage mechanisms and failure mode of the 3D composite are not altered significantly by the through-thickness reinforcement. Consequently, a limitation of the model is that a priori knowledge of the fatigue damage process of the 3D composite is needed before it can be used with confidence to predict fatigue life. This problem is exasperated by the paucity of information available on the fatigue mechanisms of many types of 3D composites. Until this problem is resolved, the model should only be applied to those types of 3D composites in which their fatigue processes have been determined.


Famous Naimark-Han-Larson dilation theorem for frames in Hilbert spaces states that every frame for a separable Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}$ is image of a Riesz basis under an orthogonal projection from a separable Hilbert space $\mathcal{H}_1$ which contains $\mathcal{H}$ isometrically. In this paper, we derive dilation result for p-approximate Schauder frames for separable Banach spaces. Our result contains Naimark-Han-Larson dilation theorem as a particular case.


Purpose – The purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of the net working capital, as one of value drivers, on the enterprise value, by examining the relationships between strategy of the net working capital management and enterprise value creation efficiency. Design/methodology/approach – Article is based on an analysis of the literature and the use of financial analysis tools in the form of efficiency measures in relation to the selected companies in the energy power sector in Poland. Findings – The analysis confirmed the existence of a relationship between the applied strategy of net working capital management and enterprise value creation efficiency. Originality/value – The study should be regarded as a starting point for further in-depth analysis of the impact of working capital, as one of value drivers, on the enterprise value. keywords: value drivers, working capital, efficiency of value creation


In this research, we investigate a position measurement system for pile driving in construction foundation work using a laser range finder. Usually, in the pile driving process, pile positions are first marked using surveying instruments and piles are then driven at the measured positions. On the other hands, the proposed system measures a pile or piling machine and estimates the pile driving position directly in order to realize more accurate and efficient pile driving. In this paper, our laser range finder based surveying system is extended to a pile driving position measurement system. We present a method to detect circular part from laser range finder data in order to extract pile driving part from the scan data of the whole piling machine. We also test the feasibility of the proposed approach in a real construction field.


Concealed information test based on P300 and machine learning has become increasingly popular in the fields of cognitive psychology. Numerous studies have set up mock crime scenario to identify changes in EEG cognitive components. However, only two kinds of subjects are taken into account in most previous studies. Therefore, if an innocent person had been aware of case-related information, i.e., probe items, which is likely to happen in practice, recognition capability will be significantly compromised. In order to simulate practical cases, three kinds of subjects needed to be discriminated, including guilty, innocent and informed. 36 subjects went through a mock crime scenario, and EEG signals obtained on 8 electrodes were analyzed. After preprocessing, the discrete wavelet packet decomposition was used to extract EEG features. Subsequently, a multi-scale wavelet kernel extreme learning machine classifier is proposed to recognize the group to which a specific subject belongs. To further reduce computation, Cholesky decomposition is introduced during the calculation of the output weights. Our results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve good recognition performance and has low computational burden.


Structured Abstract Objective To examine the impact of a weight loss intervention upon follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) levels in postmenopause. Design and Methods Participants were postmenopausal, overweight, glucose-intolerant women not using exogenous estrogen (n=382) in the Diabetes Prevention Program. Women were randomized to intensive lifestyle change (ILS) with the goals of weight reduction of at least 7% of initial weight and 150 minutes per week of moderate intensity exercise, metformin 850 mg, or placebo administered twice a day. Results Randomization to ILS led to small increases in FSH between baseline and 1-year follow-up vs. placebo (2.3 IU/l vs. -0.81 IU/l, p<0.01). Increases in FSH were correlated with decreases in weight (r=-0.165, p<0.01) and E2 (r=-0.464, p<0.0001) after adjustment for age, race/ethnicity, and randomization arm. Changes in FSH were still significantly associated with changes in weight even after adjustment for E2 levels. Metformin users had reductions in weight but non-significant changes in FSH and E2 levels vs. placebo. Conclusions Weight loss leads to small increases in FSH among overweight, postmenopausal women, potentially through pathways mediated by endogenous estrogen as well as other pathways.


This study focuses on the innovative design of massage-mechanisms for massage chair.  In this paper, we synthesize the massage-mechanisms based on the modified Yan's creative design methodology. First, we analyze the topological structure and motion characteristics of existing massage mechanisms and conclude its design requirements and constraints. All existing massage mechanisms with beating and kneading functions are mechanisms with 2 degrees of freedom (DOF). The purpose of this paper is to synthesize all the feasible designs of massage mechanisms (including F=2 and F=3). For the mechanisms with 3 DOF, they must have 1 redundant degree of freedom. Then, based on the design requirements and constraints and modified Yan's creative design methodology, we synthesize 14 design concepts of massage-mechanisms for massage chair. One of the design concepts will be completed the practice including kinematic design, engineering drawing, and the prototype manufacture. As the results, we conclude that the new design has only 5 links (less than existing design) and same kneading and beating traces, and is better than existing design.