We consider the scattering of time
harmonic acoustic waves by a sound soft rough surface in three
dimensions. The analysis we develop holds in the case that the
incident wave is due to a point source situated above the
scattering surface. It does however not apply to the case of an
incident plane wave.The first part of the thesis settles the
question of existence and uniqueness of the scattering problem. The
scattered field is sought as a modified Brakhage-Werner ansatz.
This approach yields an boundary integral equation of the second
kind in the space of complex valued square integrable functions on
the scattering surface. In contrast to the case of bounded
obstacles, the integral operators occuring in this equation are not
compact so that the Riesz-Fredholm theory is not applicable.The
second part is concerned with the numerical solution of the
integral equation. To handle the infinite domain of integration the
integral equation is truncated in a first ap! proximation step to
an equation on a finite section of the real plane. For this, we
introduce a novel truncation scheme called multi-section method for
which we can proof convergence. In a second step standard
discretisation schemes for integral equations on bounded domains
can now be applied.The discretisation of the truncated equations
yields large and dense linear systems that must be solved by
iterative methods. It is therefore important to derive fast
matrix-vector multiplication schemes. We introduce an alternative
derivation of the canonical grid method that uses high order
approximations of the Dirac delta distribution. This approach
allows a rather simple implementation of the canonical grid method.
In addition our algorithm achieves an additional speed. For the
case of the single-layer potential operator we show the feasibility
of this method by numerical examples.


Purpose: This study aims to describe the visual and surgical outcomes of 810 eyes of 805 patients who underwent unilateral cataract surgery on the same day with 1 h of preoperative antibiotic regimen. Setting: Tertiary Care Ophthalmic Hospital. Design: Retrospective, descriptive study. Methods: This study comprised of consecutive adult patients who underwent preoperative cataract work up, received 1 h of preoperative antibiotic regimen, and underwent cataract surgery on the same day of consultation with a minimum 3-week follow-up period. This study describes the demographic profile, preoperative, intraoperative details, postoperative (PO) best-corrected visual acuity (BCVA), and surgical outcomes of these patients. Results: 810 eyes of 805 patients with a mean age of 61.0 ± 9.7 years, 50% had systemic and 9% had ocular comorbidities. The mean preoperative BCVA was 0.8 ± 0.7 LogMAR. Phacoemulsification was performed in 90.1%. Intraoperative complications had occurred in 8 (1%) eyes. The mean PO BCVA of the study group on PO day 1 (POD1) and PO 3 weeks was 0.13 ± 0.3 LogMAR and 0.07 ± 0.3 LogMAR, respectively. Our study showed that 95.68% had improvement in vision, while 96.8% achieved BCVA 6/18 or better. None had PO endophthalmitis. Comparison between preoperative and both POD 1 day and PO 3-week BCVA showed statistically significant improvement (P < 0.001). Conclusion: Our study results satisfied the benchmark set by the World Health Organization (WHO) for PO BCVA with good surgical outcome. Preoperative antibiotic applied 1 h before cataract surgery provided safety and comfort and with low risk for endophthalmitis. This strategy can be adopted to tackle the backlog of cataract surgeries due to COVID-19 (or any other emergency situation) in developing countries.


Overall uptake for a pilot bowel cancer screening programme in England using flexible sigmoidoscopy was 43%, dropping to 33% in the most deprived areas, an analysis has shown.

The report, published in the Journal of Medical Screening , covered 21 187 invitations sent to eligible people in six pilot areas during the first 14 months of the programme—March 2013 to May 2014.1 The six screening centre areas were in London, Norwich, Surrey, Tyneside, west Kent, and Wolverhampton. An explanatory letter was sent to all men …


The quantitative analysis method of soil microstructures by means of image processing technique is introduced. A quantitative evaluation index of microstructure factors such as scale, shape, directionality, plump etc. of pore and structure unit is discussed. According to the microstructure image processing of soils those are added some cement and solidified, a quantitative analysis method for microstructure features of soil contained some cement is demonstrated. It is showed that after the soil was added some cement and solidified, then at any maintained period, clay particles cant be found and it is changed into aggregated structure, the scale of aggregated structure is generally bigger than 20 μm, only few of the aggregated structure scaled between 2~5μm, the silt particles content is almost the same as before, the middle sand particles content with some pseudo sandy is increased clearly. According to the plump value of aggregated structure showed that the shapes of structures are generally oblate or near circles, the evidence of cement cementation is obviously.


Since the beneficial effects of B. acidophilus appear to depend upon a transformation of the intestinal flora, it follows that a mass inoculation is desirable. This means a maximum number of viable organisms per c.c. of pabulum. The usual recommendation on commercial preparations of fermented milk is that such milk be kept in a cool place preferably in the ice-box. Consequently, the influence of low temperature on the number of viable B. acidophilus in milk seemed worth investigating. The number of viable B. acidophilus in milk held in the icebox at about 97° C. was determined daily. The viable organisms were killed as follows: after 1 day—about 50 per cent.; after 2 days—about 75 per cent.; after 3 days about 90 per cent., etc. The obvious importance of having a large number of viable organisms is manifested in the necessity for increasing dosage in severe cases. In fact, it is likely that in cases reported as failures, a sufficient increase in the number of viable organisms administered might have resulted in success. The practice of ice-boxing B. acidophilus has little to recommend it beyond preserving the palatability of the culture and it is therefore more desirable to keep B. acidophilus at room temperature. A study was made of the influence of time and pressure in autoclaving milk, prior to inoculation with B. acidophilur, with respect to the growth of the organism. Milk was sterilized at 15 and 20 pounds pressure in the autoclave for different periods of time and inoculated with B. acidophilus. Subcultures were made from each set of flasks for 3 days on milk identically sterilized, thus obtaining acclimatization. On the basis of these comparative tests it was found that milk to be used for inoculation with B. acidophilus should be sterilized in the autoclave at 20 pounds pressure for 20 minutes, or at 15 pounds pressure for 20 to 30 minutes.


Collective action exerts positive and negative effects on entrepreneur groups in Wenzhou. The hitchhiking benefit is the incentive of forming collective action, the extra profit brought by social network is the inner motive power of collective action, and high density communication within network is the guarantee of stable cooperation in collective action. However, collective action can also bring hidden crises to Wenzhou entrepreneur groups, i.e., the weakening of interests-creating function, structural differentiation of collective action, and the dilemma of collective action difficult to overstep. When these covert crises are transformed into overt ones, collective action will magnify them and transform the individual crises into groups ones.


Perennial herbaceous vegetation, mainly marsh reed grass, (Calamagrostis canadensis (Michx) Beauv.), was sprayed with glyphosate on the day before planting one-year-old plugs of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta Dougl. var. latifolia Engelm.) and white spruce (Picea glauca (Moench) Voss) on cutover forest land north of Edson, Alberta. Spraying at 4.5 kg ai/ha, included spot and strip applications in June 1976, compared with unsprayed scalps and controls. At the same time, all treatments were repeated plus a 9 g, 22-8-2 fertilizer tablet for each seedling. Another experiment at the same site, begun on August 1, 1976, compared scalp, unfertilized control and glyphosate strip treatments, followed by planting of pine seedlings the day after spraying 4.5 kg ai/ha glyphosate. An adjacent experiment, also commenced on August 1, included dosages of 1.1 to 5.6 kg ai/ha with planting of pine seedlings in 4.5 kg/ha and in control plots in May 1977. August application of 2.2 kg/ha provided excellent initial vegetation c...


At the previous ASA meeting, Peter Rogers suggested that the loss by re-radiation imposes limitations on the energy that can be extracted from incoming ocean waves. In an attempt to answer this question, the authors consider the canonical problem of an infinitely long flexible circular cylinder floating on the surface of an infinitely deep ocean. The cylinder is assumed to be externally forced into heaving oscillations at fixed frequency, and the phasing of the oscillations corresponds to a traveling wave with a fixed wavelength, which is not necessarily the wavelength of the radiated water waves. The entrained mass and the energy radiated per unit length of the cylinder is derived in the low frequency limit by the method of matched asymptotic expansions. The derived analytical results are used in the approximate modification of the multi-degree-of-freedom model of a finite length multi-segmented cylinder vibrating under the influence of an incoming ocean wave. The influence of radiation losses are significant if the overall length of the device is much greater than the wavelength of the incoming water wave.


Amin et al., J. Endocrinology 48:307-317 (1970). Boime, L. et al. "Structure-function studies of gonadotropins using site-directed mutagenesis and gene transfer: design of a long-acting follitropin agonist," Chemical Abtstracts 123(1):347-356. Boorstein, W.R. et al., "Human chorionic gonadotropin J-subunit is encoded by at least eight genes arranged in tandem and inverted pairs." Nature 300:419–422 (1982). Boothby M. et al., "A Single Gonadotropin -Subunit Gene in Normal Tissue and Tumor-derived Cell Lines." Biol Chen 256:5121-5127 (1981). Braunstein et al. Endocrinology 91(4):1030-1036 (1972). Channing, C.P. et al., "Role of the Carbohydrate Residues of Human Chorionic Gonadotropin in Binding and Stimulation of Adenosine 3 5'-Monophosphate Accumulation by Por cine Granulosa Cells," Endocrinol 103:341-348 (1978). Corless et al., "Gonadotropin Beta Subunits Determine the Rate of Assembly and the Oligosaccharide Processing of Hormone Dimer in Transfected Cells," J Cell Biol 104:1173-1181 (1987). III USO05712122A


The objectives of this work were to evaluate germination capacity of Eugenia uniflora L. seeds and the growth of seedlings under shade conditions. The experiment was carried out at Experimental Research Area of the UNIGRAN ¾ Dourados, MS. Germination test was done with 300 seeds and germination percentage and emergence speed index were evaluated. At the third month after emergence, the seedling growth experiment was carried out in a randomized block design with three treatment (50% and 70% of sunlight and at full sunlight) with four replications of 15 seedlings each treatment. When seedlings presented 4, 5, 6 and 7 months of age, height and stem diameter were evaluated and at the final of the experiment, total dried weight of seedlings (g), leaf area (dm2), leaf weight rate - RPF (g/g) and leaf specific weight - PEF (g/dm2). Eugenia uniflora L. is specie of easy propagation by seeds presenting 65,7% of germination and emergence speed index of 3.34, and seeds began their germination process 23 days after sowing. Seedlings growth better under full sunlight conditions, where they showed biggest height, stem diameter, dried weight and leaf area.


With the evolution of Internet and Computer Technology, the digital videos are increasing explosively. There's an enormous number of videos available online. So how to get the interesting video clips from the massive video dataset quickly and efficiently has become an urgent problem in the field of content-based information retrieval. Content-Based searching and retrieval of video data has become a challenging and important issue among the search engines. Generally videos are retrieved from a large collection of videos based on the keyword which is only text. "Multimodal Fusion for Video Search Re-ranking" is a flexible and effective reranking method, and it is also called CR-Reranking, to improve the retrieval effectiveness. To offer high accuracy on the top-ranked results, CRRe-ranking employs a cross-reference (CR) strategy to fuse multimodal cues. Given a text query by users, the system then returns a series of approximately relevant video shots of matching the input text with the text documents associated with the video shots. But the results of this method are less relevant as the video contains only text in the title. Also this method has time overhead. In the proposed system, videos are retrieved not only through keywords but also using an image as a query. Users are usually interested in the top ranked portion of the returned search results and therefore it is crucial for search engines to achieve accuracy on the search results. Content based video searching and retrieval framework is proposed to improve the efficiency and accuracy of the search engines. The input is given as a video at the training time, where the video is converted into images. At the time of searching, user gives a text or an image as a query to the system which then returns a series of additional relevant video shots than the previous methods by mapping with the images. At the time of training, the user can associate some relevant text to the extracted images and then some query image can be used to search the relevant video content. After implementing the proposed system the performance analysis of the system along with the memory and resource consumption has also been performed. After comparison it was found that the proposed system provides much better performance than other previously designed systems.


This paper presents topology optimization as a tool for structural lay-out design of auto body, especially underbody. BESO(bi-directional evolutionary structural optimization) based on finite element method is applied to create optimal lightweight underbody under various external load conditions. In order to treat multi-load condition, weighted average objection function was introduced. According to the numerical formulae, a PC-based test program is coded in Fortran. To verify the proposed test program, the numerical results on several benchmark problems are compared with those obtained by references. The validity of the topology optimization is examined through the numerical examples on EV(electric vehicle) underbody concept design.


THE QUESTION OF THE MATRIARCHATE remains unresolved nearly 120 years after Bachofen introduced it. A host of eminent scholars have turned their attention to the problem, primarily as defenders of the matriarchate, among them Morgan (1871, 1964 [1877]), Engels (1972a [1891]) McLennan (1865, 1876), Hartland (1917), and Briffault (1963 [1927]). Anthropologists in the 20th century in Great Britain and America have criticized and rejected the matriarchate (Radcliffe-Brown and Forde 1950:72), and the idea has been presumed moribund and noteworthy only as a curiosity in the history of the discipline. Socialist scholarship has been characterized generally by an acceptance of matriarchy as a stage in social evolution, but the question is undergoing some fresh examination (Danilova 1971, Kriukov 1972). Recently, with the rise of feminist consciousness in the West, the matriarchate is again being discussed and defended (Davis 1971, Bamberger 1974, Reed 1975). Proponents of the matriarchate hold that the original form of human social organization was the matriarchal clan, a social group emanating from the more obvious reproductive role of the female. Moreover, they argue that matriarchy constituted an epoch or stage in human history during which women were powerful and influential, remaining so until a patriarchal revolt reversed the situation. The matriarchate has meant different things to different scholars, and this, in part, explains some of the confusion surrounding the idea. I shall critically review the literature and attempt to place the matriarchate in a new perspective using contemporary data in conjunction with Marxist principles of analysis and Marxist scholarship. I shall argue


The second addendum to the Forum for Injection Techniques (FIT), India recommendations, first published in 2012 and followed by an addendum in 2013, covers various important issues. It describes how the impact of the so-called non-modifiable factors, which influence the injection technique, can be modulated; provides fresh information on timing of glucagon-like peptide 1 receptor agonist injections, methods of minimizing pain during injections, amyloidosis, and factors that impact adherence to insulin therapy. The addendum also lists semantic changes made to keep the FIT recommendations updated.


Israeli legal feminists have largely overlooked the constitutive theoretical developments that introduced the "third wave" to global feminism. Drawing on the critical insights of black and postcolonial feminist discourse, this Article introduces Mizrahi feminism to Israeli jurisprudence. It aims to lay the groundwork for a new theoretical school of critical legal scholarship in Israel and expose the multidimensional oppression endured by Mizrahi women in Israeli law and history.
 To this end, the Article focuses on a particular slice of the legal history of the Israeli abortion law reform of the 1970s. Analyzing extensive parliamentary protocols and institutional archival records, the Article pioneers the deconstructive toolbox of Mizrahi feminism in order to extract the subversive ethno-class narrative that has been left invisible in the feminist story of Israeli abortion law—a sorely neglected history of a separatist, quality-control regulatory mechanism that restrains the Mizrahi womb and Orientalizes its female carrier as "unqualified" vis-à-vis the "dignified" Ashkenazi womb.
 This intellectual exercise in legal historical study does more than unveil the complex dynamics behind the regulation of the female body in Israel. It also gives a voice to an intra-Jewish ethnic female minority that otherwise remains a transparent and denied gender category in the sociolegal literature.


Process computer control has been a bedrock topic of NPRA computer conferences for many years. Traditionally this has included basic and advanced dynamic control, multivariable control (CMVPC), on-line optimization (CLRTO), scheduling, on-line integration and performance measures. These are the five active function of CIMFUELS that make money. Lately some have excluded scheduling and integration from {open_quotes}process control{close_quotes} but as they go closed loop, they become basic functions of {open_quotes}process control.{close_quotes} These new techniques to determine the financial performance of computer systems technology are discussed.


The problem of laser heating of a plasma is considered in the low β limit. Spatial and temporal variations of electron as well as ion temperatures are calculated, and the shape of the laser pulse is varied to find an optimal ion heating condition. The propagation of the ''bleaching wave'' into the plasma column is also investigated. By an iterative approximation analytic expressions are obtained for quantities such as particle temperatures, hole burning velocity, penetration depth, and the equilibration time of electron and ion temperatures after the laser is tuned off. They can be used to find various restricted optimization conditions.


Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma is a very rare and extremely aggressive carcinoma of the thyroid Prognosis is dismal and by definition is classified as stage IV upon diagnosis Imaging plays a central role in defining the extent of disease planning therapy and monitoring the response to treatment This case report illustrates the aggressive nature of anaplastic thyroid carcinoma and the value of imaging in guiding tumor biopsy identification of metastases and planning therapy


A resolution measure is proposed which is more general than the Rayleigh resolution distance and which takes into account a priori object information and interfering noise. The measure allows evaluation of the quality of an optical system, independent of the class of objects being observed. The resolution of an ideal spatially band-limited optical imaging system is calculated as a function of the object-to-noise power ratio for a number of a priori object statistics. It is shown that there exists an optimum object-illumination interval, as a function of the object-to-noise power ratio, which minimizes the degradation due to the limited spatial bandwidth of the optical system and results in the extraction of approximately one bit of information per illumination interval.


A field study was conducted to evaluate the effects of biochar application on soil fertility status, nutrient uptake, and maize yield in the sandy soils of semiarid Lombok, Indonesia during the rainy season of 2010–2011 and dry season of 2011. Three organic amendments (coconut shell biochar, CSB; cattle dung biochar, CDB; cattle manure, CM, and no organic amendments as control, C) constituted the treatments. Biochar application improved soil fertility status, especially soil organic C, CEC, available P, exchangeable K, Ca, and Mg, and increased nutrient uptake and maize yield. Soil organic C increased from about 0.9% (untreated soil) to about 1.20% (biochar and CM treated). Soils treated with biochar had consistently higher organic C contents, which also remained more stable compared to the soils treated with CM, implying the higher potential of biochar for soil carbon sequestration. The highest maize yield during the rainy season was noted for CM, followed by CDB and CSB (5.98, 5.87, and 5.71 Mg ha–1 respectively). However, yield of the second crop in one-time CM application treatment declined. This was not the case for maize yield on biochar treated soil.


Sharma, Bhisham Ph.D., Purdue University, December 2013. Dynamic Behavior of Sandwich Beams with Internal Resonators Major Professor: Chin-Teh Sun. Dynamic behavior of sandwich beams with internal resonators was investigated. The effect of inserting spring-mass resonators into the sandwich core was theoretically analyzed and it was shown that a wave attenuation bandgap exists due to local resonance. Steady state experiments were used to demonstrate such an attenuation bandgap. Frequency response functions were obtained for a beam with resonators and without resonators. It was shown that insertion of resonators into the core causes a wave attenuation bandgap to open up. The experimental results were verified using finite element simulations. Further experiments were carried out by tuning the resonators at 12 Hz and it was demonstrated that a wave attenuation bandgap can be created at low frequencies which would help attenuate low frequency periodic loads such as those associated with hull slamming. The antiresonance phenomenon was experimentally demonstrated. By inserting local resonators tuned at the first flexural resonance frequency of the beam, it was shown that the excessive vibrations associated with resonance modes can be attenuated by inserting local resonators tuned at the global beam resonance frequency. The behavior of such sandwich beams under impact loads was also considered. Using finite element simulations, the effect of a chosen local resonance frequency on


The present invention concerns a method of producing cement or the burden BASED CALCIUM PHOSPHATE that hardens depending on the temperature and this, combined with an endothermic reaction. During this reaction, MIXING A LIMITED QUANTITY OF WATER WITH phosphate precursor dry calcium to produce a paste hydrous said precursor. Hardening of the paste, which QUICKLY BECOMES A body temperature, accompanied by the conversion of one of the reactants or more REACTIVOS apatitic calcium phosphate, poorly crystalline AND HIGHLY BIORREASORBIBLE and a MATERIAL. THIS, which is in close contact with the hydroxyapatite AMOUNTS AS SUFFICIENT TO CONFER A PROPERTY FOR COMPOSITE CHOSEN MAY be biocompatible, resorbable BIORREASORBIBLE OR. This invention also relates to a method that lets you treat DEFECT TYPE OSEO THAT IS TO IDENTIFY A SITE OSEO TO LEND TO RECEIVING AN IMPLANT, AND APPLYING ON THIS SITE IMPLEMENTATION OF CALCIUM PHOSPHATE apatitic, HIGHLY BIORREASORBIBLE Y poorly crystalline, BONE TO FORM THEN IN THE SITE. SITES can be varied, namely dental Alveola, A BONE Devoid of consolidation after a fracture, PROTESIS BONE, osteoporotic bone, intervertebral space, alveolar crest OR BONE FRACTURE ZONE.


As newsrooms are increasingly using web analytics to monitor news behavior, journalism is likely to become increasingly "metrics-driven." Research suggests that analytics are commonly used by web editors to decide on the distribution and promotion of news stories, but how does this affect the news practices of journalists? To what extent are audience metrics taken into account by individual journalists and reporters who work in a specific news beat? This paper explores this question through a survey of political journalists in Belgium. The study examines the level of access that political news journalists have to audience metrics, and to what extent their level of exposure to and use of metrics affects their attitudes toward analytics in news work. Results show that while three quarters of the political news journalists are nowadays exposed to audience metrics on a regular basis, more than half of them report to never make direct use of web metrics in their daily work. Younger journalists are more likely to be exposed and to use web metrics than their senior colleagues, but journalists working for commercial media do not use metrics more intensely than journalists from public service media. Journalists who actively use metrics themselves tend to hold more positive attitudes toward web metrics, whereas the passive exposure to metrics seems to make journalists more skeptical or negative about them.


Abstract The purpose of this paper is to study a new class of framed manifolds. Such manifolds are called almost α-cosymplectic ƒ-manifolds. For some special cases of α and s, one obtains (almost) α-cosymp(lectic, (almost) C-manifolds, and (almost) Kenmotsu ƒ-manifolds. Moreover, several tensor conditions are studied. We conclude our results with a general example on α-cosymplectic ƒ-manifolds.


Effects of a practicum-based elementary mathematics methods course on the beliefs of preservice teachers regarding conceptual knowledge in school mathematics were explored using a pre-post design. The intensity of those beliefs was assessed before and after the methods course using the IMAP Web-Based Beliefs Survey, an instrument constructed by the "Integrating Mathematics and Pedagogy" (IMAP) research group at San Diego State University. The IMAP Beliefs Survey assesses belief intensity by asking respondents to react to and analyze written and video cases (Ambrose, Clement, Philipp, & Chauvot, 2004; Philipp, Ambrose, Clement, Sowder, Schappelle, Sowder, Chauvot, & Thanheiser, 2005). Its use with preservice teachers enrolled in mathematics content courses for elementary education majors has been previously reported (Ambrose et al., 2004). In the current study, significant pre-post effects regarding belief changes were obtained in the desired direction, thus suggesting the appropriateness of conducting a future, more extensive experimental investigation of the effects of a practicum-based methods course on teacher beliefs. Practicum-Based Methods Course Effects 3 An Exploration of the Effects of a Practicum-Based Mathematics Methods Course on the Beliefs of Elementary Preservice Teachers Introduction Mathematics teacher educators in the United States face critical challenges related to the preparation of future teachers of mathematics. Data from the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (National Center for Education Statistics, n.d.) reveal that, despite some recent gains, American students continue to lag behind many of their international counterparts in mathematics competency at both the fourth and eighth grade levels. Ma, in Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics (1999), suggested one possible reason for the plethora of troubling data regarding student achievement in mathematics. She described "the vicious circle formed by low-quality mathematics education and low-quality teacher knowledge of school mathematics" (p. 149). In other words, teachers of mathematics, especially those who teach at the elementary level, generally do not possess the knowledge necessary to help empower future generations of adults mathematically. Therefore, without some sort of ongoing, widespread, and powerfully effective intervention, U.S. students appear destined to continued mediocrity in mathematics performance. Ma (1999) further postulated that teacher preparation might be the force needed to break the above-mentioned "vicious circle" (p. 149). This emphasis on the role of preservice teacher preparation is in some ways rather ironic. Preservice teacher preparation is viewed as a vehicle for improving inservice teacher performance. However, overwhelming evidence from multiple disciplines, including mathematics education, indicates that preservice preparation is significantly enhanced by strong and consistent preservice/inservice teacher partnerships (e.g., Kagan, 1992; Richardson, 1996). In other words, to break the vicious circle that characterizes Practicum-Based Methods Course Effects 4 inservice teacher performance, those same inservice teachers need to provide laboratories for preservice teachers to explore, investigate, and make sense of conceptual mathematics methodology. Promoting teacher change is complicated at best. Investigators have emphasized the role of beliefs as an important consideration in encouraging change (e.g., Civil, 1993; Vacc & Bright, 1999). In a review of research regarding teachers' beliefs, Pajares (1992) suggested that teacher change research be conducted from a perspective that focuses on "the things and ways that teachers believe" because "beliefs are the best indicators of the decisions individuals make throughout their lives" (p. 307). Hersh (1986) stated that "one's conception of what mathematics is affects one's conception of how it should be presented" (p. 13). Fullan (2001) emphasized the central role of beliefs in bringing about educational change: "Changes in beliefs and understanding . . . are the foundation [for] achieving lasting reform" (p. 45). Changing beliefs is generally considered to be challenging in teacher education settings; there is much empirical evidence to support the long-standing assumption that teachers' belief systems tend to be deeply entrenched (Pajares, 1992). Changes in beliefs "challenge the core values held by individuals regarding the purposes of education; moreover, beliefs are often not explicit, discussed, or understood, but rather are buried at the level of unstated assumptions" (Fullan, 2001, p. 44). According to Mewborn (2002), teacher beliefs about mathematics teaching and learning may be embedded within "wider beliefs about education, human relationships, and a person's role in society" (p. 27). Teachers' prior experiences as students may be particularly influential. Unlike most students choosing to major in other disciplines, potential teachers enter their chosen field with many years of experience as learners in the context in which they will work. Their experience as Practicum-Based Methods Course Effects 5 students in mathematics classrooms influences their perceptions of what mathematics is, what it means to "do" mathematics, and the role school mathematics plays in society. Thus, the nature of their beliefs regarding how mathematics should be taught may be deeply influenced as well. The difficulty of changing beliefs is further illustrated by the findings of Steinberg, Empson, and Carpenter (2004), who noted that even when teachers embrace new beliefs, they may not necessarily sustain that change or continue to change. Ernest's (1989) landmark study demonstrated that the following beliefs commonly possessed by preservice teachers have powerful effects on the decisions they make while teaching mathematics: 1. Mathematics is a set of rules to be learned rather than a body of interrelated and connected concepts. 2. Teaching mathematics consists of telling students how to follow procedures rather than supporting students as they attempt to understand. 3. Learning mathematics is a process of practicing and memorizing rather than a process of reasoning and sensemaking. These beliefs, which are widely held even today, still shape mathematics education in many classrooms (Fuson, Kalchman, & Bransford, 2005). Pajares (1992) suggested that teachers are unlikely to change their beliefs unless they find them to be unsatisfactory when challenged. In his review of research on professional growth among preservice and beginning teachers, Kagan (1992) concluded that extensive interaction with school-age students enables preservice teachers to confront their own beliefs and acknowledge the need for change. Wilcox, Schram, Lappan, and Lanier (1991) also reached similar conclusions as they implemented a content and methods course sequence, with Practicum-Based Methods Course Effects 6 accompanying field experiences, designed to help prospective teachers change their knowledge and beliefs about mathematics and mathematics education. This line of reasoning leads to the implications of Ma's conclusion stated previously. That is, preservice teachers are unlikely to make significant changes in their classroom practice relative to the teaching of mathematics unless they are challenged to confront their own beliefs within the context of extensive field practicum experiences. Philipp, Thanheiser, and Clement (2002), along with other investigators of the NSFfunded Integrating Mathematics and Pedagogy (IMAP) Project at San Diego State University, promoted significant improvements in preservice teachers' beliefs regarding conceptual mathematics teaching. Their approach paired participation in a math-for-elementary-teachers content course with field practicum experiences in a public school setting. They assessed the intensity of those beliefs using the IMAP Web-Based Beliefs Survey. (This instrument is described in greater detail in the following section.) We wondered if a similar approach might also promote belief changes in elementary mathematics methods students as measured by the same instrument. Therefore, we designed this study to explore the effects of a three-credit-hour methods course with a practicum-based component upon the beliefs of preservice elementary education majors regarding conceptual approaches to teaching mathematics. The results should help us determine the viability of conducting future research in which we plan to use an experimental model to investigate more thoroughly possible causal relationships between methods-related field practica and belief changes. Practicum-Based Methods Course Effects 7 The Study We used a simple pre-post design to conduct our exploratory study. We considered using a Likert-type instrument because such instruments have been commonly used to measure teachers' beliefs, but Hoffman and Kugle (1982) suggested that results gained from the use of such instruments may not reveal actual beliefs. In essence, such scales may assess a teachers' ability to "talk the talk" but not necessarily "walk the walk" in terms of applying conceptual teaching approaches as a result of changing beliefs. More recently, researchers have used a variety of means to ascertain preservice teachers' beliefs, including interviews, classroom observations, journals, written reflections, and surveys. Most of this research has been qualitative in nature and typically has involved small samples. Although the sample size for this particular study was not large, we plan to conduct other investigations regarding changing beliefs with larger samples, so our first challenge was to obtain an instrument capable of providing quantitative data on a sizeable scale. The aforementioned IMAP research group developed an online survey instrument that requires respondents to interpret descriptions of classroom situations or actual videotaped cases. The


A photovoltaic (PV) module is subjected to numerous cycles of mechanical and thermal loads during its lifetime. These loads can induce normal and shear stresses in different layers of the module. Normal stresses may lead to crack development and propagation in silicon resulting in power loss. Excessive shear stresses may culminate in delamination of different layers. Choosing appropriate materials, module-layout design and layers' dimensions may help in mitigating the stresses that induce premature failure. However, it is both expensive and time consuming to evaluate the most optimum conditions for module reliability experimentally. We have used finite element (FE) computations to determine stress development in the silicon layer while exerting a static pressure load of 5400 Pa on the PV module. This has been done for a range of glass thicknesses. Stress profiles for multiple module-layouts as well as stack designs have been evaluated as well and significant differences in the magnitude and distribution of normal stresses have been found. This has serious implications for crack development in silicon layer and the subsequent power loss. Informed decisions about the overall design of the module to improve reliability can be taken using the results in this study.


Our laboratory has previously reported significantly low levels of protamine (PRM) gene expression in infertile men. This drop was correlated with a low pregnancy rate, suggesting that PRMs may be useful as predictive factors for the outcome of testicular sperm extraction and intracytoplasmic sperm injection (TESE‐ICSI) in azoospermic men. Transition nuclear proteins (TPs) are expressed earlier in spermatogenesis than protamines and are required for normal sperm development. In the present study, we examined the expression of the transition nuclear protein 1 gene (TNP1) in azoospermia and its relationship with TESE‐ICSI outcomes. The cellular expression of TNP1 mRNA in spermatids was quantified by in situ hybridisation on paraffin sections of testis biopsies from 21 men with obstructive azoospermia and 23 men with non‐obstructive azoospermia. Cases of non‐obstructive and obstructive azoospermia did not differ significantly in terms of TNP1 expression. Furthermore, TNP1 mRNA expression was similar in non‐pregnant and pregnant couples. Hence, the pregnancy rate was not related to TNP1 mRNA expression levels in azoospermia. Our results emphasise the value of TNP1 as a reliable predictive marker for the presence of spermatids/spermatozoa in the testis biopsies used for TESE but also indicate that expression of the TNP1 gene (believed to be a major player in spermiogenesis and required for production of normal sperm) may not be a predictive factor for successful post‐ICSI embryonic development.


Introduction - following completion of hospital based treatment breast cancer patients often feel isolated and abandoned and report a lack of information and support to address their recovery needs. Feedback from service users at Breast Cancer Care identified a need for a resource at the end of breast cancer treatment. In collaboration with our Service User Research Partnership group we set about designing and delivering this study.
Aims - to develop a resource for breast cancer survivors based on their identified unmet information and support needs and user feedback.
Methods - a qualitative mixed method approach:
Phase1: 2 Focus groups with 12 women at the end of hospital based treatment, telephone interviews of 12 healthcare professionals.
Phase 2: reconvened focus groups and email review of healthcare professionals to critique a prototype resource.
Results - resource content was informed by the conceptual framework developed from interview analysis which identified a process of reconciliation - 'reflection', 'isolation', 'loss of self' and 'moving forward in life'. Participants wanted a comprehensive resource that could be individually tailored and includes self management strategies Real-life experiences of patients, signposting to other resources and usefulness over time were also considered important.
Conclusion - developing and designing a new patient resource based on user feedback and research has been a novel and exiting experience, and will help to ensure this resource is both relevant and useful to patients. Having SURP (users) involved in each stage of the study has further strengthened the quality of the research and will assist greatly in the dissemination of findings.


The rapid high-precision and nondestructive determination of shallow soil water content (SWC) is of vital importance to precision agriculture and water resource management. However, the low-frequency ground penetrating radar (GPR) technology currently in use is insufficient for precisely determining the shallow SWC. Therefore, it is essential to develop and use a high-precision detection technology to determine SWC. In this paper, a laboratory study was conducted to evaluate the use of a high-frequency GPR antenna to determine the SWC of loamy sand, clay, and silty loam. We collected soil samples (0–20 cm) of six soil types of loamy sand, clay, and silty loam and used a high-frequency (2-GHz) GPR antenna to determine the SWC. In addition, we obtained GPR data and images as well as characteristic parameters of the electromagnetic spectrum and analyzed the quantitative relationship with SWC. The GPR reflection two-way travel times and the known depths of reflectors were used to calculate the average soil dielectric permittivities above the reflectors and establish a spatial relationship between the soil dielectric permittivity ( ε ) and SWC ( θ ), which was used to estimate the depth-averaged SWC. The results show that the SWC, which affects the attenuation of wave energy and the wave velocity of the GPR signal, is a dominant factor affecting the soil dielectric permittivity. In addition, the conductivity, magnetic soil, soil texture, soil organic matter, and soil temperature have substantial effects on the soil dielectric permittivity, which consequentially affects the prediction of SWC. The correlation coefficients R2 of the " θ   ~   ε " cubic curve models, which were used to fit the relationships between the soil dielectric permittivity ( ε ) and SWC ( θ ), were greater than 0.89, and the root-mean-square errors were less than 2.9%, which demonstrate that high-frequency GPR technology can be applied to determine shallow SWC under variable hydrological conditions.


In the night vision assistant driving systems with near IR active imaging, the contrast and resolution of images or videos captured by cameras are drastically altered by back scattering in bad weather such as fog and mist etc, which brings a hidden danger in the night driving. In order to remove weather effects from images and make vision information captured by vision systems more valuable, it is imperative to make a study of the defog algorithm in laser night vision images. Direct towards laser active imaging assistant driving system, Monocular Camera Machine Vision and ABA Model are combined to restore the blurred images of driving environment in night fog day. In order to obtain the scene depth information, the camera was calibrated firstly; then, the scene depth map by linear imaging model and the Technical Standard of Highway Engineering was constructed. The brightness of each pixel at the receiver is composed of scene point attenuation irradiance, back scattering irradiance and airlight illumination scattering intensity in ABA model simply. By removing back scattering and airlight illumination scattering by particles to restore the image degraded in foggy day.


A method for producing flexible low-standing-wave corrugated coaxial cables is characterized by comprising the following steps of manufacturing inner conductors, manufacturing insulating media, manufacturing outer conductors and manufacturing a sheath. The flexible low-standing-wave corrugated coaxial cables produced by means of the method adopt through an accurate control manufacture process, stability consistency is ensured, and good impedance uniformity and standing wave stability are guaranteed. An insulating layer is stable in foaming degree and has very good electrical performance, and especially high-frequency attenuation performance is low. The outer conductors are good in bending performance.


Procedure for manufacturing frozen aerated products comprising; wherein * providing two separate forming elements, * providing at least one open cavity on a surface of each forming element, * providing devices for charging the cavities with an aerated frozen material, * load two cavities, one in forming element, with an aerated frozen material, a. at least one of the cavities is filled with a frozen aerated product having a level of loss of between 30% and 130%, b. then this product is allowed to expand towards the outside of this cavity, c. the two cavities are then moved in opposite directions to each other and the frozen aerated product in each cavity is pressed against the frozen aerated product in the other cavity.


The simulation systems research, development and application for ballistic missile in the second artillery academy in recent ten years are briefly introduced. It is mainly introduced the theories and methods of six-degree-of-freedom integrated modeling for ballistic missile, the design and manufacture of distributed parallel simulation computer, plan and realization of automatic parallel system for complicated continuous system simulation programs, as well as application of six-degree-of-freedom integrated modeling and simulation in missiles full life-cycle.


In this paper we use local estimation to assess temporal trends in copula based Value-atRisk (VaR), despite the developed method be able to be applied to any risk measure based in the probability distribution of an asset portfolio. The estimation of any quantile-based risk measure, in particular the VaR, relies on the correct specification of the multivariate probability distribution of the assets composing the portfolio. Temporal changes in the portfolio volatility may follow from the autocorrelations in the squares of each margin, as well as from changes over time in the dependence structure among the components. In order to assess and model temporal trends in copula parameters, we used local likelihood methods. First it is carried on some Monte Carlo simulation experiments in order to illustrate the methodology, then we apply the methods for the VaR valuation of 10 portfolios composed of international stock indexes. Through the use of out-of-sample tests, we found that the local estimation outperforms the global estimation procedure.


Social media is impacting the way service offerings are deployed and delivered. Several social media service offerings have emerged in the past few years (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn). At the same time, more traditional kinds of service offerings are finding creative ways of making use of social media techniques (e.g., Dell Community). In this research, we analyze how software companies are finding ways to use social media techniques to gather feedback from users collectively. The following four factors and the way they influence the use of social media are analyzed in depth: company size, transparency, software deployment, and number of social media tools in use. Results of our analysis of software vendors that gather collective user feedback in this way are presented, concluding with a discussion on which attributes influence the way social media is used for collecting user feedback.


Semiconductor manufacturing is one of the most technologically and highly complicated manufacturing processes. Traditional machine learning algorithms such as uni-variate and multivariate analyses have long been deployed as a tool for creating predictive model to detect faults. In the past decade major collaborative research projects have been undertaken between fab industries and academia in the areas of predictive modeling. In this paper we review some of these research areas and thus propose machine learning techniques to automatically generate an accurate predictive model to predict equipment faults during the wafer fabrication process of the semiconductor industries. This research paper aims at constructing a decision model to help detecting as quickly as possible any equipment faults in order to maintain high process yields in manufacturing. In this research, we use WEKA tool and R languages for implementing our proposed method and other five machine learning discovery techniques.


Explicitly incorporating individual vehicle acceleration into a traffic simulation model is not a trivial task, and typically results in a considerable increase in model complexity. For this reason, alternative implicit techniques have been introduced in the literature to compensate for the delay times associated with acceleration. In this paper, the claim is investigated that these implicit modelling techniques adequately account for the time delays due to vehicle acceleration; the modelling techniques are implemented in a simulated environment, and compared with models in which vehicle acceleration has been incorporated explicitly for a number of traffic network topologies and traffic densities. It is found that considerable discrepancies may result between the two approaches.


The demands of digital forensics have increased significantly due to the rising number and seriousness of web attacks. Since most digital forensic tasks against web attacks are still manually controlled, the processes of digital forensic tasks are very inefficient and prone to error, especially in cases in which the size of the web server logs experiencing the web attacks is large. In order to acquire evidence of the web attack crime in the web logs efficiently, an automatic mechanism for processing these web logs is urgently needed. To achieve this, an automatic weblog filtering mechanism for web attack digital forensics is presented in this paper. This mechanism can filter out the most valuable web logs as evidence of the web attack and indicate those highly suspicious web events and users involved in the web attack. The proposed mechanism consists of four components: (1) web attack detection; (2) scanning behavior detection, (3) web-shell detection; and (4) user rating. These components can automatically identify web attack events and corresponding users from the web logs based on scores given by each component. To evaluate the effectiveness of this mechanism, an experiment is conducted regarding a web attack event at the Nokia Taiwan website. Based on the scores of the web logs, the experiment results successfully identify the web attack traces, which exactly match the manual security report from a security expert. The proposed mechanism is shown to automatically generate the most valuable evidence from web logs and assist criminal investigators in identifying web attack traces in an accurate and cost-effective manner.


The scaling behavior of self-avoiding walks (SAWs) on the backbone of percolation clusters in two, three and four dimensions is studied by Monte Carlo simulations. We apply the pruned-enriched Rosenbluth chain growth method (PERM). Our numerical results bring about the estimates of critical exponents, governing the scaling laws of disorder averages of the end-to-end distance of SAW configurations. The effects of finite-size scaling are discussed as well.


Widows and four groups of professionals (clergy, physicians, counselors, and funeral directors) were compared in regards to their perceptions of conjugal bereavement. Results suggested consistent differences between widows' self-perceptions and professionals' views regarding the impact of bereavement and the necessity for adaptative coping mechanisms to deal with loss. Professionals saw bereavement as having a more negative impact and requiring the use of coping skills to a greater extent than did widows. Such differences remained when age at bereavement or length of widowhood were taken into account. Professionals' perceptions of conjugal bereavement were similar to one another. Help-seeking behaviors, age at bereavement, and length of bereavement differentiated widows, while experience in counseling widows failed to separate professionals. Both age-related experiential differences with loss and gender differences in coping with loss may explain these findings. These data underscore the importance of efforts to bring widows and professionals into direct contact with one another in order to lessen misperceptions of conjugal bereavement.


One hundred and five cases of freckle were treated by enriching qi and yin, clearing lung-stomach heat for three months. Results: 69 cases were cured, 23 cases got marked ef-fectiveness and 8 cases got effectiveness, with the total effective rate of 95.2%.


The aim of this study is to examine the contributions of Keynes' Money Demand Theory for Finance Motive to economic literature and starting in new discussions at this framework. In his studies bearing the dates of 1937 and 1938, Keynes has entitled the money demand ,which occurs before the investment expenditures are completed and before these expenditures affect the level of national income at the end of multiplier process, as "Money demand for finance motive''. By using money demand concept with financial motive, Keynes has stressed rejection of dichotomy, endogenous money supply and the importance of banking system in a stable capitalist economy. Moreover, opinions of Keynes about money demand for finance motive has created several discussions at framework of Post Keynesian and Monetary Circuitist Approaches.


The cloud shortwave radiative forcing is computed by using the ground global radiation from the Monderate Resolution Atmospheric Radiance and Transmittance Model(MODTRAN3) and routine data,and the cloud radiative parameters is retrieved from satellite data.Based on analyzing the relationship between cloud shortwave radiative forcing and cloud radiative parameters,a regression equation between them is established,and the equation can be used to estimate the cloud shortwave radiation forcing,thus remedying the shortage of radiation data.


Based on Fresnel-Kirchhoff diffraction theory,a Gaussian diffraction model of the bubble in the Super-RENS has been set up.Results show that the simplified model of the bubble forming process proposed in this letter can denote the structural deformation process of the mask layer in Super-RENS irradiated by a Gaussian beam.It indicates that Gaussian diffraction model is an effective method for analyzing the minute structural deformation in thin film and can give a better understanding of the far-field readout mechanism of bubble sructure.


Endowing the semantically-oblivious Internet with Intelligence would advance the Internet capability to learn traffic behavior and to predict future events. In this paper, we propose a hybrid intelligence memory system, or NetMem, for network-semantics reasoning and targeting Internet intelligence. NetMem provides a memory structure, mimicking the human memory functionalities, via short-term memory (StM) and long-term memory (LtM). NetMem has the capability to build runtime accessible dynamic network-concept ontology (DNCO) at different levels of granularity. We integrate Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and Hidden Markov Models (HMM) to extract network-semantics based on learning patterns and recognizing features with syntax and semantic dependencies. Due to the large scale and high-dimensionality of Internet data, we utilize the Locality Sensitive Hashing (LSH) algorithm for data dimensionality reduction. Simulation results using real network traffic show that NetMem with hybrid intelligence learn traffic data semantics effectively and efficiently even with significant reduction in volume and dimensionality of data, thus enhancing Internet intelligence for self-/situation-awareness and event/behavior prediction.


Simplicial complexes, or triangulated meshes, are widely used for computer graphics and for representing data in computational science and engineering. Often it is necessary to determine some topological characteristics of a complex, either for scientific study or to maintain properties while the data set is undergoing some transformation. In this paper we define the wave traversal algorithm and study its use for topological characterization of a complex.
Wave traversal is a natural extension of breadth-first search of a graph to n-dimensional simplicial complexes. As defined, each wave is a subcomplex whose simplices have a certain distance from an arbitrary start vertex. We prove that if waves on a surface split and rejoin then there is a topological hole called a tunnel in the surface.
We then prove stronger results about wave traversal and topology. We show that wave traversal can be extended to a discrete Morse function on triangulated manifolds. Critical points of a Morse function can be used to characterize the homotopy type of an n-manifold, and they give bounds on the betti numbers of the manifold.
The Morse function we derive is straightforward to compute, but expensive computationally both in terms of space and time. So we show that we can achieve similar and even stronger results about the critical points using combinatorial methods, without first computing the function itself. We supply algorithms for doing this in the case of 2-manifolds.
We also prove that barycentric subdivision eliminates degeneracies in wave traversal. Results from problems in other areas of research that have used the wave traversal paradigm could be re-examined in light of our findings.
Finally, we demonstrate the use of wave traversal for creating an auditory display of a simplicial complex. This has application particularly when the complex is large or higher-dimensional, but audio has been shown to reinforce visual display in all cases. The auditory display is intended to convey information about the complex to the user in a interactive exploratory manner. We detail two of the auditory displays that we have developed using wave traversal.


In this paper, different approximations for the effective bandwidth of self-similar traffic streams are reviewed. Among those, classical approaches originally based on Markovian models are regarded in the context of self-similar traffic. On the other hand, a solution is considered that explicitly takes the long-range dependent character of the traffic stream into account by using a fractional Brownian motion model. Furthermore, we propose an effective bandwidth scheme that provides a combination of approaches from both domains. In order to achieve an objective comparison of the different schemes, an M/Pareto fluid burst has been chosen as a common traffic model, and the corresponding traffic parameters needed by the different schemes have been derived. A burst level simulation of the same traffic model serves as another reference. The evaluation shows that the accuracy of the results obtained using the different schemes depends very much on the traffic parameters.


Abstract Recent research in multiple autonomous marine vehicle (AMV) applications shows that versatile path planning algorithms are of crucial importance to cooperative control scenarios. These algorithms need to be lightweight in terms of running time and capable of incorporating different factors influencing a given mission, like AMV dynamic constraints and environmental conditions. In addition, the path planner needs to take into account requirements imposed by multiple vehicle scenarios (of which collision avoidance is an important issue), and inter-vehicle communication constraints. Mission-related measures have to be incorporated additionally, such as minimization of energy usage over all participating AMVs, and simultaneous arrival of the AMVs at their designated target destinations, to name but a few. These aspects pose considerable challenges both from a theoretical and practical implementation standpoint. This paper presents a versatile path planning algorithm for deconflicted multiple AMV missions at sea, incorporating single vehicle dynamical constraints as well as an inter-vehicle communication constraint. Additionally, it takes into account unknown constant ocean currents, and gives an overview on time-coordinated path following, a a closed-loop methodology to execute the planned mission, reducing the need for replanning in the presence of disturbances. The paper finishes with an outlook on important future directions to advance the algorithm.


High utility itemsets (HUIs) mining is a developing point in data mining, which alludes to finding all itemsets having an utility gathering a user-indicated least utility limit min_util. Nonetheless, setting min_util fittingly is a troublesome issue for users. As a rule, finding a suitable least utility limit by experimentation is a repetitive procedure for users. On the off chance that min_util is set too low, an excessive number of HUIs will be created, which may cause the mining procedure to be extremely inefficient. Then again, if min_util is set too high, it is likely that no HUIs will be found. In this paper, we address the above issues by proposing another system for best k high utility itemset mining, where k is the coveted number of HUIs to be mined.


After deeply analyzing the relation between reason and symptom of rotor fault, the sample entropy was introduced into the fault diagnosis field of rotating machinery. Combined with rank-order morphological filtering and sample entropy, a novel feature extraction method was proposed for rotor. Firstly, the line structure element was selected for rank-order morphological filter to denoise the original signal. Secondly, the sample entropy of de-noised signal was calculated, the de-noised signal types were normal, unbalanced, misalignment, oil-film whirl and rubbing. Finally, the sample entropy was served as fault feature to evaluate the different fault condition. Practical results prove that the proposed method is effective on fault diagnosis of rotating machinery. Keywords-rank-order morphological filter; sample entropy; feature extraction; rotor


Cardiovascular health issues are increasing at an alarming rate day by day. This is due to tremendously decreased quality of cardiac health. It is affecting lives of both rural and urban population. Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) and Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) which previously were considered as the old aged ailments are now significantly evident on all the age groups among rural and urban residents both. The research work majorly focuses on analyzing cardiovascular health of rural and urban residents for early prediction of cardiac ailments through calcium score health indicator. Coronary Angiography is performed and Patients' Calcium Score results are taken randomly. Calcium score is also termed as Coronary Artery Calcium (CAC). This score is analyzed sex and age-wise in order to predict cardiovascular health issues at early stage. It is evident from the research study that males are affected more than twice of females by the cardiac health issues. The paper tries to figure out various factors affecting cardiac health among rural and urban residents of different age groups. The research outcomes motivates both rural and urban residents towards following a healthy routine and lifestyle in order to avoid such severity of cardiac health issues in future.


We have determined the adsorption energy of Ht on He-He mhdures to be e, /k = 0. 34 + 0. 03 K, essentially independent of He-He concentration. We observe a pure second-order decay of the density due to surface recombfnation with rate con-stantK, /T' '= 1. 4 &&10 ~ cm K ' s ' atB = 8 T. The nuclear relaxation time T&, predicted to be of order hours, is found to be of order seconds by an indirect measurement. H& remained gaseous down to T = 0. 085 K, the lowest temperature measured.


Construction kits like traditional building blocks provide excellent media for face-to-face collaborative interaction. The complexity and expressive power of these kits are increasingly being augmented with computational elements like controllable lights, motors and sounds. This paper introduces a computationally enhanced set of building blocks, Boda Blocks, which allows for collaborative interaction through the construction and programming of tangible three-dimensional cellular automata. We provide a brief introduction to computationally enhanced construction kits, describe the Boda Blocks system and report on the results of a preliminary user study.


Abstract A series of gold(I) complexes with the general formula [Au(L2)(L′)] (L2=4‐phenyl‐N‐(prop‐2‐yn‐1‐yl)quinazoline‐2‐carboxamide, L′=PPh3 (triphenylphosphine), 1; TPA (1,3,5‐triaza‐7‐phosphaadamantane), 2, and Me2‐imy (1,3‐dimethylimidazol‐2‐ylidene), 3) were synthesized and fully characterized by spectroscopic methods. The alkynyl ligand L2 belongs to the quinazoline carboxamide class of ligands that are known to bind to the translocator protein (TSPO) at the outer mitochondrial membrane. 1 and 2 exert cytotoxic effects in bladder cancer cells with IC50 values in the low micromolar range. Further mechanistic analysis indicated that the two complexes both act by inducing reactive oxygen species and caspase‐mediated apoptosis. The complexes inhibit thioredoxin reductase, an established target of anticancer gold(I) complexes. Docking studies confirmed that after ligand exchange the free ligand L2 can interact with the TSPO binding site.


Cardiovascular diseases are still one of the main causes of death and disability among the adult population, the search for optimal pharmacotherapy of arterial hypertension remains an urgent task. The renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) plays a direct role in the pathophysiology of arterial hypertension, being responsible for regulating fluid volume and maintaining water - salt balance. RAAS is also responsible for the processes of tissue growth and differentiation, apoptosis, and affects the synthesis of many neurohumoral factors. By increasing the activity of the RAAS angiotensin II contributes to vasoconstriction, increased secretion of aldosterone and the activity of the sympathetic nervous system, which in turn leads to the development and progression of hypertension. Angiotensin–II receptor blockers (ARBs) block the AT1 subtype receptors of the same name, which is accompanied by vasodilation, a decrease in the secretion of vasopressin and aldosterone. RAAS blockade is an effective modern reliable way to control blood pressure, as well as prevent related complications. angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers have similar hypotensive effects and a high safety profile. Due to differences in the mechanism of action, when taking angiotensin receptor blockers, the frequency of undesirable side effects is recorded less, and, accordingly, adherence to treatment is greater. One of the modern angiotensin receptor blockers, olmesartan in various studies has demonstrated its superiority over angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors (ramipril and perindopril) in the treatment of arterial hypertension. Olmesartan has proven itself both in monotherapy and in combination with a dihydropyridine calcium channel blocker or a thiazide diuretic.


Apartment floor noise is becoming a serious social problem in South Korea. Apartment floor noise conflicts arise from the disruption of neighbourhood community in Korean apartment complexes. To resolve the conflicts, the Korean government and apartment residents employ two modes of governance: technocratic and collaborative. These models of governance create legal and community standards of floor noise that constitute sonic citizenship—the status of residents as normal listeners with both the duty to reduce noise and the right to make noise. Using Sheila Jasanoff's idea of 'constitutive coproduction', floor noise in the form of sonic knowledge is constitutively coproduced with sonic citizenship in the form of public knowledge. When apartment residents cannot bear normal sound, defined by the two modes of governance, they become abnormal listeners. If normal listeners cannot put up with the level of sound from upstairs, this sound becomes floor noise. Sonic knowledge is, therefore, vital to the construction of sonic citizenship. In technocratic governance, sonic citizenship emerges from the limits of endurance in governmental floor noise standards, based on results of an auditory perception test based on noise and vibration engineering. In collaborative governance, sonic citizenship results from voluntary agreements between apartment residents. Through such governances, governmental officials and apartment residents perceive a distinction between normal and abnormal residents or between normal and abnormal apartment life.


This paper aims to answer the question whether the strength and direction of the relationships between taxes, the deficit and the general government sector debt vary in different periods of economic activity. The alternating periods of acceleration and slowdown of the economy are a natural phenomenon which occurs on and off in a market economy. The prevailing view is that those fluctuations cannot be avoided. However, they may be mitigated and their course flattened if the intervals at which they happen and their duration is shortened, which may be achieved through better control of the level and structure of revenues and expenses. For over twenty years, economic activity at different levels has been accompanied by chronic deficits, which has eventually led to the globalisation of debt. One of the reasons for the growth of this debt is declining taxes which are the one of the sources of the global debt. Thus, to increase the efficiency of fiscal tools it seems necessary, among other things, first to examine the mutual dependencies between taxes, the deficit and debt of the public finance sector. Pobrane z czasopisma Annales H Oeconomia http://oeconomia.annales.umcs.pl Data: 03/12/2018 00:59:34


female rat were devided into 4 groups.The first group was as control.The second group was treated by naloxone.The third group was treated by daidzein.The forth group was treated by naloxone and daidzein.At days 12 of lactating period,the results were that plasma LH was obviously increased in rats of group 2 and 4,and but it had no difference between rats in group 1 and 3.


This paper provides an analytical method for realizing local sound field propagation that can generate audible acoustic signals close to loudspeakers in the horizontal plane, but very low amplitudes at and beyond the reference distance. The proposed method is based on dimension mismatches between a 3-dimensional sound field propagated from a point source and a sound field produced by a linear sound source. A point source and a linear sound source located close together are produced simultaneously in mutual opposite phase. As a result, the propagated sound pressure at the reference line is completely cancelled, but the propagated sound pressure near the sound source is not compensated. A method using a point source and a linear loudspeaker array is proposed. The driving functions of the sound sources and the produced sound pressures are analytically derived. The results of computer simulations indicate that the proposed method can realize more effective local sound field propagation in the horizontal plane at all of the temporal frequencies than a simple monopole source and the conventional evanescent wave production method.


The built environment is always inhabited. A settlement is always built by people, occupied by people, and is designed for people. Its establishment, growth and further transformation are influenced greatly by people's behaviors and their lifestyles. There is a reciprocal relationship between people and the built environment. This paper is a case study of a small Chinese village named Xiaqiao ( , under bridge). This case study includes observations and analyses of the transformation of the village during the past 300 years, as well as its sustainability and adaptions as a result of villagers' changing needs. The approach taken in this case study is a cross reference between rural social history and the built environment. The clan system is the major social structure, and collective living is the predominant life style. The layout of the village is composed of three levels: the single build complex, the inner space, and the structure. The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationship between architecture and local inhabitants in pre-modern rural China. A small village can be sustainable over the course of hundreds of years if the local inhabitants are repositioned in accordance with the changes in architectural development. © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of CUTE 2016.


ABSTRACT This study aimed to investigate the use of probiotic lactic acid bacteria including Lactobacillus brevis, L. plantarum, L. helveticus and L. delbrueckii from dairy products against Penicillium digitatum (green mold) on sweet orange fruit. Antifungal activity of Lactobacillus spp. was first assayed using bacterial cells through the overlay method against 105 spore/mL suspension of P. digitatum. Also, P. digitatum growth inhibition was measured in the PDA medium containing 15 and 30% cell-free supernatant (CFS) of Lactobacillus spp. Antifungal activity of Lactobacillus spp. was evaluated under storehouse conditions by treating wounded fruits with 108/mL cell suspension (CS) and 30% CFS of Lactobacillus spp., which then infected with 105/mL spore suspension of P. digitatum. The CS and CFS of L. plantarum had the best antifungal activity under both in vitro and in vivo conditions followed by L. helveticus, L. delbrueckii and L. brevis. L. plantarum. The 15 and 30% L. plantarum CFS were able to inhibit the growth of P. digitatum by 30.31%, 76.82% and 97.6% respectively, under in vitro conditions. Also, L. plantarum CS and 30% CFS reduced the growth of the P. digitatum on the fruit by 92.77 and 98.9% respectively, under storehouse conditions. The total content of all sugars of treated fruits with Lactobacillus spp., CS and CFS showed significant difference compared to untreated fruits. Therefore, the present study highlights the successful application of biological fungicides based on secondary compounds of Lactobacillus spp. due to greater stability of metabolites than bacterial cells in the environment. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT


The aerodynamic properties of a canard-configuration WISES (Wing In Surface Effect Ship) flying over calm water and/or waves are studied from experimental and theoretical points of view. A canard-configuration WISES without PAR (Power Augmented Ram) was originally proposed by Kubo and Akimotol1) and it enables easy detachment from the waves utilizing the large trim angle of the ship induced by the front wing. On the other hand, it has been suspected for the WISES that the stability is one of the serious problems against the disturbance due to the gust or waves. However the aerodynamic properties of WISES for such disturbance have not been yet made clear in detail.In this paper, the model experiment is carried out in a towing tank imitating the WISES flying over calm water or waves, and the aerodynamic properties as well as the aerodynamic interaction effect of wings are investigated. Theoretical computations based on the BEM are also carried out and the results are compared with experiments. Through the study it is confirmed that the effect of the disturbance due to waves on the stability of WISES is scarcely to be considered, and also that the proposed theoretical method can predict aerodynamic properties of WISES in good accuracy.


The theme of this Bachelorś thesis is the Placement of patients diagnosed with alcohol dependency into care homes for senior citizens and social care departments. The thesis describes the initiation and development of alcohol dependency and the impact upon the individual and society. The options of social care for alcohol dependent patients are examined. The practical element of the thesis involves research of the general publicś view of alcohol dependency and provision of social care for those affected.


Objective To investigate the clinical and electrophysiology features of infantile spinal muscular atrophy,and explore the clinical significance of genetic diagnosis.Methods The clinical data of 13 infants suffering from infantile spinal muscular atrophy were analysed.The serum creatine phosphokinase was examined,and nerve conduction velocity was tested in median nerve,ulnar nerve,tibial nerve and peroneal nerve.The parameters such as distal motor latency,motor nerve conduction velocity and amplitude of compound motor active potential were analysed.Electromyography was performed in no less than four muscles,and the insertion potential,spontaneous potential and motor unit action potential were observed.Deletion of exon 7 in SMN1 gene was detected by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism(PCR-RFLP).Results All these infants were characterized by progressive flaccid paralysis in limbs.In all cases,amplitude of muscle response was significantly decreased,with prolonged distal latency and slowed conduction velocity.Electromyography demonstrated motoneuron degeneration.Deletion of exon 7 in SMN1 gene was detected in all 13 infants.Conclusion There are unique clinical and electrophysiology features for infantile spinal muscular atrophy,and electromyography may play an important role in the diagnosis.Prenatal genetic diagnosis may help to avoid the birth of this kind of infants.


The main steps in reliability-b ased calibration of partial safety factors in structural codes are d escribed and illustrated by the recent calibration of partial safety factors in the Danish structural codes.. The calibrated partial safety factors result in the same average reliability level as in the pr evious codes, but a much more uniform reliability level has been obtained. System effects in timber structural systems can be expected to be rather important due to load redistribution and random strength and stiffness along the structural elements not always explicitly accounted for in codes of practice. The system effect is investigated in illustrative models. The results indicate that the coeff icient of variation of the load bearing capacity of typical timber structural systems is lower than for the individual members. Finally some statistical results for bending, tension and compression strength data are presented. The results indicate that bending, tension and compression strengths a pproximately have a coefficient of variation, COV equal to 20 %, 25% and 15 % if 2-parameter Weibull tail fits are used. If a LogNormal distribution is fitted then the COV's are approximately 25%, 30% and 15%. Therefore it seems thus reasonable to introduce different partial safety factors for bending, tension and compression strength. Further the results show no significant difference in COV's obtained by visual grading and machine grading.


In this paper we introduce a new class of sets, called Pp-open sets, also using this set, we dene and investigate some properties of the concept of Ppcontinuity. In particular, Pp-open sets and Pp-continuity are dened to extend


The sensoric analysis and the determination of selected chemical parameters of both heat-treated and non-heat-treated meat products are presented in this paper. Selected characters of the meat products, such as appearance of cuts of the meat products, their taste, flavour, consistency, salt taste intensity, colour and solidity, were evaluated by the sensoric analysis. Fat and nitrite contents as well as water activity value were determined by the chemical analysis. In total, 15 samples of the long-life meat products which were obtained from five manu-facturers launching their products in Zlin Region were evaluated for the purpose of this paper


Abstract Among disaster victims, the decision to apply for assistance with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is not straight forward. It is typically affected a variety of factors beyond individual demographic characteristics. Using Texas in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey, this study utilizes bounded rationality as a theoretical framework for exploring what may affect the decision to apply for individual assistance with FEMA. A representative sample of generally affected individuals and a subsample of individuals with home damage are used to investigate various factors thought to be important in decision-making and compare differences between the groups. As a byproduct of the analysis, it is observed that although the loss of employment and being able to rely on one's immediate network is a significant predictor of applying for aid among individuals with home damage, these variables are not significant among those that were generally affected. Recommendations for future research are provided to enhance our understanding of decision-making in the aftermath of disasters.


Growth rate and replacement of teeth in Amphibians The growth rate of teeth depends on age: it varies from 5 days for the first teeth, functional at hatching time, to 2 months for 2-year-old animals. The life time of a functional tooth is 20 days in the young larva and in the young post-metamorphic individual; it is not precisely known in adults. The proteins of organic matrices are elaborated in ergastoplasm, transported through the Golgi apparatus and Golgian vesicles, and deposited outside the cells within 1 h. Destruction of old teeth begins before metamorphosis; it is performed by pulp cells necrosis, and intervention of macrophages and osteoclasts; teeth are completely destroyed in situ , allowing growth of the replacement teeth. Thyroxine hastens tooth replacement.


This experiment focuses on the effects of different concentrations of Aloe Vera gel coating on the storage behaviour of banana and star fruit at the room temperature of 25°C (±5°C). Both chemical and physical characteristics of the fruits were tested. The physical characteristics tested were Physiological Loss of Weight (PLW) and size of the fruits. The chemical characteristics of fruit that were tested are titrable acidity, pH value and Total Soluble Solid (TSS). Both banana and star fruit were coated with 0%, 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% Aloe Vera gel coating and the shelf life of the local fruits were observed up to 15 days. The constant which is 0% of Aloe Vera gel coating for both fruits started to deteriorate after storage period of 5 days and only few survived after 10 days. However, the coated banana and star fruit have extended to 15 days with most of the fruits still in good conditions even after 15 days. The optimum concentration of Aloe Vera gel coating that enhance the shelf life of both fruits is 100% of Aloe Vera gel coating.


Compared with the common institutions of higher learning in our country, "employment oriented, fostering applied high skilled talents" has become the main task and characteristics of higher vocational education. By adjusting the specialty setting and teaching reform, higher vocational colleges strengthen the training of students' practical skills. To a great extent, this alleviates the enterprise demand for employees, students first employment rate and employment rate has become an important evaluation index of the quality of higher vocational education. But the survey data of Mycos institutions indicate that both the units and higher vocational college students think students' professional quality training is more important for students' vocational skills training.


,In this paper, the problems of asymptotical stability and stabilization of descriptor systems are investigated via Lyapunov methods. Conditions for the asymptotical stability are obtained. Also, a stabilizing method is provided.


ABSTRACT Professional learning processes occur in many scenarios in which there are a variety of different elements that play key roles. The concept of learning ecologies is particularly useful for understanding how these complex processes happen, although it is still an embryonic line of research whose potential has not been fully explored. The objective of this study was to identify the elements of the contextual dimension of learning ecologies. This qualitative research was performed via a case study. Five professors of the health sciences field at the University of A Coruña constitute the case. Data were collected via in-depth interviews and analysed using Atlas.ti software. The results showed that there were three key elements in the contextual dimension: Activities, Interactions and Resources. Being aware of the components that make up their own ecology will help professors maintain and enhance it and, therefore, help them achieve their learning objectives.


The 40Ar/39Ar method using stepwise heating has been applied to 11 Precambrian mafic rocks in Minnesota and Ontario to test the technique on samples varying from extremely altered to essentially unaltered and to date some of the Lower and Middle Keweenawan igneous rocks. Four essentially unaltered samples give plateau ages which appear to be reliable and may date the time of intrusion. One strongly metamorphosed sample gives a plateau age which may date the time of metamorphism. The altered mafic rocks give patterns which are inconsistent, difficult to interpret, and have higher ages for the higher temperature fractions. Essentially unaltered samples may also give inconsistent patterns. For the Keweenawan igneous activity along the northwest shore of Lake Superior near the Minnesota-Ontario border and a Logan sill near Lake Nipigon, the plateau ages suggest that three Lower Keweenawan Logan intrusions occurred 1150 to 1170 rn. y. ago, although it is possible that the sills nearthe Minnesota-Ontario border are older; that the Keweenawan igneous activity ended about 1135 m.y. ago, based on one late dike analysis; and that a basal Keweenawan basalt flow was metamorphosed and cooled enough to retain argon by 1095 m.y. ago. On a utilise la m6thode 40Ar/39Ar avec chauffage graduel sur onze roches mafiques pkcambriennes du Minnesota et de I'Ontario pour Bprouver la technique sur une gamme d'echantillons dont I'alteration va de tres forte jusqu'k ktre absente, et pour dater des roches ign6es du Keweenawien Inferieur et Moyen. Quatre Ochantillons essentiellement frais donnent des 2ges optimum auxquels on peut se fier et qui peuvent donner un 5ge d'intrusion. Un Cchantillon de roche trts metamorphisee donne un 2ge optimum qui peut Ctre celui du mktamorphisme. Les patrons obtenus pour les roches mafiques alterees sont incompatibles, difficiles i interpreter, et donnent un 2ge plus grand pour des fractions a temperature plus elevee. Certains echantillons essentiellement nous alkres peuvent aussi donner des patrons inconsistants. Pour I'activitd ignee du Keweenawien, le long de la rive nord-ouest du Lac Superieur pres de la frontitre entre le Minnesota et I'Ontario, et pour un sill Logan pres du Lac Nipigon, les kes optimum suggerent que trois intrusions Logan du Kewenawien ont un 2ge entre 1150 et 1170 m.a., quoiqu'il soit possible que les sills pres de la frontitre Ontario-Minnesota soient plus 2ges; ces 2ges suggerent aussi, selon l'analyse d'un dyke tardif, que I'activite ignee du Keweenawien s'est terminee il y a environ 1135 m.a. et qu'une coulee de basalte basale du Keweenawien a ete metamorphisee et refroidie assez pour retenir I'argon, il y a environ 1095 m.a. [Traduit par le journal]


The reported complication rates range from 2.8 to 4.1% and the most common is intestinal obstruction. Most of the complications occur within the first six months after placement of the balloon. Other side effects of balloon insertion have been previously described, including esophagitis, severe nausea and vomiting, abdominal cramps, hiccups, (6) belching, pyrosis, bowel mechanical gastric ulcer, and aspiration.


The survival rate of whole-body x-irradiated mice was increased significantly from 35% to 60% when heparin was injected before the exposure. According to this finding to the different classes of substances that exhibit radioprotective properties a new one can be added, namely that of the anticoagulants. (auth)


In 1976 ENEX of New Zealand was commissioned by the Government of Indonesia to assist its Highways Department to design and implement a programme for the betterment of 30,000 km of its 75,000 kms of primary rural highway network.


Since the period of the so-called &dquo;Asian Miracle&dquo;, there has been a growing interest in the economic and social developments of East Asia. Part of this keen interest is in the area of language policies and language education, for which detailed information in a single volume seemed to be lacking until the publication of &dquo;Language Policies and Language Education: The Impact in East Asian Countries in the Next Decade&dquo; last year, edited by Ho Wah Kam and Ruth Y L Wong.


Experiments on reactor noise were conducted at KUR. Depending on the operating condition of the reactor, the cause of the noise are classified into the following four types. 1. Zero-power noise source due to the branching process of fission neutrons and/or due to random bombardment of neutrons to the detector—under natural circulation of coolant and at essentially zero-power level.2. Coolant temperature fluctuation due to natural convection—under natural circulation and at relatively high power level.3. Flow induced vibration of shim control rods—under forced circulation of coolant and at low power level.4. Fluctuation of inlet coolant temperature—under forced circulation and near the maximum power level. Vibration of a spare shim control rod and fluctuation of inlet coolant temperature were measured simultaneously with the neutronic noise. Then the noise sources of the types (3) and (4) were verified. The vibration of a control rod has a broad spectrum in low frequency region besides the large peak at 14...


This paper looks into the development of methodological approaches to assessing the efficiency of personnel management in an enterprise. The authors establish that appraising personnel is a crucial component of the system of personnel management in an enterprise. It acts as a powerful tool for motivating work. The authors suggest determining the content of the company's major types of work activity and its major end results through the use of a structural-diagnostic model for assessing the efficiency of personnel management that characterizes the mechanism underlying the interaction between the 3 major operands involved in the production of services: people, factors, and organization. The model lets you assess the content and efficiency of personnel management based on the findings of analyses of positions of employment, the staff recruitment system, the staff training system, compliance with work discipline, labor productivity, career planning, and pay. The authors prove that as primary assessment criteria of the efficiency of HR policy such indicators as labor efficiency, compliance with legislation, satisfaction with work, no-shows at work, employee turnover, the number of conflicts and complaints, and the accident frequency rate could be used.


Modern Monte Carlo codes (e.g. MCNP) allow calculation of power density distribution in 3-D geometry assuming detailed geometry without unit-cell homogenization. To normalize MCNP calculation by the steady-state thermal power of a reactor, one must use appropriate scaling factors. The description of the scaling factors is not adequately described in the MCNP manual and requires detailed knowledge of the code model. As the application of MCNP for power density calculation in TRIGA reactors has not been reported in open literature, the procedure of calculating power density with MCNP and its normalization to the power level of a reactor is described in the paper.


Modernization and expansion of three hydroelectric power facilities on Salt River, Arizona. The facilities include the modernizing of existing 25 Hz units and the expansion of power facilities by addition of pump storage units to provide a source of peaking power. Comparisons are given of peaking capacity by older stream units, diesel driven units, hydro units, and gas turbines along with system capacity determinations and plant operations, during summer and winter months. The economic evaluation on the basis of present worth for various alternative sources of peaking power is included along with an outline of the new power generation and pump storage units and their appurtenances.


Diesel electric propulsion is in many ways a good alternative to conventional shaft propulsion, both economically and environmentally. There are also many other good side effects which need to be c ...


This paper is concerned with a combinatorial construction which mysteriously "mimics" or "models" the decomposition of certain reducible representations of orthogonal groups. Although no knowledge of representation theory is needed to understand the body of this paper, a little familiarity is necessary to understand the representation theoretic motivation given in the introduction. Details of the proofs will most easily be understood by people who have had some exposure to Schensted's algorithm or jeu de tacquin.


ABSTRACT Ti is a very important active element in brazing SiO2 ceramics by using Ag-based fillers. Therefore, a density functional theory (DFT) study was applied to investigate the influence of Ti dopant on the interfacial bonding properties of the SiO2 ceramic/Ag interface. Firstly, we built SiO2(0001)/Ag(111) interface with very small lattice misfit. The interface structure with O1 termination and hollow site was found to have maximum value of work of adhesion (Wad). Then, the Ti atoms were doped into the interface at different locations to simulate the possible diffusion sites. The energy results show that Ti atom in the Ag slab was more likely to move to the interface and form bonding with O atoms. The result supports the interface structure of SiO2/Ti-O compounds/Ag. When the coverage of Ti atoms at the interface was raised to 100%, Wad of the interface can reach as large as 16.34 J/m2. The electronic structure analysis indicates that Ti atom at interface can form strong ionic bonding with O atoms. With the increase of Ti atoms, the single Ti-O bonding is weakened with less charge transfer. However, the number of Ti-O bonding increases and the interfaces are strengthened further.


The ETeMS (or English for Teaching Mathematics and Science) was introduced to enhance the English language skills of our learners. The move has however created much debate as non-proficient learners are said to be affected by this regulation as they are said to have fared badly in Mathematics and Science, since the two subjects are now taught in English. Following this issue, the Education Minister has announced that a decision will be made in 2008 as to whether the policy would continue. This research was undertaken to determine how Form Four learners of a boarding school, view this issue. The main objective of the research is to find out if the learners' performance in Mathematics and Science had improved or deteriorated as a consequence of having to learn the subjects in English. The second objective is to determine if the learners' proficiency of English language was enhanced as a result of the greater exposure to the English language. The challenges faced by the learners in learning Mathematics and Science in English are also reported in this paper. It is hoped that the findings of this study would help the authorities concerned, in one way or another, to make a decision on the policy pertaining to the use of English in teaching and learning Mathematics and Science.


The company was builded to maximixing the wealth of their owner or their stokeholders. The company goal can be achieved by maximizing the firm value. Maximizing the firm value reflected of holdings rate on market capital. The firm value is the most important because it will be participate by the fortune of shareholders. The purpose of this research is to find out the impact of some variables such as Sales Growth, Profitability, Firm Size, and Growth Opportunity effect to Firm Value at property and real estate companies. Purposive sampling method was used in sampling. This research was using 2013-2017 as the period of the observation and multiple analysis regression as the analysis technique and 35 companies were used as sample. The result of this research the sales growth have no significant effect on firm value, profitability, firm size, and growth opportunity have significant positive effect on firm value.
Keywords : Firm Value, Sales Growth, Profitability, Firm Size, Growth Opportunity


In Human Nature and the Limits (If Any) of Political Philosophy, I argued that justice might require things of people that they cannot bring themselves to do. A central step was to argue that this does not entail an inability to 'do' the putatively required thing. David Wiens challenges that argument of mine, and this piece is my reply.