In multi-tenant data centers, each tenant desires reassuring predictability from the virtual network fabric - bandwidth guarantee, work conservation, and bounded tail latency. Achieving these goals simultaneously relies on rapid and precise traffic admission. However, the slow convergence (tens of milliseconds) of prior works can hardly satisfy the increasingly rigorous performance demand under dynamic traffic patterns. Further, state-of-the-art load balance schemes are all guarantee-agnostic and bring great risks on breaking bandwidth guarantee, which is overlooked in prior works. In this paper, we propose μFab, a predictable virtual fabric solution which can (1) explicitly select proper paths for all flows and (2) converge to ideal bandwidth allocation at sub-millisecond timescales. The core idea of μFab is to leverage the programmable data plane to build a fusion of an active edge (e.g., NIC) and an informative core (e.g., switch), where the core sends link status and tenant information to the edge via telemetry to help the latter make a timely and accurate decision on path selection and traffic admission. We fully implement μFab with commodity SmartNICs and programmable switches. Evaluations show that μFab can keep minimum bandwidth guarantee with high bandwidth utilization and near-optimal transmission latency in various network situations with limited probing bandwidth overhead. Application-level experiments, e.g., compute and storage scenarios, show that μFab can improve QPS by 2.5× and cut tail latency by more than 21× compared to the alternatives.


In electron beam writing on EUV mask, it has been reported that CD linearity does not show simple signatures as observed with conventional COG (Cr on Glass) masks because they are caused by scattered electrons form EUV mask itself which comprises stacked heavy metals and thick multi-layers. To resolve this issue, Mask Process Correction (MPC) will be ideally applicable. Every pattern is reshaped in MPC. Therefore, the number of shots would not increase and writing time will be kept within reasonable range. In this paper, MPC is extended to modeling for correction of CD linearity errors on EUV mask. And its effectiveness is verified with simulations and experiments through actual writing test.


with the development of the Internet,the popularity of mobile positioning device,positioning,map is not only used in infrastructure construction,national defense fields,more and more to the aspects of life,permeability,anyone can provide the space information,can also enjoy the public map of the service.The surveying and mapping product became omnipresent.It is ubiquitous in the mapping and ubiquitous map phenomenon.


The Latin American countries have an urgent need to share, to join efforts and grow together in many areas, but especially in those areas that could lead us to improve the educational level of our people. Learning technologies can be considered by many as the cornerstone for a new educational era that is under development, and Latin American countries should maintain an active forum for discussing the existing technological alternatives that can be applied to our regional contexts. LACLO aims to be a forum of this type, where researchers, developers and education professionals are able to share their experiences and technological advances in the learning technologies field, and integrate these diverse technological developments in their teaching contexts and learning.


The air pollution prediction is based on the relationship that it depends on many meteorological conditions. By using statistical method to analyze datum of air quality and surface meteorological observation in the city, it was brought about meteorological forecasting criterions and statistical forecasting models. The forecast experiment in the city of Fuzhou during February to August 1999 was carried out, and the results show that the grade of concentration about urban air pollutants may be predicted by using statistical forecast.


In this paper, we present environmentally friendly UHF RFID tag antennas that are manufactured by inkjet printing silver nanoparticle ink on a plain paper substrate after finding the most efficient manufacturing parameters and the optimal number of printed layers. The RFID ICs in this work are attached with environmental-friendly and cost-effective conductive adhesive, and the ready RFID tags are evaluated for their wireless performance. According to our measurements, these tags show good performance throughout the global UHF RFID band. The peak read rangeof the fabricated tags can reach about 4 meters, which is suitable for many practical applications.


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Sweden and the surrounding countries have reorganised their armies towards a manoeuvre warfare concept. In Sweden new regulations were produced in the middle of the 90s using manoeuvre warfare as a ...


Wang Anshi's Yuanqi Theory reflects his unique style of scholarly thoughts.There is a strong link between Yuanqi and Tao.Tao is the substance.Yuanqi is the function.Therefore,when Wang Anshi elaborated the link between Yuanqi and Chongqi with substance and function,this substance and function could not be that one of Ontology.The Five Elements link with not only the substance,but also spirit.Therefore,the substance and spirit should not be separated.


Since the episode stands apart from the rest of the scene and can be omitted without destroying narrative continuity, it might have been left out in performance and consequently deleted in the prompt-book and perhaps cut altogether from a transcript of the prompt-book. I raise this possibility since it seemsto me that it has been displaced from an earlier point in the scene, and such displacement might have come about if the episode had been cut and then incorrectly restored. The idea that I should like to put forward is complementary to the emendation proposed by H. L. Rogers in 1964 in his monograph 'Double Profit' in "Macbeth".2 As a solution to the much-debated problem of how to make sense of lines 37b-39a, he offered the suggestion that these lines belong four lines later in the text, as shown below:


INTRODUCTION: Epidemiology. Classification of Incontinence BASIC SCIENCE: Embryology. Anatomy. Neurology. Physiology. Pharmacology INVESTIGATIONS: Principles of Investigation. Setting Up a Urodynamic Clinic. History. Clinical Examination. Frequency/Volume Charts. Basic Investigations. Special Investigations. Imaging Techniques. Ambulatory UDS. Compuertisation CLINICAL DISORDERS: Incontinence. Voiding Difficulties/Retention. Prolapse. Urinary Tract Infections. Uregency/Frequency Including Interstitial Cystisis. Urethral Problems Including Urethral Syndrome. Congenital Abnormalities. Nocturnal Enuresis. Urinary Fistulae SPECIAL PROBLEMS: Infancy/Childhood. Pregnancy. Menopause. The Elderly. Neuropathic Problems. Sexual Problems. Psychiatric Problems. Urinary Problems Secondary to Other Pathology UROLOGICAL ASPECTS: Physiotherapy. Behavioural Intervention. Electrical Therapy. Acupuncture. Surgery. Drugs. Treatment of Refractory Incontinence NURSING ASPECTS: Role of the UDS Nurse. Role of the Continence Advisor. Catheters and Collecting Systems. Pads and Pants. Appliances. Devices QUALITY of LIFE APPENDICES: Definition/Glossary of Terms. Normal Values. ICS Standardisation Reports. Questionnaires. Further Reading Index


Long Term Evolution (LTE) users with high mobility often experience poor communication issues, such as call dropping and call blocking effects. These issues, which are resulted from the frequent handover, can be mitigated by a call admission control (CAC) algorithm. Located inside the base station (eNB), CAC algorithm is responsible for determining whether to accept or to reject incoming calls. In this paper, a CAC algorithm is proposed to reduce call dropping rate for LTE users who need to handover their calls frequently. The proposed algorithm can also be designed to make the overall system more efficient by accepting more calls with higher priority, specifically, calls with higher quality of service (QoS) requirement and calls with good channel quality.


The object of institutional discipline: docile body as a primary goal of shaping, is defined by Michel Foucault in relation to the position of the centre of power at a certain historical moment. Post-Yugoslav artistic cinematography praxis, realised in collaboration of the countries of former Yugoslavia, provides a space for analysing of the mechanisms of power in the period of challenging potential for manipulation. On the example of militarism and its structures, it is possible to extrapolate a docile body subordinate to the indoctrination system by using Foucault's study of discipline and punishment, and to analyse the causality of control enforcement. From the historical and outdated punishment systems, public delivery of physical punishments popularised at war times - as depicted in the film Krugovi (Circles) (2013, Srdan Golubović) as well as the consequences rising from manifestations of restrictions, through systemic presence of repressive messages/instruction bearers and unavoidability of the institution as a bastion of alienated centre of power - as depicted in the film Ničije dete (Nobody's Child) (2014, Vuk Ršumović), through description of the process of assimilation of a non-controlled individual into a defined system of subordinates, to the hierarchic dynamics within military units and acting out of one's own volition - as in the film Karaula (The Border Post) (2006, Rajkot Garlic) - the docile body, in terms of military mobilisation, provides an insight into how discipline/control functions, what consequences it raises and how it influences all members of the society, insisting on its stagnation.


As part of a quest to learn about energy-substrate partitioning in supporting human physiology, in a span of a month commencing at the end of September 2006, I attended three outstanding meetings to be described below. This has been an awesome experience that has been educational, inspirational, and humbling. Many things are encapsulated by the experience, not the least is the ever-increasing pace of discovery and the difficulties we experience in just trying to keep up, let alone get ahead. In the end, I came away feeling a bit like one of the heroes of Antarctic exploration, Apsley Cherry-Garrard. To refresh your memories, Cherry-Garrard was selected by Robert Falcon Scott to serve as the biologist on the 1912 British expedition to the South Pole. Afterward, CherryGarrard authored a memoir, The Worst Journey in the World 1910Y1913 (4). That chronicle and others of surviving expedition members tell us that Scott and four of his companions came second to the Norwegian Roald Amundsen and his team in the race to reach the South Pole. Another and far less trivial distinction is that the Norwegian made it home, whereas Scott and four companions froze on the way out and chill there still. Cherry-Garrard's memoir is a testament to human aspiration, bravery, shortcomings, and mortality. In addition, after reading hundreds of pages of this book, there is the perception that Cherry-Garrard never figured out why he was selected to participate. CherryGarrard had no training in biology. He was very myopic, and his thick spectacles were often useless in the Antarctic. Still, in the complete darkness of the Antarctic winter when day and night were indistinguishable, Cherry-Garrard was selected to lead the team in the march to the Emperor penguin rookery. True to his upbringing, Cherry-Garrard carried on, never complaining even when he fell into crevasse after crevasse, each time leaving him to dangle on leather traces above the frozen abyss below. No, he was ever so thankful when his mates pulled him out to resume the lead. To reiterate, after attending the three meetings, I feel as Cherry-Garrard might have felt, that is, one person trekking on but sometimes left dangling out there.


Statistical equations for identifying the type of natural gas has been built according to natural gas composition analysis and single well production data from 40 oil and gas fields in Liaohe oil province.These equations can effectively discriminate solution gas,gas reservoir gas,oil reservoir gas and dry gas of condensate gas reservoir,thus providing reliable geological basis for natural gas reserve evaluation and efficient and reasonable development in Liaohe oil province.


Hereditary renal cancer syndromes represent approximately 5% of renal malignancies and have distinctive clinical, histopathologic, and genetic features. Next-generation sequencing and other molecular testing methods have uncovered several hereditary renal cancer syndromes. Several autosomal dominant hereditary renal cell carcinoma (RCC) syndromes, including those related to germline pathogenic variants in VHL, BAP1, MITF, MET, FH, TSC1/TSC2, FLCN, SDH, and CDC73 have been confirmed. FH- and BAP1-related RCCs are associated with more aggressive disease. Identifying the clinical and pathological features in these hereditary RCC syndromes is important as, relative to familial cohorts, these patients require early screening and intervention and regular surveillance to improve their clinical prognosis and long-term outcomes. More importantly, identification of these syndromes plays a vital role in personalized management and systemic treatment selection in this modern era of precision medicine. Ongoing studies have demonstrated that treatment based on genetic pathway targeting is a promising approach for hereditary renal cancer management. This review describes updates in the diagnostic criteria for and management of familial kidney cancer syndromes.


A mobile ad hoc network is a self-organized wireless network. Which consists of mobile devices. It is used for gathering the data. It consists of large number of nodes with limited energy or In MANET each node has limited energy resources. MANET is infrastructure less network i.e. it is a open network. Due to open network any node can join and leave a network. Because of this security is more essential for MANET. To secure network communication certificate revocation is an important integral component. The proposed method is depends on k-means clustering algorithm. Certificate revocation is used to examine attackers from participating in networks activities in future. To revoke certificates of malicious nodes present in networks, certificate revocation is one of the best scheme. It plays an important role in detecting falsely accused node within networks. To overcome all these problems, Cluster based certificate revocation for MANET is proposed. The proposed scheme is simulate using NS2.


Faced with the increasing globalization and multilateralization of disputes over the South China Sea,China should persist in the principle of safeguarding the sovereignty on the basis of the bilateral consultation mechanism.Meanwhile,China needs to advocate the signing of a code of conduct on the South China Sea legally binding on all parties concerned with an attempt to construct a reasonable multilateral mechanism.Moreover,efforts should be made to integrate the multilateral mechanism with the bilateral mecahnism so as to seek a sound and comprehensive settlement of disputes over the South China Sea.


This study aims to identify the effects of housing supply and loss on housing price and to predict changes in housing price due to the quantities of houses supplied and disappeared by New-Town Projects in Seoul. To do this, the quantities of houses supplied and disappeared were estimated up to 2015 through the master plans of New-Town Projects. A Stock-Flow model was employed for exploring the effects of housing supply and loss on housing price by life zones, and a Vector Auto-Regression (VAR) Impulse Decomposition model was used to predict the changes of housing price caused by New-Town Projects. The results showed that a total of five hundred thousand houses will be supplied until 2015, while a total of two hundred fifty thousand houses will be vanished. It was found that the effects of the quantities of houses supplied and appeared on housing price are varied across life zones. Especially, the loss of housing was found to increase the changing rate of housing price after the loss of housing was started. The supply of houses, however, was found to decrease the changing rate of housing price since the second quarter of the year after the supply of houses will be completed. Since the effects of New-Town Projects on housing price are varied across life zones, therefore, the location and the time of New-Town Projects should be determined with regard to the quantities of houses supplied and disappeared by life zones in Seoul.


The need to provide more significant rewards for 'teaching excellence' in order to provide parity of status with research in higher education has often been asserted. This paper examines ways in which the idea of rewarding excellent teaching has been understood and translated within a large teaching and learning initiative that was overtly based on rewarding and recognising excellent teaching. The initiative studied here, was the formation of 74 Centres for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, established by the Higher Education Funding Council for England in 2004. The findings are based on research that traced the 'translation' of this policy aim in 15 institutions. The research found that the process of translation resulted in multiple interpretations of this agenda, including some that rejected the notion completely, raising some pertinent questions about policy formation in relation in teaching and learning.


This paper study the main reasons of corporate getting into special treatment with survival analysis method, and establish relevant forecasting models on this phenomena forming. We find that corporate profitability, growth, operation capacity, assets size and last year earning can forecast and decide whether corporate get into special treatment situation. We also find that asset write-downs policy lead to prevalent "big bath" phenomena rather than the attribution changing of special treatment firms.


In remote areas, large power stations are often installed to supply local loads due to the difficulties of power transmission. However, with the development of renewable energies and poverty alleviation programs, many renewable energy stations have been installed in such areas. This large amount of surplus and fluctuating energy causes a poor voltage quality, and this problem is difficult to solve with traditional methods. Adding transmission lines can be a feasible solution, but the related research is limited. To provide a guideline for this solution, a network optimization algorithm is proposed in this paper. In the process, a sub-grid that is far from the national grid with an imbalanced power supply and demand is connected to the national grid directly to improve the power quality. First, the linear performance index power mileage is defined to facilitate the calculation and help denote the voltage quality. Then, an iterative algorithm is formed to perform the network optimization and automatically choose the number of clusters. A case study of an actual power grid in Chongqing, China, and an IEEE 123-bus case are used to verify our algorithm. The results show there is a great improvement in the voltage profile.


Abstract This study aims to examine bilateral trade flows across ECOWAS-15 nations with the use of a panel and cross section for the period of 1981-2013. The methodology carried out to achieve this objective involves the use of various techniques of estimation for the gravity model (Static and dynamic). More specifically, this study aims to investigate the formational impact of regional trade integration agreements on trade flows within a group of countries using the same currencies and ECOWAS at large. The main use of regional variables into gravity models is intended to determine whether RTAs lead to trade creation, or diversion. The results show the presence of a strong relationship among the factors of both RIAs and trade flows.


PURPOSE: A method for enhancing germline transmission efficiency of avian primordial germ cells is provided, thereby simplifying the enhancing method and effectively producing avian chimera. CONSTITUTION: The method for enhancing germline transmission efficiency of avian primordial germ cells comprises the steps of: (a) isolating gonadal primordial germ cells(gPGCs) from avian embryonic gonads; and (b) in vitro culturing the gonadal primordial germ cells(gPGCs) for at least 5 days. The method for producing avian germline chimera having enhanced germline transmission efficiency comprises the steps of: (a) isolating gonadal primordial germ cells(gPGCs) from avian embryonic gonads; (b) in vitro culturing the gonadal primordial germ cells(gPGCs) for at least 5 days; (c) introducing the cultured gonadal primordial germ cells(gPGCs) into receptor embryo; and (d) incubating and hatching eggs containing the receptor embryo.


Objective To observe the efficacy of flupentixol and melitracen tablet combined with Wuling capsule in the treatment of neurosis. Methods 180 cases of patients confirmed to the diagnostic criteria of neurosis were randomly divided into control group and combined group.Flupentixol and melitracen tablet was used in control group,flupentixol and melitracen tablet combined with Wuling capsule were used in combined group.The improve situation of neurasthenia symptom,depression and anxiety,sleep quality in two groups was observed after 1,2,4-week of treatment respectively. Results After 2,4-week of treatment,the improve situation of neurasthenia symptom in combined group was better than that in control group respectively,with statistical difference(P0.05).After 4-week of treatment,total effective rate of depression treatment in combined group was higher than that in control group(P0.05).After 1,2,4-week of treatment,sleep quality score in combined group was compared respectively,with statistical difference(P0.05). Conclusion Flupentixol and melitracen tablet combined with Wuling capsule can improve neurologic disease and the depression situation in patients with neurasthenia,improve the quality of sleep.Its long-term effect is better than the single with flupentixol and melitracen tablet.


The regime of the Constitution about the municipality (arts. 5o to 123) embodies the principle of local self-government organization on the basis of the representative and republican principle, with tripartite division of functions (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) in where the Municipal Justice Fouls becomes the expression of jurisdictional power at the local level.


This study was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of ethanolic leaf extracts from four selected local plants, Citrullus colocynthis (bitter apple), Artemisia annua (sweet wormwood), Pergularia tomentosa (Fattaka), and Rhanterium epapposum (Arfaj), from Hail region, northern Saudi Arabia, against the larval stages of the Dengue fever vector, Aedes aegypti. Data analyses revealed that ethanolic extracts of both R. epapposum and A. annua were more toxic to the 4th instar larvae of Ae. aegypti compared to the other two plants. The lethal effect of the ethanolic extract of A. annua on the larvae was more effective with time, as the mortality rate increased with spent time, with the highest mortality rate recorded, 95%, was after 72 hours. Moreover, the study revealed that the ethanolic extract of A. annua showed more larvicidal efficacy against Ae. aegypti larvae under lower concentrations compared to the other three


A novel compound having an optionally substituted lactam ring structure is provided to exhibit excellent inhibitory activity against dipeptidyl peptidase-IV(DPP-IV), thereby being used to treat or prevent diseases caused by the DPP- IV such as diabetes mellitus or obesity. A compound is represented by a formula(1), wherein (A) n is 0, 1 or 2; (B) A1, A2 and A3 are each independently selected from the group consisting of: H; halogen; OH or OR', wherein R' is linear or branched C1-7 alkyl; substituted or unsubstituted linear or branched C1-7 alkyl; NR'R", wherein R' and R" are each independently H, or linear or branched C1-7 alkyl; CN; COOH or COOR', wherein R' is linear or branched C1-7 alkyl; CONR'R", wherein R' and R" are each independently H, linear or branched C1-7 alkyl, or substituted or unsubstituted phenyl; substituted or unsubstituted phenyl; substituted or unsubstituted C3-6 cycloalkyl; substituted or unsubstituted heterocycle; and (CH2)mXY, wherein m is 1 or 2, X is NH, O, S, -CONR- or -CO-, and Y is each independently H, SO2R, CH2R, COR, CONHR, substituted or unsubstituted heterocycle, or halogen-substituted or unsubstituted phenyl, wherein R is each independently H, substituted or unsubstituted C1-10 alkyl, or halogen-substituted or unsubstituted phenyl; wherein A2 and A3 are interconnected to make a ring (E), and where Z is CO, E is phenyl; (C) Z is CH2 or CO; (D) B is selected from groups represented by a formula(2) or (3). In the formulae(2) and (3), n is 0, 1 or 2; D is S, O, NR' or CRR', wherein R and R' are each independently selected from H or linear or branched C1-7 alkyl; and R1, R2, R3, R4 and R5 are selected from the group consisting of H, halogen, OH or OR', C1-7 alkyl, NR'R", CN, COOH or COOR', CONR'R", substituted or unsubstituted phenyl, substituted or unsubstituted C3-C6 cycloalkyl, and substituted or unsubstituted heterocycle. A pharmaceutical composition for inhibiting DPP-IV comprises the compound of the formula(1) or a pharmaceutically acceptable salt thereof.


AbstractTwenty-nine students in a deductive logic course were studied in order to compare two forms of diagnostic feedback that accompanied the use of CAI programs. One form of feedback was delivered in special meetings between student and instructor and a second form of feedback was delivered by the CAI programs. The content of the feedback was determined by the instructor in both cases. A within-groups experimental design was used. Students were divided into two groups, and each group received each form of feedback during different stages of the course. The main dependent measures included exam performance, class attendance and responsiveness, and attitudes toward the instructor, computers, other students, and the course. The results show that there was some advantage to instructor-supplied feedback as opposed to computer-supplied feedback during the most difficult phase of the course with respect to exam performance, class responsiveness, and student attitudes toward the instructor and other students. ...


Abstract : The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS) Rapid Service/Prediction Center (RS/PC) has made several improvements to its combination and prediction products since the last Journees conference in 2007. These improvements are due to the inclusion of new input data sources as well as modifications to the combination and prediction algorithms. These changes and their impact on the users of the RS/PC data are presented.


Gels of hydroxyalkoxypropyl-dextran ('modified LH-20'), made by reaction of terminal epoxy-alkanes with Sephadex LH-20 (Ellingboe, Nystrom & Sjovall, 1968), swell in non-polar solvents such as benzene. Our observations indicate that the separating properties of the benzene-gel preparation involve gel filtration. The selective retention of aromatic compounds, observed for Sephadex G-25 and LH-20 (Janson, 1967), is absent: there is, however, a powerful hydrogen-bonding effect, the gel acting exclusively as the basic component. Hydroxyl groups markedly increase retention to a degree dependent on their number and steric environment. Carboxylic acids are severely re-tained. The incorporation of an alcohol in the benzene permits selective displacement of such samples, apparently by competitive hydrogen bonding.


The aim of this paper is to provide a formal account of the past tense and conditional mood constructions in a number of Slavic languages. As a starting point we present an analysis of these constructions in Polish using the grammatical framework of HPSG Pollard and Sag (1994). Our proposals are guided by diachronic and comparative considerations, allowing an extension of the approach to Czech, Serbo-Croatian, and Russian. Throughout Slavic, the past tense and the conditional involve the " l-participle " form of the verb (henceforth " l-form "), which agrees with the subject in number and gender. Historically, the past tense consisted of the l-form in combination with present tense forms of the auxiliary BE, while the conditional mood consisted of the l-form along with conditional forms of BE. The auxiliary forms in these constructions have evolved in different ways, ranging from a simple loss of prosodic autonomy to total disappearance, giving rise to the variety of structures observed in the modern Slavic languages. In modern Polish, the original past tense auxiliary has developed into an inflectional ending in the 1st and 2nd persons, and disappeared altogether in the 3rd person (4a). The personal endings appear most frequently on the l-form, but they can also appear on another word further to the left—compare (1a) and (1b). The phonological properties of these endings, discussed in Ba´nski (2000), suggest that these elements should be treated as suffixes rather than syntactic words. The evidence is particularly clear when the endings are attached to the l-form: they trigger vowel epenthesis, rightward stress shift, and vowel quality alternations in the verbal root. Furthermore, in coordinated verbal structures, the ending must appear on each l-form. When the endings float to the left and attach to a non-verbal host, they have different properties, but they still obey phonological restrictions that are more typical of suffixes than of words (at least in the singular). In our HPSG analysis of the past tense in Polish, we take the l-form to be the finite verb; in other words, we do not assume an auxiliary construction, in contrast to previous propos-In an approach without empty categories, this is the only analysis available for the 3rd person. In the 1st and 2nd persons, the l-form triggers the presence of an agreement marking. Formally , the l-form has a non-empty AGR(EEMENT)-TRIG(GER) list containing the index of its subject. In the simplest case, …


A 6.3–9.5 GHz UWB CMOS Transmitter is reported. The RF transmitter architecture involves Tx analog baseband predistortion and balun integration into the BGA substrate, which increases the available Tx RF power and reduces the DC power consumption and size of the chip.


The relationship between socioeconomic development and the demographic transition in Sao Paulo Brazil is explored for the period from 1900 to the present. Consideration is given to the family internal and international migration and the impact of culture and ideology on the role of women. Current and probable future developments are explored. (SUMMARY IN ENG) (ANNOTATION)


Ocular trauma is the leading cause of monocular blindness among children.Paediatric ocular trauma has a significant impact on the future quality of life of children. Here, we report a case of a 3 year old child who presented with swelling in upper lid following fall from bed. The symptoms got worse the next day. On repeated probing, grandmother gave a history of child holding pen when the fall occurred. Computerized tomography of orbit was done and it showed an intra orbital foreign body. Anterior orbitotomy was done under general anesthesia and foreign body was removed. Patient recovered with excellent visual prognosis. This report highlights importance of history taking, high suspicion of intra orbital foreign body, and need for imaging whenever indicated.


Estimating the aerosol optical depth (AOD) in the vicinity of clouds is a long‐standing problem. A few recent studies have provided important demonstration of how three‐dimensional (3D) effects can increase substantially the clear sky reflectance and, therefore, lead to significant overestimation (up to 140%) of AOD. We first assess the importance of the 3D cloud effects on the reflectance ratios for pixels located far away from clouds and their shadows (clear pixels) and show that for clear pixels the reflectance ratios for two pairs of wavelengths (660, 470 nm and 870, 470 nm) are less sensitive to the 3D cloud effects than the reflectances themselves. We also propose an approach for converting reflectance ratios to the AOD for the clear pixels. Finally, we use Monte Carlo radiative transfer calculations and 3D fields of cumulus clouds and aerosol generated by a large eddy simulation (LES) model to illustrate the performance of the retrieval with the model‐output inverse problem. Results of the model‐in...


Abstract—Four small molecular receptors of vancomycin have been designed to make part of a novel biosensor device based on theFTIR-ATR detection: N-Boc (2a)orN-Ac (2b)-6-aminocaproyl- D -Ala- D -Ala and N-Boc (3a)orN-Ac (3b)-6-aminocaproyl- D -Ala- D -Ser. Using an original microbiological approach to assess the competition of compounds with the natural target of vancomycin inbacteria, EC 50 values of 6.3–8.0 · 10 5 M(2a–b) and 7.1–9.3 · 10 4 M(3a–b) were determined. Vancomycin:2b complex was char-acterized by MS. 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Immobilisation of bioactive molecules on solid supportshas gained a growing interest because the resultingdevices can be used in various detection systems calledbiosensors. 1 These allow the specific recognition of afree analyte (the ligand) by a target (the receptor) whichis tightly bound to the device surface. Sensors based onthe molecular recognition of biomolecules have alreadyattracted intensive interest in many fields such asenvironmental analysis, monitoring of biotechnologicalprocesses, and medical diagnosis and control.


Diagnosis and management of parkinson's disease

by Cheryl H. Waters , 297 pp., Professional Communications, Inc., 2006, $24.95

Parkinson disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease of the nervous system affecting close to 1 million Americans, a number expected to rise as the population ages. Furthermore, PD is a chronic progressive disease with symptoms spanning over different medical disciplines. Although the neurologist …


An outline of the fluid–structure analysis capabilities of general–purpose finite–element software is presented. Analysis considering the influence of structure and fluid on each other is essential in applications such as a structure submerged in water, for example, a submarine or a ship. In this article, the finite–element discretisation of the governing equations of the fluid–structure problem is included. Equations are specialised to treat only the linear fluid–structure problem where the fluid is in a non–flowing state. Two types of analysis approach, namely, pressure–displacement and displacement–displacement formulation are shown. This classification is based on whether the fluid pressure or displacement is used as a dependent variable in the fluid governing equations. Example fluid–structure problems are solved using the ANSYS® finite–element program to show the types of problems a general–purpose software is capable of analysing.


. In Part I, the present authors introduced the notion of a quasi-Galois point, for investigating the automorphism groups of plane curves. In this second part, the number of quasi-Galois points for smooth plane curves is described. In particular, sextic or quartic curves with many quasi-Galois points are character-ized.


Abstract China's population is large and its annual growth significant. Since the mid-1950s, the Chinese government has made four attempts to curb the growth and hopes to limit the total population to 1.2 billion by the year 2000. Thus it has established a policy of limiting families to one child each. These efforts of population control have been successful in cities but have fallen short in rural areas. Using the 1982 Chinese census and data from a national sampling on fertility, this paper examines the urban-rural contrasts in demographic and marital behavior, rates of growth, and implementation of the one child policy. It discusses the variables, such as education, occupation, and political factors, that affect the urban and rural populations. The majority of rural couples still desire a larger family. The paper probes the reasons for this and finds that the traditional concerns of old age and family propagation are more important than are economic reasons, such as increasing the family labor force. T...


Genetically modified organisms are not really recent phenomena: thousands of years of selection have led to the domestication of many animal and plant species. However, with the modern methods of genetic engineering and biotechnology, it was possible to cross the interspecific barriers and create transgenic organisms with newly acquired properties. In this over view, we attempted to discuss different aspects of producing transgenic animals by microinjection procedure, use of transposons and use of intermediate cells like pluripotent cells, primordial germ cells and testis stem cells and somatic cell nuclear transfer. Typical agricultural application of genetic engineering and biotechnology includes improved growth and carcass composition, lactation performance, modification of reproductive performance and prolificacy and wool production, as well as enhanced disease resistance, food productions and reduced environmental impact. In addition, transgenic farm animals have applications in human medicine as a source of biologically active proteins, as donors in xenotransplantation, as disease models for the development of new treatments, antibody production in transgenic animals, blood replacement and for a research in cell and gene therapy. Despite having these applications, there are many pressing problems that need to be resolved for transgenic animal studies. Ethical considerations regarding animal biotechnology reveal that people are concerned about the purpose of the applications, the methods of research, long term impact on human health and the environment and the objects of manipulation. Among the world's largest religions, there are very few clear-cut taboos prohibiting animal biotechnology, although ethical implications can be drawn from the general role of animals within the religious tradition and from beliefs and practices that address animal care and use, animal breeding and human diet. In conclusion, transgenic animals can resolve serious problems of human health and improve the quantity and quality of animal products. However, continuous researches are required to break suspects on using transgenic animals with the oversight of respective governments.


Aim of the study: To investigate potential differences in ovarian structures relative to serum metabolite and mineral concentrations at mating. Also, body condition score (BCS), serum metabolites, and mineral profiling at mating were compared between pregnant and non-pregnant goats.
Area of study: Hot zone of northern Mexico (26 °N).
Material and methods: Mixed-breed goats (n= 89) on arid rangeland were exposed to bucks during the non-breeding season. Ovarian structures were recorded at mating and ten days after breeding using ultrasonography. Pregnancy was detected at 30 and 120 days post-mating. BCS, blood metabolites, and minerals were determined at mating.
Main results: Pregnant goats had higher BCS at mating than non-pregnant goats. The mean serum glucose concentration was higher (p<0.05) for pregnant goats than that for non-pregnant ones (87.3 ± 12.1 vs. 74.4 ± 11.6 mg/dL). Significantly lower (p<0.01) serum urea nitrogen levels at mating were recorded in non-pregnant (10.7 ± 3.5 mg/dL) than in pregnant goats (12.4 ± 3.7 mg/dL). Lower serum glucose (72.2 ± 6.9 vs. 89.4 ± 11.2) and higher non-esterified fatty acids concentrations (NEFA; 0.43 ± 0.23 vs. 0.18 ± 0.12) were significantly associated (p<0.05) with pregnancy loss. Higher serum total protein concentrations were associated with a greater number and larger ovulatory follicles. High serum phosphorus was significantly associated with larger ovulatory follicles. Goats with ovulatory follicles ≥7.6 mm were more likely (p<0.05) to get pregnant than goats with smaller ovulatory follicles.
Research highlights: Monitoring BCS, serum glucose, blood urea nitrogen, and NEFA could be used to identify goats at risk for infertility.


The paper aimed to solve the weightless problem of the active docking ring (ADR) of a docking mechanism. The paper proposes a lift-on zero gravity simulation method with compact structure, which has an internal support rope for the active docking ring in the space docking process. The internal support structure ensures that the ADR rotates freely in three-axis direction. The intelligent fixed torque mechanism not only provides high precision balance force to gravitation, but also moves up and down with the ADR as well, realizing the motion of Y direction. The lateral motion (including X and Z directions ) of the ADR simply needs to overcome the friction torque of hinge by a swing link-double hinge mechanism resistance is small even in the top speed of the docking process due to the application of the longitudinal servocontrol mechanism. The paper gives relevant calculation and design data, and also some parameters experimental and balance simulation. The zero gravity simulation mechanism is installed in the internal walkway of a docking mechanism that could realize zero gravity simulation in the whole process of space docking. The respond time is 5 ms. The error of simulated weightlessness is about 1%-2% in each direction.


That different kinds of abstracts may be found useful by different users is commonly assumed The purposes of this paper are to outline a method of obtaining independently meaningful abstracts from a single intermediate representation and to consider some preliminary results with software desig ned to implement this method. The implementation involves manual coding: expressions are enclosed in angular brackets, and a number or letter code after each left angular bracket identifies the concept to which the corresponding expression belongs. Some control of sentence order is possible in this implementation and appears to be essential when some ordinary abstracts are coded.


The cauliflower-like ZnO nanorod clusters,radial short/long nanorods and whisker clusters have been prepared via simple hydrothermal method at 180℃ by using zinc salts and hydrazine hydrate(N_2H_4·H_2O).The microstructures of the as-synthesized samples have been studied by means of X-ray diffraction,scanning electron microscope,field-emission scanning electron microscope and high-resolution transmission electron microscopes.The mean sizes of as-grown nanorods or whiskers are about 100nm,200nm and 1μm in diameter,respectively.The formation of ZnO nanorod or whisker clusters and the importance of N_2H_4·H_2O concentration are discussed with growth unit model of anion coordination polyhedra.


OBJECTIVE To study the role of ciliary neurotrophic factor(CNTF) in the generation of facial nerve.METHODS Twenty adult New Zealand rabbits' bilateral super buccals of facial nerves were transected and connected with silicone tube.CNTF was injected into a random side of silicone tube and normal saline in the other.At four and eight weeks after the operation, both the CNTF group and the SAL group underwent electrophysiology test and histopathology as well as quantity analysis.RESULTS Four weeks later, both CNTF and SAL group failed in eliciting muscular excitement upon stimulation; T-test showed a signifi-cant difference(P0.05)in the average number of myelinated axons, the axon cross-sectional areas and the diameter of axons in the two groups.Eight weeks later,motor nerve conduction velocity of facial muscular excitement was 37.9±4.4m/s in the CNTF group and 30.5±4.6m/s in the SAL group.The average number of myelinated axons,axon cross-sectional areas and diameter of axons were 1914±475, 2.17±0.21, 3.12 ±0.51 in the CNTF group and 1197±403, 1.86±0.28, 2.79±0.62 in the control one,respectively.T-test showed a significant difference between the(mP 0.05).CONCLUSION CNTF enhances facial nerve re-generation in adult New Zealand rabbits.


Wellness involves a conscious, progressing and self-directed process of realising one's full potential and is often described as a holistic, multidimensional and positive experience, including lifestyle, mental, social, occupational, spiritual and environmental well-being. It can thus be argued that by applying the Dimensional Model of Wellness, tourism, specifically adventure tourism organisations can develop successful wellness activities and programmes by becoming aware of the interrelatedness of each dimension and their impact on healthy living. This study sought to examine whether adventure tourism activities could be used as a tool for improving adventure tourists' wellness using an adaption of the Dimensional Model of Wellness. The research was conducted at adventure sites of the Tshwane Metro area in Gauteng Province, South Africa of which the criteria required was for the respondents to be either residents or visitors who participate in adventure activities. The study employed an on-site survey based on a quantitative approach with a self-administered questionnaire as the research instrument. The research instrument was based on the seven dimensions of wellness, namely physical, emotional, social, environmental, intellectual, occupational and spiritual. Convenience sampling was used for the total sample frame of N = 213. The results indicated that there is a compelling relationship between the wellness dimensions and adventure tourism and that participating in adventure activities improve overall wellness. Based on the findings of the study, it was concluded that adventure tourism activities are an effective tool for improving adventure tourists' lifestyles.


(Butadiene)(cyclopentadienyl)niobium Complexes

The known bis(butadiene)(cyclopentadienyl)niobium complex (C5H4R)Nb(C4H6)2 (1, RH) exists in solution as a 1 : 1 mixture of a bis(cis-butadiene) isomer 1a and a (cis-butadiene)(trans-butadiene) isomer 1b. In solution the barrier to isomerisation is 80 ± 2 kJ/mol. New derivatives 2 (RMe) and 3 (RSiMe3) of 1 are described. One of the butadiene ligands in 1 – 3 is readily substituted with CO, CNtBu, P(OMe)3, and PMe3. CpNb(PMe3)2(C4H6) (7) reacts with disubstituted acetylenes to form acetylene complexes CpNb(PMe3)(C4H6)(RCCR') (8: R, R'=Ph, 9: RMe, R'=Ph, and 10: RPh, R'=SiMe3), The structure of 9 resembles that of bent metallocene derivatives with the acetylene acting as a 2-e ligand.


Abstract. Until recently, the State of Puebla, Mexico had no official reported chronic cases of Trypanosoma cruzi Chagas. The State has conditions of social and ecological marginalization for transmission of infectious agents to be effective. Entomological indices and triatomines at the municipality of Xayacatlán de Bravo, Puebla were analyzed, as well as the DTU of circulating T. cruzi. In total, 117 triatomines were collected. The isolated strains of T. cruzi were molecularly characterized using the 24Sa rRNA and miniexon markers. Results indicated Meccus pallidipennis Stål and Triatoma bassolsae are at the municipality of Xayacatlán de Bravo. We found natural infection rate of 33.3%, and the circulating DTU was TcI. Data indicated the need to study biological and bionomic aspects associated with triatomines that are adapting to human dwelling.


Ni/4H-SiC Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) were fabricated, and irradiated with the 60 Co gamma-ray source to the accumulated dose of 1 Mrad(Si). The 0 V and -30 V bias voltage were applied to the SBDs during irradiation. After 1Mrad(Si) radiation, the Schottky barrier height and ideality factor of the Ni/4H-SiC SBDs under different bias voltages basically remain at the same values, and the minority carrier lifetime of the epitaxial layer also has no degradation. The reverse current decreases after radiation, which can be explained by the negative surface charge increase. The results show radiation bias voltage has no obvious influence on the radiation effect of the Ni/4H-SiC SBD.


Environmental planning and management can have positive effects on development of some land uses including industrial areas that have a major effect on economic, social and environmental conditions. Considering the most important problems associated with modeling, the fundamental methods and functions of site-selection laid inside the geographical information system are not accounted for the multi-purpose experimental programs. The main purpose of this study is to present a systematic pattern for environmental management using genetic algorithm and fuzzy analytic hierarchy process in geographical information system in order to reduce uncertainty. Through fuzzy analytic hierarchy process, the weight of criteria was calculated after extracting the criteria by Delphi technique and identifying all the effective criteria and factors involved in site selection. After preparation of intended layers, each map was prepared in the form of raster layers on geographical information system. Information layers were combined after being valued and finally the map of suitable areas was prepared. Finally, the conformity of all the obtained maps was checked out with field conditions. In this study, the genetic algorithm was used as an optimization method applied for natural selection. It was also attempted to find better solutions among others. The results showed the best site for developing industries.


BACKGROUND: Physical activity (PA) has been extensively investigated in COPD, curiously there is very limited data for asthma. AIMS: We aimed to investigate levels of PA in adult asthmatics, and to identify associations between PA and lung function. METHODS: We measured PA (steps per day, SPD) in 146 stable asthma patients (severe asthma/SA, n=63; mild-to-moderate asthma/MA, n=83) and 29 healthy controls (HC) by accelerometry (SenseWear Armband) for one week. We measured lung function: airflow limitation (FEV 1 ; PEF), airway resistance (sR eff by bodyplethysmography; R5Hz by impulse oscillometry/IOS) and small airway dysfunction (frequency dependence of resistance/ FDR abs by IOS). In addition, we assessed symptom control (ACQ-5) and dosage of inhaled corticosteroids (ICS). RESULTS: In unadjusted analyses, SA showed significantly lower SPD [median 6174 (4822–9277)] compared to MA and HC (reduction by 21% and 31%, respectively; p In multivariate linear regression analyses adjusting for common confounders, R5Hz and FDR abs were the best lung function predictors for SPD in asthma (p abs remained independent predictors after further adjustment for poor symptom control and high dose ICS treatment (p CONCLUSIONS: Physical activity is substantially reduced in patients with severe asthma. Impulse oscillometric assessments of airway resistance and small airway dysfunction in a tidal breathing maneuver are the best indicators for physical activity limitation in asthma.


This article provides an analysis of the cultural and political factors that shaped Danish nationalism in the late eighteenth and nineteenth century. Throughout the analysis of the development of Danish nationalism, parallels are drawn to nationalism in late eighteenth and nineteenth century Britain. Finally, consideration is given to the question of whether studies of nationalism can contribute to an understanding of national states' attitudes towards and willingness to engage in international cooperation.


The present paper discusses issues of challenges of social security systems in Sudan. Following parameters advanced by ILO and UNCOSOC, those systems are analyzed. The conclusions focus on their applicability that faces axial difficulties mainly presented in the state of institutional interregnum facing the country. Moreover, it is important to revisit aspects of social cohesion that serves greater role in traditional social security in the Sudan.


Yuying Wang, Joel M. Brittain, Brian W. Jarecki, Ki Duk Park, Sarah M. Wilson, Bo Wang, Rachel Hale, Samy O. Meroueh, Theodore R. Cummins, and Rajesh Khanna Running head: CRMP-2 modifies LCM's actions on Na channels From the Departments of Pharmacology and Toxicology, Chemistry, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Center for Computational Biology, and Bioinformatics, and Program in Medical Neuroscience, Paul and Carole Stark Neurosciences Research Institute, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, IN 46202, and Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Natural Products, UNC Eshelman School of Pharmacy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA.


Leishmaniasis afflicts nearly 12 million of the world's population. The causative agent is the Leishmania parasite which, in contrast to other eukaryotes, lacks a complete heme biosynthetic pathway; therefore, they must acquire heme exogenously. Here, we suggest that one mechanism of heme sequestration may be accomplished through its coordination with glutathione (GSH) via membrane associated proteins in eicosanoid and glutathione metabolism (MAPEG), which are members of the glutathione transferase (GST) superfamily. In Macaca fascicularis microsomal prostaglandin E synthase type 2 (mPGES‐2), a MAPEG GST, binds to GSH. This enzyme‐glutathione complex then has the potential to form a coordination bond with heme. Therefore, it is hypothesized that there is an enzyme similar to mPGES‐2 which scavenges free heme in promastigote Leishmania. Consequently, the GST superfamily member gene, resembling mPGES‐2, was identified using genomic searches. The L. tarentolae gene was cloned, facilitating the biophysical and biochemical characterization of the enzyme in relation to its heme binding capabilities. Identification of this gene provides the first evidence of a GST superfamily member in Leishmania. This will be achieved through multiple spectroscopic techniques. Since Leishmania lack a complete heme biosynthetic pathway, the exploitation of its heme dependency is a key target for drug discovery.


Macroscopic domain structures have been realized in wedged-permalloy (Py)/uniform-FeMn bilayers during magnetization reversal. When the exchange anisotropy is established perpendicular or parallel to the wedge direction, two macroscopic domains are observed. Separating these domains are a 180° wall in the perpendicular geometry and an intermediate band containing large density of stripe-type microdomains in the parallel geometry. While the exchange field remains practically the same in both geometries, the coercivity and squareness of the loop are much less in the parallel geometry.


Remote sensing imaging datasets for classification generally present high levels of imbalance between classes of interest. This work presented a study of a set of performance evaluation metrics for an imbalance dataset. In this work, a support vector machine (SVM) was used to perform the classification of seven classes of interest in a popular dataset called Salinas-A. The performance evaluation of the classifier was performed using two types of metrics: 1) Metrics for multi-class classification, and 2) Metrics based on the binary confusion matrix. In the results, a comparison of the scores of each metric is developed, some being more optimistic than others due to the bias that they present given the imbalance. In addition, our case study helps to conclude that the Matthews correlation coefficient (MCC) presents the lowest bias in imbalanced cases and is regarded to be robust metric. These results can be extended to any imbalanced dataset taking into account the equations developed by Luque.


Binding of Pt (1R, 3S-cyclohexanediamine)2+ to 2'-deoxyguanylyl (3'-5') guanosine, d (GpG), yielded two diastereomers, which are discriminated by using HPLC. Schematic structures of the diastereomers are proposed on the basis of UV and CD spectral studies.


The Canary Islands have an enormous richness of crops and varieties, many of them traditional or local, selected for decades by farmers based on the most desirable characteristics. Pear trees were introduced to the Canary Islands presumably in the first years after their Conquest in the 15th century, reaching a high degree of diversification. In this study, to determine the genetic identity of the genus Pyrus in the Canary Islands for conservation purposes, 266 pear accessions from the islands of Tenerife, La Palma and Gran Canaria were characterized with 18 SSRs, in addition to 190 genotypes from Galicia, Asturias, wild and commercial varieties as references to detect possible synonyms, genetic relationships and the possible genetic structure. We identified 310 unique genotypes, both diploid and putative triploid, 120 of them present only in the Canary Islands (39%, with 50% clonality). The population structure of the genotypes was analyzed by STRUCTURE 2.3.4 software (Pritchard Lab, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA). The dendrogram, by using the Jaccard coefficient and principal component analysis (PCoA), separated the analyzed genotypes into stable groups. One of these groups was formed only by Canarian varieties present at lower altitudes, showing adaptation to low chilling requirements with a significant positive correlation (0.432, p < 0.01). This first study of the pear germplasm in the Canary Islands reflects the importance of the group of local cultivars and their need for conservation given they are adapted to their peculiar climatic conditions and have a low number of chill units.


Programmed cell death or apoptosis is a central biological process that is dysregulated in many diseases, including in fl ammatory conditions and cancer. The detection and quanti fi cation of apoptotic cells in vivo is hampered by the need for fi xatives or washing steps for non- fl uorogenic reagents, and by the low levels of free calcium in diseased tissues that restrict the use of annexins. In this manuscript, we report the rational design of a highly stable fl uorogenic peptide (termed Apo-15 ) that selectively stains apoptotic cells in vitro and in vivo in a calcium-independent manner and under wash-free conditions. Furthermore, using a combination of chemical and biophysical methods, we identify phosphatidylserine as a molecular target of Apo-15 . We demonstrate that Apo-15 can be used for the quanti fi cation and imaging of drug-induced apoptosis in preclinical mouse models, thus creating opportu-nities for assessing the in vivo ef fi cacy of anti-in fl ammatory and anti-cancer therapeutics.


The aim of the present paper is to highlight the contribution of both passive and active infrared thermography for in situ damage detection and monitoring in a 2D woven composite, during a mechanical testing constituted of multiple sequences of loadings and intermediate pauses. During the monotonic tensile loadings, damages such as matrix cracking and fiber-matrix debondings are monitored by passive thermography. Their thermal signatures are analyzed and the released heat, which is assumed to be a relevant index of their severity, is evaluated and correlated to the associated acoustic energies, simultaneously recorded. Finally, the contribution of the TSR (Thermographic Signal Reconstruction) advanced processing technique to provide a qualitative overview of the detected damages is underlined. As for the constant stress plateau levels, a nondestructive damage inspection of the tested specimen is carried out by pulsed thermography. The difficulties, due to the woven structure of the composite, in detecting...


The invention relates to a transducer comprising a collar for mounting on a conduit. According to the invention a collar 76 carries two elements 77a and 77b having a U-shaped section, for holding the transducer elements in a fixed position against the conduit 70. The collar and the support members can remain on the conduit, in a fixed position, while the transducers are removable. Application to measure velocities and fluid flow rates in the pipes.


While this column mentions the Census Bureau several times, any opinions and conclusions expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Census Bureau or the other statistical agencies mentioned herein. The authors' work was supported by NSF grant #1131848 (NCRN), and by a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.


Mobile wireless networks, such as mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), are vulnerable to passive attacks that threaten the privacy of communications. Moreover, threats can now be launched from mobile platforms and with new techniques for eavesdropping, locating, and fingerprinting wireless transmissions. Recently, many wireless anonymous schemes have been studied, and mobility often plays an important role with regard to the effectiveness of wireless anonymity. In this paper, we focus on the impact of node motion behaviors. We first illustrate the emerging anonymity threat of venue privacy attacks (VPAs) to trace mobile wireless nodes. We then propose ldquomotion-MIXrdquo as the countermeasure to defend against the threat. Motion-MIX calls for protection at all the layers of the protocol stack. We further use a new asymptotic security model to verify motion-MIX's effectiveness against VPAs. In a scalable ad hoc network, we prove that the probability of security breach is negligible with respect to the number of network nodes.


Introduction: The martian meteorite suite contains a wide variety of rock types, such as basalts and lherzolites (shergottites), clinopyroxenites (nakhlites), dunites (chassignites), and an orthopyroxenite. The most numerous of these are the shergottites. These samples exhibit a variety of mineralogies ranging from olivine-bearing primitive basalts and lherzolites (e.g., Y98405, DaG 476, NWA 1068/1110) to significantly more evolved pyroxene-plagioclase bearing basalts (e.g., QUE 94201, Los Angeles, and Shergotty). In addition, the shergottites fall into three groups based on their trace element and isotopic compositions. One group is defined by samples with light REE-depleted patterns and low initial Sr and high initial Nd isotopic compositions (e.g., QUE 94201), whereas another group is defined by samples with light REE-enriched patterns and high initial Sr and low Nd isotopic compositions (e.g., NWA 1068/1110) [1-3]. The third group has characteristics that are intermediate between the other groups. There are two general scenarios to account for the mineralogical, geochemical, and isotopic variability observed in the shergottite suite. In the first scenario, the compositional variability is attributed to a combination of compositional heterogeneity in the mantle sources and variable degrees of fractional crystallization experienced by the mantle melts once leaving their source regions [1-3]. In the second, it is attributed to assimilation fractional crystallization (AFC) of differentiated crustal rocks [4-5]. In order to constrain the mechanisms responsible for the observed compositional diversity in the shergottite suite, we have begun Rb-Sr and Sm-Nd isotopic analyses on the primitive enriched olivine-bearing shergottite NWA 4468. By investigating how this relatively primitive and unfractionated meteorite obtained its enriched incompatible element signature, we hope to constrain the mechanism by which incompatible element variability is produced in the shergottite suite. Petrology and geochemistry of NWA 4468: Northwest Africa 4468 has been classified as an olivine basaltic shergottite [6]. In addition to containing ~35% Fo59-71 olivine, NWA 4468 contains ~30% clinopyroxene, ~25% maskelynite, and minor abundances of chromite, ilmenite, and phosphate. The REE pattern and whole rock Sr and Nd isotopic systematics are very similar to NWA 1068/1110 and are consistent with either derivation from an enriched source (mantle heterogenity scenario) or interaction with an enriched crustal source during its petrogenesis (AFC scenario). Sm-Nd and Rb-Sr Isotopic Analyses: A 51 mg whole rock fraction of NWA 4468 was crushed, washed in 18 mΩ water, and then progressively leached in 2N HCl and 4N HCl for 15 minutes each at 45 °C. Rubidium, Sr and REEs were separated using cation exchange columns in 2N and 6N HCl. Samarium and Nd were purified using pressurized 2hydroxyisobutyric acid columns. Rubidium and strontium were run on the VG Sector 54 multi-collector thermal ionization mass spectrometer, whereas Sm and Nd were run on the Triton thermal ionization mass spectrometer at the University of California, Berkeley. Preliminary Sm-Nd isotopic analyses on the whole rock residue (Wr-1 R) and 2N HCl leachate (Wr-2L) yield an age of 150 ± 29 Ma and an initial eNd value of -6.9 ± 0.3 (Fig. 1). Analyses of numerous other shergottites demonstrate that igneous phosphates are easily dissolved in 2N HCl and that this fraction commonly lies on the Sm-Nd isochron defined by maskelynite, pyroxene, and/or olivine [2,3,7]. As a consequence, the Sm-Nd tie-line is interpreted to represent the crystallization age of the meteorite. The data from NWA 4468 lie within error of the Sm-Nd isochron defined for NWA 1068 and suggest that these samples are closely related [6,7].


The Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications, an R&D division of the National Library of Medicine (NLM), is engaged in developing systems for automating the extraction of information from biomedical journals to create bibliographic records in MEDLINE, NLM's premier online database used worldwide. The first phase of this project has resulted in a system that involves scanning and converting (by OCR) the abstracts that appear in journal articles, while keyboarding the remaining fields. A second generation system is being designed to automate the entry of other fields such as author names, institutional affiliations, page numbers, article titles and others. This system will employ scanning and OCR as well as document image analysis techniques that will automatically zone the scanned pages, identify the zones as particular fields, and reformat the field syntax to adhere to conventional practice in MEDLINE. This paper describes the first generation system currently used for production, and the work toward the design of the second generation system. 1. BACKGROUND The two principal and obvious reasons why automated data entry is of interest are the gradual rise of labor costs and the unrelenting increase in the amount of data that needs to be entered into databases of all kinds from information that obstinately remains in paper form. The traditional way this information from paper is entered into databases is manual keying, often at offshore facilities. The vast majority of the hundreds of bibliographic databases used in every discipline rely on laborious hand entry of bibliographic information from articles in journals, e.g., article title, author names, institutions, abstract, dates, volume numbers, issue numbers, page numbers, etc. Few organizations have incorporated scanning, optical character recognition (OCR), image analysis and understanding technologies in systems to automate this data entry. At the National Library of Medicine, the world's largest medical library, we are automating the production of bibliographic records for MEDLINE, the NLM's premier database of references to articles in medical journals. MEDLINE, that the clinical and research communities rely on, contains 11 million citations drawn from 3,800 journals. The size of this database increases at a rate of well over 30,000 records a month. The approach taken was to develop immediately a first generation system with limited automation, make incremental improvements to it after installation, and then to conduct longer term R&D and design that incorporates document image analysis and understanding techniques to achieve a greater degree of automation. 2. THE FIRST GENERATION SYSTEM For the first phase system we combined scanning and optical character recognition technology with manual entry: OCR for the abstract and manual entry for all the other fields, an approach designed to reduce operator burden to some extent since the abstract is the largest single item in a MEDLINE citation, amounting to a maximum of 4000 characters. We designed, developed and installed this initial production system MARS-1 (codename standing for Medical Article Records System), developing a considerable amount of code from scratch, in addition to reusing code developed in earlier imaging projects together with commercial software. This initial system consists of multiple workstations of three types: scanners, workstations for manual entry (keyboarding) and workstations for reconciling (proofing and correcting). In addition, the system requires three servers: a network file server, an OCR server and one to match double keyboarded citations and to link these manually generated entries with the scanned abstracts. All these workstations are connected over a local area network. One advantage of this networked approach is that all three functions (scanning, citation entry and reconciling) can be done concurrently, so that a fixed sequence of operations is not necessary. For example, citations may be keyboarded before or after abstracts are scanned. The network server maintains directories in which the scanned TIFF images, the abstract text files and the citation files are all kept until they are acted upon. The process begins with the selection of the journal issues by the library staff, and "editing" whose purpose is to prepare information useful for the keyboarding operators. The editor locates each article to be indexed, eyeballs the different fields and identifies the presence of diacritics in each. This is to alert the keyboarder to watch for umlauts, grave and acute accents, tildas, etc. and to use special keys programmed to input such items. The editor indicates which pages have Databank Accession Numbers or Grant Numbers so that the keyboarders may go directly to those pages. The editor also identifies the first author and affiliation, and notes the part of the affiliation to be retained. At the scanning workstation, the operator first barcode-scans the "MRI" number. This barcode label has previously been placed on each journal issue prior to arriving at the MARS system, and appears on each issue and is unique to that issue. This MRI number serves as a directory name and all TIFF images and OCR data for all the articles in that issue are linked to that number. The operator then scans the first pages of each article on which the abstract appears, manually zones the title and abstract, and the bitmapped TIFF files are sent to the network server. The OCR server retrieves these TIFF files from the network server, and produces text files of the abstract and title, which are retained in the network server. At this point, the OCR output is checked by a spellcheck module based on medical lexicons and heuristic rules to reduce the number of correct words that are highlighted, to reduce the burden on the reconcile operator. Concurrently or at any time, the keyboarder (citation entry operator) keys in all the fields (except for the abstract) in a template for each article, and a second operator repeats this process for the same articles. The keyboarders are trained to employ the library's conventions: e.g., author names in "Last name and initials" format; keep the affiliation only of the first author, etc. Double keying is found to substantially improve accuracy, thereby reducing the burden on the reconcile operators. The matching server accesses the data in the network server, and invokes modules named DIFF and MATCH. DIFF compares the two manual entries (one from each keyboarder), and produces a "citation difference" file highlighting inconsistencies. The MATCH module then matches the keyedin title field with the OCR'ed title text. The system now "knows" that the abstract and the rest of the keyed in fields belong to a particular article. At this point, all the fields entered by keyboard and from the OCR system are available for validation and proofing by the reconcile operators. Following this step, the completed record file is FTP'ed to a module in the NLM mainframe computer. These records in the mainframe are later accessed by indexers who add the appropriate descriptive information such as Medical Subject Headings, thereby completing the bibliographic record to be added to MEDLINE. 2.1 Selecting the OCR system From the many commercial OCR packages available, we compared the performance of six in the lab. Two were multi-engine systems and the remaining four single-engine systems. The comparison was made in terms of detected (highlighted) errors, highlighted correct words (false alarms) and undetected errors. The selection of Prime Recognition's 5-engine OCR package for the MARS system was primarily based on minimizing the undetected error rate since this is the factor that gives a high level of confidence that the proofers need not compare every word in the converted text against the original printed material, a highly labor-intensive step. However, this OCR system also exceeded the performance of the other packages with respect to the other two criteria. 2.2 MARS-1 performance With instrumentation code designed into the executable programs, it was possible to measure the time taken for various processes. In the case of scanning, as an example, the machine scan time was just 6% of the total capture time, but manual zoning represented 45%, the physical handling of the journals 37% and the quality check 12%. Since in MARS-1 only two fields are being zoned, this will remain manual for now, but in the next generation system, automatic zoning will be implemented to save the operators' time. 2.3 Incremental improvements to MARS-1 At installation, MARS-1 was producing about 67 completed records a day. Fifteen months later it was producing over 600 completed records a day, over a third of the total requirement at NLM. A large part of that is the fact that the system was scaled up to double the number of machines and operators. However, gradual improvements have also helped, as outlined below. Barcode scanners. Finding that the manual entry of the MRI number, a nine digit number, burdensome and error-prone, all workstations were equipped with a barcode scanner. This is a very important number to recognize correctly because it identifies the journal issue and is the gateway to all the articles in that issue, the image files and the OCR output files. Click select special symbols. In the case of the Greek letters and biomedical symbols which are not recognized by the OCR, a window with a list of these symbols in words (ALPHA for alpha, for instance) was provided to enable the operators to click on the words which are then automatically entered in the right place in the text. So even though the OCR system does not recognize these symbols, we have made it easier for the operators to enter them. Programmed keys. At first diacritics, NIH grant numbers and databank accession numbers (e.g., GenBank) were entered separately after the MARS process, turning out to be laborious. I


Most film adaptations of Hamlet focus on the emotional distress of the titular character. One notable to exception to this is Akira Kurosawa's film, The Bad Sleep Well. In this adaptation of Hamlet, Kurosawa amplifies the hints of a Marxist viewpoint in Shakespeare's original play into a film with a systemic anti-capitalist worldview. This version of the story replaces the state government of Denmark with the corporate business sector of Japan. This change of setting allows Kurosawa to examine not only the corruption that stems from hegemonic incompetence that Shakespeare comments on, but also, a more finely-tuned critique of the imbalances that are imposed on society through the perpetuation of the capitalist marketplace. While Shakespeare displays an empathy for the working class in Hamlet, he ultimately upholds the hierarchies that oppress them. Kurosawa is able to transpose Shakespeare's empathy into a broader structural critique that seeks to abolish the unequal hierarchies imposed by capitalism and imbue the working class with a revolutionary potential.


Industry-university-research institution collaboration plays more and more important roles in the regional innovation systems. However, what is the structure of the collaboration in the systems? What's more, what's the relationship between the structure and the activities of regional innovation? This study examined the Indus-try-university-research institution collaborative modes within four different regional innovation systems of China. Based on the patents including universities of Guangdong province, Zhejiang province, Liaoning province and Sichuan province during the year 2000-2010, different collaborative structures in regional innovation systems are discussed.


The first six months after the December 2006 coup have been a time of great anxiety and concern to the people of Fiji as the military-backed Interim Administration has attempted, without much success, to entrench itself into the public consciousness as a force for good of the nation. Several court cases loom, challenging the legality of the Interim Administration and of the Fiji Independent Commission Against Corruption. Important institutions of the state remain deeply politicised, including the Fiji Human Rights Commission and the judiciary. International opinion remains firmly set against the interim regime. Six months after the coup, nothing is resolved except the Interim Administration's determination to remain in power at all costs.


The objective of this pilot study was to evidence the impact of reflection in the professional development of teachers of higher education, in order to increase their levels of empowerment and class effectiveness. This research used mixed methods and can be considered a pilot study because it was designed to prove if a permanent reflective-practical coaching program, was able to be implemented with success in an environment of higher education. The methods and instruments needed to be tested before the design of the program. The unit of analysis was a private university from Quito, Ecuador, which is aiming towards academic excellence, goal that can be reached through the professional development of its teachers, key for fulfilling this objective from the classrooms. The population was all full-time teachers from all faculties and careers. The sample was 42 teachers selected based on two criteria: 1) their levels of effectiveness measured through the permanent evaluation of teachers system, specifically during the semester September 2014 to February 2015; and (2) the list of teachers recommended by the coordinators of each career to participate in this research. The quantitative data was collected using two surveys applied pre and post intervention: teacher's empowerment and self-reflection; and two class observations to measure the effectiveness of the teaching process. Effectiveness was measured through two macro-criteria: planning and implementation. The qualitative data collected information related with the feelings and perspective of the participants, pre and post intervention, through in-depth interviews which aimed towards understanding the origin of attitudes, decisions, and actions that could affect empowerment or class effectiveness, such as: reasons to become a teacher, perspective of teachers about their students, levels of fulfillment of objectives, and reasons for selecting certain teaching strategies. The results of this research proved that the practice of reflection as part of coaching strategy with the objective of reaching the standards of excellence, is a key element in the professional development of teachers from higher education. The data demonstrated that the reflection helped to increase the awareness of teachers about what they do, how they do it and why, which increased their empowerment levels in the six characteristics chosen to measure empowerment: making decisions, professional development, autonomy, self-efficacy, status, and impact. Moreover, there was evidence that empowerment is closely related with the attitudes and practices of a teacher, which in turn affects their teaching effectiveness.


The United Nations last September 2015 has agreed on the sustainable development goals that will oriented the policy actions for the next 15 years. The 17 goals and the related 169 targets should be monitored  and evaluated.  The National Statistical Institutes, following a decisions of The UN Statistical Commission,  should coordinate the process of production of the statistical data for elaboration of indicators that will be used for monitoring. Therefore it is necessary to develop a global, regional and national  set of indicators for monitoring the achievements of the goals and targets by countries. This paper will illustrate the strategy that Istat will develop for monitoring  the SDGs goals and targets trying to develop a coherent set of measures utilizable for this porpoise.  In Italy we have approached the measuring of sustainability in the context of BES, in line with the United Nations declaration that there is sustainable development when the wellbeing of people is pursued.  Moreover, Istat is an observer country inside the Inter Agency Expert Group- SDGs constituted by the UN statistical Commission, where the indicators for monitoring are selected. Istat is also member of the TF UNECE for developing Sustainable  Development measures. All these experiences allow to develop a coherent framework for Sustainable Development  measures in which methods, measures and concepts find clarification. Key words : sustainable development, SDGs, global, regional and national indicators


This paper presents a very compact and low power consumption mixed mode circuit for voice signal processing. A re-configurable ADC/DAC stage was implemented both in analog and digital blocks, taking advantage of the half-duplex operation and thus reducing the total area and consumption. The circuit was designed in a 0.18/spl mu/m digital CMOS process supplied at 1.8/3.3 V. The presented circuit and architectural design techniques reduce the area down to 0.42mm/sup 2/ and the power consumption to 0.94mA in D-to-A mode and 0.88mA in A-to-D mode, while featuring 8 Ohm speaker driving delivering 70mW and all the necessary microphone interface and bias including a 0 to 42 dB gain control. The measured THD is 0.015% and the dynamic range is 71.2dB in D-to-A mode, while A-to-D mode the THD is 0.004% and the dynamic range is 74dB.


Agriculture has been the most important sector contributing to the overall economic growth as well as providing livelihood to a very significant proportion of rural population in India, besides having been an instrument of food security to children and women in particular. Agriculture contributes 22 per cent to the Gross Domestic Product [over Rs.6000 billion] of the Indian economy. It employs around 57 per cent of the labor force on a total of 163 million hectares of land. It has a significantly decisive role in achieving the expected GDP growth rate of 8 to 10 per cent during the Tenth five year plan It is, therefore, legitimate for the Government of India & States to support agricultural development through formulation & implementation of national policies and programs that can make country self-reliant in its food requirements & create large scale employment in rural areas. This should lay emphasis on integrating agricultural research, extension and education system on one hand and establishing efficient, sustainable and cost effective functioning of rural financial markets on the other. After country's Independence, Government of India & Reserve Bank of India both are committed to expand & deepen the rural financial intermediaries in the country side so as to facilitate the rural households' easy access to credit for farm sector development. Entire banking system comprising cooperative, private/public sector/nationalized/foreign/regional rural banks is geared up & its performance is reviewed/monitored periodically such that each one plays its role in this most significantly important area of development through provision of credit. Performance The Government of India, in its budget for the year 2004-05,had asked banks to double the flow of credit [from Rs. 869,820 million to Rs.1,739,640 million] to farm sector & increase its outreach to cover small & marginal farmers; tenant farmers, share croppers, oral leases, in three years i.e by the end of the 10 Five Year Plan[2006-07]. As on 31 March 2005, the credit flow was of the order of Rs 1,152,428.10 million as against the target of Rs. 1,045,000 million for the year 2004-05 & actual flow of Rs. 869,820 million during the year 2003-04, indicating increase by 9.76 per cent & 32 per cent respectively. Agency-wise details of the performance during the year 2004-05 & as on 31 March'05 are given in following tables. Table No.1 Agency-wise targets, disbursements & percentage growth during 2004-05 [Rs in Million] Agency Target –2004-05 Disbursements % Growth Commercial Banks 670,000 728,862.6 +27.87 Cooperatives 390,000 306,388 -21.44 RRBs 85,000 117,181.7 +37.86 Total 1,045,000 1,152,428.1 +9.76 While disbursements made by RRBs were higher by 37.86 per cent over the targets, followed by commercial banks at 27.87 per cent, cooperative banks' achievements were 78.56 per cent of the targets. Overall achievements were higher by 9.76 per cent during the year 2004-05 over the targets. Table No.2 Agency-wise disbursements during 2003-04&2004-05 & percentage growth [Rs in Million] Agency Disbursements 2003-04 Disbursements 2004-05 % Growth


• Regular physical activity induces a wide range of health benefits in adults across all BMI categories, even in the absence of weight loss. • Aerobic and resistance exercise can favour the maintenance or improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness, mobility, strength and muscle mass during weight management interventions. This can be important, as these outcomes are not targeted and sometimes are negatively affected by other therapies, such as caloric restriction, medications and bariatric surgery. Physical Activity in Obesity Management


An integrated tandem photoelectrochemical (PEC) cell, composed of a three-dimensional (3D) ZnO/CdS/NiFe layered double hydroxide (LDH) core/shell/hierarchical nanowire arrays (NWAs) photoanode and a [Formula: see text]-Cu2O photocathode, was designed for unassisted overall solar water splitting in this study. The optical and photoelectrochemical characteristics of ZnO-based photoanodes and Cu2O photocathode were investigated. The results show that ZnO/CdS/NiFe LDH nanostructures offer significantly enhanced performances with a photocurrent density reaching 5.8[Formula: see text]mA[Formula: see text][Formula: see text][Formula: see text]cm[Formula: see text] at 0.9[Formula: see text]V and an onset potential as early as 0.1[Formula: see text]V (versus RHE). The enhancement can be attributed to the existence of CdS nanoparticles (NPs) which boosts the light absorption in visible region and enhances charge separation. Moreover, the introduction of NiFe LDH nanoplates, with unique hierarchical mesoporous architecture, promotes electrochemical reactions by providing more active sites as co-catalyst. On the above basis, the ZnO/CdS/NiFe LDH–Cu2O two-electrode tandem cell system was established. At zero bias, the device shows a photocurrent density of 0.4[Formula: see text]mA[Formula: see text][Formula: see text][Formula: see text]cm[Formula: see text] along with the corresponding solar-to-hydrogen (STH) conversion efficiency reaching 0.50%. Our results indicate that the tandem PEC cells consisting of metal–oxide–semiconductor photoelectrodes based on Earth-abundant and low-cost materials hold promising application potential for overall solar water splitting.


High-temperature superconducting strand with high current capacity is expected to have widely potential applications transferring electric power and superconducting power devices since it is easy to insulate to avoid point charging. Quench characteristics of a 2-kA quasi-isotropic superconducting strands made of REBCO tape with copper sheath in liquid nitrogen (LN2) were investigated numerically and experimentally in this paper. The minimum quench energy and quench propagation velocity of the superconducting strand were simulated and measured. The simulation results are in very good agreement with the experiment. Due to high current density and quasi-isotropic critical current in magnetic field, this kind of superconducting strand has potential application in high-current transmission and high-field magnets.


Along with the development of network technology and mobile equipment, WeChat platform has become the information carrier of new media era, which has provided many possibilities for mobile library, which is favored by domestic university libraries. By means of network survey and data statistic and analysis, 144 universities in Shandong Province were investigated and analyzed. Find out the existing problems, from the service content, operational management, interactive design and other aspects of the development of countermeasures.


This paper examines an explanatory policy in the management of drinking water in Tunisia. Indeed, the price variable, while is considered, in general way, as a confident indicator in the regulation of drinking water consumption, it seems to be insufficient since the management of drinking water is influenced by other set of variables such as: the revenue level of households, the consumption of bottled water, the alternative sources, the household size and, above all, the quality variable, which presents an enormous variability inter- and intra-regions. Through our study, we have shown, that the variation in willingness to pay (WTP) is essentially due to psychological and subjective consideration (the degree of importance of these variables in the scale of preferences of consumers).


In this paper, we will begin by presenting a certain critique of violence, introduced by Walter Benjamin in Critique of Violence and developed/deconstructed by Jacques Derrida in Force of Law. We will present the concepts involved in this criticism, such as those of violence that founds law and violence that maintains law, legal violence and anomic violence, pure means, manifestation, readability and event. Departing from those concepts, we will then go into a theoretical discussion promoted by some Brazilian intellectuals and academics, especially in the compilation of articles titled Rebel Cities: Passe livre and the protests that took over the streets of Brazil. Some of the questions dealt with are: what it means to interpret a manifestation; what the role of theory is in the face of those phenomena; how a violence from the streets can transform law; how to differentiate between legitimate and illegitimate violence; etc.


We present a probabilistic incremental model of early word learning. The model acquires the meaning of words from exposure to word usages in sentences, paired with appropriate semantic representations, in the presence of referential u ncertainty. A distinct property of our model is that it continual ly revises its learned knowledge of a word's meaning, but over tim e converges on the most likely meaning of the word. Another key feature is that the model bootstraps its own partial knowledge of word‐meaning associations to help more quickly learn the meanings of novel words. Results of simulations on naturalistic child-directed data show that our model exhibits behaviours similar to those observed in the early lexical acquisition of children, such as vocabulary spurt and fast mapping.


We propose a novel type of query suggestion to support credibility-oriented Web search. When users issue queries to search for Web pages, our system collects disputed sentences about queries from the Web. Then, the system measures how typical and relevant each of the collected disputed sentences are to the given queries. Finally, the system suggests some of the most typical and relevant disputed sentences to the users. Conventional query suggestion techniques focus only on making it easy for users to search for Web pages matching their intent. Therefore, when users search for Web pages to check the credibility of specific opinions or statements, queries suggested by conventional techniques are not always useful in searching for evidence for credibility judgments. In addition, if users are not careful about the credibility of information in the Web search process, it is difficult to be aware of the existence of suspicious Web information through conventional query suggestions. Our disputed sentence suggestion enhances users' awareness of suspicious statements so that they can search for Web pages with careful attention to them.


A high performing process control system is the key for facing the challenges in chip manufacturing for automotive industry. Increasing requirements on products and product quality drive the evolution of standards for process control. A lot of effort is spent by Infineon to bring its process control systems to perfection. Historically, the four disciplines FDC (Fault detection and classification), R2R (Run to Run control), Sensors and Metrology are used more or less separately to work on specific problems on semiconductor processing equipment and semiconductors. Every of these disciplines have its own advantages and disadvantages and its own target window in a wafer fab.


Chapter 12 focuses on Iran and tackles two issues. First, it seeks to demar-cate the conceptual boundaries of 'geographic agency'. Second, it attempts to apply this concept to the case of Iran. Adopting a critical geography approach, the chapter unpacks how Iran is reinventing itself geographically through certain 'space-making processes' and 'space-framing assumptions'. The chapter argues that Iran is showing agency at three geographical levels: 1) as a nation state, it is systematically representing the 'idea of Iran' as a 'civilizational crossroads'; it does so 2) in a region that the Iranian government chooses to call 'West Asia' (and not 'the Middle East'), and 3) in an emergent world whose organizing trope is a 'New Silk Roads' imaginary and which has a geoeconomic rather than geopolitical logic.


As part of an investigation of factors responsible for a previously reported lower efficiency of carcass lean gain in steers offered grass silage diets, 16 Simmental × Friesian steers (515 (s.e. 6·4) kg) were offered perennial ryegrass silage ad libitum (C0) or silage plus rolled barley at 200 (C20), 400 (C40) or 600 (C60) g/kg total diet dry matter (DM). Barley-supplemented diets were intake-restricted to provide equal DM and metabolizable energy (ME) intakes to those offered C0. Eight steers were selected at random to determine the ME contents of the diets by open-circuit respiration calorimetry. The other eight steers were offered the same diets and were blood-sampled at 20- to 60-min intervals, for 10 h, to monitor changes in the concentrations of a number of nutritionally related plasma metabolites and hormones. Estimated ME intakes in these steers were 85·7, 83·1, 84·4 and 86·2 (s.e. 0·91) MJ/day from diets C0, C20, C40 and C60 respectively. Rumen-fistulated Hereford × Friesian steers provided 24-h rumen data for the same diets offered at equal amounts of ME per kg metabolic live weight. Mean 24-h plasma concentrations of insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) were linearly and positively related ( P P P P P P = 0·051 and P P P


Aim  Climate is recognized for the significant role it plays in the global distribution of plant species diversity. We test the extent to which two aspects of climate, namely temperature and precipitation, explain the spatial distribution of high taxonomic groupings (plant families) at a regional spatial resolution (the Neotropics). Our goal is to provide a quantitative and comparative framework for identifying the local effects of climate on the familial composition of tropical forests by identifying the influence of climate on the number of individuals and the number of species within a given family.


We apply a growth accounting approach to estimate the contribution to potential output growth in Italy by firms with different characteristics. We do so by exploiting time series obtained by aggregating individual firm data. Results show that during the double-dip recession smaller firms provided the strongest negative contribution to potential output growth, while the recovery was driven by big ones. Young firms always give a positive contribution. Growth within sectors is the main driver of the dynamic of both aggregate trend total factor productivity and the capital labor ratio. Looking at sectoral composition effects, between 2014 and 2018 sectors with lower capital deepening have increased their share in the economy, holding back the aggregate figures.


Objective To explore the therapeutic mechanism of oral transfer factor(OTF)for psoriasis.Methods The clinical effects of OTF on38patients with psoriasis were observed and the mRNA expressions of related cytokines(IL-8,IFN-γ,TNF-α)in psoriatic skin before and after the treatment with OTF were detected by hybridization in situ method.Re sults The results revealed that the skin inflammation of psoriasis was improved greatly with total efficiency of60.52%,and the mRNA expressions IL-8,IFN-γand TNF-αwere down-regulated obviously after the treatment with OTF.Conclusion OTF is a safe and effective preparation in treating psoriasis.And the therapeutic effects may be implicated with the inhibitive action on cytokines production,which can play an important role in psoriatic pathogenesis.