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Objective: To compare the safety and efficacy of anti-leukotrienes and inhaled glucocorticoids as monotherapy in people with asthma. Design: Systematic review of randomised controlled trials comparing anti-leukotrienes with inhaled glucocorticoids for 28 days or more in children and adults. Main outcome measure: Rate of exacerbations that required treatment with systemic glucocorticoids. Results: 13 trials (12 in adults, one in children) met the inclusion criteria; all were in people with mild and moderate asthma. Leukotriene receptor antagonists were compared with inhaled glucocorticoids at a daily dose equivalent to 400–450 μg beclometasone dipropionate. Patients treated with leukotriene receptor antagonists were 60% more likely to suffer an exacerbation requiring systemic glucocorticoids (relative risk 1.6, 95% confidence interval 1.2 to 2.2; number needed to treat 27, 13 to 81). A 130 ml greater improvement (80 ml to 170 ml) in forced expiratory volume in one second and a 19 l/min greater increase (14 l to 24 l) in morning peak expiratory flow rate were noted in favour of inhaled glucocorticoids. Differences in favour of inhaled glucocorticoids were also observed for nocturnal awakenings, use of rescue β2 agonists, and days without symptoms. Risk of side effects was no different between groups, but leukotriene receptor antagonists were associated a 2.5-fold increase risk of withdrawals due to poor asthma control (relative risk 2.5, 1.8 to 3.5). Conclusions: Inhaled glucocorticoids doses equivalent to 400 μg/day beclometasone are more effective than leukotriene receptor antagonists in the treatment of adults with mild or moderate asthma. There is insufficient evidence to conclude on the efficacy of anti-leukotrienes in children. What is already known on this topic In 2000 a Cochrane systematic review tentatively concluded that control of asthma was better in patients treated with inhaled glucocorticoids as single agents than with anti-leukotrienes The 2002 Global Initiative for Asthma guidelines still classify the role of anti-leukotrienes as “under investigation” What this study adds Anti-leukotrienes as single agent are less effective than low doses of inhaled glucocorticoids for patients with mild and moderate persistent asthma

Contact Logics provide a natural framework for representing and reasoning about regions in several areas of computer science. In this paper, we focus our attention on reasoning methods for Contact Logics and address the satisfiability problem and the unifiability problem. Firstly, we give sound and complete tableaux-based decision procedures in Contact Logics and we obtain new results about the decidability/complexity of the satisfiability problem in these logics. Secondly, we address the computability of the unifiability problem in Contact Logics and we obtain new results about the unification type of the unifiability problem in these logics.

Spiral Architecture is a relatively new and powerful approach to general purpose machine vision system. On this novel architecture, image rotation is achieved by Spiral Multiplication. However, the general image rotation on Spiral Architecture has two effects. One is scaling segmentation and the other is rotation. This paper presents an algorithm to achieve image rotation without scaling on Spiral Architecture, which improves the Spiral Architecture’s usage in image processing.

Big amounts of textual information are generated every day, and existing techniques can hardly deal with such information flow. However, users expect fast and exact information management and retrieval tools. Clustering is a well-known technique for grouping similar data and in such a way making it more manageable and usable. Text clustering is an adaptation of clustering for a very specific data - documents. However, it is not transferable directly to any language, i.e. specifics of language influence performance quite a lot, as shows results for English and other well investigated languages. In this paper we apply different distances and clustering approaches for Lithuanian data, discuss results and provide recommendations for documents in Lithuanian clustering.

Due to current improvements in techniques for islet isolation and transplantation and protocols for immunosuppressants, islet transplantation has become an effective treatment for severe diabetes patients. Many diabetic animal models have contributed to such improvements. In this paper, we focus on 3 types of models with different mechanisms for inducing diabetes mellitus (DM): models induced by drugs including streptozotocin (STZ), pancreatomized models, and spontaneous models due to autoimmunity. STZ-induced diabetes is one of the most commonly used experimental diabetic models and is employed using many specimens including rodents, pigs or monkeys. The management of STZ models is well established for islet studies. Pancreatomized models reveal different aspects compared to STZ-induced models in terms of loss of function in the increase and decrease of blood glucose and therefore are useful for evaluating the condition in total pancreatomized patients. Spontaneous models are useful for preclinical studies including the assessment of immunosuppressants because such models involve the same mechanisms as type 1 DM in the clinical setting. In conclusion, islet researchers should select suitable diabetic animal models according to the aim of the study.

This paper introduces strong bisimulation for continuous-time Markov decision processes (CTMDPs), a stochastic model which allows for a nondeterministic choice between exponential distributions, and shows that bisimulation preserves the validity of CSL. To that end, we interpret the semantics of CSL - a stochastic variant of CTL for continuous-time Markov chains - on CTMDPs and show its measure theoretic soundness. The main challenge faced in this paper is the proof of logical preservation that is substantially based on measure theory.

Transport levels continue to increase worldwide representing complex challenges to climate change prevention and the liveability of cities. Private car use in particular represents a critical problem due to its negative impacts on global climate, local air quality and congestion. In recent years, interest has arisen in the concept of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) as one possible path towards sustainable mobility futures. MaaS builds on the idea of a shift from private car ownershipto a seamlessly integrated system providing access to multimodal mobility options including public transport and shared mobility services like car and bike sharing. Currently, only few examples of MaaS exist (e.g. Whim in Finland) and knowledge of user experiences is limited.The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how shared mobilities fit with the everyday life and social practices of citizens. Methodologically, the paper will draw on insights from qualitative interviews with families using shared mobility schemes in Copenhagen. The interviews will be informed by a practice theoretical approach focusing on how mobility practices are shaped through elements of materials, competences, and meaning (Shove and Pantzar, 2005) in order to study the ability of MaaS to fit people’s social practices. To inform the discussion of our empirical results, we include a literature review of existing studies of user experiences with Maas and a review and analysis of user practice representations in existing MaaS trials; i.e. how the use of MaaS is envisaged. challenges to climate change prevention and the liveability of cities. Private car use in particular represents a critical problem due to its negative impacts on global climate, local air quality and congestion. In recent years, interest has arisen in the concept of Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) as one possible path towards sustainable mobility futures. MaaS builds on the idea of a shift from private car ownership to a seamlessly integrated system providing access to multimodal mobility options including public transport and shared mobility services like car and bike sharing. Currently, only few examples of MaaS exist (e.g. Whim in Finland) and knowledge of user experiences is limited.The aim of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of how shared mobilities fit with the everyday life and social practices of citizens. Methodologically, the paper will draw on insights from qualitative interviews with families using shared mobility schemes in Copenhagen. The interviews will be informed by a practice theoretical approach focusing on how mobility practices are shaped through elements of materials, competences, and meaning (Shove and Pantzar, 2005) in order to study the ability of MaaS to fit people’s social practices. To inform the discussion of our empirical results, we include a literature review of existing studies of user experiences with Maas and a review and analysis of user practice representations in existing MaaS trials; i.e. how the use of MaaS is envisaged.

In the process of European integration, national constitutional law remains crucial, in several respects. The EU Constitution, in its broadest sense, builds on the common constitutional traditions and principles of the Member States, and EU law refers back to national constitutional law in many ways. National constitutional law contributes to constitutionalising the EU, to give it legitimacy, and to ensure that the EU and the Member States as its agents continue to comply with fundamental constitutional requirements, such as the rule of law, democracy and accountability, and the protection of fundamental rights. Also, from the national perspective, national constitutional law remains essential, since it provides the foundation of membership of the EU, it is decisive for the procedures to be followed when powers are transferred at times of accession and Treaty amendment, and it serves to provide the connection between the national and the EU legal orders. Participation in the EU requires adaptation of the national constitutional arrangements, and national constitutions should not be neglected in the process of the constitutionalisation of Europe. This paper looks into the national constitutional experience of the EU-15 with the EU and asks whether lessons can be learned for candidate countries.

This paper presents a work that aims to study seismo-electromagnetic phenomena in the Western Part of the Eurasia-Nubia Plate Boundary. This region has a significant tectonic activity combined with relatively low electromagnetic noise levels, rendering high quality seismo-electromagnetic measurements possible. An overview of the topic is made and future perspectives are presented.

This paper develops a model of crime analyzing how such behavior is associated with individual and neighborhood poverty. The model shows that even under relatively minimal assumptions, a connection between individual poverty and both property and violent crimes will arise, and moreover, neighborhood effects can develop, but will differ substantially in nature across crime types. A key implication is that greater economic segregation in a city should have no effect or a negative effect on property crime, but a positive effect on violent crime. Using IV methods, I show this implication to be consistent with the empirical evidence.

The performance of spatial modulation (SM) is known to be dominated by the minimum Euclidean distance (MED) in the received SM constellation. In this paper, a symbol scaling technique is proposed for SM in the multiple-inputmultiple- output (MIMO) channel that enhances the MED to improve the performance of SM. This is achieved by forming fixed sets of candidate pre-scaling factors for the transmit antennas, which are randomly generated and are known at both the transmitter and receiver. For a given channel realization, the transmitter chooses the specific set of factors that maximizes the MED. Given the channel state information readily available at the receiver for detection, the receiver independently chooses the same set of pre-scaling factors and uses them for the detection of both the antenna index and the symbol of interest. We analytically calculate the attainable gains of the proposed technique in terms of its transmit diversity order based on both the distribution of the MED and on the theory of classical order statistics. Furthermore, we show that the proposed scheme offers a scalable performance-complexity tradeoff for SM by varying the number of candidate sets of pre-scaling factors, with significant performance improvements compared to conventional SM.

This paper present the experimental work of double unit tunnel form building (TFB) subjected to in-plane lateral cyclic loading. A one third scale of 3-storey double unit of TFB is tested until its strength degradation. Then, the TFB is repaired and retrofitted using additional shear wall, steel angle and CFRP sheet. The crack patterns, lateral strength, stiffness, ductility and equivalent viscous damping (EVD) were analyzed and compared before and after repair and retrofit. The result indicates that the lateral strength increases by 22% in pushing and 27% in pulling direction. Moreover, the stiffness and ductility obtained before and after retrofit increase tremendously by 87.87% and 39.66%, respectively. Meanwhile, the energy absorption measured by equivalent viscous damping obtained after retrofit increase by 12.34% in pulling direction. It can be concluded that the proposed retrofit method is capable to increase the lateral strength capacity, stiffness and energy absorption of double unit TFB., {"references":["H. Kaplani, S. Yilmazi, N. Centinkaya and E. Atimtay \"Seismic\nstrengthening of RC structures with exterior shear walls\", Sadhana Vol.\n36, Part 1, February 2011, pp. 17-34, © Indian Academy of Sciences","S. Altin, U. Ersoyand T. Tankut, \"Hysteretic response of reinforce\nconcrete infilled frames\", ASCE J. Struct. Eng., 1992, 118(8): 2133–\n2150.","N. H. Hamid, N. D. Hadi, and K. D. Ghani, \"Retrofitting of beamcolumn\njoint using CFRP and steel plate\", International Journal of Civil,\nArchitectural Science and Engineering, 7, 542-548, 2013.","K. D. Ghani and N. H. Hamid, \"Seismic performance of SFRC beamcolumn\njoint with corbel under reversible lateral cyclic loading\",\nInternational Journal of Engineering and Technology (IACSIT), 4(1),\n76-80, 2012.","C. Balkaya and E. Kalkan, \"Nonlinear seismic response evaluation of\ntunnel form building structures\", Computational Structural Journal, 81,\npp 153-165, (2002).","S. Bahadir Yuksel, and E. Kalkan, \"Behaviour of tunnel form building\nunder quasi-static cyclic lateral loading\", Structural Engineering and\nMechanics, Vol. 4, No. 1, 26-33, 2012.","A. Abdul Razzaq Nasser Al-Aghabari, S.H. Hamzah, N.H. Hamid, and\nN. Rahman, \"Structural performance of two types wall slab connection\nunder out-of-plane lateral cyclic loading\", Journal of Engineering\nScience and Technology, Vol. 7, No. 2, 177-194, 2012.","S.A Anuar, N.H Hamid, and M.H. Hashim, \"Comparison of seismic\nbehaviour for a single unit tunnel form RC building before and after\nrepaired\", Advanced Material Research, Vol. 905, pp 254-258, 2014."]}

In this paper, several characterizations for s-closed spaces are obtained using regular semiclosed sets and some sets having two properties of near openness and near closedness in the same time. Images of s-closed spaces under some noncontinuous mappings are investigated. The relations between s-closedness and near compactness, co-compactness, almost co-compactness, light compactness, mild compactness are obtained. S-closed subsets relative to a semi-T2-spaces are also discussed. في هذا البحث بعض الخواص الجديدة لفراغات س - المغلقة التي قدمها طومسون عام 1967 ، وذلك باستخدام بعض المجموعات التي لها خاصية قريبة الانفتاح وقريبة الانغلاق في آن واحد ، كما تم مناقشة صور الفراغات س - المغلقة تحت تأثير بعض الرواسم غير المتصلة ، كما تضمن البحث دراسة عن علاقة الانغلاق السيني ببعض أنواع الأصماط ، واحتوى البحث كذلك على مناقشة للمجموعات الجزئية السينية المغلقة بالنسبة لفراغ T2 النصفي .

I'm sorry that there is a gap in this paper., Comment: 50 pages without figures, minor corrections at page 31 and page 48. New version

The development of technology in many ways determines the business concepts and way of business processes at all levels of business. Tourism business, today can not be imagined without the integration of Internet and the Web in everyday business practice. Semantic Web (which deals with aspects of the meaning) is an extension of the World Wide Web as seen through the integration of "machine" technology and human intelligence (human brain), and is often described in different ways as a utopian vision, website data-information, or paradigm change in everyday use of web. Modern business via the web starts from the behavioral approach of all involved in the business process, particularly in the area of online promotion, whereby the base of a dynamic web site should be automatism which is based on the results of semantic analysis. Business via the web is increasingly important and dominant in the business. Business “Systems” - companies in the tourism industry must follow modern trends and continuously adopt technological changes from the global context.In this way the positive effect is visible at the web site user side (satisfaction) and on the better business results on the other hand. The main feature of this paper is to present behavioral models in the tourism business through the prism of the Semantic Web paradigm., Razvoj tehnologije u mnogočemu determinira poslovne koncepte i način odvijanja poslovnih procesa na svim razinama poslovanja. Poslovanje u turizmu danas se nemože niti zamisliti bez integracije interneta i weba u svakodnevnoj poslovnoj praksi. Semantički web (koji se bavi aspektima značenja) je proširenje World Wide Weba promatrano kroz integraciju “stroja”, tehnologije i ljudske inteligencije (ljudskog mozga), a često se opisuje na različite načine kao utopijska vizija, web podatak ili pak promjena paradigme u svakodnevnom korištenju weba. Suvremeno poslovanje putem weba polazi od bihevioralnog pristupa svih involviranih u poslovni proces, posebice u segmentu on line promocije pri čemu bi temelj dinamike određenog web site-a trebao biti automatizam upravljan ponderiranim razultatima semantičke analize. Poslovanje putem weba sve je značajnije i dominantnije u poslovanju. Poslovni subjekti u turizmu moraju se suvremenim trendovima i promijenama stalno prilagođavati kako bi ne samo zadržali konkurentnosti učinkovito pozitivno djelovali na zadovoljstvo korisnika svoga “weba” i na svoje poslovanje uopće, već da bi i opstali. Glavna značajka ovoga rada jest predstavljanje bihevioralnog modela poslovanja u turizmu predstavljenog kroz prizmu semantičkog weba.

In this paper, a new three-parameter lifetime distribution is introduced and many of its standard properties are discussed. These include shape of the probability density function, hazard rate function and its shape, quantile function, limiting distributions of order statistics, and the moments. The unknown parameters are estimated by the maximum likelihood estimation procedure. We develop an EM algorithm to find the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters, because they are not available in closed form. The Fisher information matrix is also obtained and it can be used for constructing the asymptotic confidence intervals. Finally, a real-data application is given to demonstrate the performance of the new distribution., 19 pages, 3 figures, and 2 tables