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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

The sufficient utilization of the mega data acquired from operative power units is a promising way leading to high efficient, clean and safe operation of power plant. Hereinto, data filtering is a critical link to the data-driven dynamic model identification aiming at optimizing the process control. The machine learning is an advantageous approach for filtering usable data from mega databases for identification due to its effective statistical learning strategy to the field data with noises, disturbances and coupling quantities. Therefore, a data filtering method of combining Gaussian Naive Bayesian classifier and prediction error method (Gaussian NB-PEM) is proposed in this paper. Firstly, variables associated with identification model are selected by analyzing the characteristics of the process. Secondly, the GaussianNB classifier is used for coarse data filtering by calculating the priori probability of each attribute from training sample set and the probability with all possible values of the known categories for testing sample set. Thirdly, the prediction error method is used for further data filtering based on model fitting. By using the filtered closed-loop data, the dynamic characteristics of the superheated steam temperature is modeled and verified by closed-loop control simulation, showing the validity of the Gaussian NB-PEM data filtering method.

Heterogeneous, distributed multi-databases (data warehouses, grids) are growing day by day as businesses demand more economical and flexible solutions for their data storage and processing needs. One of the main issues obstructing the large scale deployment of distributed multi-databases is latencies involved in data retrieval. Such problems are usually solved with the help of persistent caches. The paper presents a semantic caching architecture which supports faster semantic matching in query processing. This paper enhances the existing architecture of semantic cache and provides the mapping of hierarchical indexing scheme over it with the help of case study in order to represent the working of architecture. This paper also provides experimental results of the query processing over updated architecture and provides the discussion over comparison of the extended architecture with the previously proposed architecture.

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.

Essentially, the difficulty in dehydration technology of lignite depends on the energy state of water in lignite. The fundamental understanding of the water occurrence and energy state in lignite as well as its physical-chemical interaction with coal structure is helpful to the upgrading of lignite. In this paper, the water occurrence in lignite and the changes of oxygen-containing functional groups, pore structure, and water holding capacities at different drying temperatures were researched by DSC, NMR, FTIR and BET, respectively. The binding energies (calculated by DFT using model compounds) of different forms of water in lignite were also summarized. The relationships between energy state and occurrence mode of water in lignite as well as dehydration difficulty and structural changes during dewatering were clarified. The Results show that the energy state of water in lignite divided into three levels. The water in free and pore is in the lowest energy level. Its binding force with coal is pretty weak. So this type of water is easily vaporized and re-adsorbed. It is the main in removed moisture. Generally, the temperature removed free water mainly focused on below 100 °C, and the dehydration temperature of pore water mainly focused on 100–200 °C. The water bonded in hydrogen-bond and capillary confinement is in the middle energy level. The dehydration temperature mainly focused on 200–400 °C. The oxygen-containing functional groups of samples change a little and the re-adsorbed property improves a little after dehydrated. The water mainly produced by chemical reaction above 400 °C is in the highest energy level. Though this type of water does not belong to the natural occurrence of water in lignite, the re-adsorbed property improves much, and it plays the key role in stabilizing the dehydrated lignite interface.

The Relationship Between Agricultural Prices and Food Prices This paper examines the relationships between agriculture, food processing, trade and retail, and consumers at the macro-economic level in France, between 1978 and 2005. The surplus account method is applied using input-output tables (IOT). In order to do so, volume and price indices are calculated for all the elements of the IOTs' to measure the productivity of agriculture and food processing industries and measure the transfers of purchasing power between various economic agents. Agriculture includes forestry and fishing. Food processing industries are divided into two sub-sectors: meat and dairy, and other food processing industries. Trade and retail activities are measured by marketing margins. To measure relationships between sectors, we use the table of intermediate inputs. Relationships with the rest of the world are taken into account through imports and exports. The subsidies and taxes are introduced either at the stage of production, or at the stage of use of products. Payments of factors in each sector are deducted from income accounts, their volume being calculated like an aggregate of the labour and fixed assets being used., Ce texte examine, sur le plan macroéconomique, les relations entre l'agriculture, les industries agro-alimentaires, le commerce et les consommateurs, en France, entre 1978 et 2005. La méthode des comptes de surplus est appliquée aux tableaux entrées-sorties pour mesurer la productivité de l'agriculture et des industries alimentaires et apprécier les transferts de pouvoir d'achat entre les différents agents. L'agriculture inclut la sylviculture et la pêche. Les industries sont divisées en deux branches, les industries de la viande et du lait et les autres industries alimentaires. L'activité du commerce est mesurée par les marges commerciales. Pour apprécier les relations entre branches, le tableau des entrées intermédiaires est utilisé. Les relations avec l'étranger sont prises en compte à travers les importations et les exportations. Les subventions et les taxes sont introduites soit au stade de la production, soit au stade de l'utilisation des produits. Le revenu des facteurs internes des branches est déduit des comptes d'exploitation, leur volume étant calculé comme un agrégat du travail et du capital fixe utilisés., Butault Jean-Pierre. La relation entre prix agricoles et prix alimentaires. In: Revue française d'économie, volume 23, n°2, 2008. pp. 215-241.

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.

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.

A common task of Web users is querying structured information from Web pages. In this paper we propose a novel query processor for systematically discovering any-k relations from Web search results with conjunctive queries. The 'any-k' phrase denotes that retrieved tuples are not ranked by the system.For realizing this interesting scenario the query processor transfers a structured query into keyword queries that are submitted to a search engine, forwards search results to relation extractors, and then combines relations into result tuples.Unfortunately, relation extractors may fail to return a relation for a result tuple. We propose a solid information theory-based approach for retrieving missing attribute values of partially retrieved relations. Moreover, user-defined data sources may not return at least k complete result tuples. To solve this problem, we extend the Eddy query processing mechanism [14] for our 'querying the Web' scenario with a continuous, adaptive routing model. The model determines the most promising next incomplete row for returning any-k complete result tuples at any point during the query execution process.We report a thorough experimental evaluation over multiple relation extractors. Our experiments demonstrate that our query processor returns complete result tuples while processing only very few Web pages.

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.

The paper presents a project of a prototype solution of a device for making inseparable crimped joints consisting in forming the material of two elements to be joined to each other with the use of punches. The work contains the assessment and analysis of the joints made in the stand with the use of various forming tools. Furthermore, the paper presents the analysis of the characteristic features of the new joints, as well as dependences in strength tests. The elements joined on the machine had been made of 5754 aluminium. This material and the presented joint are used in the construction of heat exchangers, such as water, oil coolers or condensers in the automotive or aircraft branch.

In this paper we present a parametric method for the identification of a horizontal positioning system for a billets unloading machine. The input-output models are obtained on the experimental models and on the priori information of the process. The obtained models are represented as second-order underdamped systems. The assessment of the models is made via simulation and a best fit model follows. In order to improve the current process performances, new automatic control structures for the positioning process can be derived using the determined model

During the content uniformity test of a drug product (tablet formulation), an unknown peak was observed in the HPLC chromatograms. Upon further investigation, it was determined that the unknown peak was originated from an external source and, therefore, the drug product is free of this unknown peak. The next step was to identify the structure of this unknown peak in order to determine the source of this contaminant species. In this paper, we wish to present the strategy and the results of the experiments that led to the identification of this unknown peak. LC-PDA/UV and LC-MS(n) analyses were conducted to obtain the UV spectrum, molecular weight and MS(n) fragmentation pathways of the unknown peak. The MS analysis revealed certain structural features of the unknown species and a number of model compounds that contain such features were then examined for their UV absorbance profiles in an attempt to establish the functional group connectivity within the unknown species. A careful examination of these results in conjunction with the determination of the high-resolution molecular weight led to a short list of potential candidates for the unknown species, among which the most likely one was 1,3-diphenylguanidine. The identification of the unknown contaminant was confirmed by spiking experiments using the authentic compound. The potential source of this contaminant was also identified as derived from the safety filler of the pipette bulb used to prepare the sample solutions during the drug analysis.

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.

The interest in multivariate statistical process control (MSPC) has increased as the industrial processes have become more complex. This paper presents an industrial process involving a plastic part in which, due to the number of correlated variables, the inversion of the covariance matrix becomes impossible, and the classical MSPC cannot be used to identify physical aspects that explain the causes of variation or to increase the knowledge about the process behaviour. In order to solve this problem, a Multivariate Statistical Process Control based on Principal Component Analysis (MSPC-PCA) approach was used and an R code was developed to implement it according some commercial software used for this purpose, namely the ProMV (c) 2016 from ProSensus, Inc. (www.prosensus.ca). Based on used dataset, it was possible to illustrate the principles of MSPC-PCA. This work intends to illustrate the implementation of MSPC-PCA in R step by step, to help the user community of R to be able to perform it., FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia(UID/CEC/00319/2013)

The paper explores the uniqueness properties of the subjective probabilities in two axiomatizations of state-dependent preferences. Karni, Schmeidler, and Vind's (KSV 1983) system depends on selecting an arbitrary auxiliary probability, and as such, does not guarantee the uniqueness of the derived subjective probability. However, an axiom system initially designed by Karni and Schmeidler (KS 1981) and further elaborated upon here does guarantee the desired uniqueness as well as a useful property of “stability” of the derived solution. When the preference relation displays state-independence, even the KS probabilities may not agree with those derived from the classic Anscombe-Aumann (AA 1963) theorem. However, we claim that, in this case, the KS rather than the AA probabilities are the appropriate representation of the agent's beliefs.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to compare experiences of two parents of adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) differing in gender, including their daily routines at school and at home, challenging behaviour, social support and future plans for their children. Design/methodology/approach The parents of the two adolescents with ASD were interviewed with open-ended questions related to their children as well as their personal experiences, along with getting their individual responses for the established Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS). Findings There were similarities and differences in the parents’ experiences with their adolescent children with ASD. Similarities included a limited social support outside their families, hopes for the future of their children, where in they emphasised the need for some “normality” for their child, and a lack of plan in terms of legal guardianship and written wills after their own time. Some of the differences were also noted in the parents’ description of symptoms of their children, with the father of the female adolescent reporting more negative experiences both with his child, as well as with his spouse, a lack of social support and, subsequently, more “dissatisfaction” on the SWLS than the mother of the male adolescent. Research limitations/implications One of the major limitations of this study is the absence of feedback from the other parent besides the one being interviewed, due to which only one parental perspective was provided here. Social implications There are vital social implications of this study. Both parents reported a limited social support due to which they expressed the need for increasing awareness for ASD in the general society. These findings illustrate the need for a focus on designing interventions for improving outcomes for both parent and child in similar situations. Originality/value This study compared the experiences of two parents of adolescents with ASD, differing in gender and symptomology, but similar in other respects, including the family demographic characteristics and cultural context.

In this paper, the problem of approximating a function defined on a finite subset of the real line by a family of generalized rational functions whose numerator and denominator spaces satisfy the Haar conditions on some closed interval [a, b] containing the finite set is considered. The pointwise closure of the family restricted to the finite set is explicitly determined. The representation obtained is used to analyze the convergence of best approximations on discrete subsets of [a, b] to best approximations over the whole interval (as the discrete subsets become dense) in the case that the function approximated is continuous on [a, b] and the rational family consists of quotients of algebraic polynomials. It is found that the convergence is uniform over [a, b] if the function approximated is a so-called normal point. Only L p {L_p} norms with 1 ⩽ p > ∞ 1 \leqslant p > \infty are employed.

Deadlock prevention policies are used to solve the deadlock problems of FMSs. The theory of regions is recognized as the unique method for obtaining maximally permissive (i.e., optimal) controllers in the existing literature. In this paper, the selective siphons and critical markings method [17] is merged in the new deadlock prevention policy. First of all, reachability graph is still needed. Second, CMTSIs are identified. Further, selective siphons and critical markings method is used to check if all dead/quasi-dead markings of CMTSIs are covered by these selective siphons. Furthermore, choose anyone CMTSI that belongs to a same selective siphon to be processed. Finally, controllers are therefore obtained. Experimental results indicate that the computational cost can be reduced again. Besides, it is the most efficient policy to obtain maximal permissive behavior of Petri net models.

Machining of highly abrasive carbon fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) in the aerospace industry requires processes with excellent machining quality, sufficient tool lifetime and short cycle times. To reach these goals a detailed understanding of the physics of cutting and chip formation based on the tool geometry is necessary. This paper presents a fundamental study in milling of unidirectional CFRP focussing on variable process parameters, tool geometries and fibre orientations. A single-edged tool with cemented carbide inserts of variable macro geometry is utilised. The experiments are evaluated by 3D microscopy of the milled edges, detailed tool wear analyses and interpretation of cutting forces. The key conclusions from the experimental results are drawn to reach a better machining quality and increased tool lifetime. The delamination of top layer fibres from the ply below up to a certain distance from the milled edge, which depends on the forces at fibre cutting angle ϕ = 90°, has been identified as main quality issue. Force and tool wear models based on the measurement data are presented.

The intention of this paper is to set forth for a potential user of approximate molecular orbital methods some of the precautions to be considered in their application and in the interpretation of the results.

The classification of color image that contain skin pixel is a challenging process. It is challenging due to certain factor such as brightness, background similar to human skin represent the obstacles thereof. The basic approach of skin detection is color based classification. The human skin image is the composition of RGB color. The data values of skin is calculated by randomly sampling RGB color values of different face images which have different age, race, genders sets. However, its performance has not really been high because of the high overlapped degree between “skin” and “non-skin” pixels. This paper describes the linear norm fuzzy based twin support vector machine (LN-FTSVM)) approach for discriminate skin and non-skin data values of skin dataset and to enhance the skin recognition performance. The concept of fuzzy is resolved the unclassified and overlapped data region problems. If no decision function is positive for a data set, this data set is classified into a class with the large membership value. By computational experiments shows that Experiments result shows that the accuracy is improved by linear norm fuzzy based TSVM (LN-FTSVM)) over the conventional methods.

A medical genetics clinic is a unique and complex environment in which care requires a combination of medical knowledge, social intelligence, and emotional sensitivity. We offer a few pearls from our medical genetics clinic that we hope will help the pediatric or general dermatologist when caring for patients with known or suspected genetic disorders. This paper addresses five main topics: When is it more than just atopic dermatitis? How should the clinician approach blistering in the newborn period? What is mosaicism? When is genetic testing useful? Where can clinician, patients, and families turn for available resources?

International audience; This volume contains the proceedings of the International Conference on Innovative Intelligent Industrial Production and Logistics (IN4PL 2020), which was exceptionally held as a web-based event this year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, from November 2-4, 2020. IN4PL is sponsored by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (INSTICC). This conference focuses on research and development involving innovative methods, software and hardware, whereby intelligent systems are applied to industrial production and logistics, and was organized according to three parallel tracks: Industry 4.0, Intelligent Manufacturing and Management, and Logistics and Operations Research. In addition to paper presentations, IN4PL’s program included two keynote talks delivered by internationally distinguished speakers: Andreas Oroszi, Festo AG & Co. KG, Germany, and László Monostori, SZTAKI, Hungary. IN4PL received 18 paper submissions from 13 countries, of which 17% were accepted as full papers. The high quality of the papers received imposed difficult choices during the review process. To evaluate each submission, a double-blind paper review was performed by the Program Committee, whose members are highly qualified independent researchers in the IN4PL topic areas. All presented papers will be submitted for indexation by Scopus, Google Scholar, DBLP Computer Science Bibliography, Semantic Scholar, Microsoft Academic, EI (Elsevier Engineering Village Index), and Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index (CPCI/ISI). A short list of papers presented at the conference will be selected for publication of extended and revised versions in the CCIS (Communications in Computer and Information Science) Series book by Springer. All papers presented at this conference will be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library. We express our thanks to all participants. First to all the authors, whose quality work is the essence of this conference; secondly to all members of the Program Committee and auxiliary reviewers, who helped us with their expertise and valuable time. We also deeply thank the invited speakers for excellent contributions in sharing their knowledge and vision. Finally, we gratefully acknowledge the professional support of the INSTICC team for all organizational processes, especially given the need to introduce online streaming, forum management, direct messaging facilitation and other web-based activities in order to make it possible for IN4PL 2020 authors to present their work and share ideas with colleagues in spite of the logistic difficulties caused by the current pandemic situation. We wish you all an inspiring conference. We hope to meet you again next year for the 2nd edition of IN4PL, details of which will soon be available at http://in4pl.org/.

This paper analyze a design of bootloader for microcontrollers AVR and made proposal for implementation to the device Sci-Trace. Create design circuit for patch board and control board and implementation into the rack system.

Beryllium is known to precipitate in the form of basic carbonates from neutral and alkaline solutions [1]; the solubility of beryllium basic carbonates is mainly due to the formation of strong hydroxide, carbonate, and mixed-ligand hydroxocarbonate complexes [2‐7]. The thermodynamic properties (solubility products) of basic carbonates and the stability constants of beryllium hydroxocarbonate complexes have not yet been determined with sufficient accuracy. The possible occurrence of strongly bonded fluorocarbonate complexes (they are also poorly studied) adds even more uncertainty to the calculations of beryllium speciation [7]. As a result, the estimation of the environmental mobility of beryllium becomes considerably less reliable, and it is more difficult to develop efficient green technologies. To partially fill in the existing gap, here we report the experimental investigation of CÂ 2 (ec) 2 ee 3 solubilities in carbonate solutions. In the experiments, we used basic beryllium carbonate CÂ 2 (ec) 2 ee 3 , which was precipitated from a boiling 0.05 M BeSO 4 solution with a twofold excess of a heated-to-boil 0.5 M Na 2 CO 3 solution. CÂ 2 (ec) 2 ee 3 solubilities were studied in 0.7 M NaClO 4 solutions that contained variable amounts of Na c CO 3 and Na 2 CO 3 with their overall concentration being less than or equal to 0.05 mol/L. In one set of runs, the solutions in addition contained NaF. The weight ratio of the solid phase to solution in all runs was 1 : 200. The run duration was 2 weeks, which was about twice as long as the period required for the solute beryllium concentration and pH to acquire constant values. The solution temperatures were within 25 ± 1°e . At the end of a run, the sample was filtered through presteamed, fine Blue Ribbon paper filters. The filtrates were colorimetrically analyzed for beryllium using Beryllon II indicator and for carbonate alkalinity using an acidometric method; the filtrate pH was determined potentiometrically. The measurement error was ± 5%, ± 2% , and ± 0.005 pH, respectively. The results of the experiments are displayed in the table. Because the concentration of free Be 2+ ions is ignorable at pH > 8 [2, 6], the CÂ 2 (ec) 2 ee 3 solubility is determined by the concentration of hydroxide, carbonate, and hydroxocarbonate complexes. In view of this, the reaction of CÂ 2 (ec) 2 ee 3 dissolution can in general be written as

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.

In this paper, the generalized detector (GD) constructed on the basis of the generalized approach to signal processing in noise is employed by synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system to define a target location. The GD is proposed to solve the common problem of target detection at the very low signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) when the conventional detection algorithms are not able to do it. Simulation results demonstrate a GD performance superiority in comparison with the search for undefined maritime objects (SUMO) detector one.

Reviews from players regarding different characteristics of an esports game are one of the worthiest sources for the developers to enhance their services or adjust operating strategy. However, little research has been conducted on detecting esports players’ favorite topics dealing with topic modeling. Thus, this paper aims to use a data mining approach to analyze community data in the games domain available on Steam. We collected more than 1.2 million English reviews from four esports games up to August 2020 on Steam. Our contributions in this paper are: (i) we manually build a dataset by filtering out high-quality esports reviews, (ii) we then infer and group reviews into 3 groups with 19 topics, and (iii) we add more contributions to finding the emerging opinions of esports players towards the different topics of esports reviews, which might benefit further research on understanding esports reviews.

This paper studies the dynamic time-varying formation control of multi-agent systems. Aiming at the unmanned vehicle systems, based on the static time-varying formation in literature [18], a multi-agent dynamic time-varying formation control based on consistency is put forward. Additionally, the sufficient conditions for the agreement and the steps for solving the control parameters are given. The simulation is conducted to prove the effectiveness and robustness of the theoretical results.

Software frameworks are difficult for plugin developers to use, even when they are well designed and documented. Some of these difficulties stem from the many constraints that frameworks impose on plugin code. These constraints might restrict operations from being called on certain objects, or they might restrict how long an object is available. Additionally, the constraints are relative to the current context of the plugin, and they can involve multiple, interacting framework objects. This paper proposes a lightweight specification system and analysis to check plugins from a semantic perspective, rather than a purely structural view.

Delivering reliable service requires satisfactory operation of numerous line components, spanning significant geographical areas and subject to environmental, electrical, and mechanical stresses, plus normal aging. Conventional reliability practices use periodic maintenance to minimize failures, coupled with rapid restoration procedures when outages occur. Reliability statistics have shown little change in decades. Newer technologies can shorten outages, by automatically rerouting service to customers on healthy feeder segments, but they: require redundant paths for power flow; react only after outages occur; and often require communications with pole-mounted switches. Over the past decade, Texas A&M University has demonstrated that electrical waveforms, available via conventional substation-based CTs and PTs, contain evidence of failures, incipient failures, and improper operation of feeder equipment, often well before these conditions escalate and cause outages. This provides the basis for conditioned-based maintenance and outage avoidance. This paper provides examples, from operating feeders, demonstrating some of these advances.

El presente trabajo tiene como objetivo analizar las formas de sociabilidad entre estudiantes secundarios de dos escuelas de gestión estatal de la provincia de Buenos Aires en Argentina. Se trata de una investigación cualitativa cuyo corpus empírico está compuesto por sociogramas, entrevistas en profundidad y grupos focales realizados con alumnos durante los años 2012 y 2014. En un primer momento, se analizan los modos de agrupamiento de los jóvenes en cada una de sus escuelas. Luego, se indagan los motivos por los cuales los estudiantes se eligen o rechazan con sus compañeros. Por último, se interpreta que las diferentes formas de sociabilidad en cada escuela están asociadas al grado de movilidad del plantel estudiantil de cada institución. The aim of this paper is to analyze the forms of sociability among secondary school students in two state-managed schools in the province of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The research was of a qualitative nature, and its empirical corpus consists of sociograms, in-depth interviews, and focus groups carried out with students in 2012 and 2014. First, the types of young people’s groups in each school are analyzed. Then the students’ motives for selecting or rejecting classmates are researched. Lastly, the different forms of sociability in each school are interpreted to be associated with the degree of student mobility in each institution. Fil: Di Napoli, Pablo Nahuel. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofia y Letras. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Educación; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; Argentina

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.

This paper proposes a novel approach to design a controller in discrete time for the class of uncertain nonlinear systems in the presence of magnitude constrains of control signal which are treated as the saturation nonlinearity. A associative law between reinforcement learning algorithm based on adaptive NRBF neural networks and the theory of robust control Ho is set up in a novel control structure, in which the proposed controller allows learning and control on-line to compensate multiple uncertain nonlinearities as well as minimizing both the H. tracking performance index function and the unknown nonlinear dynamic approximation errors. The novel theorem of robust stabilization of the closed-loop system is declared and proved. Simulation results verify the theoretical analysis.

The paper re-assesses South Korean unification narratives in the context of territory and critical approaches to territory. From this, the paper identifies a set of underlying assumptions and expec...

Today, around the world, Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) project finance model is used frequently in numerous projects. One key aspect to the success of project company who wishing to gain BOT tender is to prepare a financial package consistent with the expectations of the related participants in accordance with BOT contract. The debt to equity ratio, the concession length and the unit prices are the important financial decision variables to be determined by the project company. The objective of this paper is to present financial optimization model including two different procurement objectives; (1) potential of winning a BOT project and (2) potential of finding debt. The optimization model solved by multi-objective evolutionary algorithm generate a set of pareto solutions to help project company assess the trade-offs between the two competing objectives. To show application of the model, a real airport YİD project in Turkey study is conducted., Bugün dünyada pek çok projede Yap İşlet Devret (YİD) proje finansman modelinin sıklıkla kullanıldığını gözlemlemekteyiz. YİD ihalesini kazanmak isteyen proje şirketinin başarısı için kilit görüş, YİD sözleşmesi gereğince ilişkide olduğu tarafların beklentileriyle uyumlu finansal bir paket hazırlamasıdır. Proje şirketinin belirleyeceği özsermaye borç oranı, imtiyaz (çalışma) süresi ve ürün/hizmetlerin birim fiyatları önemli finansal karar değişkenleridir. Proje şirketinin ihaleyi kazanma potansiyeli ve borç bulma potansiyeli iki farklı ihale hedefidir. Çalışmanın amacı, bu hedefleri içeren finansal optimizasyon modelini sunmaktır. Çok amaçlı evrimsel algoritma ile çözümlenen model, pareto çözümler kümesi sunarak, iki çelişen amaç arasındaki değişimi değerlendirmede karar vericilere yardımcı olmaktadır. Modelin uygulaması için Türkiye’deki bir havaalanı YİD projesi verileri kullanılmıştır.

The meaning of psychosocial factors for the course of breast cancer--First results of a prospective research project. Studies investigating the meaning of psychosocial factors for the course of cancerous diseases have so far been contradictious. In this paper the basic datas and first results of a prospective research project on this topic covering 107 breast cancer patients are reported. Somatic datas such as stage of lymph-nodes, type of surgery and additional treatments (radiation therapy or chemotherapy), are less important for the coping process 6 months after primary treatment than the cognitive attitudes of the patients toward their disease. About 56 percent of the patients coped quite well with their disease, 44 percent showed difficulties. The group of patients whose somatic and psychosocial prognosis was judged rather unfavorably at the time of the first examination, showed the highest rate of recidivation and progredience in the follow-up of the first 12 months.

In the field of Business Process Management formal models for the control flow of business processes have been designed since more than 15 years. Which methods are best suited to verify the bulk of these models? The first step is to select a formal language which fixes the semantics of the models. We adopt the language of Boolean systems as reference language for Boolean process models. Boolean systems form a simple subclass of coloured Petri nets. Their characteristics are low tokens to model explicitly states with a subsequent skipping of activations and arbitrary logical rules of type AND, XOR, OR etc. to model the split and join of the control flow. We apply model checking as a verification method for the safeness and liveness of Boolean systems. Model checking of Boolean systems uses the elementary theory of propositional logic, no modal operators are needed. Our verification builds on a finite complete prefix of a certain T-system attached to the Boolean system. It splits the processes of the Boolean system into a finite set of base processes of bounded length. Their behaviour translates to formulas from propositional logic. Our verification task consists in checking the satisfiability of these formulas. In addition we have implemented our model checking algorithm as a java program. The time needed to verify a given Boolean system depends critically on the number of initial tokens. Because the algorithm has to solve certain SAT-problems, polynomial complexity cannot be expected. The paper closes with the model checking of some Boolean process models which have been designed as Event-driven Process Chains.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the issues arising for women and men in senior management in New Zealand and Australian universities where life course and career trajectories intersect, and analyses how the stereotypical masculinist culture of universities can create additional problems for women. Design/methodology/approach – The data presented here comes from 47 interviews undertaken with women (27) and men (20) senior managers – a total of 26 interviews from New Zealand universities and 21 from Australian universities. “Senior Management” was defined in this study as those academic managers with university wide responsibilities, who were currently in senior management positions. Findings – Life-course issues for women aspiring to senior management roles in universities are framed around hegemonic constructions of masculinity; notions of academic careers subsuming personal life in professional roles; and structural constraints making rational choice impossible for many women. Furthermore, the excessive hours worked in such roles equate with the definition of extreme jobs. The paper concludes that the way in which women and men in senior HE endeavour to balance work and family life differs but creates issues for them both. Research limitations/implications – The structure and operation of Australian and New Zealand universities make gender diversity and management difficult to operationalise, given the competing imperatives of work and other life course trajectories. It is crucial to reframe life course and career intersections are conceptualised to ensure that diversity can be maximised. Originality/value – This paper focuses on women and men in senior management positions in New Zealand and Australian universities, but the findings can be generalised to other countries with HE systems based on the British University model. In discussing how institutional culture affects the intersection of career and life course trajectories, this paper highlights the detrimental outcomes for individuals and the resultant lack of diversity in the sector.

The Cygnus Dual Beam Radiographic Facility consists of two identical radiographic sources each with a dose rating of ∼4-rad at 1 m, and a ∼1-mm diameter spot size. The development of the rod pinch diode (RPD) was responsible for the ability to meet these criteria. The RPD in each machine uses a 0.75-mm tungsten diameter tapered anode rod extended through a 9-mm diameter cathode aperture. When properly configured, the electron beam born off the aperture edge can self-insulate and pinch onto the tip of the rod creating an intense, small x-ray source. These sources are utilized in concert with an imaging system on complex experiments, which are single-shot, high-value events. In such an application there is an emphasis on machine performance (reliability and reproducibility). Vacuum quality is a significant determinator for source performance. In this paper we discuss the Cygnus Dual Beam Radiographic Facility, the associated vacuum systems, vacuum monitor calibration and a multi-purpose vacuum chamber. Vacuum system performance, using various enhancements, will be reported. Using the vacuum system enhancements, as well as other machine tweaks, recent source performance has improved. This new level of performance will be presented via dosimetry and electrical measurements.

The behavior of aggregate demands in an economy is affected by how the distribution of income moves over time. Consider any economy of agents who don't suffer from money illusion, so agents' demand equations are homogeneous in income and prices. This paper describes a property of income distribution movements, called ‘mean scaling’, which is sufficient (and in a weak sense necessary) to make aggregate demands in the economy homogeneous. Mean scaling essentially requires that changes over time in standard income inequality measures (e.g., the coefficient of variation) be independent of changes in mean income over time. An implication is that aggregate demands will not be homogeneous if income redistribution policies are tied to absolute measures of income.

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.

Oxygen levels are unequal in different living geographical locations of human and related to normal physiology of health. The reduction of oxygen level in the body can lead to a variety of diseases, such as stroke caused by cerebral ischemia and hypoxia. In the recent years, many studies have elucidated the molecular and cellular mechanisms of organism response to different oxygen concentrations by using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) as model organism. C. elegans can escape hypoxia or hyperoxia and adapt to the ambient oxygen environments, and there are different response and regulation mechanisms in different degrees of hypoxia environment. In this paper, recent advances in the reaction of nematodes to different oxygen concentrations and the underlying mechanism were reviewed.

Pressure regulators have a great impact on the runtime and energy savings of supersonic wind tunnels. In order to investigate this impact quantitatively the theoretical isentropic (ideal) equations for the supersonic wind tunnel flow were compared with viscous CFD computations. The theoretical model was extended include the flow from the outflow from the pressure vessel up to the wind tunnel. This theoretical model was solved with and without pressure regulation valve using a Runge-Kutta method. The differences in runtime and energy consumption for both configurations with and without pressure regulator as well as the derivation of the analytical model and the numerical solution are presented in detail in this paper.

This paper presents a method for characterizing chemical solutions using nanowire field effect transistors. A pulsed gate potential method is used to prevent instabilities related to the dynamics of ions and other charged species present in the solution. Applying this method realizes a significant increase of the stability of the drain current versus gate potential characteristics of the devices, enabling reproducible characterization of chemical solutions with nanowire field effect transistors in aqueous environments.