The thinning Quotient - a relevant description of thinning?

Det finns en rad satt att beskriva gallringsformen. Ofta används begreppet gallringskvot i dessa sammanhang utan att närmare ange vilken metod eller definition som använts for att beräkna den. Detta kan lätt leda till att missuppfattningar uppstår. Denna studie belyser olika definitioners känslighet for bland annat beståndsstruktur, gallringsform och stickvägsavstånd. Studien innehåller dessutom en jämforelse mellan olika metoder att mäta och uppskatta gallringskvoten i ett bestånd. Slutsatsen är att gallringskvotens användbarhet och tillförlitlighet i många sammanhang är starkt begränsad.Thinnings can be described in many different ways. Frequently, however, the "thinning quotient" is used as a descriptor. This quotient is usually expressed as the ratio between a mean diameter of the trees extracted and the trees left, although many definitions exist. In this study, the appropriateness of different definitions is evaluated through thinning simulations, sampling simulations, and analyses of the impact of strip-roads. The conclusion is that the value of using thinning quotients as descriptors seems to be limited

Severity as a Priority Setting Criterion: Setting a Challenging Research Agenda

Priority setting in health care is ubiquitous and health authorities are increasingly recognising the need for priority setting guidelines to ensure efficient, fair, and equitable resource allocation. While cost-effectiveness concerns seem to dominate many policies, the tension between utilitarian and deontological concerns is salient to many, and various severity criteria appear to fill this gap. Severity, then, must be subjected to rigorous ethical and philosophical analysis. Here we first give a brief history of the path to today’s severity criteria in Norway and Sweden. The Scandinavian perspective on severity might be conducive to the international discussion, given its long-standing use as a priority setting criterion, despite having reached rather different conclusions so far. We then argue that severity can be viewed as a multidimensional concept, drawing on accounts of need, urgency, fairness, duty to save lives, and human dignity. Such concerns will often be relative to local mores, and the weighting placed on the various dimensions cannot be expected to be fixed. Thirdly, we present what we think are the most pertinent questions to answer about severity in order to facilitate decision making in the coming years of increased scarcity, and to further the understanding of underlying assumptions and values that go into these decisions. We conclude that severity is poorly understood, and that the topic needs substantial further inquiry; thus we hope this article may set a challenging and important research agenda

Effect of Powder Recycling in Electron Beam Melting on the Surface Chemistry of Alloy 718 Powder

Process-induced degradation of the powder feedstock in additive manufacturing may have a negative influence on the final properties of built components. Consequently, it may lower the cost-effectiveness of powder bed additive manufacturing, which relies on recycling of the nonconsumed powder. This is especially the case for production of high-performance aero engine components where high material and process reliability is required. This study comprises a detailed investigation on the degradation of Alloy 718 powder during multicycle electron beam melting (EBM). The surface-sensitive analysis methods, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES), were combined with scanning electron microscopy (SEM) to depict the differences in surface morphology, and surface composition of powder samples exposed to varying numbers of re-use cycles. The results show a significant change in surface characteristics after exposing the powder to the process and the environment in the build chamber. The virgin powder is covered mainly by a relatively thin and homogeneous oxide layer. The re-used powder, however, has undergone transformation to a heterogeneous oxide layer, rich in thermodynamically stable Al-rich oxide particulates, which started already during the first build cycle. Significant growth of the Al-rich oxide occurs via selective oxidation of Al under the conditions in the build chamber, including both pick-up of oxygen from the process atmosphere and redistribution of initial surface-bound oxygen from less-stable products like Ni-oxide and/or hydroxide

Towards Structured Evaluation of Deep Neural Network Supervisors

Deep Neural Networks (DNN) have improved the quality of several non-safety related products in the past years. However, before DNNs should be deployed to safety-critical applications, their robustness needs to be systematically analyzed. A common challenge for DNNs occurs when input is dissimilar to the training set, which might lead to high confidence predictions despite proper knowledge of the input. Several previous studies have proposed to complement DNNs with a supervisor that detects when inputs are outside the scope of the network. Most of these supervisors, however, are developed and tested for a selected scenario using a specific performance metric. In this work, we emphasize the need to assess and compare the performance of supervisors in a structured way. We present a framework constituted by four datasets organized in six test cases combined with seven evaluation metrics. The test cases provide varying complexity and include data from publicly available sources as well as a novel dataset consisting of images from simulated driving scenarios. The latter we plan to make publicly available. Our framework can be used to support DNN supervisor evaluation, which in turn could be used to motive development, validation, and deployment of DNNs in safety-critical applications.Comment: Preprint of paper accepted for presentation at The First IEEE International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Testing, April 4-9, 2019, San Francisco East Bay, California, US

Разработка конструкции стенда для испытаний системы выгрузки зерна комбайна КЗС-10К

Материалы VIII Междунар. науч.-техн. конф. студентов, магистрантов и молодых ученых, Гомель, 28–29 апр. 2008

Protein kinase C inhibition attenuates vascular ET(B )receptor upregulation and decreases brain damage after cerebral ischemia in rat

BACKGROUND: Protein kinase C (PKC) is known to be involved in the pathophysiology of experimental cerebral ischemia. We have previously shown that after transient middle cerebral artery occlusion, there is an upregulation of endothelin receptors in the ipsilateral middle cerebral artery. The present study aimed to examine the effect of the PKC inhibitor Ro-32-0432 on endothelin receptor upregulation, infarct volume and neurology outcome after middle cerebral artery occlusion in rat. RESULTS: At 24 hours after transient middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO), the contractile endothelin B receptor mediated response and the endothelin B receptor protein expression were upregulated in the ipsilateral but not the contralateral middle cerebral artery. In Ro-32-0432 treated rats, the upregulated endothelin receptor response was attenuated. Furthermore, Ro-32-0432 treatment decreased the ischemic brain damage significantly and improved neurological scores. Immunohistochemistry showed fainter staining of endothelin B receptor protein in the smooth muscle cells of the ipsilateral middle cerebral artery of Ro-32-0432 treated rats compared to control. CONCLUSION: The results suggest that treatment with Ro-32-0432 in ischemic stroke decreases the ischemic infarction area, neurological symptoms and associated endothelin B receptor upregulation. This provides a new perspective on possible mechanisms of actions of PKC inhibition in cerebral ischemia

Inhibition of PKC activity blocks the increase of ET(B )receptor expression in cerebral arteries

BACKGROUND: Previous studies have shown that there is a time-dependent upregulation of contractile endothelin B (ET(B)) receptors in middle cerebral arteries (MCA) after organ culture. This upregulation is dependent on mitogen-activated protein kinases and possibly protein kinase C (PKC). The aim of this study was to examine the effect of PKC inhibitors with different profiles on the upregulation of contractile ET(B )receptors in rat MCA. Artery segments were incubated for 24 hours at 37°C. To investigate involvement of PKC, inhibitors were added to the medium before incubation. The contractile endothelin-mediated responses were measured and real-time PCR was used to detect endothelin receptor mRNA levels. Furthermore, immunohistochemistry was used to demonstrate the ET(B )receptor protein distribution in the MCA and Western blot to measure which of the PKC subtypes that were affected by the inhibitors. RESULTS: The PKC inhibitors bisindolylmaleimide I, Ro-32-0432 and PKC inhibitor 20–28 attenuated the ET(B )receptor mediated contractions. Furthermore, Ro-32-0432 and bisindolylmaleimide I decreased ET(B )receptor mRNA levels while PKC inhibitor 20–28 reduced the amount of receptor protein on smooth muscle cells. PKC inhibitor 20–28 also decreased the protein levels of the five PKC subtypes studied (α, βI, γ, δ and ε). CONCLUSION: The results show that PKC inhibitors are able to decrease the ET(B )receptor contraction and expression in MCA smooth muscle cells following organ culture. The PKC inhibitor 20–28 affects the protein levels, while Ro-32-0432 and bisindolylmaleimide I affect the mRNA levels, suggesting differences in activity profile. Since ET(B )receptor upregulation is seen in cerebral ischemia, the results of the present study provide a way to interfere with the vascular involvement in cerebral ischemia

Pengaruh Model Cooperative Learning Metode Two Stay Two Stray (TSTS) dan Numbered Head Together (NHT) terhadap Pemahaman Konsep Akuntansi Siswa ditinjau dari Kemampuan Awal Siswa : studi quasi eksperimen pada materi laporan keuangan perusahaan jasa mata pelajaran siklus akuntansi perusahaan jasa kelas X SMK Negeri 1 Kota Tasikmalaya tahun Ajaran 2014/2015

Penelitian ini dilakukan untuk melihat pengaruh model cooperative learning metode TSTS dan NHT terhadap pemahaman konsep akuntansi ditinjau dari kemampuan awal siswa dalam mata pelajaran akuntansi kelas X Akuntansi SMKN 1 Kota Tasikmalaya. Metode yang digunakan adalah quasi eksperimen dengan pengambilan sampel cluster random sampling yaitu kelas X-Ak 1 dan X-Ak 3. Kemampuan awal setiap kelas dibagi menjadi dua kategori, yaitu kemampuan awal tinggi dan kemampuan awal rendah. Data penelitian dikumpulkan melalui tes tulis yaitu tes kemampuan awal, pre test, dan pos test. Uji Hipotesis menggunakan uji anova between subject design faktorial 2x2. Hasil penelitian menunjukan ada pengaruh metode pembelajaran NHT dan TSTS terhadap pemahaman konsep akuntansi. Ada pengaruh kemampuan awal terhadap pemahaman konsep akuntansi. Ada pengaruh dan interaksi penggunaan metode TSTS dan NHT terhadap peningkatan pemahaman konsep akuntansi ditinjau dari kemampuan awal. Pemahaman konsep siswa yang memiliki kemampuan awal tinggi dengan metode NHT lebih tinggi dari penggunaan metode TSTS dengan kemampuan awal yang sama. Peningkatan pemahaman konsep siswa dengan kemampuan awal rendah metode TSTS lebih baik dari metode NHT. This research was conducted to see the effect of cooperative learning model of Two Stay Two Stray method and Numbered Head Together method toward the understanding of accounting concepts seen from the student’s prior knowledge.The research method was is quasi experimental with cluster random sampling in class X-Ak 1 and X-Ak 3. Prior Knowledge of each class is divided into two categories, namely high prior knowledge and low prior knowledge. The instrument used in this research was tests, was prerequisite test, pre test and post test. Hypothesis test using ANOVA test between subject 2x2 factorial design.The findings of this research are: there is the influence of the use of methods TSTS and NHT toward the increase of the understanding of accounting concepts. There is also the influence of the prior knowledge toward the increase of the understanding of accounting concepts. Moreover an effect of interaction between TSTS method and NHT method with the student’s prior knowledge toward the increase of the understanding of accounting concepts. The use of NHT method and TSTS method increased the understanding of the concept of students who have a high prior knowledge. Meanwhile, the use of TSTS method is better than NHT method in improving student comprehension with low prior knowledge

Enhanced expressions of microvascular smooth muscle receptors after focal cerebral ischemia occur via the MAPK MEK/ERK pathway

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>MEK1/2 is a serine/threonine protein that phosphorylates extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK1/2). Cerebral ischemia results in enhanced expression of cerebrovascular contractile receptors in the middle cerebral artery (MCA) leading to the ischemic region. Here we explored the role of the MEK/ERK pathway in receptor expression following ischemic brain injury using the specific MEK1 inhibitor U0126.</p> <p>Methods and result</p> <p>Rats were subjected to a 2-h middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO) followed by reperfusion for 48-h and the ischemic area was calculated. The expression of phosphorylated ERK1/2 and Elk-1, and of endothelin ET_Aand ET_B, angiotensin AT₁, and 5-hydroxytryptamine 5-HT_1Breceptors were analyzed with immunohistochemistry using confocal microscopy in cerebral arteries, microvessels and in brain tissue. The expression of endothelin ET_Breceptor was analyzed by quantitative Western blot. We demonstrate that there is an increase in the number of contractile smooth muscle receptors in the MCA and in micro- vessels within the ischemic region. The enhanced expression occurs in the smooth muscle cells as verified by co-localization studies. This receptor upregulation is furthermore associated with enhanced expression of pERK1/2 and of transcription factor pElk-1 in the vascular smooth muscle cells. Blockade of transcription with the MEK1 inhibitor U0126, given at the onset of reperfusion or as late as 6 hours after the insult, reduced transcription (pERK1/2 and pElk-1), the enhanced vascular receptor expression, and attenuated the cerebral infarct and improved neurology score.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results show that MCAO results in upregulation of cerebrovascular ET_B, AT₁and 5-HT_1Breceptors. Blockade of this event with a MEK1 inhibitor as late as 6 h after the insult reduced the enhanced vascular receptor expression and the associated cerebral infarction.</p