Role of Algal and Fungal Polysaccharides in the Formation and Hydrolysis of Lake Sediments

This study was supported in part by the Office of Water Resources Research, U.S. Department of Interior under Project A-024-OHIO(print) 34 l. illus. 28 cmIntroduction -- Materials and Methods -- Cultures and Media -- Isolation of polysaccharide and measurement of cell weight -- Extraction of lipid -- Isolation of cell walls -- Hydrolysis and chemotography -- Analytic procedures -- Electron Microscopy -- Infrared Spectroscopy -- Cytochemistry -- Separation and identification of lipid components -- Fatty acids -- Results and Discussion -- Anacystis nidulans -- Alternaria tenuis -- Literature Cite

The Impact of Business Intelligence on Strategic Decision-Making

This article is concentrated the relation between business intelligence and strategic decision-making. Business intelligence is an important issue to collect and bring the data together that decision-making is depended on. Managers in today’s organizations are still to know how to apply business intelligence in strategic decision-making. The main aim of this study is to explore the impact of business intelligence on strategic decision making. Strategic decision making defined as gradual and interdependent, which is formed by a variety of impacts contextual to the past events arising in present-day conditions and finally the future views.Using questionnaires applied at four different communication companies in Iraq, the experience managers have participated from top level managers and those in the middle-level management. The SPSS software used to analyze the result, when the result indicated that business intelligence has a great impact on strategic decision-making and improved the efficiency and effectiveness. The relation between business intelligence parts and strategic decision shows different result, business intelligence tools, business intelligence Use, business intelligence system infrastructure flexibility improved the efficiency of strategic decision making. Keyword: Business intelligence, Strategic Decisio

Design optimisation for cold rolled steel beam sections with complex stiffeners considering cold working effects

This paper presents the analysis and design optimization of the cold rolled steel sections for flexural strength considering the effect of cold working exerted on the section during the roll forming process. The sections included channel and zed shapes with complex longitudinal web and flange stiffeners. Nonlinear Finite Element (FE) modelling was developed to model the flexural strength of the channel and zed beams and validated against the four-point bending experiments for these sections. The material properties of steel at the section’s flat parts, corners, and stiffener bends were obtained from tensile tests and were incorporated into the FE simulations to account for the true material properties at these regions. The section strength was then optimized using FE modelling results based on the Design of Experiments (DOE) and response surface methodology. Optimal designs for the channel and zed sections with maximum strength in distortional buckling could be obtained while changing the stiffeners’ position, shape, sizes, and considering material properties at section corners and stiffener bends. It revealed that, the optimal designs provided up to 13% and 17% increase in flexural strength for the channel and zed sections, respectively; however, when the true material properties at the section corner and the stiffener’s bend regions was included, the increase in flexural strength increased up to 20% and 23%, respectively

POST-MARKETING PASSIVE SURVEILLANCE OFBIVALENT AND QUADRIVALENT HUMAN PAPILLOMAVIRUS RECOMBINANT VACCINES

Objective: Cervical cancer and other Human papillomavirus associated malignancies might be prevented by Human papillomavirus vaccines namely Gardasil® (HPV4) - quadrivalent (Merck) and Cervarix™ (HPV2) - bivalent (GlaxoSmithKline) which are marketed internationally. The aim of this study is to analyze vaccines adverse events reporting system (VAERS) which is used for post-marketing passive surveillance (PMS) of licensed vaccines.Methods: We searched and analyzed reports of adverse events associated with HPV 2 and HPV4 vaccines from Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). In United States, between the year2006-2013, total 24, 719 adverse events were reported after taking HPV2 and HPV4 vaccines. For HPV2 vaccine, we searched for reports from October 2009 to December 2013 and for HPV4 vaccine, we searched for reports from October 2006 to December 2013.Results: For HPV4 vaccine during 2006-2013, total 24, 460 adverse events and 84 deaths were reported while for HPV2 vaccine during 2009-2013, total 259 adverse events and 3 deaths were reported. Even after proper route of HPV vaccinesadministration i. e. intramuscular 13, 287 adverse events have been reported for HPV4 while 259 adverse events have been reported for HPV2 vaccine. The most frequently recorded adverse events due to HPV4 vaccine were found to be within the year 2006-2013 which included rash (2306 cases) followed by injection site erythrema (2245 cases) and pyrexia (2142 cases). However, adverse events recorded for HPV2 vaccine were within the period 2009-2013 which included dizziness (37 cases) followed by headache (34 cases) and malaise (19 cases).Conclusion: In future ongoing HPV vaccines safety surveillance and further studies may shed light on some of the hypothesized associations

Role of professional associations in agricultural innovation systems

Professional Associations (PAs) refer to a formal organization of professionals or a group of professionals, which are practitioners of a given profession united together by mutual consent to deliberate, determine and act jointly for a common purpose. Professional Associations (PAs ) can play a significant role in shaping agricultural policy as well as in re- directing their scientific knowledge to more socially relevant problems. Individual members of the PAs as well as the PAs themselves have the potential to play such a role. PAs in agricultural sciences are predominantly part of R&D system and are positioned uniquely to use their voluntary mandate and organizational flexibility to address broader goals relevant to the society. PAs as of now are little recognized as “Innovation Systems Actors” in the “Agricultural Innovation System”. Agricultural innovation system(AIS) refers to the interlinked and learning network of organizations and individuals together with institutions and policies that affect their innovative behavior

Aspect oriented implementation of design patterns using metadata

Computer programming paradigms aim to provide better separation of concerns. Aspect oriented programming extends object oriented programming by managing crosscutting concerns using aspects. Two of the most important critics of aspect oriented programming are the “tyranny of the dominant signature” and lack of visibility of program's flow. Metadata, in form of Java annotations, is a solution to both problems. Design patterns are assumed as the general solutions for Object-Oriented matters. They assist in software complexity management and serve as a bridge among software designers as well. These properties have led the patterns to be introduced as a choice in order to prove new technologies. Successful implementations share a generic solution: the usage of annotation to configure and mark the participants, while the pattern's code is encapsulated in aspects. This loses the coupling between aspects and type signatures and between the code base and a specific AOP framework. Also, it increases the developer's awareness of the program's flow. In the present article, aspect oriented programming and design patterns are introduced and also taking the benefit of annotation equipment in java language is proposed as a solution to reduce tight coupling and increase program flow observation rate for aspect oriented programming. Keywords: aspect oriented programming, design patterns, object oriented programming, metadata

Measurement metrics for measuring success of business intelligence system

Currently, Business Intelligence Systems (BIS) have been widely utilized in organizations. Although BIS have been well accepted as value creator by organizations, justification of BIS value is not always been clear in order to justify BIS investment. Therefore, to understand BIS value, organizations need to measure their BIS. In addition, reviewing other researches shows that BIS measurement was used for managing BIS process as well as understanding BIS value. Prior researchers applied objective and subjective methods for BIS measurement which are suitable for Competitive Intelligence System (CIS) but not for BIS. Literatures also suggested that Information Systems (IS) success measurement models could be used for BIS success measurement in order to understand BIS value and manage BIS process. Therefore, this research applied DeLone & McLean (D&M) updated IS success model to identify BIS success dimensions. Furthermore, based on the model, previous researches focused more on user satisfaction, system use and net benefits dimensions of BIS success rather than BIS service, system, and information quality dimensions which this research aimed to address. To do so, the interpretive paradigm was chosen. Qualitative data collection methods, which include interviews, focus group and organizational document review were applied for collecting data in the largest car manufacturing company of Middle-East as a case study. During this study, 25 participants include senior and technical level managers were selected as interviewees and focused group members. Collected data was analyzed using qualitative data analysis methods, and the findings were validated by 10 BIS experts. In addition, researcher performed a Walk-Through test on BIS in Case Study Company. The main contribution of this research is the measurement metrics for BIS quality and the BIS success measurement model, which are applicable to understand success of BIS in organizations

Optimization of multidimensional equalizers based on MMSE criteria for multiuser detection

PhD ThesisThis thesis is about designing a multidimensional equalizer for uplink interleaved division multiple access (IDMA) transmission. Multidimensional equalizer can be classified into centralized and decentralized multidimensional equalizer. Centralized multidimensional equalizer (MDE) have been used to remove both inter-symbol interference (ISI) and multiaccess interference (MAI) effects from the received signal. In order to suppress MAI effects, code division multiple access (CDMA) has been used with MDE to minimize the correlation between users' signals. The MDE structure can be designed using linear equalizer (MLE) or decision feedback equalizer (MDFE). Previous studies on MDE employed adaptive algorithms to estimate filter co-effi cients during the training mode, i.e. the symbol equalization was not optimal, for two users. In our work, we applied MDE on IDMA receiver for multipath selective fading channels and also derived new equations to obtain the optimal filter taps for both types of MDE equalizers, i.e. MDFE and MLE, based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion. The optimal filter taps are calculated for more than two users. Moreover, we investigated the performance of the optimal MDFE using both IDMA (MDFE-IDMA) and CDMA (MDFE-CDMA) detectors. Generally, the MDE equalizer suffers from residual MAI interference effects at low signal-to-noise-ratios (SNR) due to the delay inherent in the convergence of the crossover filter taps. Therefore, a new decentralized multidimensional equalizer has been proposed to IDMA detector. Within design of decentralized equalizer, the convergence problem has been resolved by replacing the crossover filters with parallel interference canceler (PIC) for removing MAI dispersion. The proposed decentralized multidimensional equalizer shows a higher efficiency in removing MAI interference when compared with existing receivers in the literature. However, this is achieved at the expense of higher computational complexity compared to centralized multidimensional equalization