Units of measurement appear as media of social confl ict in Witold Kula’s seminal study on metrication. Given the current discussions around political epistemology, Kula’s treatment of metrology is telling. He turns the supposedly neutral auxiliary science of weights and measures into a matter of concern. The reception of his concepts in the West is outlined (history of historical metrology, the Annales school, and the history of science), and the potential of this social history of measurement in times of accelerated data production is evaluated.
The Intrauterine fetal development process is complicated and affected by many regulating factors such as maternal nutritional status, transcription factors and adipokines. Adipokines are kinds of active substances secreted by adipose tissue, including more than 50 kinds of molecules. To explore the correlation between calf birth weights and adipokines including adiponectin, leptin, visfatin, and IGF-1 in cows venous and venous cord blood. Fifty-four healthy multiparous Chinese Holstein cows were used; in which, cows with a calf weight less than 40 kg were included in group A (n=9); those with a calf weight between 40 kg~45 kg were included in group B (n=25) and ≥45 kg were included in group C (n=20), venous blood and cord venous blood was collected. An ELISA kit was used to evaluate the concentration of adiponectin, leptin, visfatin, and IGF-1, correlations between index-index and index-calf birth weight were analysed. In both cows venous and cord venous blood, adiponectin, leptin, visfatin, and IGF-1 levels were significantly correlated with each other (p<0.01), and levels of these adipokines in venous blood were significantly higher than cord venous blood (p<0.01). Adiponectin, leptin, visfatin, and IGF-1 in venous cord blood were positively correlated with calf birth weights, and significantly correlated with calf birth weights respectively (p<0.01). Our study showed that adiponectin, leptin, and IGF-1 were found in venous blood and cord venous blood, and adiponectin, leptin, and IGF-1 in venous and cord venous blood potentially inter-regulated each other; adiponectin, leptin, and IGF-1 in venous blood were not significantly correlated with calf birth weights, while adiponectin, leptin, visfatin, and IGF-1 in venous cord blood were significantly correlated with calf birth weights, respectively.
Tensile structures in general, achieve their load-carrying capability only after the process of initial form-finding. From the mechanical point of view, this process can be considered as a problem in statics. As cable systems are close siblings of trusses (cables, however, can carry tensile forces only), in our study we refer to equilibrium equation similar to those known from the theory of the latter. In particular, the paper regards designing pre-tensioned cable systems, with a goal to make them kinematically stable and such that the weight of so designed system is lowest possible. Unlike in typical topology optimization problems, our goal is not to optimize the structural layout against a particular applied load. However, our method uses much the same pattern. First, we formulate the variational problem of form-finding and next we describe the corresponding iterative numerical procedure for determining the optimum location of nodes of the cable system mesh. We base our study on the concept of force density which is a ratio of an axial force in cable segment to its length.
In cellular networks, cells are grouped more densely around highly populated areas to provide more capacity. Antennas are pointed in accordance with local terrain and clutter to reduce signal shadows and interference. Hardware parameters are easily set during installation but difficult to change thereafter. In a dynamic environment of population migration, there is need to continuously tune network parameters to adapt the network performance. Modern mobile equipment logs network usage patterns and statistics over time. This information can be used to tune soft parameters of the network. These parameters may include frequency channel assignment or reuse, and transmitter radiation power assignment to provide more capacity on demand. The paper proposes that by combining the frequency and power assignments, further optimisation in resource allocation can be achieved over a traditional frequency assignment. The solution considers the interference, traffic intensity and use of priority flags to bias some edges. An Edge Weight Power and Frequency Assignment Algorithm is presented to solve the resource allocation problem in cellular networks. The paper also analyses the performance improvements obtained over that of the Edge Weight Frequency Assignment Algorithm. The results show that the proposed algorithm improves the performance of the Edge Weight Frequency Assignment Algorithm depending on the initial structure of the graph.