As web-based transactions become an essential element of everyday corporate and commerce activities, it becomes increasingly important that the performance of web-based services be predictable and guaranteed even in the presence of wildly fluctuating input loads. In this paper, we propose a general implementation framework to provide quality of service (QoS) guarantee for cluster-based Internet...

A broad range of investigations has been carried out to suggest that the facet joint capsule is a source of neck pain and the pain may arise from large strain in the cervical facet capsule that will cause pain receptors to fire. So far, no direct methods to in vivo test the cervical facet capsule strain during rearend crashes have been known. To solve this methodology problem, a special liquid ...

Human melanoma MZ2-MEL expresses several distinct antigens that are recognized by autologous cytolytic T lymphocytes (CTL). Some of these antigens are encoded by genes MAGE-1, MAGE-3, and BAGE, which are expressed in a large fraction of tumors of various histological types but are silent in normal adult tissues with the exception of testis. We report here the identification of the gene coding f...

For the past 30 years, the study ofaccuracy in person perception has been a neglected topic in social and personality psychology. Research in this area was stopped by a critique of global accuracy scores by Cronbach and Gage. They argued that accuracy should be measured in terms of components. Currently, interest in the topic of accuracy is rekindling. This interest is motivated, in part, by a ...

For a number of years, "process-product" re searchers have studied the relationship between teacher behaviors (process) and student achievement (product) with the hope of determining what teacher behaviors will lead to increases in student achieve ment and attitude. At last, this research has borne fruit. Several reviewers of process-product research have recently concluded that effective teach...

The GAGE family of tumor-associated antigens is present in a wide spectrum of human tumors but is highly restricted among normal tissues except to the testis. By reverse transcription-PCR, GAGE expression was detected in 55 of 67 neuroblastomas (NBs; 8 of 12 stage 1, 13 of 13 stage 2, 9 of 12 stage 3, 7 of 12 stage 4S, and 18 of 18 stage 4), 5 of 5 Ewing's and peripheral neuroectodermal tumors,...

The need for calibration arises frequently in the use of strain gage instrumentation. Periodic calibration is required, of course, to assure the accuracy and/or linearity of the instrument itself. More often, calibration is necessary to scale the instrument sensitivity (by adjusting gage factor or gain) in order that the registered output correspond conveniently and accurately to some predeterm...

Tests were conducted to determine thickness of smooth, nonreinforced geomembranes using three methods: mechanical (according to ASTM and European standards), ultrasonic, and magnetic methods. The mechanical method is the standard procedure used for determining thickness of geomembranes. The ultrasonic and magnetic methods are not commonly used for geomembranes; however, they are used for testin...