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This study aimed to develop an educational program to improve the public’s knowledge and awareness about the use of medicines. Pre- and post-intervention studies were conducted to assess the impact of an educational intervention program on the use of medicines among the general public. Adult people over 18 years old who were using medicines at the time of the study or in the past month prior to the study were included. A convenience sampling method was used to invite the people to participate in a health education program in their household area in the State of Penang. This study showed that there was inadequate knowledge about some aspects of using medicines, with a mean score of 5.66 ± 2.39 out of 10 points. In addition, most of the participants have poor awareness about the role of pharmacists in drug management, with a mean score of 2.40 ± 1.73 out of 5 points. The mean score of knowledge and awareness was significantly increased after the educational intervention to 8.64 ± 1.65 and 4.12 ± 0.97, respectively. Educational intervention was useful, especially when it was followed by effective patient counselling to improve the knowledge and awareness about the use of medicines among medicine users.

Strict requirements for concentricity of the multistage high pressure rotor of an aero-engine are employed to guarantee performances such as vibration. Tedious and time-wasting trial assembly by adjusting the installation angles of stages is needed to meet the requirements due to the lack of effective analysis methods. Furthermore, there is no quick way to find out where the problem is and how to repair the parts when the installation-angle-adjusting method fails. This article focuses on a solution to optimize the installation angle of each stage and to make repair decisions in the assembly process. The run-out data are processed by least square method to get the spatial positions and attitudes of flanges and a deviation propagation analysis model is built by virtue of homogeneous coordinate transformation theory to predict the accumulative errors of each stage. The eccentricities of stages are evaluated with reference to the common axis and the installation angles of stages are optimized by minimizing the sum of eccentricities. Sensitivities of eccentricity, eccentric angle and parallelism of each stage are analyzed and repair decisions for parts are made to meet more strict requirements. An example of a three-stage subassembly is presented to demonstrate the solution.

The performance of high-speed and high-precision machine tool spindle is quite sensitive to the variation of system parameters. How to accurately predict the influences of key parameters on spindle characteristics is important for designers to achieve required machining accuracy. In the assembly of spindle system, the interference fit, which is always used to connect bearing and shaft, affects the performances of spindle system directly. Therefore, the quantitative investigation on the effects of interference fit on spindle characteristics are of great practical significance. In this paper, the effect mechanism of interference fit on spindle bearing system is explored and used to modify the analytical spindle bearing model. Firstly, the internal geometric relationships among the assembly bearing parts and shaft is analyzed under the influence of assembly deformation and centrifugal expansion. Then, the static and dynamic characteristics of spindle bearing system, including the bearing stiffness, maximum loosing speed, spindle stiffness as well as modal characteristics, are predicted under different interference fit values based on the modified spindle bearing model. The results show that the interference fit will stiffen the bearing and spindle system and result in obvious increments on bearing stiffness, spindle stiffness as well as the natural frequencies. A specially designed spindle test rig is built to verify the simulation results, and the variation of spindle stiffness and natural frequencies are measured under different interference fit values. The maximum error of the system natural frequencies between the analytical results and the experimental data is 7.36%, which confirmed the accuracy of the proposed analytical model.

The study aims to obtain the effect of forming parameters on multi-stage cold forging with 20MnTiB steel by performing a series of physical simulation and then verified by producing experiment of high-strength bolt. Physical simulation was performed through Gleeble 3500 compression tests; the mainly forming parameters such as strain rate (100∼101), deformation degree (20∼80 %), and number of stages were discussed. The results showed that the strain rate has little effect on the microstructure and the mechanical property. However, the number of stages and the deformation degree have an appreciable effect on the sample microstructure, of which the pearlite grain is fined and ferrite grain is elongated as fiber. The adiabatic thermal temperature rises from 20 to 142 °C with a 60 % deformation degree at a strain rate of 10 s−1. Finally, the deformation properties of bolts can compare with the physical simulation results.

Although terrestrial CO2 concentrations [CO2] are not expected to reach 1000 μmol mol(-1) (or ppm) for many decades, CO2 levels in closed systems such as growth chambers and greenhouses can easily exceed this concentration. CO2 levels in life support systems (LSS) in space can exceed 10,000 ppm (1 %). In order to understand how photosynthesis in C4 plants may respond to elevated CO2, it is necessary to determine if leaves of closed artificial ecosystem grown plants have a fully developed C4 photosynthetic apparatus, and whether or not photosynthesis in these leaves is more responsive to elevated [CO2] than leaves of C3 plants. To address this issue, we evaluated the response of gas exchange, water use efficiency, and photosynthetic efficiency of PSII by soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr., 'Heihe35') of a typical C3 plant and maize (Zea mays L., 'Susheng') of C4 plant under four CO2 concentrations (500, 1000, 3000, and 5000 ppm), which were grown under controlled environmental conditions of Lunar Palace 1. The results showed that photosynthetic pigment by the C3 plants of soybean was more sensitive to elevated [CO2] below 3000 ppm than the C4 plants of maize. Elevated [CO2] to 1000 ppm induced a higher initial photosynthetic rate, while super-elevated [CO2] appeared to negate such initial growth promotion for C3 plants. The C4 plant had the highest ETR, φPSII, and qP under 500-3000 ppm [CO2], but then decreased substantially at 5000 ppm [CO2] for both species. Therefore, photosynthetic down-regulation and a decrease in photosynthetic electron transport occurred by both species in response to super-elevated [CO2] at 3000 and 5000 ppm. Accordingly, plants can be selected for and adapt to the efficient use of elevated CO2 concentration in LSS.

In this paper, we investigate the convergence properties of the Fletcher-Reeves algorithm. Under conditions weaker than those in a paper of M. Al-Baali, we get the global convergence of the Fletcher-Reeves algorithm with a low-accuracy inexact linesearch.