Health sciences libraries and information services in Bangladesh

Basic problems relating to the status of health sciences libraries and information centers in Bangladesh are highlighted and discussed; strategies for improving the country's health sciences information services are suggested. A survey of libraries is reported, the country's national science and technology information policy is defined, and recommendations for action are proposed.     

The scientometric analysis of the activity of Kazakh scientists based on the materials of the SCOPUS DB (Netherlands)

This paper gives the results of the scientometric analysis of foreign publications by Kazakh authors that was reflected in the SCOPUS DB in 1991–2008. The publication activity is expressed in 3883 documents, the citation index of which is 10 132. The average share of Kazakh publications in the total worldwide flow is equal to 0.017%. The citation rate of publications was revealed to have significantly grown since the 1996–2000 period. It is shown that most articles were written in English and published in periodical editions. The main themes of publications are represented by physics and chemistry. The leading foreign partners of Kazakhstan in the scientific sphere were determined. Kazakh-Russian scientific cooperation is developing most fruitfully.     

Urinary Urea,Uric Acid and Hippuric Acid as Potential Biomarkers in Multiple Sclerosis Patients

Urine is a proven source of metabolite biomarkers and has the potential to be a rapid, noninvasive, inexpensive, and efficient diagnostic tool for various human diseases. Despite these advantages, urine is an under-investigated source of biomarkers for multiple sclerosis (MS). The objective was to investigate the level of some urinary metabolites (urea, uric acid and hippuric acid) in patients with MS and correlate their levels to the severity of the disease, MS subtypes and MS treatment. The urine samples were collected from 73 MS patients-48 with RRMS and 25 with SPMS- and age matched 75 healthy controls. The values of urinary urea, uric acid and hippuric acid in MS patients were significantly decreased, and these metabolites in SPMS pattern showed significantly decrease than RRMS pattern. Also showed significant inverse correlation with expanded disability status scale and number of relapses. Accordingly, they may act as a potential urinary biomarkers for MS, and correlate to disease progression.     

Active structural control for load mitigation of wind turbines via adaptive sliding-mode approach

This paper studies the load mitigation problem for wind turbines by using active tuned mass dampers. A state space model for the tower/nacelle system is established with the consideration of tower/blade interaction. The uncertainties that appear in the damping matrix and natural frequencies are also considered in the controller design. External loads acting on the tower including the drag force induced by winds and the absolute base shear induced by the rotating blades are involved, and shaping filters for online generating these loads are proposed which can be easily implemented in numerical simulations. An adaptive sliding-mode controller is proposed to handle the system uncertainties, external disturbances and hard constraint, and also to improve the overall performance of the wind turbine system. Numerical simulations are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control law.