Tiny Part Research Articles

An Innovative Course Structure to Teach Excel to Business School Students

Mastering Microsoft Excel is an essential skill for any business school student, whether during their studies, their internships, or their future jobs. This competency is difficult to teach as many students think they master the software when they only use a tiny part of it. In this paper, we will describe an innovative course we’ve created to train a large group of students in our business school. This course combines e-learning paths, online synchronous sessions, and an adapted support. Having taught this course for several years, we will first describe the first sessions of the course. After these sessions, we observed that as some students are aware of the necessity to develop their skills, some others are not involved at all in the process. Following these sessions, we introduced some evolutions we will present. These evolutions improved the course. We will describe these evolutions and present the results on students’ training. Finally, we will present the future developments we plan to implement for next year.

Protecting Earth’s Irreplaceable Species—The Time is Now!

During five previous mass extinction events, many of Earth’s species died out in a relatively short period of time–like the dinosaurs did 66 million years ago. Scientists believe that Earth is currently experiencing another mass extinction, the sixth such event, but the first to be caused by human activities. This is a wake-up call: over a million species could vanish during our lifetimes! But there is hope: we can save many species by protecting their homes, especially in tropical places where many unique animals and plants live. This article will explain how some of the spots that are currently protected fail to capture all of the places where these at-risk species actually live. To complete the safety net of protection, we must focus on other important areas, called Conservation Imperatives sites, which contain many threatened species but only cover a tiny part of the Earth’s surface. Saving these spots is urgent, and luckily it is not as expensive as you might think. Time is running out, and the sooner we start, the better our chances of preventing many animals and plants from disappearing forever.

Laser weeding: opportunities and challenges for couch grass (Elymus repens (L.) Gould) control

Laser weeding may contribute to less dependency on herbicides and soil tillage. Several research and commercial projects are underway to develop robots equipped with lasers to control weeds. Artificial intelligence can be used to locate and identify weed plants, and mirrors can be used to direct a laser beam towards the target to kill it with heat. Unlike chemical and mechanical weed control, laser weeding only exposes a tiny part of the field for treatment. Laser weeding leaves behind only ashes from the burned plants and does not disturb the soil. Therefore, it is an eco-friendly method to control weed seedlings. However, perennial weeds regrow from the belowground parts after the laser destroys the aerial shoots. Depletion of the belowground parts for resources might be possible if the laser continuously kills new shoots, but it may require many laser treatments. We studied how laser could be used to destroy the widespread and aggressive perennial weed Elymus repens after the rhizomes were cut into fragments. Plants were killed with even small dosages of laser energy and stopped regrowing. Generally, the highest efficacy was achieved when the plants from small rhizomes were treated at the 3-leaf stage.

20 Years of the Republic of Slovenia in NATO: Some Impressions about a Tiny Part and the Whole

Abstract Smart states, through alliances, synergistically enhance the capacity, readiness, responsiveness, resilience, sustainability and interoperability of their instruments of national power. NATO is constantly continually responding in a multidimensional way to changing security threats and operational circumstances, including by updating and upgrading concepts, plans and measures. The Alliance is also an opportunity for self-reflection; not to judge in retrospect, but to prevent mistakes in the future. We need to discuss honestly why we might be elsewhere, as had been desired and planned, but at the same time, despite our small size, we could be more courageous in pursuing different and original solutions.

How a Technology Identity Can Enhance the Diffusion of Good Design Practices in Product Sound Design

People are plugged into an intangible sound universe. But only a tiny part of the sounds we are exposed to have been purposefully designed. Recently, designers are bashfully approaching these intangible products’ quality. Product Sound Design represents, in fact, a promising research field still scarcely explored. The design community is answering this concern through new design methods. An Italian university developed a patented method-and-tool, conceived to collect, analyze, and recreate various sounds to develop a new generation of products with designed mechanical (and, eventually, digital) sounds. Spreading this innovation within the design community is fundamental to stimulate future more focused and aware practices. As well as all new technologies, the new patent didn’t have its own identity from the beginning. Extensive work conducted with the scientific approach has therefore been undertaken to redesign its identity to make its disruptiveness intelligible and understandable.

Antibody Profiling of Pan-Cancer Viral Proteome Reveals Biomarkers for Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma Diagnosis and Prognosis

Diagnosing, predicting disease outcome, and identifying effective treatment targets for virus-related cancers are lacking. Protein biomarkers have the potential to bridge the gap between prevention and treatment for these types of cancers. While it has been shown that certain antibodies against EBV proteins could be used to detect nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC), antibodies targeting are solely a tiny part of the about 80 proteins expressed by the EBV genome. Furthermore, it remains unclear what role other viruses play in NPC since many diseases are the result of multiple viral infections. For the first time, this study measured both IgA and IgG antibody responses against 646 viral proteins from 23 viruses in patients with NPC and control subjects using nucleic acid programmable protein arrays. Candidate seromarkers were then validated by ELISA using 1665 serum samples from three clinical cohorts. We demonstrated that the levels of five candidate seromarkers (EBV-BLLF3-IgA, EBV-BLRF2-IgA, EBV-BLRF2-IgG, EBV-BDLF1-IgA, EBV-BDLF1-IgG) in NPC patients were significantly elevated than controls. Additional examination revealed that NPC could be successfully diagnosed by combining the clinical biomarker EBNA1-IgA with the five anti-EBV antibodies. The sensitivity of the six-antibody signature at 95% specificity to diagnose NPC was comparable to the current clinically-approved biomarker combination, VCA-IgA, and EBNA1-IgA. However, the recombinant antigens of the five antibodies are easier to produce and standardize compared to the native viral VCA proteins. This suggests the potential replacement of the traditional VCA-IgA assay with the 5-antibodies combination to screen and diagnose NPC. Additionally, we investigated the prognostic significance of these seromarkers titers in NPC. We showed that NPC patients with elevated BLLF3-IgA and BDLF1-IgA titers in their serum exhibited significantly poorer disease-free survival, suggesting the potential of these two seromarkers as prognostic indicators of NPC. These findings will help develop serological tests to detect and treat NPC in the future.

Dealing with the Data Imbalance Problem in Pulsar Candidate Sifting Based on Feature Selection

Pulsar detection has become an active research topic in radio astronomy recently. One of the essential procedures for pulsar detection is pulsar candidate sifting (PCS), a procedure for identifying potential pulsar signals in a survey. However, pulsar candidates are always class-imbalanced, as most candidates are non-pulsars such as RFI and only a tiny part of them are from real pulsars. Class imbalance can greatly affect the performance of machine learning (ML) models, resulting in a heavy cost as some real pulsars are misjudged. To deal with the problem, techniques of choosing relevant features to discriminate pulsars from non-pulsars are focused on, which is known as feature selection. Feature selection is a process of selecting a subset of the most relevant features from a feature pool. The distinguishing features between pulsars and non-pulsars can significantly improve the performance of the classifier even if the data are highly imbalanced. In this work, an algorithm for feature selection called the K-fold Relief-Greedy (KFRG) algorithm is designed. KFRG is a two-stage algorithm. In the first stage, it filters out some irrelevant features according to their K-fold Relief scores, while in the second stage, it removes the redundant features and selects the most relevant features by a forward greedy search strategy. Experiments on the data set of the High Time Resolution Universe survey verified that ML models based on KFRG are capable of PCS, correctly separating pulsars from non-pulsars even if the candidates are highly class-imbalanced.

Brain infection by SARS-CoV-2: Lifelong consequences

Brain infection by SARS-CoV-2: Lifelong consequences The WATCH team, founded to elucidate the role played by specialized brain cells called tanycytes in various physiological processes, has been investigating how and where the SARS-CoV-2 virus infects the brain, and some long-term consequences of this neuro-invasion. The European Research Council (ERC) Synergy project WATCH (Well-Aging and the Tanycytic Control of Health) brings together the teams of three principal investigators: Vincent Prevot, a neuroendocrinologist working for the French National Health Research Institute (INSERM) in Lille, France; Markus Schwaninger, a neurologist at the University of Lübeck, Germany; and Ruben Nogueiras, an expert in molecular metabolism at the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Together, they are researching how tanycytes – highly specialized cells residing in a tiny part of the brain called the hypothalamus – regulate various physiological processes.

Legal Protection of Traditional Cultural Expressions “Penginyongan” in Banyumas Regency Based on Law No.28 of 2014 concerning Copyright

Traditional Cultural Expressions (TCE) in Penginyongan are diverse and unique. The uniqueness of Penginyongan culture has distinguished between the Javanese Palace culture (Keraton) and Ngapak culture. This condition makes cultural expressions more tangible to the community as folk art. The protection of TCE in Article 38 of Law No. 28 of 2014 on Copyright mandates the state to inventory existing TCE. However, only a tiny part of Penginyongan TCE in Banyumas Regency has been recorded, namely cowongan and begalan. This research uses a qualitative approach with normative juridical. Institutionalisation in protecting Intellectual Property Rights in Banyumas Regency can be seen in terms of legal substance, structure, and culture. In terms of legal substance, the protection of TEE is shown by the laws and regulations that protect it, although there is no specific law for the protection of TEE. Regarding legal structure, TCE protection in Banyumas Regency is carried out by Dinporabudpar (Department of Youth, Sport, Culture, and Tourism). Still, it has limitations, including in efforts to register Communal Intellectual Property Rights. In terms of legal culture, the protection of TCE in Banyumas Regency has obstacles related to the existing ‘speech’ culture.

Transferring Annotator- and Instance-Dependent Transition Matrix for Learning From Crowds.

Learning from crowds describes that the annotations of training data are obtained with crowd-sourcing services. Multiple annotators each complete their own small part of the annotations, where labeling mistakes that depend on annotators occur frequently. Modeling the label-noise generation process by the noise transition matrix is a powerful tool to tackle the label noise. In real-world crowd-sourcing scenarios, noise transition matrices are both annotator- and instance-dependent. However, due to the high complexity of annotator- and instance-dependent transition matrices (AIDTM), annotation sparsity, which means each annotator only labels a tiny part of instances, makes modeling AIDTM very challenging. Without prior knowledge, existing works simplify the problem by assuming the transition matrix is instance-independent or using simple parametric ways, which lose modeling generality. Motivated by this, we target a more realistic problem, estimating general AIDTM in practice. Without losing modeling generality, we parameterize AIDTM with deep neural networks. To alleviate the modeling challenge, we suppose every annotator shares its noise pattern with similar annotators, and estimate AIDTM via knowledge transfer. We hence first model the mixture of noise patterns by all annotators, and then transfer this modeling to individual annotators. Furthermore, considering that the transfer from the mixture of noise patterns to individuals may cause two annotators with highly different noise generations to perturb each other, we employ the knowledge transfer between identified neighboring annotators to calibrate the modeling. Theoretical analyses are derived to demonstrate that both the knowledge transfer from global to individuals and the knowledge transfer between neighboring individuals can effectively help mitigate the challenge of modeling general AIDTM. Experiments confirm the superiority of the proposed approach on synthetic and real-world crowd-sourcing data.

IN-GOOD-NEWS-IA”: THE ROLE OF GOOD NEWS FROM INDONESIA (GNFI) IN HELPING TO ENGENDER SENSE OF NATIONHOOD

The bad news seemed to have become a daily dish in a variety of Indonesian media today. Meanwhile, positive news and impressive achievements of Indonesia are often masked, or only displayed in a tiny part of the whole story. It also dismisses the sense of concern for a nation because the audience is fed up. News reporting has the possibility to influence public opinion and audience behaviour. Furthermore, the effects may have an impact on the sense of nationhood. The matters about a country are reflecting on how the media plays the role as news platform in creating the values of nationalism in the content. This essay examines the roles of Good News From Indonesia (GNFI) news platform and social media movement in Indonesia in helping to engender a sense of nationhood. This research uses qualitative methods, including media observation, in-depth interview, and also completed with literature review to acquire data to support the analysis. The essay focuses on three primary roles of GNFI, which are fulfilling the needs of useful information, restoring the optimism of Indonesia, and rebuilding confidence and citizen’s optimism.

MEDIUM SHIFT AND EXISTENCE OF ORNAMENTS ON PELINGGIH OF SACRED BUILDINGS (TEMPLES) DUE TO THE VOLCANIC IMPACT OF MOUNT AGUNG

The study of the existence of ornaments on the pelinggih (temple) buildings that utilise the black stone material of Mount Agung is considered to be only a tiny part of the ornamental manifestations applied to the black stone pelinggih building of Mount Agung when compared to the application of pelinggih ornaments using solid stone materials in general. It is done as an economic production that needs to be sold to the public, especially for Hindus in Bali. To explore this, the researcher uses socio-cultural and aesthetic approaches. The presentation of this article aims to describe (1) The form of the pelinggih temple building that has been used in the community as a place of worship. (2) The existence of ornaments, which are applied to the parts of the pelinggih building, according to the existing parts, such as the feet, the body and the top. (3) Factors influencing the creation of pelinggih with black stone material of Mount Agung, featuring ornaments with minimalist patterns. It is hoped that this research can also be used as a basis for future research to find solutions in developing techniques for sculpting or carving ornaments that utilise the black stone material of Mount Agung, using modern tools. The research approach used was descriptive qualitative. Data were collected through field surveys, literature studies, observations and interviews. Data can be collected, processed, classified and reduced, then analysed using textual and contextual analysis and interpretation. Descriptive qualitative research method that describes situations or events to make a description systematically, factually, and accurately about the facts and the characteristics of the population or sample of a particular area (Suryabrata, 2005: 76). Data in verbal form is often contained in different words with the same meaning and long and wide sentences. In conclusion, the description of ornaments on pelinggih (temple) buildings that use the black stone material of Mount Agung is related to the dominant factors that influence the embodiment of decorations. Although the structure and form of the pelinggih in the preparation have followed the ethics or the existing rules, the application of ornaments in detail is minimal, only in the form of basic patterns, both at the bottom feet, body or middle and head or top. There is still a lack of reliable and professional Gunung Agung black stone carvers

Microfluidic Sampling of Undissolved Components from Subcellular Regions of Living Single Cells for Mass Spectrometry Analysis.

Precise sampling of undissolved chemical components from subcellular regions of living single cells is a prerequisite for their in-depth analysis, which could promote understanding of subtle early stage physiological or pathological processes. Here we report a microfluidic method to extract undissolved components from subcellular regions for MS analysis. The target single cell was isolated by the microchamber beneath the microfluidic probe and washed by the injected biocompatible isotonic glucose aqueous solution (IGAS). Then, the sampling solvent was injected to extract undissolved components from the expected subcellular region of the living single cell, where the position and size of the sampling region could be controlled. The components immobilized by undissolved cellular structures were proven to be successfully extracted. Since unextracted subcellular regions were protected by IGAS, the single cell could survive after a tiny part was extracted, providing the possibility of repetitive sampling of the same living cell. Phospholipids extracted from the subcellular regions were successfully identified. The results demonstrated the feasibility of our method for subcellular sampling and analysis.

The 5th Dimension and its Implications for the String Theory, Conservation of Energy and Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle

In 1919, the mathematician Theodor Kaluza began to play around with Albert Einstein’s formulas for gravity. Out of curiosity, he reworked the equations to see how they‘d look in five, rather than four, dimensions. The exercise yielded an extra set of equations, which were the same as James Clerk Maxwell’s equations for the electromagnetic field. His idea of a fifth dimension had produced a mathematical unification of gravity and electromagnetism. Since Kaluza’s calculations yielded an extra set of equations with Einstein’s formulas for gravity, it’s logical to assume that extending the number of known dimensions to five might also extend E = mc2. This article also visits conservation of mass and energy / mass-energy equivalence, Electromagnetism, Dark Matter, Dark Energy, the Matrix, Antigravitons, Incompleteness Theorems, New Irrationals, Calculus, Celluloid Motion, and Vector-Tensor-Scalar Geometry. And as the text accompanying Figure 5 says, “The counterclockwise rotation does not have to encompass 360 degrees. It can be divided into single degrees – and even arcseconds which are 3,600 times smaller than a degree. Each arcsecond (or tiny part of it) could correspond to a separate dimension and the total dimensions might make up a temporal multiverse that’s reminiscent of string theory, the cosmological framework that says particles are composed of one-dimensional objects called strings (a group of binary digits is called a single-dimensional bit string).” Finally, Heisenberg’s Principle of Indeterminacy - in which the position and the velocity of a particle cannot both be measured exactly, at the same time, even in theory - is revised. Quantum uncertainty is changed into quantum certainty by software containing a new type of irrational number – actually, irrational equations - that’s based on mathematics’ Matrix and topology’s Mobius strip, as well as being interdimensional. Ludwig Wittgenstein, an Austrian-British philosopher, once stated, "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world." Wittgenstein proposed that our understanding of the world is shaped by the language we use to describe it. This concept extends to mathematics, which can be seen as a specialized language. So if a person has no doubt that 1 + 1 = 2, he or she can never arrive at a truly Unified Theory in which only one thing exists. The maths accepted in 2023 is indispensable in enabling advancements in technology and science that have transformed our lives but is incapable of fully describing Unification. Scientific history has shown that it can go partway. Scientists consequently assume it will eventually go all the way.

Quasi-bound states in the continuum in asymmetric hetero-bilayer metasurfaces

Bound states in the continuum (BICs) are completely confined states of open optical structures existing above the light line. However, BICs must be turned into quasi-BICs having a finite Q-factor to be accessible. To achieve quasi-BICs with a high Q-factor at normal incidence, diverse optical structures have been explored by inducing asymmetry by etching a tiny part of the structure. However, it is difficult to introduce a small asymmetry by the etching process for a high Q-factor. Here, we propose novel asymmetric hetero-bilayer metasurface using a low-refractive-index top grating and high-refractive-index bottom grating. The thin upper grating is intended to introduce perturbation accurately, and the bottom grating functions as a broadband reflector. We identified the effect of the geometric perturbation and the top grating material on the Q-factor, resonance wavelength, and background reflectance. As the geometric asymmetry increases, both the Q-factor and the background reflectance decreased, and the resonance wavelength changed accordingly. The Q-factor followed the inverse quadratic of the geometric perturbation and the inverse cube of the relative permittivity. The effect of geometric perturbation decreased up to 10 times with a lower refractive index. Taking advantage of a high-Q hetero-bilayer metasurface, a gas sensor was numerically investigated, and it distinguished a change in the refractive index of 5 × 10−7. Furthermore, the asymmetric hetero-bilayer metasurface showed a quasi-BIC with a high Q-factor on a rigid substrate.

Lithology determination and petrophysical rock typing of sedimentary rocks using X-ray tomography

Computerized Tomography (CT) scan imaging is a non-destructive method to characterize reservoir rock samples. The lithology and rock typing of more than 250 carbonate and sandstone samples were quantitatively and qualitatively investigated. The samples were collected from different formations, including dolostone, limestone, sandstone, and their combination. Their porosity and permeability ranges were from 5 to 30% and 0.001 to 1000 milli Darcy, respectively. The results showed that the reservoir rock lithology can be determined by combining the CT number with the porosity and grain density values. Unlike traditional methods, digital data was used in lithology determination with this method and the entire sample was examined. Qualitative petrological analysis by thin section and SEM methods show high uncertainty, as a tiny part of the rock is analyzed. Determining a new rock typing to study reservoir properties by image analysis was another result of this study. In the determined grouping, attention paid to the petrophysical separation, and the parameters that had a good relationship with permeability were utilized.

Prediction of the Water Inrush Risk from an Overlying Separation Layer in the Thick Overburden of a Thick Coal Seam

With the expansion of coal mining westward in China, water inrush from seam roofs has become a prominent safety problem during mining. The roof rock of the coal seam in the Shilawusu coal mine has the characteristics of a double-layer structure, and the overlying separation space formed in the mining process of the coal seam poses a risk of water inrush. To ensure the safety of coal mine production, considering the geological and hydrogeological data of the mining area, the core recovery rate, lithologic assemblage index, key aquifer thickness, hydrostatic head and lithologic structure index of the Zhidan Formation are selected as evaluation indexes. The index weights are calculated based on the attribute hierarchical model and coefficient of variation methods, and subjective and objective preference coefficients are introduced to determine the ranking of comprehensive indexes. The catastrophe progression method is improved, and a zoning prediction model for water inrush risk is established by the improved catastrophe progression method. The results show that only a tiny part of the mining area is in danger, and most areas are in the safe and transition zones. The model realizes the prediction of the risk of water inrush from the overlying separation layer in the study area and provides a theoretical basis for the prevention and control of water inrush from the overlying separation layer in coal mining.

Coca Colas Colors Bring out the Concept of Happiness to the Consumers

Through reading this article, we will discover that Coca-Cola doesnt sell coke, it sells happiness. This paper investigates in the history of Coca Cola, and we will investigate in what is bottled happiness. We will also investigate in the advanced marketing team behind which helped coca cola to spread happiness to all its customers through a series of research and investigation. The power of Coca Colas marketing department is massive, and they even changed a culture. To be more specifically, the commentary is more focused on the one tiny part of the packaging marketing of Coca Cola, a part that has some miraculous influences on Coca Cola --- The Color Red.

The Vedic Microcosm sūkṣmāntarikṣa

The Vedika tradition offers a multifaceted view of “this whole” is Agni [SB 7.3.1.12], pervaded antarikṣa, [Tāṇḍya Br, 15.12.2] and the sūkṣmāntarikṣa, the humans or more aptly, Jīva, along with Śarīraṁ [SB 6.1.1 4]. Rooted in the Ṛta, which represents the cosmic order or the universal principles that govern the world and the universe. Human existence is deeply interconnected with the cosmos, governed by Dharma. The idea of interconnectedness and unity of the sūkṣmāntarikṣa and antarikṣa, “This Whole” is agni [SB 7.3.1.12] = prajāpatiḥ [SB 6.2 1.23] = puruṣaḥ [SB 6.1.1.5] = brahma [SB 10.4.1.5]. It is beautifully encapsulated [ Chāndogya Up. 6.1.7], which says, "All this is, indeed, Brahman" and ascertains further by “Tat Tvam Asi” [ Chāndogya Up. 6.8.7], hence establishes cosmic responsibilities. [RV. 1.89.6] giving sūkṣmāntarikṣa the greatest strength in its capacity to depict the complexities and vulnerabilities of human existence. What we call Prakṛti, i.e., the nature is intricately connected to Ṛta, [RV.1.90.6; RV. 1.164.23; RV. 10.190.1], and [Taittiriya Saṁhitā, 1.2.8.1]. The order and balance between the antarikṣa and the sūkṣmāntarikṣain, the natural world as a reflection of the cosmic order. [RV.1.89.2; RV.1.25.8], harmony in nature, [RV. 5.44.4; RV. 7.49.4] and moral and ethical [RV. 10.191.1] are established. This paper, explores man and nature from the above perspective, which leads ultimately to the space and time to which the modern natural and mathematical sciences have started converging. It is a tiny part of my long discourse under preparation, “Vedic Hṛdaya Chakṣu." Keywords: antarikṣa, sūkṣmāntarikṣa, agni, Tat Tvam Asi, Prajapati, puruṣa, Śarīraṁ, Hṛdaya, Chakṣu, Ṛta, सूक्ष्मांतरिक्ष, Vedic MicroCosm

Quantification of carbon cycling within the aerobic zone in surface sediments of the Bohai Sea, China

Evaluating the carbon cycling driven by aerobic oxidation of methane (AeOM) in surface marine sediments and calculating the CH4 flux to the seawater is critical for assessing the risk of greenhouse gas emission, as well as exploring for gas field. This study provides quantitative results of carbon cycling in the aerobic zone of the Bohai Sea, China, and the function of AeOM for CH4 interception via numerical simulations constrained by laboratory experiments. TOUGH + HR, an integrated simulation package, was used to numerically characterize the microbial AeOM, which couples water/gas transport and biogeochemistry. Based on the laboratory experiments and measured data in the Bohai Sea, a one-dimensional column conceptual model was constructed and solved by TOUGH + HR. The results show that when the upward CH4 flux into the aerobic zone is between 4.5 × 10−9 and 4.8 × 10−9 kg/s/m2, the simulated dissolved methane matched the measured data well. Under this condition, most of the CH4 source flux (18.63 mmol·carbon/m2/day) was oxidized to dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC), which finally discharged into the seawater with the flux of 18.44 mmol·carbon/m2/day, while only a tiny part of CH4 leaked into the seawater with the flux of 0.0003 mmol·carbon/m2/day. Therefore, it can be concluded that the aerobic zone in the sediments intercepts the majority of CH4, which mitigates the greenhouse gas emission from marine sediments. At the same time, the sensitivity analyses in this study indicate that carbon cycling is affected by methane flux and temperature, which influences the proportion of carbon sources and sinks. The results have important guidance for gas exploration and carbon cycling when the AeOM in the aerobic zone is considered.