The question of eating ourselves (and of eating others) seems particularly pertinent in the context of artistic research, where, in its focus upon subjectivity and affirmation, the issue of framing an opposition can all too easily become moot. Orthorexia refers to an obsession with only ingesting food that is 'pure'. What is considered to be 'pure' or 'impure' varies from person to person, but an individual's belief about what constitutes healthy food may lead them to exclude certain nutrients or entire food groups from their diet, resulting in a cannibalisation of their internal resources. Conditions such as orthorexia, anorexia and bulimia reflect a set of broadly immanent, and affective concerns, whilst nevertheless embodying somewhat tensile attitudes towards relation. As such, they provide an interesting perspective from which we might address notions of affirmation, argumentation and opposition in a creative-research context. Arguably, anorexia is an auto-cannibalistic, overtly non-relational activity. That is to say, in avoiding consumption, the anorexic tends towards the imperceptible, whilst ultimately consuming themselves from within. In contrast to this, the bulimic appears to gorge on relations – tasting, affirming, and ingesting everything – whilst subsequently purging it from the body in a partially digested fashion. Interestingly, both conditions are accompanied by symptoms of body dysmorphia, a mode of self-caricature that also functions as a regulatory motif. Nevertheless, the bulimic remains close to average bodyweight whilst the anorexic withers away. With these observations in mind, this paper explores strategies of contestation and negation as they occur in Deleuzian philosophy – a philosophy highly influential in the formation of practices of artistic research, which is likewise associated with the affirmation of relations and with becoming imperceptible. It is claimed here, firstly that Deleuze's mode of criticism is bulimic in character that his directive that we should strive to become imperceptible can proceed only after he has first 'virtualised' his opponents – reducing their difference to self-identity, and secondly, that it is through consideration of Deleuze's virtualisation of others, that we might develop strategies of argumentation and creative contestation that are still noticeably lacking in the context of artistic research Proceedings of the 9th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research
 April 11th 13th 2018, University of Plymouth, UK Introduction This paper explores the inception and transformation of artistic research through the lens of the differential modes of being that are more commonly categorised as eating 'disorders'. Conditions such as orthorexia, anorexia and bulimia reflect a set of broadly immanent, and affective concerns, whilst nevertheless embodying somewhat tensile attitudes towards relation. That is to say, eating is a relational activity, that may involve exploration, consumption, and digestion as well as rejection, expulsion and regurgitation. The process of eating per se places us in intimate relation with other things, whilst at the same time subjecting them to a form of dissolution – we partially absorb what we consume, whilst expelling the remainder from our bodies – sometimes in the form of vomit – but most often in the form of urine or faecal matter – a series of 'waste' substances, which nevertheless still teem with microbial life. In this sense, modes of consumption provide an interesting perspective from which we might address both the relational practice of affirmation, and non-relational practices of argumentation and opposition in the context of artistic-research. We will begin by exploring certain orthorexic tendencies that characterized the early stages of the debate concerning the legitimacy of artistic research. Orthorexia refers to an obsession with only ingesting food that is 'pure'. As we shall see, the inception of artistic research took place in a climate of contestation – in which overtly purist, somewhat caricatured notions of both 'research' and 'art' were placed into opposition. It is significant, for instance that Christopher Frayling's (1994) oft cited seminal paper which purported to provide an overview of stake-holding positions at the argument's inception, began not by examining any actual voice within the debate, but chose instead to interrogate a series of Hollywood stereotypes. In the context of his discussion, Frayling presented us with a series of pure but lifeless stereotypes and caricatures – those of the impassioned, lunatic artist, the pragmatic designer-boffin, the designer-semiotician (as a surfer of signs and culture) and contrasting clichés of the 'saintly' and 'mad' scientist (Ibid, pp.3-4). Such abstractions enabled Frayling to stage a set of oppositions, but there is an important sense in which his paper failed to critically engage with the complexities of any position as it was actually held – preferring instead to debate a series of rather idealised, ghostly representations (Borgdorff, 2012, p.5). Perhap most interestingly, in this early point in the discussion, Frayling stated in no uncertain terms that he could not see how raw, un-textually mediated artistic Proceedings of the 9th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research
 April 11th 13th 2018, University of Plymouth, UK production could speak to the category of research, and that as a consequence he was unsure of how the term could be meaningfully employed. Frayling's empty category of 'research for art' set the tone for the critique of the subjectivity, ineffability and lack of communication that coloured critical accounts of artistic practice, and which dominated much of the early debate concerning the legitimacy of artistic research. Ironically, however, it is Frayling's disputed category of research for art that has come to prominence in more recent times, and which has been brought into focus in the performative context of artistic research notably due to a turn away from epistemology and towards a series of more ontologically focused concerns. The Orthorexic Inception of Artistic Research The early contestation of what, in an Anglophone context, was once known as practice-based or practice-led research can be seen as orthorexic in the sense that it driven by overtly narrow, and somewhat purist conceptions of both research and art. That is to say, in the early stages of the debate the image of artistic practice from the perspective of its critics was that of an impure, or tainted food that was not fit for consumption. Those who aligned themselves with 'traditional' modes of research saw artistic practice, as resulting in ill defined, highly subjective outcomes, which were poorly suited to what were taken to be the at once objective, rigorous, and communicative demands of academia. Those hostile to practice-led modes of enquiry focused upon what they took to be the impurity of artistic practice when seen from a traditional academic perspective. That is to say, they focused upon the ways in which the idea of artistic research seemed to jar with academic values and to square poorly with what they took to be its rational, investigative ideals (Frayling, 1994; Elkins, 2009; Durling, 2002; Biggs & Büchler, 2010). In short, when seen from the perspective of more traditional research paradigms, modes of artistic research in which sensation, or the subjectivity of artistic practice played a major part, were simply not considered Kosha food. Whilst, much criticism focused upon the practicalities of assessment and the difficulties in determining the degree to which knowledge might be tacitly encoded in artistic artefacts, it was the performative dimension of the artwork that seemed most unpalatable to critics, with particular scrutiny being cast upon the subjective and interpretative context of artistic exhibition (Durling, 2002; Biggs, 2002; 2008). It seems clear today that the issue of 'purity' from the perspective of the academy foregrounded a somewhat positivistic research agenda, whilst aligning this with particularly propositional view of language. Those critical of artistic modes of research frequently took issue with what was perceived to be artistic researchers' Proceedings of the 9th SAR International Conference on Artistic Research
 April 11th 13th 2018, University of Plymouth, UK resistance to, or reluctance to engage with verbal or textual modes of argumentation (Durling, Friedman & Gutherson, 2003; Elkins, 2009) the importance of language in the formulation and structuring of argument was stressed, along with its power to capture, compare, and evaluate information (Biggs, 2002; 2003). We might say that for the critics of artistic research, it was important not only to consume the right food, but also to eat with the correct implements, and with the appropriate kind of decorum. The idea that there might be more visceral approaches to the consumption of food that we might choose to eat with our hands, for instance or that artefacts as performative assemblages could in any sense 'speak for themselves' was initially granted very little countenance. It is important to recognise, however, that issues of 'purity' in representation were not limited to those who purported to speak for the academy. Whilst orthorexics are united in their belief that the food which they ingest must be 'pure', there is an important sense in which what is considered to be 'pure' or 'impure' varies from individual to individual, and many practitioners were outraged at the prospect of a mode of artistic research that did not sanction artistic practice as a way of engaging with the world. Here the notion of purity centred upon the artwork, and the potential for it to become tainted in its intersection with positivistic and overly rationalised research processes. Thus, commentators such as Dennis Strand (1998. p.16) stressed the way in which the methodologies of


Nevus sebaceus is a congenital cutaneous hamartoma which has a potential to develop both benign and malignant neoplasm in late life. The most common benign tumor developed within the nevus is syringocystadenoma papilliferum and the most common malignant tumor basal cell epithelioma. Although two different tumors often develop simultaneously on the lesion, it is rare to see more than two different tumors developing on the lesion of nevus sebaceus. In Korean literatures only three such cases were reported. We report an additional case of nevus sebaceus developing three different tumors, syringocystadenoma papilliferum, sebaceous epithelioma, and basal cell carcinoma, in a 67-year-old female patient.


We reported that ulceration of the prostomach of rats following protein restriction was due to the action of the acid gastric juice. 1 An investigation was therefore undertaken to determine whether the gastric acidity was increased by protein restriction. To estimate the acidity, from 15 to 100 pieces of iron, steel or aluminum were given daily to 10 rats, by a method described elsewhere, 2 and the degree of erosion or the percentage of weight lost in passage through the digestive tract was noted. Tests were made for periods of from 47 to over 100 days during which chiefly the protein content of the diets was changed from time to time. Data thus obtained 3 were complicated by factors that tended to obscure evidence of changes in gastric acidity but the net impression was that ulceration of the prostomach occurred as a result of protein restriction without a marked increase in the gastric acidity of any of these rats. A more definite and striking consequence of protein restriction in 7 of the 10 rats was the development of a gastric retention and a correspondingly increased erosion of test material, in some instances more than 10 times the normal. The retention was apparently due to the onset of pylorospasm. As the test material consisted mainly of pieces of iron and aluminum wire, the immediate inference might be that the pieces of metal irritated the pyloric region and spastic contractions were the consequence. But this would not explain why, in spite of continuing to give the same kinds and amounts of metal daily, it repeatedly proved possible to clear up growing gastric retentions by simply changing the diet from low to high protein. Moreover, pylorospasm and gastric retention were not observed to be promoted when rats were kept on diets consisting mainly of bran 1 nor when they were given larger amounts of rougher pieces of metal during longer periods in an earlier study but during which only adequate diets were used. 2


A natural question is: To what extent does property (1) characterize the homogeneous real polynomial of bidegree (k, k), for instance, among all real homogeneous polynomials on C? Of course, one needs to add some reasonable condition to make the question a feasible one. Burns [3] asked if a homogeneous polynomial P on C that is positive (i.e., with P(z) > 0 and P(z) = 0 iff z = 0 and such that ddP ≥ 0 and (ddP )n−1 ≡ 0, with u = log P satisfying (1)) needs to be a homogeneous polynomial of bidegree (k, k). In this paper we prove the following result.


This paper makes qualitative analysis of characteristics of the teacher talk in EFL classroom by closely examining ten real EFL classroom data. It follows that in the aspects of liveliness, topics, transaction markers, error treatment, Ll use, etc. , the modification of teacher talk can bring about desirable effects, but meanwhile, some negative effects accompanying should be reckoned with.


A novel 64-bit hybrid radix-4 sparse-4 tree adder using clock-delayed (CD) footless domino logic is proposed. The adder operates at 6.4GHz with 181ps latency and it consumes 840mW at 1.2V in a standard 90nm CMOS technology. The adder latency is accurately measured by the programmable clock generated from delay-locked loop (DLL). Pseudo-exhaustive testing is applied so that all testable faults in this 64-bit adder are detected by just 23K patterns. This at-speed self testing technique is very useful for speed binning of high performance CPU.


The SnCl_2·2H_2O with EBiB was found to act as the initiator for the radical polymerization of methyl methacrylate(MMA)in the presence of N,N,N′,N″,N″-penta(methyl acylate)diethylenetriamine(HA_5-DETA)or PPh_3.The system belongs to conventional radical polymerization yielding the polymer with M_w/M_n2.0 and initiating efficiencies less than 10%.With the catalysis of FeCl_3·6H_2O,the newly formed RATRP system becomes a well-controlled one.The polymerization of MMA catalyzed by EBiB/SnCl_2·2H_2O/FeCl_3·6H_2O system shows good controllability and high initiating efficiencies(more than 80%)either in bulk or in solution.And the mechanism was investigated.


The applications of robotics in recent years have emerged beyond the field of manufacturing or industrial robots itself. Robotic applications are now widely used in medical, transport, underwater, entertainment and military sectors. In the medical field, these applications should be emphasised in view of the increasing challenges owing to the variety of findings in the field of medicine, which requires new inventions to ease work process. The objective of this review paper is to study and present the past and on-going research in medical robotics with emphasis on rehabilitation assistive care and surgery robotics which are certainly the two main practical fields where robot applications are commonly used presently. The study found that rehabilitation and surgery robotics applications grow extensively with the finding of new invention, as well as research that is being undertaken and to be undertaken.


A review of Interpretation in International Law. Edited by Andrea Bianchi, Daniel Peat and Matthew Windsor. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2015. Pp. 432. $120.00.


This article compares food program participation and costs for the July-September quarter of 1985 with the same 3 months of 1984. Preliminary data are reported as of November 1985 and are subject to revision. Entitlement and bonus commodities are included where applicable. Administrative costs are excluded unless noted.


1. Differing responses in riparian species richness and composition to disturbance have been reported as a possible explanation for the differences along and between rivers. This paper explores the ...


The engineering graphics is a required course for undergraduate students of engineering colleges. Classroom practice is an important channel for information exchange between teachers and students in the classroom teaching. In order to improve the effect of classroom teaching, we should optimize the classroom practice. In this paper, the attentions in the optimization of classroom practice were discussed by the classroom practice examples in engineering graphics teaching. Through the positive role of classroom practice, we should improve the students' intelligence and ability. Keywords—classroom practice, classroom teaching, engineering graphics


The hodograph method for determining patterns of flow of groundwater in a coastal aquifer with a drain requires the treatment of double-sheeted hodograph planes. This many-valuedness does not prohibit the use of Schwarz-Christoffel analysis if the hodograph domain is simply connected. In the two-fluid case of fresh water flowing over stationary salt water the hodograph is simply connected, and the hodograph method is shown to give a solution. This solution was verified by a test that showed a stable interface in the predicted position.


Introduction: Food abstinence during breastfeeding can cause a lack of
nutritional fulfillment in breastfeeding mothers. It occurs because of the
prohibition of consuming certain types of food. Food abstinence is adviced by
parents to their children who are taught to the next generations. This study aimed
to describes the correlation between knowledge and attitude level of parents about
food abstinence with diet of breastfeeding mothers.Methods: This was descriptive
correlation research. The population were 99 breastfeeding mothers who have
child about 0-2 years in Banter Village, Benjeng District, Gresik regency. The
samples were 44 breastfeeding mothers who live with her parents in a house.
Independent variable were parents knowledge and attitude about food abstinence.
Dependent variable was breastfeeding mother's diet. Data were collected through
questionnaire and analyzed by Spearman test (rs) level significance α = 0,05.
Result: The result showed that there was no correlation between parental
knowledge level about food abstinence and eating patterns on breastfeeding
mothers (p = 0,146), and parental attitudes had no correlation with the eating
patterns of breastfeeding mothers (p = 0.478). Discussion: It can be concluded
that the breastfeeding mother's diet is appropriate despite they have parents with
enough knowledge and supportive attitudes about food abstinence. Further
research is expected to add other factors, such as family income, food and cultural
availability.


The pedagogical effectiveness of two versions of AutoTutor was assessed in two student learning outcome studies. Sixty students enrolled in a computer literacy course received tutoring or reread material on two of the following topics: Hardware, Operating Systems, and the Internet. All participants then received a comprehension test on all three topics. A within-subjects design enabled the following conditions to be compared: AutoTutor versus a reread condition versus a control condition. Results from these two studies suggest that AutoTutor was an effective pedagogical tool. Both versions of AutoTutor provided an effect size increment of approximately .5 standard deviations units when compared to the reread and control condition. A Description of AutoTutor AutoTutor is an animated pedagogical agent that engages in a conversation with the learner while simulating the dialog moves of human tutors. AutoTutor is currently designed to help college students learn about topics that are typically covered in an introductory computer literacy course (e.g., hardware, operating systems, the Internet). AutoTutor's architecture is comprised of five major modules: (1) an animated agent, (2) a curriculum script, (3) language analyzers, (4) latent semantic analysis (LSA), and (5) a dialog move generator. All of these modules have been discussed rather extensively in previous publications; and therefore, will only be mentioned briefly in this paper (see Foltz, 1996; Graesser, Franklin, Wiemer-Hastings, & the TRG, 1998; Graesser, Wiemer-Hastings, Wiemer-Hastings, Harter, Person, & the TRG, in press; Hu, Graesser, & the TRG, 1998; Landauer & Dumais, 1997; McCauley, Gholson, Hu, Graesser, & the TRG, 1998; Olde, Hoeffner, Chipman, Graesser, & the TRG, 1999; Person, Graesser, Kreuz, Pomeroy, & the TRG, 2000; Person, Klettke, Link, Kreuz, & the TRG, 1999; Wiemer-Hastings, Graesser, Harter, & the TRG, 1998). AutoTutor is controlled by Microsoft Agent. AutoTutor's images were first created in MetaCreations Poser 3 and then loaded into Microsoft Agent. He is a three-dimensional embodied agent that remains on the screen during the entire tutoring session. The material that AutoTutor covers in the tutoring session is organized in a curriculum script. A curriculum script is a well-defined, loosely structured lesson plan that includes important concepts, questions, cases, and problems that teachers and tutors plan on covering in a particular lesson (Graesser & Person, 1994; Graesser, Person, & Magliano, 1995; McArthur, Stasz, & Zmuidzinas, 1990; Putnam, 1987). AutoTutor's curriculum script includes 36 computer literacy questions/problems along with corresponding "ideal answers" (which are comprised of many potential good answer aspects, anticipated bad answers, corrections for anticipated bad answers, and all of AutoTutor's dialog moves that contain information about the question/problem (i.e., assertions/elaborations, hints, prompts, prompt responses, and summaries). AutoTutor begins the tutoring session with a brief introduction and then asks the student a question from the curriculum script. The student responds to the question by typing her/his answer on the keyboard and hitting the "Enter" key. A number of language analyzers operate on the words in the student's contribution. These analyzers include a word and punctuation segmenter, a syntactic class tagger, and a speech act classifier. The speech act classifier assigns the student's input into one of five speech act categories: Assertion, WH-question, Yes/No question, Short Response, or Prompt Completion. These speech act categories enable AutoTutor to sustain mixedinitiative dialog by responding to the student in conversationally and pedagogically appropriate ways (Person, Bautista, Kreuz, Graesser, & the TRG, in press; Person, Graesser, & the TRG, in press; Person et al., 2000) AutoTutor's knowledge about computer literacy is represented by Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) (Foltz, 1996; Foltz, Britt, & Perfetti, 1996; Landauer & Dumais, 1997; Landauer, Foltz, & Laham, 1998). LSA is a statistical technique that measures the conceptual similarity of two text sources. LSA computes a geometric cosine (ranging from 0 to 1) that represents the conceptual similarity between the two text sources. In AutoTutor, LSA is used to assess the quality of student Assertions and to monitor other informative parameters such as Topic Coverage and Student Ability Level. Student Assertion quality is measured by comparing each Assertion against two other computer literacy text sources, one that contains potential good answers to the topic being discussed and one that contains the anticipated bad answers. The higher of the two geometric cosines is considered the best conceptual match, and therefore, determines how AutoTutor responds to the student Assertion. For the domain of computer literacy, we have found our application of LSA to be quite accurate in evaluating the quality of learner Assertions (Graesser et al., in press; Wiemer-Hastings, Wiemer-Hastings, & Graesser, 1999). We currently have two versions of AutoTutor, AutoTutor 1.1 and AutoTutor 2.0. The fundamental difference between the two versions involves how each system generates particular dialog moves. AutoTutor-1 selects dialog moves by using fuzzy production rules and algorithms that will not be elaborated here. There are different categories of dialog moves: main questions, short feedback (i.e., positive, neutral, negative), pumps ("uh huh", "tell me more"), prompts ("The primary memories of the CPU are ROM and _____"), hints, assertions (elaborations), corrections, and summaries. The selection and sequencing of the dialog moves are sensitive to various parameters that are induced from the tutorial dialog. Fuzzy production rules are tuned to (a) the quality of the student's assertions in the preceding turn, as computed by LSA, (b) global parameters that refer to the ability, verbosity, and initiative of the student, and (c) the extent to which the good answer aspects of the topic had been covered. AutoTutor 2.0 generates dialog moves with tactics that attempt to get the student to provide good answers and elaborate the topic aspect that is in the discourse focus. Whereas AutoTutor 1.1 considers a topic aspect (Ai) as covered if it is expressed by either the tutor or the student, AutoTutor 2.0 counts only what the student says when computing the topic coverage parameter. Hence, if aspect (Ai) is not expressed by the student, it is not considered covered at all. This forces the student to articulate the good answers and explanations in their entirety, an extreme form of constructivism. In order to implement this more sophisticated pedagogical model, AutoTutor 2.0 sequences dialog moves according to their progressive specificity. Specifically, AutoTutor 2.0 forces the student through two cycles of hinting, prompting, and asserting until the student articulates (Ai). For each of the 36 questions and problems, the student and AutoTutor collaboratively improve the quality of the student's contributions while participating in a conversation. In this sense, AutoTutor is more of an assistant for conversation than an information delivery system. Once AutoTutor is "convinced" that enough of the critical components for a particular question/ problem have been covered, the conversation proceeds to the next question or problem in the curriculum script. Evaluation of AutoTutor The pedagogical effectiveness of AutoTutor 1.1. and 2.0 was evaluated in two experiments. Thirty-six students enrolled in a computer literacy course participated in Experiment 1 in which AutoTutor 1.1 was evaluated, and 24 computer literacy student participated in Experiment 2 in which AutoTutor 2.0 was evaluated. All students received money or course credit for their participation. The methodology for the two experiments did not differ. The content of AutoTutor's curriculum script was developed from the textbook used in the computer literacy course (Beekman, 1997). AutoTutor currently tutors on three topics that are covered in the textbook: hardware, operating systems, and the Internet. Prior to the experiments, each of the topics had been covered in course lectures, and students had been tested on the material in the course. Thus, we assumed that the students had read the material on at least one occasion prior the experiments. All students in both experiments were required to do the following: (1) reread a chapter in the course textbook that corresponded to one of the three tutoring topics (e.g., the Internet), (2) interact with AutoTutor on a different topic (e.g., operating systems), and (3) take a comprehension test on all three topics (i.e., hardware, operating systems, and the Internet). All experimental sessions were counterbalanced to control for order effects of condition and topics. In addition, students were given 45 minutes to reread the chapter so that we could control the amount of time spent rereading versus interacting with AutoTutor. The comprehension test consisted of three parts: 18 multiple-choice, shallow knowledge questions taken from the Beekman test bank, 12 multiple-choice, deep-reasoning questions that were crafted by computer literacy experts, and a 72-item Cloze task. The test included items for all three topics and was scored according to number of correct items; a score of 102 would be considered a perfect score. Results from a series of statistical analyses yielded favorable outcomes for AutoTutor compared to the reread and control conditions. For example, a 2 (AutoTutor Version, 1.1 versus 2.0) x 3 (Learning Condition, AutoTutor versus Reread versus Control) ANOVA yielded a significant main effect for Learning Condition, F(2,58) = 12.15, p < .001. Specifically, the mean test score for the AutoTutor condition (43%) was significantly higher than the other two learning conditions which did not statistically differ (35% for the control condition, 37% for


This study examined the relationships between peer, teacher and self-assessments on adolescent direct and indirect aggressive behaviour taking place at school. Subjects, a total of 2002, numbered 725 early, 575 middle and 702 late adolescent girls and boys. Measures on direct aggression included bullying, fighting and arguing, and measures on indirect aggression focused on backbiting and intriguing. The results revealed that, as a rule, the correlation between the peers and the teachers was higher than the agreement between the teachers and the self, which, in turn, was higher than that between the peers and the self. Consistency was also found to be higher with direct than with indirect aggression. Regarding age differences, the teacher-peer agreement was higher for the early and middle adolescents than for the late adolescents, while the teacher-self and the peer-self consistencies showed curvilinear relationships. Examining gender-related variance revealed that the peer-teacher correlation on direct aggression was higher for boys than for girls. No gender differences were found in assessments of indirect aggression. The results suggest, firstly, that self-ratings are not well interchangeable with peer or teacher assessments, which, in turn, are in line with each other, and, secondly, that there is a higher concordance in assessing direct than indirect aggression.


The air permeability influences a number of important fabric properties, such as protection against wind in outerwear garments, efficiency of filtration in industrial cloths, performance of sail cloths and parachute fabrics, etc. It has been suggested by Olofsson [6] that there is a general interdependence between shear behavior (measured using the shear apparatus designed by Behre c21) and air permeability of woven worsted fabrics. The effect of two basic structural parameters for wool double-knitted fabrics-viz. the tightness factor and run-in-ratio-on air permeability has been studied by Postle and Suurmeyer [S]. Also, it has been shown by Knapton and Lo [4] that the air permeability of double-knitted fabrics is highly dependent upon fabric construction. In this letter, air permeability measurements are compared for a wide range of commercially produced woven, double-knitted, and warp-knitted outerwear fabrics. A total of 87 fabrics was tested, representing a number of different fabric manufacturers and finishers. Of the total, 37 fabrics were woven (all-wool or wool/ polyester blends), 4 plain-knits (3 wool and 1 polyester/ cotton blend), 17 wool double-knits, 13 textured polyester double-knits, and 16 synthetic warp-knits. A detailed description of the construction of these fabrics has been reported previously [3] together with a detailed analysis of their bending and shear behavior. The air permeability of a fabric, defined as the volume of air (measured in cubic centimeters) passing per second through 1 cm2 of the fabric a t a pressure difference of 1 crn head of water, was determined by employing a Cambridge air-flow apparatus. Owing to the openness of the knitted fabric structures, multiple layers were used, and the value of a u permeability for one layer of fabric was obtained from the product of air permeability of a composite of superimposed fabrics and the number of layers used in the composite [S, 71. For woven fabrics, no difficulty was encountered in testing single layers of the fabric. Measurements of fabric thickness were carried out under a pressure of 7 kPa c11. The air-flow results, for all types of fabrics investigated, are plotted against fabric thickness in (a) of Figure. 1 and against fabric weight per unit area in (b) of Figure 1. The similarity between both charts shown in Figure 1 is immediately evident, indicating (as ex-


This work presents a conceptual framework for learning an ontological structure of domain knowledge, which combines Jaccard similarity coefficient with the Infinite Relational Model (IRM) by (Kemp et al. 2006) and its extended model, i.e. the normal-Infinite Relational Model (n-IRM) by (Herlau et al. 2012). The proposed approach is applied to a dataset where legal concepts related to the Japanese educational system are defined by the Japanese authorities according to the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). Results indicate that the proposed approach effectively structures features for defining groups of concepts in several levels (i.e., concept, category, abstract category levels) from which an ontological structure is systematically visualized as a lattice graph based on the Formal Concept Analysis (FCA) by (Ganter and Wille 1997).


Abstract— Brains from 20 day old normal and 20 day old Jimpy mice were fractionated by a modification of the procedure described by Eichberget al. (1964). Each of the fractions obtained was subjected to radioimmunoassay (RIA) for myelin basic protein (MBP). From both the normal brain and the Jimpy brain MBP was recovered in three separate membrane fractions designated P1A. P2A. and P3A. which differed in their sedimentation properties but which had similar densities (less than 1.08 g'ml). In the Jimpy brain compared to normal brain the amounts of P1A and P2A were greatly reduced but the amount of P3A was increased. During development in the normal brain the amount of MBP in the PIA fraction increased in parallel with the accumulation of myelin. The amount of MBP in P2A increased gradually during active myelination and decreased slightly in the adult. The amount of MBP in P3A increased sharply during the period of most active myelination and decreased approx 10‐fold as the rate of myelination in the brain declined. Electron microscopic examination revealed that the P1A and P2A fractions from normal brain contained myelin fragments while the P1A and P2A fractions from Jimpy brain contained numerous vesicular membranous structures with little if any identifiable myelin. The P3A fraction from both normal and Jimpy brain contained small vesicles of uniform size, some with polyribosomes attached. Each of the fractions was analyzed by a technique combining sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis with RIA for MBP in order to identify and quantitate the four different forms of MBP with molecular weights of 21.5 K. 18.5 K. 17 K and 14 K dalton. The proportions of the four MBPs were characteristic for each fraction. The relative proportions of the four proteins were 14 K > 18.5 K > 17 K > 21.5 K daltons in all the fractions except P1A Jimpy in which 21.5 K dalton protein was the predominant form of MBP present. The cellular origin of the MBP containing fractions from normal and Jimpy brain is discussed.


This essay discusses the methodology of technical research project in enterprise in China, especially the manufacturing enterprise. The characteristic and the source of technical research project are analyzed, as well as the basic requirements for a qualified researcher. The general flow chart on the implement of technical research project is also given out in this essay. Every step in the flow chart is explained and the key-points are analyzed in detail.


Potassium-Graphite Fiber Intercalation Compounds(K-GFIC) have been prepared from well oriented pitch-based Graphite fiber by the transformed two-bulbs method with variation of reaction temperatures of graphite( : , , , , ). The stage transition process of K-GFICs was studied by X-ray diffraction methods, and we have observed peaks with d-values of (001) diffraction of and , which are charecteristic for the stage 1 and stage 2, respectively. The stage stability and energy states of K-GFICs were studied by UV/VIS spectrophotometer. As a results, We found that the minimum values of reflactance of K-GFICs with pure stage was moved to higher energy pristine Graphite fiber's. But because of mixtured stage, we could not observe minimum reflectance in the visible region at high reaction temperatures(, ). From X-ray diffraction and UV/VIS sepctrophotometry data, we can suggest that K-GFICs with lower stage has many charge carriers existed between C atoms of graphite Layers. And then, these results also provides information on the electrical and other physical properties of K-GFICs.


This paper introduces the thermal simulation analysis process of a telecommunication base station. The design problems are discovered by the simulation analysis with FLOTHERM software. Based on the analysis result, improved design methods are suggested, and the simulation analysis is made again.


Grip strength has proven to have a positive effect on sports performance in which a sport implement is grasped in the hand. Racquetball athletes are constantly in search of ways to find advantages over their competition and there is a paucity of research regarding the role of grip strength and racquetball performance. Purpose: This study sought to find the relationship between maximal grip strength of the dominant hand and success (in the context of an amateur racquetball tournament) in the sport of racquetball. Methods: Racquetball tournament players were recruited to participate in the study prior to the beginning of the tournament. Each participant was asked to perform at least three maximal isometric grip strength measurement trials using a Jamar Handgrip Dynamometer and the average of the three highest grip strength readings was recorded. The participants then went on to play in their groups in the racquetball tournament at the Utah Summer Games (USG). Following the tournament, the USG racquetball organizer provided researchers with the full results of the racquetball tournament. Results: Because of the limited number of female participants in the study only the data concerning male participants was statistically analyzed. Due to the large number of sub groups in the tournament, the data were analyzed as those who finished in 1st place versus those who finished below first place. An independent t-test indicated that there was not a significant difference in grip strength between group winners and the other competitors. Discussion: Although the results of this study did not show a significant difference in grip strength between those who succeeded in tournament play and those who did not, the results are important to the overall discussion of the role that grip strength plays in racquet sports, most specifically racquetball. This data can serve as a launching point for further research regarding grip strength and racquetball. Conclusion: Within the parameters of this study, it does not appear that grip strength plays a significant role in winning and losing in racquetball tournament competition.


In this paper, the author approaches dropout as a study case in Universdad Don Bosco students. This study is carried out through the experience of those students looking for assistance at the Psychopedagogical Attention Department. The study takes the data gathered from sessions of those students that by academic or personal reasons have looked for support at such department during 2014. These data have become the base to discover the dropout causes and to design a merging profile of the dropout student for this university. Dia-logos 16, 39-47.


In this paper we propose the combination of the recursive least squares (RLS) and the least angle regression (LAR) algorithms for nonlinear system identification. In the application of interest, the model possesses a large number of coefficients, of which only few are different from zero. We use the LAR algorithm together with a geometrical stopping criterion to establish the number and position of the coefficients to be estimated by the RLS algorithm. The output error is used for indicating model inadequacy and therefore triggering the LAR algorithm. The proposed scheme is capable of modeling intrinsically sparse systems with better accuracy than the RLS algorithm alone, and lower energy consumption.


In this paper, we investigate and evaluate the performance of two fast reroute mechanisms in packet switched core networks. Such mechanisms enable, in the case of a network fault, the fast switchover of protected traffic onto pre-established backup paths within minimal time (typically below 50 ms) to minimize traffic loss. Our research testbed consists of both real and emulated IP/MPLS Label Switching Routers (LSRs). Using empirical tests, we compare the two fast protection mechanisms MPLS Traffic Engineering (TE) Fast Reroute (FRR), and IP FRR to protect MPLS LDP traffic. In our tests, we consider single link failures protected with pre-provisioned backup paths using TE-FRR tunnels, or IP Fast Reroute (IP-FRR) alternate paths. We compare the two techniques in terms of traffic loss and network time convergence obtained by repeating the tests multiple times.


Most problems in the ensuing list are of fairly recent origin. None of them seem easy and some are likely to be very difficult. The formulation of each problem is such that it can be answered by one word only: either yes or no. (Strictly speaking, it is conceivable that within the same question, the answer sometimes depends on the dimension.) We offer no conjectures or guesses. In many cases, the particular question is just a chosen concise representative from a whole group of related open problems. Whenever known, we shall point out the original source of a question. Otherwise, the question is either a folk question, a modification of a folk question, or suggested by one or both of the authors. We apologize in advance for all omissions and misquotes. Practically all the problems require some background definitions; many concepts that are being used have only recently been introduced, and are perhaps not so widely known. Typically, the question is stated first, and the relevant definitions and references are given right afterwords. To keep this essay brief, we give little or no motivation here. For this purpose, we kindly invite the reader to consult the literature as referred to in the text. This list of questions was born at the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in August 1996. The choices we made were necessarily partial but still somewhat arbitrary. There certainly are many more problems around these topics that we deem equally worthy.


After having made a purchase decision, consumers often revisit their choice and ponder forgone alternatives. This tendency can lower satisfaction with the selected alternative, especially when choices are difficult. We introduce the concept of "choice closure"--defined as the psychological process by which consumers come to perceive a decision to be final--and show that specific physical acts that are metaphorically associated with the concept of closure (such as covering or turning a page on the rejected alternatives) trigger choice closure in the context of difficult choices. Four studies show that performing acts of closure inhibits consumers' propensity to reconsider their decision process and to engage in unfavorable comparisons between the chosen and the forgone options, resulting in greater satisfaction with the outcome of choices made from large sets. These findings suggest that subtle cues, which do not alter the actual choice context, can improve satisfaction with a difficult decision.


The culture of the Offenders Aid and Rehabilitation Services (OARS) workplace with particular regard to the positive impact it has had on clients exiting prison is discussed. The aims and objectives of the OARS Freshstart Accommodation Programs are highlighted.


The superB project foresees the construction of a high intensity super-flavor factory at the Cabibbo Lab, in Tor Vergata (near Rome). The experiment, based on a high intensity asymmetric electron-positron collider, and on the related detector, is expected to reach a very high luminosity: 2 × 1036 cm-2s-1, that will allow the high statistic study of rare decays and, possibly, will show evidences of new physics. The Muon Detector plays the fundamental role of identifying (mainly) muons tracks, present in many important decays. In order to cope with the very high particle flux, the detector must provide a very fast response and has to be very robust with respect to radiation damage and aging effects. The adopted technique exploits extruded plastic scintillators as active material, WLS fibers for the light collection and Silicon Photon Multipliers (SiPM) as photo-detectors In this manuscript, a complete description of the designed Muon detector and of all the related studies will be presented. In particular, we will focus on the results of a beam tests performed at Fermilab on a large scale prototype and on radiation tests of the most sensitive parts of the detector.


This thesis reports the results of a survey of the fishes of the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River system in Tennessee and Kent�cky. This system represents the south easterly extension of the Cumberland River system. The survey was conducted from June, 1968, to Sep tember, 1969, with the majority of the collecting being made in the summer months of both years. A variety of collecting techniques were employed. These included ten and twenty-foot small mesh seine nets, thirty and sixty-foot bag seines, gill nets and sodium cyanide. A total of sixty-four collections are included, sixty one made by the author, and three by other investigators. These yielded sixty-three species of fishes. Several addi tional species are included in the paper. These were reported in the literature as being taken at one time or another from the system, but were not taken in the present.study, and thus may or may not be still present. Contained in this thesis is a 11st of the species of fishes collected in the system, with notes on their habitat and distribution, botp within the system, andin comparison with other systems. Included also is a literature survey l and a description of the river system with notes on the cur rent state of pollution in the system. A discussion of the species distribution 1s included, 111 iv and possible reasons for the distribution are given. Results of the survey indicate a strong possibility for stream cap ture between the Big South Fork system and other parts of the Cumberland River system. However, more investigation is needed in this regard.


Describes a top down systems approach to the design of any large and complex system. The specific example used throughout is that of a submarine weapon system since this is the line of work in which VSEL (combat systems) is engaged. The approach leads to a truly integrated weapon system (IWS) in contrast with the traditional practice of bottom-up integration of individually specified sub-systems. The systems design activities appropriate to the feasibility and project definition phases are discussed in detail, and the specific technique advanced by VSEL is described. A computer-based integrated modelling environment under phased development supports this technique, with a centralised relational database accessible to a series of toolsets.


Temperature is the main climate factor related to induction, maintenance and dormancy release in apple (Malus domestica Borkh.). The inadequate chilling exposure in apples causes budbreak problems, resulting in decrease in yield potential. Thus, the knowledge of physiological principles and environmental factors determining the dormancy phenomenon, especially winter temperature effects, it is necessary for the efficient selection of cultivars in a productive region. In addition, it is indispensable to adapt the orchard management aiming to decrease the problems caused by lack chilling during winter. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of different thermal conditions during the dormancy period on budbreak of apple cultivars. One-year-old twigs of 'Castel Gala' and 'Royal Gala' cultivars, grafted on M7 rootstock, were submitted to temperatures of 5, 10 and 15oC for different exposure periods (168; 336; 672; 1,008 and 1,344 hours). After treatments execution, the plants were kept in a greenhouse at 25oC. Budbreak was quantified when accumulated 3,444; 6,888; 10,332; 13,776; 17,220 and 20,664 GDHoC after temperature treatments. The cultivars responded differently to temperature effect during the winter period. The temperature of 15oC during winter shows a greater effectiveness on 'Castel Gala' apple budbreak while in the 'Royal Gala' apples the temperatures of 5 and 10oC show better performance. 'Castel Gala' cultivar (low chilling requirement) may supply its physiological necessities, may be capable to budburst, even when subjected to higher temperatures in relation to 'Royal Gala' apples (high chilling requirement).


The attempt was made to evaluate and compare postabortion and interval minilaparotomy sterilization procedures. Over the July 1975 to November 1977 period, 149 women underwent postabortion sterilization and 151 women underwent interval sterilization at the Medical College Hospital in Baroda, India. All the procedures were performed by a single operator via minilaparotomy using the tubal ring technique. 100% of the subjects returned to the hospital for the 1st followup visits. Women undergoing postabortion and interval sterilization procedures were similar with respect to age, parity, number of living children, previous child loss and education. Over 90% of the women in both groups had not practiced any form of contraception. There were no technical problems. The incidence of surgical difficulties was higher for the interval (13.2%) than for the postabortion (10.1%) cases. There were no major surgical problems. The most frequently reported difficulty in both groups of patients were related to visualizing and exteriorizing the tubes. No complications attributable to the abortion procedure were reported for patients undergoing postabortion sterilization. The incidence of all sterilization complications was higher for the postabortion cases (43.0%) than for the interval cases (27.8%). The difference was statistically significant for early postoperative complications. There was a higher incidence of complaints among the postabortion (34.9%) than among the interval cases (25.8%).


Structure of amorphous chalcogenide semiconductor glassy As-S-Se films, obtained by high-frequency (HF) ion-plasma sputtering has been investigated. It was shown that the length of the atomic structure medium order and local structure were different from the films obtained by thermal vacuum evaporation. Temperature dependence of dark conductivity, as well as the dependence of the spectral transmittance has been studied. Conductivity value was determined at room temperature. Energy activation conductivity and films optical band gap have been calculated. Temperature and field dependence of the drift mobility of charge carriers in the HF As-S-Se films have been shown. Bipolarity of charge carriers drift mobility has been confirmed. Absence of deep traps for electrons in the As40Se30S30 spectrum of localized states for films obtained by HF plasma ion sputtering was determined. Bipolar drift of charge carriers was found in amorphous As40Se30S30 films obtained by ion-plasma sputtering of high-frequency, unlike ...


Objective Many SPF animal rooms were upgraded and reconstructed on the basis of the old ordinary rooms in our country,there are some deficiencies in the design of automatic monitoring system.In generally,the temperature,cleanliness,and the room pressure gradience are easily controlled.However,the humidity control is very hard,especially in the winter and rainy season.In addition,the monitoring system usually emphasizes on the monitoring function,but the control function is weak,and there is no electronic record reserved in the system.Based on these deficiencies,our laboratory animal room has been upgraded and the reconstructed,and performance of the new system is good.


INTRODUCTION: Cisplatin, alone or in combination with other chemotherapeutic drugs, is currently in clinical use for patients with osteosarcoma. However, the frequent occurrence of systemic toxicity, especially nephroand neuro-toxicity, limits its dose in these patients. Localized controlled delivery of the drug to the tumor would decrease systemic cisplatin levels and possibly result in higher local doses. Additionally, the development of a biodegradable vehicle containing a depot dose of cisplatin would improve local treatment options that otherwise require drug loaded non-degradable beads and repeat surgery for their removal. The goal of this study is to investigate the in vitro release of cisplatin from biodegradable microsphere vehicles and evaluate their efficacy against an osteosarcoma cell line.


The Legislatures of many of the States are now in session, and in most of them measures have been proposed, of more or less importance, affecting medical practice or public health. It is difficult to present a full statement of all these bills, but the substance of many of them has been published in the daily papers and will be of interest. In New York the principal bills are the following: One removing the pauper insane from the county poorhouses and transferring them to the State Asylums. This involves the expenditure of about $500,000 for a new building to accommodate the new patients, and has been actively opposed by local officials who have found some pecuniary or other advantage in keeping the insane in the poorhouses, which are badly adapted for the care of such patients. The general sentiment of the profession and of humane persons is strongly in favor


Objective:To explore the principles of donor site selection for defects of the hypopharynx and/or cervical-esophagus based on a novel defect classification system and treatment outcome of this series.Method:Thirty-nine patients underwent reconstruction of their defects of the hypopharynx and/or cervical-esophagus from January 2007to June 2012were retrospectively studied.23hypopharngeal and/or cervical-esophageal defects were circumferential or near circumferential(group A),16were partial(group B).22patients had compromised neck vascular status,while the other 17patients had normal neck vascular status.Selection of the donor sites was based on extent of the defects and neck vascular status.Donor sites for reconstruction of the defects of group A included anterolateral thigh flap(n=8),gastric pull-up(n=6),radial forearm flap(n=3),jejunum flap(n=3),and pectoralis major myocutaneous flap(n=3).For goup B,Infrahyoid myocutaceous flaps,radial forearm flaps,and pectoralis major myocutaneous flaps were used in 8,3,and 5cases,respectively.Flap survival,surgical complications,function outcome,and tumor control were observed.Result:Overall complication rate was 12.8%(5/39)in this series.In group A,three flap necroses occurred in jejunum flap(n=1),anterolateral thigh flap(n=1),and pectoralis major flap(n=1).All these flap necroses occurred in the compromised neck vascular status group.One case of pharyngeal fistula without flap necrosis occurred in Group B.All except 2patients restored oral intake postoperatively;16patients with laryngeal preservation had good phonation postoperatively.2-year and 3-year survival of this series were 72.1%and 65.2%,respectively.Conclusion:Selection of an appropriate donor site for reconstruction of the defects of hypopharynx and/or cervical-esophagus should be based on the extent of the defects,neck vascular status,and clinical features of the flap.Individualized donor site selection for hypopharyngeal and cervical esophageal defects reconstruction can result in good clinical outcome.


Good indoor air quality improves productivity at the workplace. On the other hand, poor indoor air quality could lead to losses in productivity as a result of comfort problems, ill health, and sickness-absenteeism. The purpose of the study was to assess indoor air quality in various rooms of university buildings, covering the offices, lecture theatre, laboratory or workshops, and public restroom across eight faculties in a conventional university. Investigations were conducted at twenty-nine indoor locations in the main campus of the University of Lagos. Noise level, PM2.5, PM10, relative humidity and temperature, CO, SO 2 , NOx, and the microbial quality (fungal and bacterial) were all determined. The microbial quality was determined using the sedimentation method (open Petri dishes) containing different culture media for sample collection. Noise level ranged from 61.60 to 84.10 dBA. The noise level is quite high in almost all sampling points especially in the workshops, yet there was no significant difference (P>0.05) across all the indoor sampling points and the WHO limit. SO 2 was mostly absent, however, the highest value of 0.4 ppm was recorded, which was higher than the recommended limit of 0.1 ppm. PM2.5 ranged between 4.0–25.0 µg/m³ and PM10 were between 8.0–47.0 µg/m³. Though there was high variation in PM2.5 and PM10 across all the indoor sampling points, there was no significant difference (P>0.05). They were below the maximum limit of 150 µg/m 3 . The total fungi load ranged from 10.4 to 963 CFU/m³. There was a generally higher number of fungi in the restroom than in all the other indoor environments and they were significant in the Faculty of Social Sciences. Fungi isolates include Aspergillus spp . (86.2%), unidentified mold (13.77%) and Sporothrix schenckii (0.03%). Total bacteria load ranged from 96.3 to 689 CFU/m 3 . The lowest load of bacteria (9.63 × 101 CFU/m³) was recorded in the Dean's Office at the Faculty of Environmental Sciences. The restrooms have the higher bacterial load (6.89 × 102 CFU/m³), which was higher than the recommended maximum limit of 500 CFU/m 3 . Identification from the colonies showed that about 55% were gram positive and 45% were gram negative cells. Morphological studies showed that cocci were also more predominant over the bacillary shape bacteria (55% versus 45%).


A video identifier extraction device, comprising: for each image feature amount extraction unit means, for extracting from the video input of each picture (frame or field that is) as the feature amount of each image visual feature; axis direction change region extraction unit means, for a time direction change by analyzing an image on a predetermined region within the image from a video in, finding region is obtained having a large image change from the video and generates the area information changes, this change region information is information specifying the region; each-region feature amount extraction means for extracting from the video feature quantity corresponding to the region of the change region information for each region as a visual feature; and a multiplexing means, for which each visual image feature amount, the feature amount of each region and the visual change region information are multiplexed to generate a video identifier.


The November issue of JAALAS volume 53 and the December issue of Comparative Medicine (CM) volume 64 marked the end of another year for the AALAS journals. Our sincere thanks go again to the talented support the journals receive from art director Amy Tippett and scientific editor Amy Frazier, as well as to the AALAS staff—John Farrar, Virginia Dawson, and, previously, Melissa Bagaglio. This team together continues to sustain a timely flow of well-edited and professionally presented information through the entire process from manuscript submission to publication.

As shown in Table 1, publication statistics for the journals remain strong, although notably the number of submissions fell for both journals. Determining whether this decrease foretells a trend must await future data. In 2014, the percentage of articles submitted from international (non-US) institutions and authors was higher than in previous years for both journals. Acceptance rates fell to 38% for CM but rose to 59% for JAALAS. These percentages are consistent with obtaining an adequate amount of high-quality content for each issue. Our expectation is that the number of submissions will increase in the future time, resulting in lower acceptance rates. Prospective authors should be aware that as more submissions are received, standards for acceptance will be higher. For example, manuscripts that contain relatively little data (only one table or figure) will be viewed as less desirable than articles that present a substantive and comprehensive investigation of a research question.

Table 1.

Journal statistics

Reflected in the top cited articles is the impact of the AALAS Grants for Laboratory Animal Science (GLAS) on furthering scientific knowledge in the field. Among the top downloaded articles from PubMed Central is the paper on superovulation strategies by Luo et al for research that was funded by a 2009 GLAS award to Jan Parker-Thornburg as the principal investigator and Charlie Luo and Juliana Zuniga as co-investigators. The GLAS program also made a 2012 award to Julia Zaias (principal investigator) and Carolyn Cray (co-investigator) for research on acute phase proteins as markers of mouse transport stress, an area of work related to their review paper (Cray et al) which was among those top cited in Comp Med and downloaded from PubMed Central.

Particularly notable for this year, although published in March 2015, is the special focus issue "Global 3Rs Efforts—Making Progress and Gaining Momentum," guest edited by Leticia V. Medina. We thank Leticia for the effort she put forth to produce this landmark issue, which will undoubtedly serve for years to come as a ready consolidated source of information on this important topic. This special issue probably contributed to the higher number of submissions and acceptance rate in 2014, as the content was comprised largely of extra solicited articles by established experts in the field. However, as with all published work, these articles were vetted through the standard peer review process. We invite all readers to suggest other topics for focus issues for either of the journals. The editors and staff will be happy to work with you to develop this type of invaluable contribution to the field.

The tables of top 10 downloaded articles for the two journals really highlight the value of the AALAS publications (Tables 2 and and3).3). As you can see, many articles are downloaded thousands of time a year for many years after the publication date. These data show that even though the journal impact factors are not high, the articles are used by the community we serve and are durable in terms of content. The list of top 10 cited articles has several new additions this year (Tables 4 and and55).

Table 2.

Top 10 Downloaded Articles from PubMed Central in Comparative Medicine in 2014

Table 3.

Top 10 Downloaded Articles from PubMed Central in Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science in 2014

Table 4.

Top 10 cited articles in Comparative Medicine*

Table 5.

Top 10 cited articles in Journal of the American Association for Laboratory Animal Science*

Table 6.

Journals with greatest number of citations of and citations in AALAS journals in 2013

As always, we welcome your suggestions for improvements in the journals and encourage you to give us your opinions, perspective, concerns, and suggestions.You have our continued thanks for your support in the development and growth of the journals.


We quantitatively study the interface resistance in Ni/Nb multilayers fabricated by sputtering system. For a fixed Ni layer thickness in Ni/Nb/Ni trilayers, the superconducting temperature Tc decreases with decreasing Nb thickness. By analyzing the data with the proximity effect, the critical thickness below which superconductivity vanished was deduced. From current perpendicular to plane (CPP) measurement interpreted with a one-band series-resistor model, we obtained the CPP resistivities of Nb and Ni and the unit area resistances of 4.2±0.2 and 1.5±0.4 fΩ m2 for superconducting and normal Ni/Nb interfaces. The transparency parameter is directly calculated in terms of interface resistance.


Let X be a nonnegative random variable with absolutely continuous distribution function F and survival function . Given a random sample X1,…,Xn from the distribution F, the problem considered is to test Ho (α being an unspecified positive constant) against the alternative for every x,y ≥ 0, that is F is NBU. If F is NBU, then for x,y ≥ 0. Let D(F) = EF[δ(x,y)]. Then D(F) can be taken as an overall measure of deviation for testing Ho against H1. Let S be the U-statistic associated with D(F). It can be seen that S = U − J, where U is the Ahmad statistic and J is the Hollander-proschan statistic already proposed in the literature. Test is to reject Ho for large values of S. The test has good ARE properties.


Many digital images contain blurred regions which are caused by motion or defocus. The defocus blur reduces the contrast and sharpness detail of the image. Automatic blur detection and segmentation is an important and challenging task in the field of Computer vision "e.g. object recognition and scene interpretation" that requires the extraction and processing of large amounts of data from sharp areas of the image. Therefore, the sharp and blur areas must be segmented separately to assure that the information is extracted from the sharp regions. The existing techniques on blur detection and segmentation have taken a lot of effort and time to design metric maps of local clarity. Furthermore, these methods have various limitations "i.e. low accuracy rate in noisy images, detecting blurred smooth and sharp smooth regions, and high execution cost". Therefore, there is a dire necessity to propose a method for the detection and segmentation of defocus blur robust to the aforementioned limitations. In this paper, we present a novel defocus blur detection and segmentation algorithm, "Local Triplicate Co-occurrence Patterns" (LTCoP) for the separation of in-focus and out-of-focus regions. It is observed that the fusion of extracted higher and lower patterns of LTCoP produces far better results than the others. To test the effectiveness of our algorithm, the proposed method is compared with several state-of-the-art techniques over a large number of sample images. The experimental results show that the proposed technique obtains comparative results with state-of-the-art methods and offers a significant high-speed advantage over them. Therefore, we argue that the proposed method can reliably be used for defocus blur detection and segmentation in high-density images.


The study is aimed at investigating the professional self-determination of future teachers. The author clari-fies the nature of the concept of self-determination; analyzes the structure, types and components of professional self-determination. There is the presentation of the program to improve the effectiveness of professional self-determonation.


In this study, I have followed a group of older adults (the oldest born 1925 and the youngest 1946) through a total of 6 focus group events to highlight how older people relate to their own aging i ...


English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' communicative competence presents a challenge for both students and instructors. Being communicatively competent leads the language user to avoid any kind of breakdown of communication; thus, reaching fluency which is the main aim of foreign language learners (EFL learners). The acquisition of the notion of formulaicity provides a great deal of help for EFL learners to achieve native-like language proficiency and that is the main hypothesis of this study. The main aim of this research is to draw learners' attention towards formulaic language and to investigate its effects on their communicative competence. To achieve this purpose, the present research is designed to answer the following questions: (1) what is formulaicity? (2) Is the acquisition of formulaic language important for EFL learners to reach communicative competence? (3) Is designing a course for this subject helpful to reach learners' language aims? An experiment is conducted through a pre and a post test in addition to the treatment of six sessions of instruction to carry out the comparative study using the paired t test result as statistical proof. After the comparison of the pre-test and the post test, the results revealed a substantial progress for the experimental group's communicative competence and thus their conversational competence as well. As a result, formulaic language needs to be an essential part of EFL learners' curriculum according to its variation and enormous effects on learners' communicative competence in both writing and speaking skills.


Numerous cellulase producing mutant strains were obtained from the parent strain Trichoderma reesei Rut C-30 treated with 10 μg/mL ethidium bromide (EtBr) for 20 min following by 30 min-UV irradiation. During strain screening, size of hydrolysis zone and FPase activity were served as the indexes and mutant T. reesei EBUV-3 was finally selected. Nearly 1.4, 1.7, 2.0 and 1.3 folds enhancement of the activities of FPase, CMCase, β-glucosidase and xylanase were noted in T. reesei EBUV-3 compared with T. reesei Rut C-30. The Vmax of β-glucosidase and CMCase increased 1.7 and 1.4 folds. Meanwhile, the Km values were 2.6 and 1.5 folds lower than the parent strain. The saccharification of steam-exploded corn stover by T. reesei EBUV-3 increased 24%. After 48 h saccharification, the reducing sugars production of T. reesei EBUV-3 was determined to be 70% at an optimal condition of 55°C and pH 5.0. Our present experimental findings suggested that mutant T. reesei EBUV3 possesses a higher cellulase activity and stronger saccharifying ability compared with the parent strain. T. reesei EBUV-3 was promisingly potential to be a cellulase producer in application. © 2016 Friends Science Publishers


AIM To compare the effects of ziprasidone and quetiapine on plasma non-enzyme antioxidants levels and their curative effects in the acute period hospitalization patients with schizophrenia.METHODS Totally 77 schizophrenic patients were randomly divided into ziprasidone(n = 39) and quetiapine(n = 38) group by stratified sampling for a four-week treatment.The initial doses was 40 mg·d~(-1) and 100 mg·d~(-1) and the highest dose did not exceed 160 mg·d~(-1) and 800 mg·d~(-1) for individual of the ziprasidone group and the quetiapine group respectively.The two groups were evaluated by the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).Serum levels of albumins,uric acid,and bilirubin were tested.RESULTS After the four-week treatment,the PANSS scores,positive syndrome scores and negative syndrome scores in the two groups decreased compared with those before the treatment(P0.05),with no differences between the two groups(P0.05).There was no difference between the ziprasidone group and the quetiapine group about the effective rate (67%vs.58%,P0.05).There were no differences between the two groups about the levels of albumins and bilirubin after the four-week treatment(P0.05),and the levels of uric acid in the ziprasidone group were higher than those in the quetiapine group(P0.05).The levels of albumins,bilirubin and uric acid in the quetiapine group were lower than those before the treatment(P0.05),and there were no differences in the ziprasidone group(P0.05).CONCLUSION Ziprasidone has the same curative effect as the quetiapine in the acute period patients with schizophrenia.Quetipine has more effects on oxidative stress than ziprasidone does. The effects of ziprasidone and quetiapine on the levels of plasma non - enzyme antioxidants have nothing to do with curative effects.


By combining a transmitarray-based controllable phase-delay surface with a near-zero-index collimating metalens, a compact, high-gain, upper-hemisphere scanning antenna can be constructed. The ability of the ZIM lens to produce a nearly uniform field amplitude and phase across its surface provides an efficient input for the transmitarray phase-control surface, which can then simply be controlled by addressing the appropriate rows and columns.


The purpose of the research was to investigate the relationship between the female in fertile and anti reproductive antibodies.The sera of 390 primary and 292 secondary infertile women,25~35 years old,were detected sera antisperm antibody(ASAb),antiendometrium antibody(AEMAb),antiovary antibody(AOVAb),anti human chorionic gonadotropin antibody(AhCGAb),anticardiolipin antibody(ACPAb) with ELISA.The results showed that ASAb positive rate was 22 56%,AEMAb 16 41%,AOVAb 14 87%,AhCGAb 14 35%,ACPAb 12 85% in primary infertile group;the ASAb positive rate was 18 49%,AEMAb 25%,AOVAb 20 20%,AhCGAb 22 26%,ACPAb 18 83% in the secondary group.The statistical analysis showed that the positive rates of AEMAb,AhCGAb and ACPAb in secondary group were higher than those in primary group( P 0 05).But the positive rates of ASAb and AOVAb were no significant difference between two groups( P 0 05).Anti reproductive antibodies can interfere the ovum mature,ovulation,fertilization,fertilied ovum embeding,fetal development and mature for resulting in the decrease of female infertile capability.Because the productions of AEMAb,AhCGAb and ACPAb have related with the gregnancy,abortion and endometritis,so the positive rates of AEMAb,AhCGAb and ACPAb in secondary group were higher than those in primary group.The detection of the anti reproductive antibodies will provide the evidences for the diagnosis and cure of female infertility.


Biofilms are sessile communities of microbial cells embedded in a self-produced or host-derived exopolymeric matrix. Biofilms can both be beneficial or detrimental depending on the surface. Compared to their planktonic counterparts, biofilm cells display enhanced resistance to killing by environmental threats, chemicals, antimicrobials and host immune defenses. When in biofilms, the microbial cells interact with each other and with the surface to develop architecturally complex multidimensional structures. Numerous imaging techniques and tools are currently available for architectural analyses of biofilm communities. This allows examination of biofilm development through acquisition of three-dimensional images that can render structural features of the sessile community. A frequently utilized tool is Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy. We present a detailed protocol to grow, observe and analyze biofilms of the respiratory human pathogen, Bordetella pertussis in space and time.


The base hydrolysis of [(tetren)Co02CRj2+ {tetren = tetraethylenepentamine; R = -CH2NH2, -CH2Cl-12NH2, -(2)C5H4N (aPS isomer), -CH(CH3)N2 (aPR and aPS isomers)} has been investigated in DMSO + water (0 < XOMSO < 0.274, XOMSO = mole fraction of DMSO) at 20.0 < tf'C < 40.0. The destabilization of OH' in mixed solvent media alone does not explain the observed rate acceleration. The solvent composition dependence, 10gkoHO= 10gkoHO+ ~ a;XoMso'(i=I,2,koHo denote koH atl = 0 in mixed solvent(s) and water (w)indicates specific solute solvent interactions explicable in terms of solvent acidity (as), basicity (ps) and polarizability (n '5). The values of the relative transfer free energy data [dtG(t.S.)dtao(i.s.)]s •.... w)(25°C) (=Y), where t.S. and i.s. denote transition state and initial state of the substrates, are positive for all substrates at all compositions indicating greater destabilising effect of the mixed solvent on the trnsition state than on the initial state. The Y values have a negative correlation with CE (Y a XOMSO + cCE, both c and C negative) for all apS isomers, v.:hich presumably correspond to a positive destabilising effect of the solvent structure on both t.S. and i.s., the effect being relatively larger on the former. The variation ofthe relative transfer enthalpy and entropy values (dd X(t.s) (i.s)js •.... w) (X=H, S) with XOMSO further supports that solvent structural effects mediated the rates and energetics of the reaction. However, the solvent effects on the solvation components of tJIi and tJ.S!are mutually compensatory (tJIi I kJ morl = (57.4±3.1) + 0.333±0.026) tJ.S!IJK·1 mol") this indicating that there is no change in the mechanism.


Semi-supervised learning plays an important role in large-scale machine learning. Properly using additional unlabeled data (largely available nowadays) often can improve the machine learning accuracy. However, if the machine learning model is misspecified for the underlying true data distribution, the model performance could be seriously jeopardized. This issue is known as model misspecification. To address this issue, we focus on generative models and propose a criterion to detect the onset of model misspecification by measuring the performance difference between models obtained using supervised and semi-supervised learning. Then, we propose to automatically modify the generative models during model training to achieve an unbiased generative model. Rigorous experiments were carried out to evaluate the proposed method using two image classification data sets PASCAL VOC'07 and MIR Flickr. Our proposed method has been demonstrated to outperform a number of state-of-the-art semi-supervised learning approaches for the classification task.


AN explanation of the part that the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission plays in the Department of Industrial Accidents requires a brief outline of the workings of the Industrial Accident Board...


Four new species of Pachyprosopis Perkins are described: P. (Parapachyprosopis) grossoscapus, P. (Parapachyprosopis) melanognathus, P. (Pachyprosopula) kununurra and P. (Pachyprosopula) flava. A key to the species of P. (Parapachyprosopis) using females is presented. Hitherto unrecorded morphology and new records are given for P. (Parapachyprosopis) xanthometopa, P. (P.) sternotricha, P. (P.) eucalypti and P. (P.) angophorae.


We report a simple approach for the preparation of superhydrophobic polyaniline (PANI) and its application for the corrosion protection coatings. First, PANI was synthesized conventionally by oxidative polymerization with APS. Subsequently, PANI with different wettability was obtained by modification with different surfactants. The surface modification of PANI with three different surfactants (sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate, polyethylene glycol, and cetyltrimethylammonium bromide) provided excellent surface superhydrophobicity (water contact angle >150°). The structure and morphology of as-prepared PANI were characterized with Fourier transform infrared, Energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and Scanning electron microscopy. Corrosion protection performance of PANI with different wettability was evaluated in 3.5% NaCl electrolyte using Tafel polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The results indicated that various superhydrophobic PANI coatings have better anticorrosion performance as compared to the hydrophilic PANI. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2016, 133, 44248.


Rain microstructure is a critical aspect to understand the dynamics and microphysics character of the clouds. It is characterized by the distribution of size, fall velocity and shape of raindrop. Raindrop size distribution (DSD) explains the detail of the microphysical process because it represents a process of rain to the surface. One of the phenomena that influence the rain patterns in Indonesia is Madden Julian Oscillation (MJO). Therefore, observing rain microstructure with its relation to MJO can determine the differences in rainfall characteristic and microphysical processes during active and inactive MJO period. The data used in this study are Micro Rain Radar (MRR), disdrometer, and real-time multivariate (RMM) index data. The period/date selection of active MJO event performed using RMM index method is more than 1 in phases 4 and 5 and otherwise for inactive MJO. Types of rain are divided into stratiform and convective rain based on disdrometer data. From that, there are 46 active and 52 inactive MJO events. Rain microstructure in this study focuses on DSD from disdrometer and micro rain radar data analyzed with liquid water content profile, fall velocity, reflectivity, and rain rate from MMR. Besides, there are parameters of DSD, which are the mass-weighted diameter (Dm) and total concentration (Nw), calculated using the moment and gamma distribution method. The result shows that DSD and other parameters are greater during inactive MJO period. It means that process of collision-coalescence, evaporation, and updraft is dominant during inactive MJO period.


Revised, updated edition of a successful anthology first published in 1979. It presents the full spectrum of twentieth century Northern Irish poetry, from the contemplative John Hewitt to the personal, highly crafted work of Heaney. Here also is Michael Longley, John Montague, Paul Muldoon, Medbh McGuckian, and many others. Also includes work from the new generation of poets that has emerged since the original anthology was published.


Foreword / Douglas Hay Acknowledgments Introduction / Carolyn Strange 1. Civilized People Don't Want to See That Sort of Thing: The Decline of Physical Punishment in London, 1760-1840 / Greg T. Smith 2. In Place of Death: Transportation, Penal Practices, and the English State, 1770-1830 / Simon Devereaux 3. 'Harshness and Forbearance': The Politics of Pardons and the Upper Canada Rebellion / Barry Wright 4. Savage Mercy: Native Culture and the Modification of Capital Punishment in Nineteenth-Century British Columbia / Tina Loo 5. Discretionary Justice: Political Culture and the Death Penalty in New South Wales and Ontario, 1890-1920 / Carolyn Strange Punishment in Late-Twentieth-Century Canada: An Afterword / Anthony N. Doob


We have developed a computationally efficient rate equation model to study transformations between amorphous and crystalline phases of network forming materials. Amorphous and crystalline phases are treated in terms of their atomic ring distributions. The transformation between the two phases is considered to be driven by the conversion of one set of rings into another, following the Wooten-Winer-Weaire bond-switching algorithm. Our rate equation model describes both the generation and collapse of amorphous regions in thin crystalline films, the processes crucial for phase-change data storage materials. It is found that the amorphous spot collapse is assisted by the motion of certain crystal facets.


Two methods of comparing the death tax due under American law and under British law are described in this study, and the difference in the results of the comparisons is analyzed. The first method (described in Part I below) takes account of differences not only in rate structure and minimum exemptions but also in treatment accorded to various kinds of property, disposition of property, etc. The second method (described in Part II below) follows the conventional treatment of taking account only of differences in rates and minimum exemptions, and therefore assuming an identical tax base in any one comparison. The comparisons are made between hypothetical taxpayers (estates) under the death tax laws of (a) Great Britain and (b) the federal government of the United States and New York State.2


Abstract : The Author Certificate introduces a method of stabilizing the focal spot in electron-beam welders with the focusing system receiving power from the network through a rectifier and a magnetic amplifier with the network-voltage and an accelerating-voltage feedback. To improve stabilization, a correcting signal proportional to the changes in accelerating voltage is fed continuously to the focusing system. (Author)


Conventional data and tropical cyclone(TC)yearbook data from 1971 to 2000 are used to study the climate and disaster features of TC affecting the Liaodong peninsula. Results indicate that interannual change of TC activities is obvious. Different sources of TC have different impacts on areas of interest. Intensity and moving velocity of TC vary substantially in the progress of moving northward. Besides, tracks and disaster distribution of TC are quite different.


coordinator role is assigned to the concrete PARIS roles of broker and provider with respect to global and local capability services. In the pre-contact phase of VBS, the various roles of the PARIS SOM are responsible for specification and mutually adjusting their software services. Fundamentally, PARIS providers describe their asset services as well as their local capability services and publish them in repositories of PARIS brokers that are accessible within and outside of the organisational business service network. Outside of the network, PARIS clients query the repository to discover asset services and capability services. In turn, they specify their demand services and likewise publish them in a repository. Inside of the network, PARIS brokers discover demand services as well as asset services and related local capability services. They specify global capability services that combine asset services with respect to demand services by composing respective local capability services. In the contact phase of virtual business services, the roles of the PARIS SOM execute their software services to automate control of business service processes. PARIS brokers rapidly optimise and implement global capability services with respect to given client requests that contain actual non-functional requirements. All other services can be implemented and deployed in the pre-contact phase. In turn, execution of global and local composite capability services automatically enforces the planned regulation of interactions in the business service process. Finally, in the post-contact phase of the virtual business service, PARIS SOM roles analyse the interaction logs of their software services that were monitored in the contact phase. With respect to the results, they might evolve specific aspects of the software service specifications to optimise effectiveness or efficiency of the virtual business service process. They re-publish these changes for future business service transactions.


In this paper, we investigate the effectiveness of a financial time-series forecasting strategy which exploits the mul- tiresolution property of the wavelet transform. A financial series is decomposed into an over complete, shift invariant scale-related representation. In transform space, each individual wavelet series is modeled by a separate multilayer perceptron (MLP). To better utilize the detailed information in the lower scales of wavelet coef- ficients (high frequencies) and general (trend) information in the higher scales of wavelet coefficients (low frequencies), we applied the Bayesian method of automatic relevance determination (ARD) to choose short past windows (short-term history) for the inputs to the MLPs at lower scales and long past windows (long-term history) at higher scales. To form the overall forecast, the indi- vidual forecasts are then recombined by the linear reconstruction property of the inverse transform with the chosen autocorrelation shell representation, or by another perceptron which learns the weight of each scale in the prediction of the original time series. The forecast results are then passed to a money management system to generate trades. Compared with previous work on combining wavelet techniques and neural networks to financial time-series, our contributions include 1) proposing a three-stage prediction scheme; 2) applying a multiresolution prediction which is strictly based on the autocorrelation shell representation, 3) incorporating the Bayesian technique ARD with MLP training for the selection of relevant inputs; and 4) using a realistic money management system and trading model to evaluate the forecasting performance. Using an accurate trading model, our system shows promising profitability performance. Results comparing the performance of the proposed architecture with an MLP without wavelet preprocessing on 10-year bond futures indicate a doubling in profit per trade ($AUD1753:$AUD819) and Sharpe ratio improvement of 0.732 versus 0.367, as well as significant improvements in the ratio of winning to loosing trades, thus indicating significant potential profitability for live trading. Index Terms—Autocorrelation shell representation, automatic relevance determination, financial time series, futures trading, multilayer perceptron, relevance determination, wavelet decom- position.


Section 1: Microbial Systems, Both Prokaryote and Eukaryote Virus Assembly and Morphogenesis Spatial and Temporal Control of Gene Expression in Procaryotes Multicellular Development in the Myxobacteria Myxococcus xanthus and Stigmatella aurantiaca


Involuntary weight loss (IWL) is a non-specific symptom frequently found in patients with malignant neoplasm. Other causes include chronic inflammatory/infectious diseases, or psychiatric disorders. This group of investigators looked at very simple clinical and laboratory data to assist the physician to develop a rational approach to such patients. They discussed the statistical significant association with variables, like sex, age, haemoglobin level, liver enzymes, etc. Of the 308 patients for whom a final diagnosis was established, 115 had a malignant neoplasm, 113 an organic non-malignant disease, and 80 a psychiatric disorder. The objective was to develop a prediction model for cancer in the setting of an isolated IWL. The model allowed the correct classification of 85% of the patients. In the study, the prevalence of malignant disease as a cause of isolated IWL was 37%.


Based on the bill printing processing in warehouse management system,this paper discusses the datashare technology in PowerBuilder,then gives the skills of printing and preview in complicated bill processing ,as well as the development procedure.


Purpose – Syntax-based text classification (TC) mechanisms have been overtly replaced by semantic-based systems in recent years. Semantic-based TC systems are particularly useful in those scenarios where similarity among documents is computed considering semantic relationships among their terms. Kernel functions have received major attention because of the unprecedented popularity of SVMs in the field of TC. Most of the kernel functions exploit syntactic structures of the text, but quite a few also use a priori semantic information for knowledge extraction. The purpose of this paper is to investigate semantic kernel functions in the context of TC. Design/methodology/approach – This work presents performance and accuracy analysis of seven semantic kernel functions (Semantic Smoothing Kernel, Latent Semantic Kernel, Semantic WordNet-based Kernel, Semantic Smoothing Kernel having Implicit Superconcept Expansions, Compactness-based Disambiguation Kernel Function, Omiotis-based S-VSM semantic kernel function a...


For inhomogeneous electromagnetic wave, we use the phase shift of reflection coefficient on the conductive interface to derive the lateral shift of reflected wave, and draw the curves of lateral shift. The results show that the lateral shift increases with increasing incident angle. As the incident angle approaches 90°, electromagnetic wave will propagate for a long distance before returning to the first medium. When the incident angles are the same, the lateral shift of electromagnetic wave whose polarization direction of electric field is in the incident plane will be longer than that whose polarization direction of electric field is perpendicular to the incident plane. With the frequency increasing, the lateral shift becomes smaller.


The infrared spectra of Bao-gu-qi and Jian-zhong-xiao of Yi nationality's medicine were determined by Fourier transforming infrared spectrometry(FTIR).The differences and similarities of two Yi nationality's medicine in infrared spectra were compared and analyzed,and the results showed that there were differences in peak shape,absorption position and intensity of absorption peak between infrared spectra of two medicines,and the characteristic absorption peaks of different samples were obvious.The FTIR can provide the certain scientific basis for identification,recognition and pharmacological analysis of Yi nationality's medicine.


616 Background: Cancer patients are at an increased risk of venous thromboembolism (VTE), which includes both deep venous thrombosis (DVT) and pulmonary embolism (PE). The risk of VTE following abdominal and pelvic surgery is known, while the risk following breast cancer (BC) surgery is not established. We have developed clinical pathways for all BC patients undergoing surgery in order to minimize variation in treatment. Patients receive pre-operative teaching about immediate post-operative ambulation, application of intra-operative lower extremity elastic stockings and intermittent pneumatic compression boots. We wished to determine the peri-operative incidence and treatment of VTE in patients on these pathways.

METHODS
BC patients undergoing surgery between Jan 1, 2000 and Sep 30, 2003 and treated on the breast pathways were analyzed following IRB approval. VTE within 60 days post-operatively was determined from our prospective breast cancer, radiology and pharmacy databases, medical records and ICD-9-CM codes.

RESULTS
3887 patients underwent 4449 procedures. The median age was 54.4 years (range 11-91.8). Seven patients with post-operative VTE were identified, for a rate of 0.16% per procedure. The median time from surgery to diagnosis of VTE was 14 days (range 2-60) with a mean of 21.8 days. No relationship was identified between the type of breast surgical procedure and development of VTE. Patients were diagnosed by Ventilation Perfusion scan (3), CT Pulmonary angiogram (3), Duplex Doppler of the lower extremities (2) and IV contrast CT of the abdomen and pelvis (1). Three patients respectively presented with only DVT or PE, while one patient was found to have both DVT and PE. One of 7 patients (14%) had received neo-adjuvant therapy. Treatment consisted of Low Molecular Weight Heparin (5) or IV heparin (2) all followed by warfarin. There were no deaths.

CONCLUSIONS
The incidence and outcome of VTE in BC surgery patients has not been previously reported. VTE following surgery was rare in BC patients on clinical pathways. Based on these results, no additional systemic VTE prophylaxis is indicated in this group of patients. No significant financial relationships to disclose.


In past and contemporary societies, kin presence and support are widely cherished for helping couples contend with parenthood. Thus, it is hypothesized that intergenerational cooperation in raising children influences fertility decisions. Despite the potential benefits of having a supportive family environment, societies with dissimilar social, structural, and geographical conditions may exhibit cross-cultural differences that are characterized by variations in family processes and reproductive outcomes. To demonstrate the influence of context, this study draws on the 2006 and 2016 East Asian Social Survey and uses generalized Poisson regression to investigate cross-national differences in the effect of intergenerational support on fertility in East Asia. The results show distinct patterns in the effect of intergenerational financial support, instrumental support, and geographic proximity on fertility. Financial support and proximity to grandparents are particularly conducive to childbearing among urban families. Instrumental support appears to be more beneficial for societies going through the second phase of the gender revolution (South Korea and Taiwan) than for societies with stronger gender role constraints (Japan). The findings highlight how context underpins the effect of intergenerational support on fertility.