This paper presents a new technique for segmenting an audio stream into pieces, each one contains speeches of only one speaker. Speaker segmentation has been used extensively in various tasks such as automatic transcription of radio broadcast news and audio indexing. The segmentation method used in this paper is based on a discriminative distance measure between two adjacent sliding windows operating on preprocessed speech. The proposed unsupervised detection method which does not require any pre-trained models is based on the use of the exponential family model and 1-SVMs to approximate the generalized likelihood ratio. Our 1-SVM-based segmentation algorithm provides improvements over baseline approaches which use the Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). The segmentation results achieved in our experiments illustrate the potential of this method in detecting speaker changes in audio streams containing over-lapped and short speeches.


The concern of this paper is a famous combinatorial formula known under the name "exponential formula". It occurs quite naturally in many contexts (physics, mathematics, computer science). Roughly speaking, it expresses that the exponential generating function of a whole structure is equal to the exponential of those of connected substructures. Keeping this descriptive statement as a guideline, we develop a general framework to handle many different situations in which the exponential formula can be applied.


The FT-IR spectra of poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO)-based gel polymer electrolytes (GPEs), PEO-NaSCN-propylene carbonate (PC) and PEO-NaSCN-ethylene carbonate (EC), were measured at room temperature. Along with the FT-IR spectra of NaSCN-PC, PEO-PC, and PEO-EC, the interactions in the GPEs and the plasticizations of PC and EC are revealed. It is shown that the coordination of ether oxygen in PEO with NaSCN is the preferential solvation, whereas the interactions of PC and EC with NaSCN are relatively weak in the GPEs. However, both PC and EC play an important role in inhibiting the formation of crystalline complexes and high ionic aggregations, in addition to the ability of transformation of PEO from crystal to amorphism. It is further observed that EC exhibits the stronger ability to transform PEO crystalline into amorphism than PC when the plasticizer content in PEO is more than 25%, and also the far stronger ability to decompose the crystalline complexes, in particular, in polymer electrolytes with high salt content.


A novel methodology can be used to evaluate corporate social performance (CSP) based on data envelopment analysis (DEA). CSP has been recognized as a multi-dimensional concept, and one of the salient features of DEA is that it can systematically aggregate multiple qualitative CSP indicators into a single and intuitive efficiency index. From the DEA score, investors can easily derive a CSP ranking of firms, and use this information to improve their investment decisionmaking. Ming and Delmas illustrate the DEA approach through an application to the widely-used CSP database developed by Kinder, Lydenberg, and Domini Inc. Using firm-specific examples, they demonstrate that the DEA approach has the advantage of being more statistically robust and easier to interpret in practice, when compared with other competing aggregation approaches used in the CSP literature.


A series of new trimethylsilyldiazenido complexes [MX(NNSiMe3)(L)4] (M=Mo: X=I; M=W: X=CF3SO3; L=PMe2Ph or 1/2 dpe; dpe=Ph2PCH2CH2PPh2) and trimethylsilylhydrazido(2−) complexes [MX2(NNHSiMe3)(PMe2Ph)3] (M=Mo: X=I or Br; M=W: X=CF3SO3) and [MX(NNHSiMe3)(dpe)2]X (M=Mo: X=I; M=W: X=CF3SO3) were prepared by treatment of dinitrogen complexes cis-[M(N2)2(PMe2Ph)4] or trans-[M(N2)2(dpe)2] with Me3SiX in benzene. The trimethylsilyl groups on the terminal nitrogen atoms were easily replaced by hydrogen by the reaction with MeOH or H2O, affording, for example, diazenido and hydrazido(2−) complexes such as [WI(NNH)(dpe)2] and [WI2(NNH2)(PMe2Ph)3] from [WI(NNSiMe3)(dpe)2] and mer-[WI2(NNHSiMe3)(PMe2Ph)3], respectively. When reduced with excess Na in THF under N2, complexes trans-[MI(NNSiMe3)(PMe2Ph)4] (M=Mo or W) and mer-[WI2(NNHSiMe3)(PMe2Ph)3] gave (Me3Si)2NH and NH3 in substantial yields, accompanied by the regeneration of the parent dinitrogen complexes. Additional amount of NH3 was obtained by the hydrolysis of...


Description of computer program for solving two dimensional and axisymmetric forms of compressible boundary layer equations for continuity, mean momentum, and mean total enthalpy


An average of 200 Australian children are admitted to hospital and more than one child dies each day as a result of accidental injuries. This has an emotional cost to families and communities. It also has an economic cost estimated at $190 million per year. The sources of these accidental injuries are several. Between two and three children are treated at hospitals each day for injuries due to a dog attack. Falls are the most common cause of injury to Australian children. For children under age five, 50% of all unintentional injury deaths and 75% of non-fatal injuries occur in the home. Over 100 Australian children have died in the last five years as a result of fire, burns, or scalds. A further 100 children are killed each year as pedestrians. Yet another 100 children drown each year. Between five and 10 children die each year from poisoning. Every accident we prevent aids child development.


Spontaneous cerebrospinal fluid(CSF)rhinorrhea is rarely found,especially in patients with brain tumors. Similarly,reports of tentorial meningioma coexisting with acquired Chiari I malformation with hydromyelia are also few.No doubt,one patient with cerebrospinal fluid rhinorrhea,tentorial meningioma and Chiari I malformation with hydromyelia is hardly ever found.We reported one case of this rare condition.


ed and=or Indexed in: EBSCOhost Products, EconLit, Gale Cengage: Business ASAP, IndexCopernicus, LexisNexis, OCLC ArticleFirst & Electronic Collections Online, Scopus, ProQuest ABI/INFORM. Journal of African Business (Print ISSN: 1522-8916) is published in print annually in December for a total of 1 print issue per year by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 325 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA. Journal of African Business (Online ISSN: 1522-9076) is published online in March, July, and November for a total of 3 issues per year. U.S. Postmaster: Please send address changes to Journal of African Business, Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 325 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA. Annual Subscription, Volume 12, 2011 Print ISSN: 1522-8916, Online ISSN: 1522-9076 Institutional subscribers: $570, £430, 4559. Personal subscribers: $160, £126, 4160. Institutional and individual subscriptions include access to the online version of the journal. Production and Advertising Office: 325 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA. Tel: 215-625-8900; Fax: 215-625-8563. Production Editor: Michelle A. Bielko. Subscription Offices USA=North America: Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, 325 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA. Tel: 215625-8900; Fax: 215-625-2940.UK=Europe:Taylor& Francis Customer Service, Sheepen Place, Colchester, Essex CO3 3LP, United Kingdom. Tel: þ 44 (0) 20 7017 5544; Fax: þ 44 (0) 20 7017 5198. For a complete guide to Taylor & Francis Group's journal and book publishing programs, visit our Web site: www.taylorandfrancis.com. Copyright # 2011 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, transmitted, or disseminated in any form or by any means without prior written permission from Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, grants authorization for individuals to photocopy copyright material for private research use on the sole basis that requests for such use are referred directly to the requester's local Reproduction Rights Organization (RRO), such as the Copyright Clearance Center (www.copyright.com) in the USA or the Copyright Licensing Agency (www.cla.co.uk) in the UK. This authorization does not extend to any other kind of copying by any means, in any form, and for any purpose other than private research use. The publisher assumes no responsibility for any statements of fact or opinion expressed in the published papers. The appearance of advertising in this journal does not constitute an endorsement or approval by the publisher, the editor, or the editorial board of the quality or value of the product advertised or of the claims made for it by its manufacturer. Permissions. For further information, please visit http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/permissions.asp


The 19th International Union of Materials Research Societies – International Conference in Asia (IUMRS-ICA) 2018 was held in Bali on 30 October – 2 November 2018. The main theme of IUMRS-ICA 2018 is "Innovation of Advanced Material for Green Technology and Sustainable Development". The conference is organized by Materials Research Society-Indonesia (MRS-INA) with the aim to provide international forum for presenting scientific results in the field of materials science by scientists, academicians, industries and government from national, as well as regional and international. The pupose of the IUMRS-ICA 2018 is to gather Indonesian Materials Researchers, and to promote international collaboration and cooperation among scientists and academia from regional and developed countries. This should be accomplished by presence of invited world-class speakers for the scientific program. In this event, the fundamentals, innovations and industrial applications of Materials Sciences and Technology will be discussed. The Committee received over 200 scientific articles showing a diverse and stimulating program, from more than 40 national and international institutions, covering 20 countries (UK, Turkey, Taiwan, Czechia, Pakistan, India, Austria, Germany, Ethiopia, Egypt, USA, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Japan, Bangladesh, China, Australia, Korea and Indonesia). The publication committees were responsible for arranging approximately 150 full peer review of the manuscripts that will appear in several media of international publications, such as Progress in Natural Science: Materials International, IONICS, Journal of Atom Indonesia, Indonesian Journal of Materials Sciences as well as the IOP Conference Proceedings. After selection and peer review, there are 66 articles to be published in IOP Materials and Engineering. List of Steering Committee, International Advisory Board, Indonesian Advisory Board, Organizing Committee, Chairman, Members, Language Editor and Layout Editor are available in this pdf.


The teacher should be aware of several aspects of vocabulary learning and teaching in order to effectively teach. The first section of this paper considers what it means to actually 'know' a word. For the learner to 'know' a word, several elements are involved, including meaning, pronunciation, grammar, collocations, word formation, connotation, and register. Each of these elements will be examined in turn. The next section looks at major groups of vocabulary: high and low frequency words, academic words and technical words, and how much attention should be given to each depending on the learning purpose. The third section looks at the role of dictionaries in vocabulary learning. This includes the advantages and disadvantages of dictionary use, as well as monolingual and bilingual dictionary usage. The next section looks at how meaning, or definitions, of words can be effectively conveyed by the teacher. Lastly, the need for, and types of vocabulary assessment will be briefly discussed.


Human face-to-face communication is a little like a dance, in that participants continuously adjust their behaviors based on verbal and nonverbal cues from the social context. Today's computers and interactive devices are still lacking many of these human-like abilities to hold fluid and natural interactions. Leveraging recent advances in machine learning, audio-visual signal processing and computational linguistic, my research focuses on creating computational technologies able to analyze, recognize and predict human subtle communicative behaviors in social context. I formalize this new research endeavor with a Human Communication Dynamics framework, addressing four key computational challenges: behavioral dynamic, multimodal dynamic, interpersonal dynamic and societal dynamic. Central to this research effort is the introduction of new probabilistic models able to learn the temporal and fine-grained latent dependencies across behaviors, modalities and interlocutors. In this talk, I will present some of our recent achievements modeling multiple aspects of human communication dynamics, motivated by applications in healthcare (depression, PTSD, suicide, autism), education (learning analytics), business (negotiation, interpersonal skills) and social multimedia (opinion mining, social influence).


We develop an online learning scheme inspired by the versatility of the human learning system to bootstrap several sensorimotor skills in "Learning while Behaving" fashion. Our proposed scheme is able to represent multiple coordination styles to handle assigned tasks flexibly. We have four main contributions in this paper. First, we propose a novel online learning scheme to learn several robot models simultaneously, online, from scratch and in a plain exploratory fashion. Second, we develop an incremental online associative radial basis function network which is constructed from scratch to solve the learned mapping ambiguities, e.g., redundancy, dynamically based on the current robot state. Third, we combine both proposed schemes to inherit their advantages in Associative Multi-Stage Goal Babbling. Fourth, we propose a parameter-sharing technique to increase efficiency and speed up the online learning process. All the proposed methods are evaluated in different illustrative experiments. They demonstrate promising performance with sufficient accuracy and a reasonable number of samples.


In this paper, we propose a new numerical method for solving system of integro-differential equations featuring Volterra and Fredholm integrals. The proposed method depends on the successful application of the Discrete Adomian Decomposition Method (DADM) to solve highly complicated functional equations coupled with some numerical integration schemes of Trapezoidal and Simpson rules. The scheme is further simulated with the aid of symbolic computation and demonstrated on some test problems. We then carried out error analysis in comparison with some existing methods revealed that the present method is superior due to the high level of accuracy and less computational steps.


The mechanical configuration, structural composition, and five typical working conditions of a newly developed friction stir welding robot are introduced. The kinematics model of the friction stir welding robot is established and the forward kinematics equations, inverse kinematics equations, and the Jacobian matrix are solved. In addition, the dynamics model of the friction stir welding robot is also built by using the Lagrange method. The centroid position coordinate and inertia matrix of each part are obtained. Finally, the dynamic equation of friction stir welding robot is determined. According to the kinematics and dynamics model of robots, simulation analysis for friction stir welding robot based on virtual prototyping technology was carried out. The trajectory equation of the weld joint under the condition of melon petal welding is established, the spline trajectory is fitted by many discrete points measured by the contact probe, and the trajectory planning of each joint and the changing laws of motion parameters under the friction stir welding robot melon petal welding condition are obtained. The movement laws and the loading conditions of each joint can be better controlled by designers, and provide solid theoretical support for the static and dynamic characteristics analysis and structural optimization of the friction stir welding robot.


One of the many questions concerning cerebrospinal fluid that has never been definitely determined is whether there is a true circulation in it. In order to state that a fluid has a true circulation, certain criteria must be fulfilled; first, and most important, there must be a constant movement of the fluid in a given direction and along certain pathways; second, particles injected into this current must be carried along in this one constant direction by the fluid. Numerous investigators have studied the subject. All these studies may be grouped under one of the following headings: (1) The method and place of production of cerebrospinal fluid (2) The pathways of the fluid (3) The pulsation of cerebrospinal fluid (4) The pressure of cerebrospinal fluid, particularly in relation to arterial and venous intracranial pressure (5) The place and method of absorption of the fluid REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE The question of


Two on-line inspection methods of printed matter based on optical image subtraction are proposed, using two kinds of spatial light modulation (SLM) respectively, which are TFT-LCD and CRT-LCLV. The test image of printed matter is obtained by CCD, while the standard image of printed matter is saved in computer. The test image and standard image are jointly displayed on SLM by computer as the input image of an optical image subtraction system, which is an optical 4f system with a sine-grating between two lenses. The subtraction image will occur at the output plane, which contain all defects of the test image. Comparing to machine vision method, this inspection method of printed matter based on optical image subtraction is advantaged because the inspection process is accomplished by the optical system, avoiding any complicated arithmetic. The precision of printed matter inspection is defined by the frequency of SLM and the sine-grating. The relationship between parameters of the subtraction image and parameters of optical system is analyzed.


Because of the increasing automatic degree in hydropower station, the on-line monitoring and fault diagnosis of equipment become more and more important. Based on the practical application, this paper analyzes the functions of the on-line monitoring and the fault diagnosis expert system for hydropower generating units and automatic diagnosis system. Finally, this paper puts forward some common schemes.


AbstractThe concentrations of methane (CH4) were measured in several Pacific Northwest rivers and flux rates of CH4 to the atmosphere were estimated. These rivers were supersaturated almost everywhere, with typical CH4 concentrations in the surface waters between 10 and 500 nM. Even though stream variability was very high, CH4 concentrations tended to increase significantly in deeper, slower moving sections of the rivers. In more turbulent sections of the rivers, the accumulated CH4 was rapidly evaded to the atmosphere resulting in high flux rates. Fluxes were estimated with two models (eddy cell and large eddy) and by direct measurement of CH4 loss within specific river reaches. The flux rates encountered during this study ranged from 0 to 317 mg CH4 m−2 d−1. Microbial CH4 oxidation accounted for about 25% of the total CH4 lost from the Columbia River but was insignificant in the more turbulent Wenatchee River.


The main purpose of this study is to explore cross-format shopping motives among grocery consumers and to categorise cross-format shopping typologies based on identified motives. The paper also aims to identify common consumer subgroups amongst the customer base of different retail formats and differences among shopper segments in relation to format choice and repeat patronage (loyalty). In this method, exploratory qualitative (semi-structured personal interviews) and quantitative research (mall intercept survey) approaches were used. Primary data were collected from 1040 grocery consumers by self-administering a structured questionnaire. Multivariate techniques including exploratory factor analysis, k-means cluster analysis, multiple discriminant analysis, multivariate analysis of variance, and χ2 tests were applied to test the formulated propositions. This paper identifies nine cross-format shopping motivations: value for money, value for time, price-conscious, local shopping, shopping enjoyment, social shopping, variety seeking, entertainment, and brand-conscious motives. Based on these central dimensions, this paper finds five cross-format shopper segments: economic shopper, convenience shopper, price-promotional shopper, hedonic shopper, and social shopper. The study also indicates that there are significant differences amongst shopper typologies in relation to retail format choice and repatronage. This study provides specific knowledge of the cross-shopping motives to the grocery retailers that consumers consider important when making format choices. The study also helps retailers develop various retailing strategies to increase store format loyalty. Despite the importance of understanding grocery consumers' cross-shopping, little research has been conducted to investigate the growing incidence of cross-format shopping. Given the absence of published academic literature in relation to cross-format shopping behaviour in the context of emerging retail markets, the empirical evidence may serve as a departure point for future studies in this area of concern. The research is relevant to grocery retailers in terms of format development.


Objective:To evaluate the security,efficacy and side effects of E2 transdermal patch(Fem-7)in the treatment of menopausal syndrome.Methods:A total of 60 cases with menopausal syndrome(bloodserum FSH30 U/L,E2109.8 pmol/L)were randomly divided into treatment group(Fem-7 group)and control group(estrodiol valerate(E2V)group)for 12 weeks treatment.Fem-7 group changed patch every 7 days and took the 2 mg medroxyprogesterone(MPA)every day.While the E2V group took the 2 mg MPA and 1.5 mg E2V every day.Serum E2,FSH,lipoprotein and coagulation function were evaluated at baseline and at the 12th week of the treatment.In addition,menopausal symptoms and some other index of security and side effects were also observed.Results:Kupperman indix in both groups was decreased and the mean value of E2 was increased obviously.Hepatic function,renal function,coagulation function and blood glucose were no obvious change.Lipoproteinα was descended markedly in Fem-7 group.Other index of security in both groups was no obvious change.Conclusions:Fem-7 patch is secure and valid for relieving symptom of menopause,especially for the women who is not sutable for oral medication.


Given a connected graph $G=(V,E)$, a set $S\subseteq V$ is a $k$-metric generator for $G$ if for any two different vertices $u,v\in V$, there exist at least $k$ vertices $w_1,...,w_k\in S$ such that $d_G(u,w_i)\ne d_G(v,w_i)$ for every $i\in \{1,...,k\}$. A metric generator of minimum cardinality is called a $k$-metric basis and its cardinality the $k$-metric dimension of $G$. We study some problems regarding the complexity of some $k$-metric dimension problems. For instance, we show that the problem of computing the $k$-metric dimension of graphs is $NP$-Complete. However, the problem is solved in linear time for the particular case of trees.


The expansion of the dairy industry in southern Idaho has led to increased application of manures to meet crop nutrient demands that can alter the uptake pattern of both macronutrients and micronutrients. A greenhouse study was conducted to determine the effects of dairy manure, composted dairy manure, and fertilizer (monoammonium phosphate) application on soil test phosphorus (P), microbial activity, and nutrient uptake by silage corn (Zea mays). Two Portneuf soils, having either a low or high soil test P concentration, were amended with the three treatments at four application rates (25, 50, 100, and 200 mg P kg−1) with four replications of each treatment in a randomized complete design. Treatments were incubated for 2 weeks, then planted with corn grown for approximately 3 weeks. Soil samples were analyzed before planting, whereas plant samples were analyzed at the end of the growing period. Increases in Olsen P from P additions were greatest in the monoammonium phosphate and least in the manure-treated soils. Plant dry matter production and tissue P concentration did not differ with treatment. Tissue K increased with manure and compost addition, whereas tissue Ca decreased; there was also a decrease in tissue Mg with compost application. Tissue Zn increased with manure applications, whereas tissue Mn decreased with manure and compost application on the low-P soil. It is important to consider plant nutrient interactions when applying manure and compost to forage crops as imbalances in K, Ca, and Mg can have a negative impact on animal health.


Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has emerged as one of the most prevalent life‐threatening cancers, and the high mortality rate is largely due to the metastasis. The sustained activation of Smad4 and transforming growth factor‐β (TGF‐β) is closely associated with advanced HCC metastasis. However, the regulatory mechanism underlying the aberrant activation of Smad4 and TGF‐β pathway remains elusive. In this study, using a functional screen of USPs siRNA library, we identified ubiquitin‐specific proteases USP10 as a deubiquitinating enzyme (DUB) that sustains the protein level of Smad4 and activates TGF‐β signaling. Further analysis showed that USP10 directly interacts with Smad4 and stabilizes it through the cleavage of its proteolytic ubiquitination, thus promoting HCC metastasis. The suppression of USP10 by either shRNAs or catalytic inhibitor Spautin‐1 significantly inhibited the migration of HCC cells, whereas the reconstitution of Smad4 was able to efficiently rescue this defect. Overall, our study not only uncovers the regulatory effect of USP10 on the protein abundance of Smad4, but also indicates that USP10 could be regarded as a potential intervention target for the metastatic HCC in Smad4‐positive patients.


It is well known that the three‐dimensional shell geometry of the visible portion of a distant hard‐skinned sonar target can be scanned in xy coordinates by beamforming a planar array, with the associated z coordinates being provided by time gating the acoustic return. However, a simple line array running along the x axis can provide a projection view of the target, with its upper and lower surfaces being projected semi‐transparently onto the xz plane, giving a picture analogous to that of a paramecium viewed with a slide microscope. If the line array is now tumbled in the xy plane, it will appear that the target is revolving around the z axis. When this tumbling view is presented 14° out of phase to the left and right eyes, a stereoscopic view of the tumbling target is obtained, thus revealing its three‐dimensional form (with the aid of the brain's innate tomographic signal processing powers). Further simplifications of the array structure and processing are possible, with some limitations and weaknesses...


The characterization of the statistical distributions of observed weather data is of crucial importance both for the construction and for the validation of weather models, such as weather generators (WG's). An important class of WG's (e.g., the Richardson-type generators) reduce the time series of each variable to a time series of its residual elements, and the residuals are often assumed to be normally distributed. In this work we propose an approach to investigate if the shape assumed for the distribution of residuals is consistent or not with the observed data of a given site. Specifically, this procedure tests if the same distribution shape for the residuals noise is maintained along the time. The proposed approach is an adaptation to climate time series of a procedure first introduced to test the shapes of distributions of growth rates of business firms aggregated in large panels of short time series. We illustrate the procedure by applying it to the residuals time series of maximum temperature in a given location, and investigate the empirical consistency of two assumptions, namely i) the most common assumption that the distribution of the residuals is Gaussian and ii) that the residuals noise has a time invariant shape which coincides with the empirical distribution of all the residuals noise of the whole time series pooled together.


Objective:To investigate the major risk factors of amblyopia in children.Methods:A 1∶1 matched case control study was used in 60 paired cases and 60 controls. The major factors impacted on the occurrence of amblyopia,including the congenital factors,acquired factors and the nutritional factors,were analyzed by condition logistic regression model.Results:Single factor analysis showed that the risk factors of amblyopia included child-bearing age of father,times of pregnancy,daylight of child's habitual room,content of calcium and magnesium in hair of child,body mass index(BMI) of child,parents educational levels,sugar-intake during pregnancy,height of child. A further multi-regression analysis confirmed that four factors,including times of pregnancy,daylight of child's habitual room,hair calcium content and BMI of child,were mutually related to the occurrence of amblyopia.Conclusion:More times of pregnancy,poor daylight of child's habitual room,high content of calcium in hair and high BMI of child can increase the risk of amblyopia.


Several arginine modification studies on enzymes have mostly been done by phenylglyoxal (PG) or 1,2-cyclohexanedione (CHD) as the modifying reagents. It has been found that one molecule or two molecules of PG or one CHD molecule covalently modify sidechain guanidine of arginine of the enzymes. To seek clearer insights into stoichiometry of this reaction, herein, we decided to investigate some model amino acids that include L-arginine (L-Arg) and two model peptides (an octapeptide and a 30 amino acids long peptide). Reactions were conducted at room temperature (RT: ~25 ° C), involving 'equimolar concentrations' of reactants in seven different mediums: five buffers (all at basic pH, 7.4 - 8.4) and two solvents. The two solvents are: (1) water (H 2 O) and (2) mixture of acetonitrile and water (ACN:H 2 O, 1:1, v/v). Progress of every reaction was monitored as a function of time by liquid chromatography - electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (LC-ESI-MS). With PG, L-Arg forms 1:1 adduct ([L-Arg+PG]; m/z 309), 1:2 adduct ([L-Arg+2PG]; m/z 443) and water condensed products of respective 1:1 and 1:2 adducts ( m/z 291 & m/z 425) in all six mediums, except in borate, where only uncondensed 1:1 adduct ([L-Arg+PG]; m/z 309) was observed. However, with CHD, L-Arg yielded 1:1 adduct ( m/z 287), 1:2 adduct ( m/z 399) and corresponding water condensed products (m/z 269 & m/z 381) in borate. Interestingly, in H 2 O and in ACN:H 2 O (1:1) too, L-Arg undergoes modification. This is the first LC-ESI-MS study illustrating modification of LArg by phenylglyoxal and 1,2-cyclohexanedione. Molecular structures are proposed for every observed modified product, depicting stoichiometry and mode of binding by PG or CHD onto guanidine moiety of L-Arg. Keywords : Arginine Modification; Electrospray Ionization-Mass Spectrometry (ESI-MS); Liquid Chromatography- MS (LC-MS); L-Arginine; Peptides and Proteins; Arginyl Enzymes


The electric field induced phase transition behavior of lead lanthanum zirconate titanate stannate (PLZTS) ceramics was investigated. PLZTS undergoes a tetragonal antiferroelectric (AFETet) to rhombohedral ferroelectric (FERh) phase transition with the application of an electric field. The volume increase associated with this antiferroelectric (AFE)–ferroelectric (FE) phase transition plays an important role with respect to actuator applications. This volume increase involves an increase in both transverse and longitudinal strains. The E field at which the transverse strain increases is accompanied by an abrupt jump in polarization. The longitudinal strain, however, lags behind this polarization jump exhibiting a slight decrease at the onset of phase switching. This decoupling was related to the preferentially oriented AFE domain configuration, with its tetragonal c-axis perpendicular to the applied electric field. It is suggested that phase switching involves multiple steps involving both structural tran...


Artificial intelligence (AI) research has a long track record of drawing inspirations from findings from biology, in particular human intelligence. In contrast to current AI research that mainly treats explanations as a means for model inspection, a somewhat neglected finding from human psychology is the benefit of self-explaining in an agents' learning process. Motivated by this, we introduce a novel learning paradigm, termed Learning by Self-Explaining (LSX). The underlying idea is that a learning module (learner) performs a base task, e.g. image classification, and provides explanations to its decisions. An internal critic module next evaluates the quality of these explanations given the original task. Finally, the learner is refined with the critic's feedback and the loop is repeated as required. The intuition behind this is that an explanation is considered"good"if the critic can perform the same task given the respective explanation. Despite many implementation possibilities the structure of any LSX instantiation can be taxonomized based on four learning modules which we identify as: Fit, Explain, Reflect and Revise. In our work, we provide distinct instantiations of LSX for two different learner models, each illustrating different choices for the various LSX components. We broadly evaluate these on several datasets and show that Learning by Self-Explaining not only boosts the generalization abilities of AI models, particularly in small-data regimes, but also aids in mitigating the influence of confounding factors, as well as leading to more task specific and faithful model explanations. Overall, our results provide experimental evidence of the potential of self-explaining within the learning phase of an AI model.


Summary form only given. We present what is, to our best knowledge, the first self-starting mode-locked Yb/sup 3+/:KY(WO/sub 4/)/sub 2/ (Yb:KYW) laser based on Kerr-lensing effect. The 10-at.% Yb/sup 3+/-doped KY(WO/sub 4/)/sub 2/ crystal is 4-mm long with Brewster angle for the E//b signal beam and is cooled to 18/spl deg/C. The gain material is CW end-pumped by two 100 /spl mu/m stripe laser diodes operating at 940 nm with a spectral bandwidth of /spl sim/3 nm FWHM. One of these diodes is slightly damaged and its light is focused to a beam diameter of 120 /spl mu/m/spl times/30 /spl mu/m (1/e/sup 2/ intensity) with 1.25 W reaching the crystal. The light of the other diode is focused to a beam diameter of 110 /spl mu/m/spl times/30 /spl mu/m (1/e/sup 2/ intensity) with 1.35 W reaching the crystal. Over 90% pump light is absorbed and we obtain 580 mW CW output power with a 2% output coupler without prisms in the cavity.


Objective To investigate the effects of magnesium sulphate on newborn asphyxia. Methods 51 cases of neonatal infants with birth asphyxia were randomly divided into two groups. The infants in treated group (n=27) were given a leading dose of 250 mg/kg magnesium sulphate intravenously within 12 hours of delivery, followed by two further infusions of 125 mg/kg at 24 and 48 hours respectively. The infants in control group (n=24) were conventionally trea ted . Blood pressure, heart rate, breath rate, muscle tone, blood gas, serum LDH,CK, Cr, urine β 2m were measured in all infants. MDI and PDI were evaluated at 6 months of age. Results PaO 2 improved in treated infants in the first and third day of delivery was significantly better than those in control group(P0.05). The decrease of serum CK in the former in the first and seventh day of delivery was significantly more than the latter (P0.05). The decrease of serum Cr and urine β 2m in the former in the first and seventh day of delivery was significantly more than the latter (P0.05;P0.001). 28 cases of infants were followed up in 6 months of age and no significant differences of MDI and PDI were found between the two groups, so no significance statistically though the treated group was better than the controls. Conclusion Magnesium sulphate is effective in preventing and treating neonatal hypoxi-ischemic damage after birth asphyxia.


Missions have beenproposed inwhich a spacecraft equippedwith a large furlable solar sail transfers to amain-belt asteroid using the fully deployed sail for propulsion and then performs an inspectionmission at the asteroid with the sail fully stowed. This paper examinesways inwhich the partially deployed sail could insteadbe used tomaneuver the spacecraft while in the vicinity of the asteroid,with the goal of improving the science observations that could bemade. Methods are presented for quantifying the performance that can be obtained by taking advantage of the freedom to select the active sail area for two types of hovering problems: one in which the spacecraft is to maintain a fixed position in the rotating sun–asteroid frame and the other in which it is to maintain a fixed position relative to a landmark on the rotating asteroid surface. In both of these problems, the ability to adjust the active sail area greatly expands the range of locations at which the spacecraft can satisfy the specified hover conditions.


ObjectiveTo investigate if intra-aortic balloon pump(IABP) is contraindicated without anticoagulation therapy.Methods153 consecutive IABP patients in King Abdulaziz Cardiac Center(KSA) were randomly assigned into two groups. Anticoagulation group(Group A) consisted of 71 patients who were given heparin intravenously with target aPTT 50-70 s. Non-anticoagulation group(Group B) consisted of 82 patients without intravenous heparin during balloon pumping. Hematological parameters including platelet count, D-dimer, Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1( PAI-1) and fibrinogen degradation products(FDP) were checked respectively at point of baseline, 24 h, 48 h and 24 h post IABP counterpulsation. Clot deposit on balloon surface, vascular complications from IABP including bleeding and limb ischemia were recorded.ResultsPlatelet count and PAI-1 level decreased at 24 h and 48 h in both groups (P0.05). D-dimer level and FDP level increased at 24 h and 48 h in both groups(P0.05), which returned to the baseline 24 h post IABP removal. No statistical difference of platelet count,D-dimer,PAI-1 and FDP level were seen between group A and group B at any observation time. Three patients in Group A and 2 patients in Group B developed minor limb ischemia. No major limb ischemia in either group. Two patients in Group A suffered major bleeding and required blood transfusion or surgical intervention, whereas no patient had major bleeding in Group B. Eight patients had minor bleeding in Group A, but 2 patients in Group B(P0.05). No clot deposit developed on IABP surface in either group.ConclusionIABP is safe without anticoagulation therapy. Selecting appropriate artery approach and early detection intervention are key measures to prevent complications.


This paper aims to present an alternative methodology to improve the tuning of proportional-integral multiresonant (PI-MR) controller applied to the current control loop of a shunt active power filter (SAPF) by using a differential evolution (DE) metaheuristic method. For computing the PI-MR controller gains, the methodology based on Naslin polynomial (NP) can be employed, although its performance is limited. On the other hand, tuning procedures accomplished by trial-and-error methods have been largely used. In order to fill the lack of methodological procedures to determine the PI-MR controller gains, the use of DE metaheuristic optimization algorithm is proposed to perform an optimal adjustment. The DE algorithm operates minimizing an appropriate cost function, taking into account the total harmonic distortion of the source current, the error of the compensation current control loop, and the saturation limit of the control action. The effectiveness of the proposed methodology is compared to the NP-based method, applied to a single-phase SAPF. The proposed methodology is validated by means of both simulation and experimental results. The evaluation of the static and dynamic performances is obtained from experimental tests performed based on a digital signal processor.


This paper proposes a simple and practical iterative method for bias-corrected kernel regression. The proposed approach corrects for both curvature-based and boundary-based nite-sample bias. The method is proposed as an alternativeto bias-reduction through the estimation of leading terms in asymptotic expansions, the use of high-order kernels, the use of boundary kernels, or the use of data reeection, and the approach does not require trimming. A cross-validatory approach to bandwidth selection is proposed for this method which yields a bias-corrected estimator with improved square-error properties. In addition to obtaining bias-corrected nonparametric regression functions, bias-corrected conndence bounds and response coeecients can readily be obtained. The technique admits general stationary processes. Simulations and applications are considered.


Recommender systems have been well studied and applied both in the academia and industry recently. However, traditional recommender systems assume that all the users and items are independent and identically distributed. This assumption ignores the correlation of explicit attributes of both users and items. Aiming at modeling recommender systems more realistically and interpretably, we propose a novel and efficient hybrid matrix factorization method which combines implicit and explicit attributes, and can be used to solve the problem of cold start and recommender interpretation. Based on the MovieLens datasets, the experimental analysis shows our method is promising and efficient.


Calculations were made of the reduction in the cross section of europium as a result of thermal neutron flux exposure. The cross section is related to the number of neutrons absorbed in the chain of five isotopes and these data are used to determine the loss of thermal control effectiveness stainless steel- europium oxide rods. In control rods of typical dimensions, the loss of thermal effectiveness after 3000 hr at 100 Mw is negligible for concentrations of the oxide above 15 vol.%. The loss of control is likely to be slightly greater for program control than for bank control. (auth)


Pelvic inflammatory disease (PID), infection and inflammation of the upper female genital tract, is a common condition managed by General Practitioners (GPs). It accounts for one in 60 consultations in women of reproductive age. Early diagnosis, management and, if necessary, referral is essential to help prevent serious long-term complications such as ectopic pregnancy, infertility and chronic pelvic pain. This article outlines the causes, clinical features, treatment and follow-up of PID.


Background: In the Duffy blood group system (, and Fy antigens), antigen is associated with weak while Fy antigen means the null phenotype Fy (a-b-). antigen and Fy antigen result from the polymorphisms of allele. This report assessed the allele frequency and genotype frequency of , and Fy antigens in Koreans. Methods: We performed a study of the followings on 253 visitors to the health promotion center of Seoul National University Bundang Hospital: PCR-RFLP and PCR-SSP for the detection of Duffy 125G>A and -33T>C; PCR-SSP for the detection of Duffy 265C>T and 298G>A. Results: The results of PCR-RFLP and PCR-SSP were consistent with each other in a total of 253 subjects. Allele frequency was as follows: Fy 92.3%, 6.1%, and 1.6%. The allele was newly observed. , , and alleles were not detected in Koreans. The distribution of Duffy phenotypes in Koreans was as follows: Fy (a+b-) 88.1%, Fy (a-b+) 0.4%, Fy (a+b+) 11.5%, and Fy (a-b-) 0.0%. Fy (a+) was 99.6% and Fy (b+) was 11.9%. Conclusion: In our study for Duffy polymorphisms, the frequency of Fy allele was very high. The frequency was similar to those of other Asian populations, but different from those of Caucasians. The allele, which was associated with antigen, was newly detected in Koreans.


The structures of self-assembled peptide amphiphiles are studied using empirical force fields and atomistic molecular dynamics calculations. The hydrophilic headgroups of these amphiphiles possess a lower, rigid part and an upper, flexible part. At an appropriate pH large dipoles are found in the flexible part of the headgroups, leading to attractive interactions between them, while the rigid parts participate in the formation of an effective parallel beta sheet due to hydrogen bonding oriented in the same direction as the large dipoles, and stabilizing the self-assembly in that direction. Molecular dynamics simulations on the self-assembled amphiphiles are performed with periodic boundary conditions in two dimensions. The tendency of the nanostructure to curve around an axis parallel to the dipoles and the beta sheet is revealed by removing the periodic boundary conditions, one direction at a time, leading to the conclusion that a cylindrical micelle would be the most stable one.


"Self" is a complex, multileveled and multifaceted notion. From a phenomenological perspective (Parnas 2000; 2003) three levels of selfhood have been identified. First, there is the implicit awareness that this is 'my' experience. Such pre-reflective level of selfhood is sometimes referred to as the 'basic' or 'minimal' self or as 'ipseity'. Second, there is the more explicit awareness of self as an invariant subject of experience and action. Such reflective level of self-awareness presupposes the 'minimal' self. Finally, there is the social or narrative self, which refers to personality, habits, style and other characteristics of an individual. The concept of minimal, pre-reflective, or "core self" (Rochat 2004) is currently under debate in cognitive science, developmental psychology and philosophy of mind. However, it is not clear which empirical features such a self is presumed to possess and which kind of experience concurs in shaping this implicit sense of being oneself. In particular, in the ongoing debate about the definition of the notion of self, as the minimalist level of subjective experience, one of the central issues is the contribution of bodily experience to its constitution. For instance, some aspects of the minimal self proposed by contemporary philosophical and empirical research are: the notion of perspective and first-person perspective, the 'mineness' of the phenomenal field, the question of transparency, embodiment of point of view, and the issues of agency and ownership (Cermolacce et al. 2007). What is important to note here is that, on the philosophical side, phenomenology emphasizes the necessity of embodiment of the self for all the above cited aspects of self experience. Furthermore, as argued by Cermolacce and colleagues (2007), in phenomenology "the field of experience is not yet considered to be subjective because this predicate already implies that there is a subject. For phenomenology, the very idea of the subject articulates itself in experience. In this sense, the manifestation and appearing of experience are the conditions for the experience of the subject in question". This philosophical standpoint should have important implications for the empirical studies, especially for those investigating the neural correlates of self-consciousness or self-representations. Rather than searching for the neural correlates of a pre-defined, explicit and reflective selfknowledge, the first aim of empirical research should be to investigate which kind of experience (and how) allows an implicit and pre-reflective self-knowledge to emerge. For example, reminding the importance of embodiment of the self for self-experience, an interesting question to be answered would be: "What is the basic experience of ourselves as bodily selves? What enables us to implicitly distinguish ourselves, as bodily selves, from other human bodies?" Contemporary research answers this question by focusing mostly on the notions of body ownership, sense of agency and first person perspective. Body ownership refers to ''the perceptual status of one's own body, which makes bodily sensations seem unique to oneself'' (Tsakiris et al. 2007a). Different studies on Rubber Hand Illusion (RHI, Botvinick and Cohen 1998) suggested that multisensory integration is the crucial mechanism leading to the experience of our body as our own. The RHI consists in watching a rubber hand being stroked together with one's own unseen hand. If the stroking of the rubber and real hands occurs synchronously, the position sense of the real hand shifts towards the location of the dummy hand. Participants report that they feel the dummy hand to be part of their body. However, as it has been recently argued (see Gallese and Sinigaglia 2010; Gallese and Sinigaglia 2011), there is a lot of evidence showing that the multisensory integration leading to the experience of our body as our own, far from being the outcome of a mere visual–proprioceptive perceptual association (Costantini and Haggard 2007), is conditioned by the possibility – or not – to perform actions with a given body part (Tsakiris and Haggard 2005; Tsakiris et al. 2006; Tsakiris et al. 2007b). Sense of agency refers to the sense of being the one who generates an action. We recognize ourselves as agents on the basis of the congruence between self-generated movements and their expected consequences. This dominant role of action over other possible cues for self-identification is accounted for by the hypothesis of the Central Monitoring Theory of action recognition. In its simplest form, this model holds that each time the motor centers generate an outflow signal for producing a movement, a copy of this command (the ''efference copy", Von Holst and Mittelstedt 1950) is retained and then compared with the reafferent inflow signals generated by the movement (e.g., visual, kinesthetic). A predictive component of the model anticipating the sensory consequences of the movement, is such that, in the case of a self-produced movement, the actual sensory feedback will match the prediction. Otherwise, sensory signals will be referred to an external event (Jeannerod 2007). However, as argued by Marc Jeannerod (2007), the Central Monitoring Theory "cannot explain the fact that sense of agency also arises in many situations where action representation is formed, but no movement is executed". Because circumstances where actions remain covert are frequent in our daily life, "the existence of an overt behaviour should not be a prerequisite for self-identification". Such circumstances occurs, for example, in the case of motor imagery (Jeannerod 1995) or motor simulation, which is a functional mechanism taking place during the observation of others' actions and having the mirror neuron system as its neural counterpart (Gallese 2000; Gallese 2006; Gallese 2009; Gallese and Sinigaglia 2011). Starting from the concept of shared representations (Georgieff and The bodily self


Metallic magnetic calorimeters are energy-dispersive cryogenic particle detectors providing an excellent energy resolution, a fast signal rise time, a high quantum efficiency as well as an almost ideal linear detector response. To surpass the present record resolution of 1.6 eV (FWHM) for 6 keV photons, we have started to develop integrated detectors for which the paramagnetic temperature sensor monitoring the temperature rise of the detector is integrated directly into the pickup loop of the superconducting quantum interference device. Due to the greatly enhanced magnetic flux coupling and consequently the reduced contribution of SQUID noise to the overall noise spectrum, this kind of devices should push the resolution to a value well below 1 eV. Here, we discuss the design and performance of a prototype 64 pixels metallic magnetic calorimeter based detector array with integrated detectors that rely on first-order parallel gradiometric SQUIDs with two meander-shaped pickup coils onto which planar temperature sensor made of Ag:Er are deposited.


Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) is an optical treatment modality that allows malignant tissue destruction. It is based on the administration of a photosensitizer and the posterior irradiation by an optical source. Photosensitizer molecules absorb the excitation light photons triggering a series of photochemical reactions in the presence of oxygen in the target tissue. During such interactions it is produced the de-excitation of the photosensitizer molecules in the singlet excited state which return to their minimum energy state by emitting fluorescence photons. These days, there are fixed clinical PDT protocols that make use of a particular optical dose and photosensitizer amount. However treatment response varies among patients and the type of pathology. In order to adjust an optimal dosimetry, the development of accurate predictive models plays an important role. The photosensitizer fluorescence can be used to estimate the degradation of the photoactive agent and as an implicit dosimetric measurement during treatment. However it is complex to know the fluorescence dependence with the depth in the tumor from observed fluorescence in the pathology surface. We present a first approach to predict the photosensitizer fluorescence dependence with depth during the PDT treatment applied to a skin disease commonly treated in the dermatological clinical practice. The obtained results permit us to know the photosensitizer temporal fluorescence evolution in different points of the tumor sample during the photochemical reactions involved in PDT with a predictive purpose related to the treatment evolution. The model presented also takes into account the distribution of a topical photosensitizer, the propagation of light in a biological media and the subsequent photochemical interactions between light and tissue. This implies that different parameters related with the photosensitizer distribution or the optical source characteristics could be adjusted to provide a specific treatment to a particular pathology.


Abstract Based on ethnographic fieldwork that took place in 2014 in two Irish primary Muslim schools in the Republic of Ireland, this article draws from both observations of Arabic classes from fourth and fifth classes as well as semi-structured interviews with teachers and parents. The research findings explore the content of and approaches towards the teaching of Arabic and the views held by participants towards the learning of Arabic as part of Islamic religious education. The study reveals the diversity of views that exist and questions the importance of learning Arabic, as part of formal religious education for young Muslims living in non-Muslim pluralist societies. The author concludes with some implications from the study and offers some direction for Muslim schools as it relates to teaching Arabic and, more broadly, to Islamic religious education of young Muslims in Western contexts.


The passive optical sample assembly-I (POSA-I), part of the Mir Environmental Effects Payload (MEEP), was designed to study the combined effects of contamination, atomic oxygen, UV radiation, vacuum, thermal cycling, and other constituents of the space environment on spacecraft materials. The MEEP program is a Phase 1 International Space Station Risk Mitigation Experiment. The payload was attached by EVA to the exterior of the Mir docking module during the Space Shuttle mission STS-76. It was removed during STS-86 after exposure to the Mir space station environment for 18 months. POSA-I consists of nearly 400 samples of thermal control paints, chemical conversion coatings, mirrors, optics, and baseline materials for International Space Station. POSA-I also flew state-of-the-art materials and passive instruments for monitoring the atomic oxygen and UV radiation dose to the experiment. Pre- and post-flight characterization of candidate spacecraft materials is discussed. Contamination was detected on the POSA-I experiment. On the side facing space, visible contamination was observed. The contamination was uniform as would occur from a slow photodeposition process. A very definite film was deposited on the optical samples. The deposition appears to have directionality with definite shadowing effects. On the side facing the main Mir core, no visible contamination was noted.


Abstract We give a means of estimating the equivariant compression of a group G in terms of properties of open subgroups G i ⊂ G whose direct limit is G. Quantifying a result by Gal, we also study the behaviour of the equivariant compression under amalgamated free products G 1∗H G 2 where H is of finite index in both G 1 and G 2.


Controlling the amount of inventory value is not an easy thing for Computers in the current era of globalization are a major need in supporting human work. One of the branches of computer science that is widely used by humans to help work is the formation of an expert system which is one of the sub-fields of artificial intelligence [1]. One of the uses of expert systems is in the field of dentistry. It is proven by the emergence of Nyoman Kusuma Wardna's research entitled designing an expert system for diagnosing oral and dental diseases using the CLIPS programming language which was published at the National Seminar on Information Technology Applications held at Gajah Mada University, Yogyakarta 21 June 2008 . This application appears with an interface in the form of closed questions about the symptoms felt by the user so that it does not maximize the diagnostic results obtained. This expert system is also a development of Bambang Suyono's research (National Seminar on Informatics UPN Yogyakarta 22 May 2010) which has a deficiency in using the depth first search method so that it is unable to display two or more solutions [3], whereas in diagnosing a disease sometimes a doctor determines differential diagnosis. This is what prompted the author to develop the application system by correcting all existing deficiencies. The method used in this research is Extreme Programming (XP) which is part of the AGILE method [7], consisting of five stages, namely, Planning, Design, Coding, Test and release.


49 Background: Conversations about serious illness care goals are often inadequate and fail to address key elements of high-quality discussions.

METHODS
As part of a cluster-randomized trial of a multi-component communication intervention, we conducted a retrospective chart review of 147 deceased oncology patients to assess frequency and timing of documentation of end-of-life (EOL) conversations; charts of a subset of 20 intervention and 20 matched control patients underwent detailed review to assess quality. A systematically developed abstraction tool was used by two blinded researchers. The tool contained 25 elements reflecting four EOL conversation domains: goals/values, illness understanding/prognosis, EOL care planning, life-sustaining treatments.

RESULTS
Of 153 intervention patients, 44.4% died (n = 68); of 161 controls, 49.1% died (n = 79). Significantly more intervention patients than controls (92.7% vs 74.7%, p = 0.006) had at least 1 documented EOL discussion before death; intervention conversations occurred 3 months earlier (median 147 days vs 62 days, p = 0.003). 59.4% of intervention conversations were documented in a retrievable EHR location compared to 10.2% of controls (p = 0.001). In the detailed review, 85% (n = 17) of intervention and 40% (n = 8) of controls had at least 1 documented discussion about values/goals (p = 0.0001), with an average of 3.6 of 8 elements (0.7 of 8 for controls) (p = 0.0003). 85% percent (n = 17) of intervention and 30% (n = 6) of controls had at least 1 documented discussion about prognosis (p = 0.0014), with an average of 2.5 of 7 elements (0.5 of 7 for controls) (p = 0.001). 85% of intervention (n = 17) and 55% of controls (n = 11) had at least 1 documented discussion about EOL planning (p = 0.009). 55% of intervention and 30% of controls had at least 1 documented discussion about life-sustaining treatments (p = 0.20).

CONCLUSIONS
The intervention resulted in more, earlier and better documentation of serious illness care goals. Across 3 of 4 domains of quality, intervention patients had more detailed information about their EOL care preferences, demonstrating that the intervention results in more patient-centered, comprehensive discussions.

CLINICAL TRIAL INFORMATION
NCT01786811.


Cancer is something to lose sleep over. It causes understandable anxiety that might well disrupt sleep. But losing sleep, and the disruption of associated circadian patterns of hormones such as cortisol and melatonin, may well have more pervasive effects on the body, ranging from the expectable—such as fatigue and depression—to increases in the rate of cancer progression and risk of cancer incidence. Good sleep is necessary and restorative for people in good health. There is growing evidence that sleep plays an even more important role in the health of cancer patients. In their article in this issue of the Journal of Clinical Oncology, Parker et al utilized 24-hour ambulatory polysomnography to precisely study sleep/wake patterns among 114 patients with advanced solid tumors. They documented considerable sleep disruption, including poor quality and quantity of sleep at night and excessive sleep episodes during the day. Demographic factors that mitigated this sleep disturbance included being female, married or partnered, white, and more highly educated. As is the case in many situations, "them as has, gets." Those with less in the way of social support, education, and the associated socioeconomic advantages, suffered combined effects of cancer-related and social stress at night as well as during the day. The detailed sleep analysis demonstrated that these cancer patients' sleep was anything but normal. They had an average of 60 brief arousals per hour and some six awakenings lasting a minute or more per hour at night, and they slept an hour and a half during the day. This included 6.7% rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is rare during the day and is a sign of chronic sleep and REM deprivation. One bit of good news is that antineoplastic agents seemed, if anything, to be associated with increased sleep efficiency. Also, those patients taking antidepressants had better sleep, presumably through effective treatment of depression, which is often accompanied by sleep disruption, especially early morning wakening. A key observation from the study is the erosion of distinction between night and day in sleep among cancer patients: They were awake approximately a quarter of the time and night, and slept approximately one fifth of the time during the day. This is consistent with daytime fatigue, and presumably with dysregulation of hormones, such as cortisol, melatonin, human growth hormone, and thyroidstimulating hormone, that have pronounced circadian patterns. Disruption of these patterns could have adverse effects on both quality of life and the disease itself. Circadian rhythm disruption is associated with poorer quality of life among cancer patients, including increased fatigue and depression. Notably and not surprisingly, daytime fatigue is associated with disturbed sleep and phase-advanced circadian rhythms among primary breast cancer patients, even before chemotherapy. There are similar observations of sleep disruption among patients with non– small-cell lung cancer. Mediating factors associated with circadian disruption and fatigue include reduced daytime light exposure and elevated cytokine levels, notably 8-AM levels of transforming growth factor-alpha, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, and interleukin 6. Cytokines such as these have been associated with "sickness behavior" and depressive symptoms in cancer patients. Cancer can be understood as a series of stressors—the diagnosis and its implications, including fears of death, arduous treatments, and changes in one's social and physical environment. Reactivity to stressors involves not only the initial response of the central and autonomic nervous systems and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, but also the body's ability to restore equilibrium after stress. Older organisms seem to be less flexible in this regard, leaving stress responsive systems more tonically upregulated for longer periods of time. Cancer particularly affects older people, and chronic disease-related stressors are perhaps likely to further decrease the flexibility of stress-response mechanisms. Stressing older animals leads not only to persistently elevated cortisol levels, but also much more rapid growth of implanted tumors. There is an exquisitely sensitive circadian clock that regulates variation in levels of cortisol and other hormones throughout the day. There is evidence that abnormal circadian clock gene expression is associated with cancer. Breast and ovarian cancer patients have abnormalities in the circadian rhythm of cortisol. Among breast cancer patients, these abnormalities include high levels throughout the 24-hour cycle. Loss of normal circadian variation in cortisol, similar to that observed in depression, predicts earlier mortality among metastatic breast cancer patients, independent of other known risk factors including estrogen/progesterone receptor status, age at diagnosis, and disease-free interval. This loss of normal diurnal variation in cortisol is associated with more awakenings during the night, and with reduced feedback inhibition of cortisol secretion by the pituitary. It would be very interesting to see whether the degree of sleep disruption observed by Parker et al turns out to predict the rate of disease progression in their sample. A clear physiologic distinction between an active daytime and a restful nighttime has been associated with longersurvival,betterqualityoflife,andlessseverefatigue,anorexia, and depression in metastatic colorectal cancer patients. Female nightshift workers are at higher risk for developing breast, colon, and endometrial cancers. This effect could be a result of sleep loss and associated disruption of circadian cortisol rhythms as well as suppressed melatonin levels. Why might circadian cycle disruption affect the course of cancer? In certain prostate cancer cell lines, the androgen receptor becomes JOURNAL OF CLINICAL ONCOLOGY E D I T O R I A L VOLUME 26 NUMBER 15 MAY 2


The reactions which occur on heating iron-containing micas depend on the ambient atmosphere. In vacuo, the principal reaction is dehydroxylation, accompanied by evolution of hydrogen according to the equation, 4Fe2++ 4OH-→ 4Fe3++ 4O2–+ 2H2. Between 500 and 600° in air or oxygen, dehydrogenation occurs before dehydroxylation. This involves simultaneous reaction of iron(II) and hydroxy-ions according to the equation, 4Fe2++ 4OH–+ O2→ 4Fe3++ 4O2–+ 2H2O, and proceeds until either the iron(II) or the hydroxy-content of the mica has been consumed. Between 500 and 600° in hydrogen, reduction of iron(III) occurs according to the equations, 4Fe3++ 4O2–+ 2H2→ 4Fe2++ 4OH– and 4Fe3++ 2O2–+ 2H2→ 4Fe2++ 2H2O. Similar reactions in deuterium provide a convenient method for introducing OD– ions into iron-containing silicates.


Improved data-processing capability, coupled with innovative sampling techniques, has led to increased use of Fourier-transform infrared spectrometers for industrial applications.


Testosterone metabolism, androgen receptors, and the androgen binding protein (ABP) were studied in male albino rats injected with 1 mg of testosterone propionate (TP) on Day 2 of life. The epididymal content of ABP was diminished in immature but not in adult animals treated neonatally with androgen. No changes were detected in the testicular levels of this protein in 27-day-old rats. In adult animals atrophic lesions were seen in 3% of the seminiferous tubules. Androgen treatment of neonates led to a substantial decrease in the 5o-reductase activity in homogenates of prostate gland and epididymis from adult rats with a concomitant decline in the 3cc13-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase activities in both tissues. These animals did not show any change in the number of available or total androgen receptor sites as measured by incubating prostatic cytosol with (3 H) R1881. The present findings suggest that the impaired development of the male genital tract could be partially due to a diminished peripheral conversion of testosterone to its active, 5cc-reduced metabolites.


Saint-Evremond's work is one which particularly enables us to understand how certain forms of moral Epicureanism helped to enrich and renew the analysis of aesthetic experience and its values. This article, after emphasising certain characteristic deformations within the heritage of Epicureanism, studies fields which are apparently far removed from the explicit Epicurean discourse, namely Saint-Evremond's criticism of Racine and his analysis of how passions are expressed on the stage ; this is very different from the Aristotelian conception of catharsis. Between moral categories and aesthetic judgement, we find certain characteristic elements of what we can call a 'neo-epicurean taste', involving a whole art of avoiding what are seen as harmful passions and insisting on the relativity of forms of pleasure throughout history.


Recommendation 4. All courses and professional development experiences for mathematics teachers should develop the habits of mind of a mathematical thinker and problem-solver, such as reasoning and explaining, modeling, seeing structure, and generalizing. Courses should also use the flexible, interactive styles of teaching that will enable teachers to develop these habits of mind in their students. This recommendation is at least as important for practicing teachers as future teachers. A worthy goal of mathematics instruction for any undergraduate is to develop not only knowledge of content but also the ability to work in ways characteristic of the discipline. For teachers, this is not only worthy, but necessary.


The problems of socialization of young people and the formation of their socio-cultural identity become the main theoretical issues and methodological foundations of scientific and research projects related to the implementation of the state youth policy. These methodological aspects of the study are directly adjacent to the study and analysis of the formation of a single Russian civil nation, national and state identity, education tolerance to representatives of different ethnic groups, interethnic cooperation. The particular relevance of these aspects are in terms of the ongoing migration policy aimed at attracting young migrants in the Russian regions from other national republics and CIS countries, which are designed to fill labour shortages and to take the important socio-economic and socio-demographic challenges of the region development. The objects of sociological research conducted by survey methods are closely related social communities, carrying out their activities on the basis of existing social institutions in specific socio-economic and socio-cultural conditions of modern Russia and representing young migrants (from 14 to 30 years) from the national republics that are part of the Russian Federation, living in the Nizhny Novgorod region for no more than 5 years. In the course of the research, the authors identified new trends in the formation of motivations, features and life strategies of young migrants from the national republics of the Russian Federation living in the Nizhny Novgorod region for no more than 5 years. The assessment of their integration into the host society is given. Благоевич М., Матич З. Религиозные перемены: православный катихизис в школьной системе Республики Сербии (2001-2017) // Научный результат. Социология и управление. – Т.4, No 1, 2018. 74 СОЦИОЛОГИЯ И УПРАВЛЕНИЕ SOCIOLOGY AND MANAGEMENT


The Monte Carlo simulation of a model polymer is implemented on the Mark III Hypercube computer under the CROS operating system. The polymer model and the simulation method are discussed. The key features of the implementation are given. The results show that hypercube computers are well suited for the polymer simulations.


One of the key obstacles precluding the maturation and commercialization of planar solid oxide fuel cells has been the absence of a robust sealant. A computational model has been developed in conjunction with leakage experiments at Oak Ridge National Gaboratory. The aforementioned model consists of three components: a macroscopic model, a microscopic model, and a mixed lubrication model. The macroscopic model is a finite element representation of a preloaded metal-metal seal interface, which is used to ascertain macroscopic stresses and deformations. The microscale contact mechanics model accounts for the role of surface roughness in determining the mean interfacial gap at the sealing interface. In particular, a new multiscale fast Fourier transform-based model is used to determine the gap. An averaged Reynolds equation derived from mixed lubrication theory is then applied to approximate the leakage flow across the rough annular interface. The composite model is applied as a predictive tool for assessing how certain physical parameters (i.e., seal material composition, compressive applied stress, surface finish, and elastic thermophysical properties) affect seal leakage rates. The leakage results predicted by the aforementioned computational leakage model are then compared with experimental results.


In Greek, there are basically two words referring to happinness: eudaimonia and eutykhia. Our research explores the meanings of the term eudaimonia in Philo, who, as a master and guide of the Jewish school of Alexandria, applied himself in his wide work to the task of interpreting Mosaic Law with the terminology of the Greek paideia. Therefore, our reading of the Philonian text tackles their two sources: the Jewish and the Alexandrian. We summarized the Helenic roots in the Aristotelian ones and focused on the figure of the Philonian ontology, Isaac, as a paradig- matic case of eudaimonia in terms of allegoric interpretation.


Based on the principle of surface magneto-optic Kerr effect, the magnetic parameters of film magnetic material can be measured. The Kerr angle of NiFe material is measured experimentally and the magnetic hysteresis loop is plotted.


This paper states the explanation of OECD and COSO to corporation governance and internal control.Based on the analysis of corporation governance and internal control,the author thinks there exists a cross_interaction relationship between them.Internal control can be consolidated by innovating corporate governance,that is,by improving the function and setup of the board of directors,enhancing financial supervision to the investors,and establishing motivation and restriction mechanism to key managers.Corporate governance can be regulated by strengthening budget control and setting up feasible supervision accounting.


The effects of sodium and potassium salts on conidial germination, mycelial growth and infection of Capsicum fruit were studied for Colletotrichum capsici, pathogen responsible for Anthracnose disease in Bell Pepper (Capsicum frutescence). Sodium benzoate, Sodium metabisulphite and Potassium metabisulphite at 1000 µg per ml concentration completely inhibited the conidial germination and mycelial growth whereas Potassium nitrate inhibited the conidial germination and mycelial growth by 70% and 12% respectively. When salt solutions with varying concentrations were applied to wounded Capsicum fruit prior to inoculation, 39% to 82% of smaller lesions were observed when compared to control. From the results it is evident that both sodium and potassium salts have ability to control Colletotricum capsici and can be used as part of post harvest disease management practice.


Objective(s) Pursued: Objective 1: Machine improvement and alternative design to reduce tree structural damage AImproving the design of fruit removal tines  Determining mechanical and physical properties of citrus wood  Statistical modeling of tree limbs  Formulation of mechanistic tree damage and fruit detachment model  Perform optimization based on numerical techniques BDeveloping alternative fruit removal systems Objective 2: Improved automated tine control system Objective 3: Enhancing the application efficiency of an abscission compound using a smart sprayer  To test the potential of the variable rate axial-fan airblast sprayer retrofit for increasing the abscission-inducing chemical application efficiency in different size citrus canopies  Evaluating the targeted delivery, coverage, droplet deposition density, and uniformity of chemical applications


www.mathworks.com Manually translating MATLAB to C involves incorporating into the code low-level details such as data-type assignments, memory allocations, and optimizations for computational load and memory. A great deal of effort is required to ensure that the MATLAB code and the C code remain equivalent. When your MATLAB algorithm uses the Embedded MATLABTM language subset, the translation to C becomes unambiguous, enabling you to focus on refining your design rather than producing and verifying handwritten C code.


Species richness, diversity and density in periphytic communities generally increase with substratum complexity. Aquatic macrophytes are often a main component of habitat complexity in lentic ecosystems, and the texture of aquatic macrophytes may alter the structure of periphytion. Here, we tested the hypothesis that even a subtle increase in complexity promotes an increase in species richness and density of periphytic organisms by means of a paired experiment with artificial plants. Artificial leaves were constructed simulating leaves of submerged aquatic macrophytes with veins (0.01 cm tall) and without veins (with the same foliar area). Nineteen pairs of artificial leaves, with two levels of complexity (with or without veins), were submerged during three weeks in Samambaia Lake, a small (ca. 4 ha) pond localized in Central Brazil. Species richness and density were significantly higher in the more complex leaves for rotifers and small bodied organisms (< 100 μm). Species composition as determined by ordination was not altered by complexity. The results suggest that even subtle differences in complexity of aquatic macrophytes (i.e. more complex venation) can influence the diversity of periphytic communities.


Often, local governments do not have the resources to fully assess and implement energy efficiency measures (EEMs) even though initial payback calculations are encouraging. To address this problem, the California Energy Commission (CEC) has been operating the Energy Partnership Program (EPP) to provide technical assistance and funding to local governments for energy efficiency projects in public buildings. A government agency interested in participating in the EPP begins the process by submitting an application which is then reviewed by the CEC for energy savings potential. Selected sites are visited by the CEC, after which they may be granted a full energy audit and recommendation study by an independent energy service company (ESCO). Also, in cases where the local government does not have the capital for new equipment purchases, the CEC can provide a loan to that government which can then be repaid through the reduced utility expenditures. Since industry experience has found that, on average, actual energy savings are only 60 - 70% of engineering estimates, the CEC hired Pacific Science & Technology (PS&T) to perform end-use metering and analysis to evaluate the accuracy of the energy audit. The CEC is not only interested in evaluating the total energy savings, butmore » also improving the accuracy of future energy audits as well. To this end, Pacific Science & Technology is reviewing and evaluating all of the basic assumptions made by the auditor such as equipment power draws, operating schedules, fixture counts, etc. These basic assumptions are common building blocks used in energy use analysis. So, the goal of this project is to improve the audit assumptions and thereby improve the accuracy of future energy audits and EEM assessments.« less


Vanadate can activate the uptake of Ca in A431 epidermal carcinoma cells by two‐to fivefold with no detectable lag period. Preincubation with epidermal growth factor (EGF) to down‐regulate the EGF receptor prevents subsequent stimulation by EGF but not that by vanadate. Ca uptake is sodium‐independent and is not activated by depolarization in high KCl. On the contrary, vanadate‐stimulated uptake is completely inhibited by decreasing the plasma membrane potential from about −65 to −30 mV. These results demonstrate that the EGF receptor is not itself functioning as a Ca channel, that vanadate is not acting at the level of EGF receptor, and that the Ca transport system exhibits an unusual potential sensitivity in that it is inhibited by depolarization of the plasma membrane.


The article presents results of the studies on development of a rapid scheme for isolation and bacteriological identification of Aeromonas veronii bacteria, which induce aeromonosis of salmon and cyprinids, as well as A. salmonicida subsp. salmonicida, A. hydrophila, A. sobria, A. eucrenophila A. сaviae. The experiments were carried out on the bacterial strain Aeromonas veronii biogroup sobria - АТSS 9071. The scheme consists of three stages: the first is the isolation of microorganisms from the test sample using the A.v.1-UlGAU accumulative nutrient medium of the original author's formula; the second stage is reseeding of colonies typical for Aeromonas veronii on the author's dense differential diagnostic medium A.v.2-UlGAU; the third stage is the study of physiological and biochemical parameters: mobility specification, oxidase production, xylose utilization, pigment formation of grown bacterial colonies on GRM agar with tyrosine, decarboxylation of lysine and ornithine, arginine hydrolysis, lactate fermentation. The proposed isolation and identification method will allow to differentiate Aeromonas veronii from associated bacteria, including A. salmonicida, A. hydrophila, A. caviae, within 120 hours, at relatively low costs for nutrient media and reagents.


Reductive elimination of C6F5-C6F5 from cis-[Pd(C6F5)2L] (L = cod, bpy, and dppb) was promoted by Brønsted acids. HNO3 is a convenient acid for the formation of C6F5-C6F5 from [Pd(C6F5)2(cod)]. The products are controlled by the auxiliary ligand.


Interleukin-2 (IL-2) treatment, used for boosting the strength of the immune system, is controversial. IL-2 is not approved for HIV/AIDS treatment by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), it is very expensive, and its flu-like side effects can be severe. However, in some cases, the drug has led to dramatic increases in CD4 counts and prevented patients from progressing to AIDS. IL-2 does not attack HIV, but instead strengthens the immune system to defend itself against the disease. A case study of one patient's side effects on the drug is included.


Background: The MAD1 protein, a member of the MYC/MAX/MAD network of transcriptional regulators, controls cell proliferation, differentiation and apoptosis. MAD1 functions as a transcriptional repressor, one direct target gene being the tumor suppressor PTEN. Repression of this gene is critical to mediate the anti-apoptotic function of MAD1. Under certain conditions it also antagonizes the functions of the oncoprotein MYC. Previous studies have demonstrated that MAD1 expression is controlled by different cytokines and growth factors. Moreover we have recently demonstrated that the MAD1 promoter is controlled by the cytokine granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (G-CSF) through the activation of STAT3, MAP kinases and C/EBP transcription factors. Results: We observed that in addition to G-CSF, the cytokine transforming growth factor b (TGFb1) rapidly induced the expression of MAD1 mRNA and protein in promyelocytic tumor cells. Moreover we found that C/EBP and SP transcription factors cooperated in regulating the expression of MAD1. This cooperativity was dependent on the respective binding sites in the proximal promoter, with the CCAAT boxes being bound by C/EBPa/b heterodimers. Both C/EBP and SP transcription factors bound constitutively to DNA without obvious changes in response to TGFb1. In addition SMAD3 stimulated the MAD1 reporter, cooperated with C/EBPa and was bound to the core promoter region. Thus SMAD3 appears to be a potential link between TGFb1 signaling and C/EBP regulated promoter activity. Moreover TGFb1 stimulated the phosphorylation of polymerase II at serine 2 and its progression into the gene body, consistent with enhanced processivity. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that C/EBP and SP factors provide a platform of transcription factors near the core promoter of the MAD1 gene that participate in mediating signal transduction events emanating from different cytokine receptors. SMAD3, a target of TGFb1 signaling, appears to be functionally relevant. We suggest that a key event induced by TGFb1 at the MAD1 promoter is the recruitment or activation of cofactors, possibly in complex with C/EBP, SP, and SMAD3 transcriptional regulators, that control polymerase activity. Background The MYC/MAX/MAD network of transcriptional regulators is essential to control many aspects of cell physiology [1]. MYC was originally identified as oncogene in several different chicken retroviruses. Subsequently the three human MYC genes, MYC, MYCN and MYCL were found deregulated in the large majority of human tumors [2]. The potent capacity of MYC to transform cells has also been supported by a large number of studies in both primary cells and established cell lines and in animal models. Central to the ability to transform cells is MYC's function as transcriptional regulator in controlling the expression of a large number of target genes. This explains, at least in part, the broad biological activities associated of MYC [3,4]. The functions of MYC in gene expression control depend largely on its * Correspondence: firstname.lastname@example.com † Contributed equally Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Medical School, RWTH Aachen University, 52057 Aachen, Germany Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Hein et al. BMC Molecular Biology 2011, 12:9 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2199/12/9 © 2011 Hein et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. interaction with MAX, the central component of the MYC/MAX/MAD network. MAD proteins are alternative binding partners of MAX [5]. Six different MAD proteins have been identified. MAD1-4 are highly related, while MNT and MGA are considerably larger multi-domain proteins. Similar to MYC, the MAD proteins are transcriptional regulators, with MAD1-4 primarily described as repressors. Unlike MYC proteins, the MADs have not been linked to human diseases, in particular they appear not to be tumor suppressors as one might have expected. For MAD1-4 the reason for their apparent lack to function as tumor suppressors may be in part due to their broad and overlapping expression pattern, suggesting that more than one MAD family member would need to be inactivated in tumors [5]. In addition, MAD proteins, best studied for MAD1, have anti-apoptotic activity and thus may antagonize the pro-apoptotic functions of MYC proteins [6-8]. This activity of MAD proteins may be indispensable for tumor development. In support, one of the few MAD1 target genes that has been identified is the tumor suppressor gene PTEN [8]. MAD1, which functions primarily as a transcriptional repressor by recruiting histone deacetylase-containing complexes [9-12], represses the PTEN promoter directly [8]. This contributes to the anti-apoptotic phenotype elicited by MAD1. The analysis of granulocytes from mice lacking Mad1 revealed increased sensitivity to pro-apoptotic conditions [6], further supporting the view that MAD1 protects cells from different apoptotic stimuli. In addition to the anti-apoptotic function, MAD1 has been suggested to control proliferation and differentiation antagonistically to MYC [5]. Indeed the unscheduled expression of MAD1 interferes with cell proliferation and the lack of Mad1 results in a differentiation defect of granulocytes [6,7,13-15]. During the studies to elucidate the functions of MAD1 in proliferation and differentiation, it had been noted early on that the expression of the MAD1 gene is highly regulated, generally reciprocal to the regulation of MYC genes [5]. Moreover MAD1 expression is directly downregulated by MYC (NH and BL, unpublished observations). In particular several differentiation inducing agents, including transforming growth factor b (TGFb), retinoic acid, and granulocyte-colony stimulating factor (G-CSF), were identified as stimulators of MAD1 expression [16-20]. These findings led us to address the question how the MAD1 promoter is organized and how signals of these differentiation factors control gene expression. The MAD1 promoter contains a CpG island as part of a roughly 400 bp proximal promoter region highly conserved between humans and rodents [17]. This region is responsive to G-CSF, integrating signals transduced from the G-CSF receptor by STAT3 and by the RASRAF-ERK pathway. This regulation of the MAD1 promoter by G-CSF is in agreement with the described role of this cytokine and of Mad1 in the control of granulocyte differentiation and survival [6]. Cytokines of the TGFb family have broad activities in controlling cell physiology, including proliferation, differentiation and survival [21-23]. TGFb signals through TGFb type II and I receptors with Ser/Thr kinase activity, thereby activating SMAD proteins, in particular SMAD2 and 3 in combination with SMAD4. These proteins translocate to the cell nucleus and form complexes with additional molecules to control the expression of target genes [24]. We have shown previously that the phorbol ester TPA and TGFb activate the expression of MAD1 in U937 and in HaCaT keratinocytes, respectively [18,19]. In both systems a substantial increase in mRNA expression was observed by 90 min, suggesting that the induction was direct. Different kinetics of MAD1 induction were observed in a clone of U937 promyelocytes that stably express a viral version of MYC (U937-myc6). In these cells a weak induction was observed in response to TGFb by 8 hrs, possibly as a result of constitutive MYC expression [20]. To understand in more detail how TGFb1 regulates MAD1 gene expression, we addressed how this cytokine affects MAD1 promoter activity. It appears that TGFb1 stimulates MAD1 through elements proximal to the core promoter. Results and Discussion Rapid activation of MAD1 by TGFb During cell proliferation and differentiation, the MAD1 gene is regulated by multiple signaling pathways. One of the regulatory cytokines is TGFb1, which is known to induce MAD1 in keratinocytes and in U937-myc6 promyelocytes [19,20]. To further evaluate the role of TGFb1 in regulating MAD1, we performed time course experiments. TGFb1 rapidly activated MAD1 mRNA expression in U937 cells (Figure 1A). In parallel, MAD1 protein became detectable within 4 hrs of TGFb1 stimulation (Figure 1B). Thus the induction of MAD1 protein follows closely the up-regulation seen at the mRNA level. The induction of MAD1 expression was dependent on the TGFb receptor (TGFbR) since the TGFbRI inhibitor SB505124 blocked MAD1 activation (Figure 1C). Moreover inhibition of the MAPK p38 resulted in a partial inhibition of MAD1 expression in response to TGFb1, whereas the inhibition of JNK or ERK kinases did not repress MAD1 expression (Figure 1C). The activities of the inhibitors were verified by analyzing the phosphorylation of the relevant kinases (data not shown). These findings indicate that TGFb1 may signal by different pathways to the MAD1 promoter. Indeed the TGFbR is known to activate several different Hein et al. BMC Molecular Biology 2011, 12:9 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2199/12/9 Page 2 of 13


Neural Architecture Search (NAS) has emerged as one of the effective methods to design the optimal neural network architecture automatically. Although neural architectures have achieved human-level performances in several tasks, few of them are obtained from the NAS method. The main reason is the huge search space of neural architectures, making NAS algorithms inefficient. This work presents a novel architecture search algorithm, called GPT-NAS, that optimizes neural architectures by Generative Pre-Trained (GPT) model with an evolutionary algorithm (EA) as the search strategy. In GPT-NAS, we assume that a generative model pre-trained on a large-scale corpus could learn the fundamental law of building neural architectures. Therefore, GPT-NAS leverages the GPT model to propose reasonable architecture components given the basic one and then utilizes EAs to search for the optimal solution. Such an approach can largely reduce the search space by introducing prior knowledge in the search process. Extensive experimental results show that our GPT-NAS method significantly outperforms seven manually designed neural architectures and thirteen architectures provided by competing NAS methods. In addition, our experiments also indicate that the proposed algorithm improves the performance of finely tuned neural architectures by up to about 12% compared to those without GPT, further demonstrating its effectiveness in searching neural architectures.


The electronic states of capped semi-infinite nanotubes are studied within the phenomenological gauge field-theory model. A single manifold for the description of both the nanotube and the cap region (considered as nearly a half of either Ih or I fullerene) is suggested. The wave functions and the density of states (DoS) are numerically calculated for both metallic and semiconducting nanotubes. The smoothing of van Hove singularities is found and proven analytically. The comparison with the experimental observations is discussed.


In [1], Rafael Ortega considered a periodically forced Kepler problem and proved the existence of linear motions with collisions. In this work, instead of the Kepler problem associated to the equation ü = − 1 u2 + p(t) we consider the problem ü = − 1 uα + p(t), α > 2 and obtain results analogous to those in [1].


In this article, we consider a flow network that is described by a digraph, each edge of which can admit a flow within a certain interval, with non-negative end points that correspond to lower and upper flow limits. We propose and analyze a distributed iterative algorithm for solving the so-called feasible circulation problem, which consists of computing flows that are within the given intervals at each edge and balance the total inflow and the total outflow at each node. Unlike previously proposed distributed algorithms that required bidirectional communication between pairs of nodes that share an edge in the flow network, the algorithm we propose can operate over any communication network, assuming the corresponding digraph that describes it is strongly connected. The proposed algorithm allows the nodes to asymptotically compute (with a geometric rate that depends on the specifics of the given flow network and communication topology) a solution to the feasible circulation problem, as long as such a solution exists. An important special case of the setting studied in this article is the case where the digraph of the flow network matches the digraph of the communication network.


Modeling multiagent decision making as decentralized Markov decision processes (MDP) or partially observable Markov decision processes (POMDP) establishes a theoretical foundation to multiagent cooperation problems and provides a quantified framework for solving those problems. In recent years, there have been intense interests in the study of the complexity of these models, and also in the study of the conditions in which optimal or approximation solutions can be constructed. However, we are still in the early stages toward our goal of applying such decision-theoretic techniques in agent building. One of the obstacles is to deal with agents with only partial knowledge of the problems. That is, in addition to the limitation of partial observability of the system states, the agents also have limited understanding of the decision process. While this limitation is easier to be formalized in certain representations like hierarchical task networks, expressing it in a MDP/POMDP model presents a challenge. In this paper we propose a framework to introduce agent's partial understanding of the problem-the so-called local views-into the MDP/POMDP model, and describe how to produce the local views for corresponding task networks.


Studies on a number of Japanese and American healthy individuals have indicated that platelet glycoprotein (GP) Ib is a polymorphic protein, in that two different GP Ib species can be observed in one individual (1, 2). This GP Ib polymorphism, which is apparently not associated with clinical symptoms (1, 2), was never described in combination with other platelet membrane abnormalities. An example of a disorder characterized by a platelet membrane abnormality is Glanzmann's thrombasthenia in which GP's lib and Ilia are absent or severely reduced (3). We now report a patient with GP lb polymorphism and Glanzmann's thrombasthenia type I. The patient N. A., an 8-year-old girl of Moroccan origin, was hospitalized because of persisting epistaxis and an extreme