In recent years, in the sphere of water purification, there has been successfully developed the direction of producing effective sorbents of petroleum products associated with altering the nature of their surface with compounds of various classes. An effective method is the hydrophobization process involving a special processing of materials by immersion in solutions or melts of water repellents, spraying them on the surface, etc. As water repellents, there are used silicon organic compounds, paraffin, monoalkyl ethers of polyethylene glycol, high molecular weight compounds, etc. The hydrophobizer itself must have good adhesion to the material and, being evenly distributed during the processing, it can form bonds with the surface, which will allow it not to be washed out and not to dissolve further during operation. However, hydrophobization has some disadvantages, such as the complexity of obtaining a modified surface which would be resistant to leaching, a considerable material consumption, a high cost, etc. In this work, we have investigated the possibilities of hydrophobization of expanded perlite with quaternary ammonium salts in order to reduce its water absorption. The optimal parameters of the hydrophobization process have been established. It is shown that among the used ammonium modifiers, the greatest beneficial effect is observed for catamine AB-18: under static conditions, the sorption capacity of expanded perlite samples modified with its 1 % solution is 2-3.5 times higher than the corresponding indicator of the original.


This paper illustrates the difficulty in disentangling the underlying channels of intergenerational earnings persistence by means of path analysis and recursive models. On closer examination, these models manifest their shortcomings as regards accounting for how parental earnings have a direct impact on their offspring's earnings, but also have an effect through other factors such as education, skills and health. The estimated effects of these mediating factors are likely to capture the influence of other mechanisms not taken into account in the analysis. Nonetheless, the results suggest that education is the most important mechanism in the earnings transmission process, although it is sensitive to the inclusion of other covariates and the order in which these are entered into the equation. Nonlinear specifications suggest that the effect of a father's earnings on his son's has the greatest impact primarily through education and IQ in the upper middle categories of the earnings distribution of the fathers, while health status is of secondary importance.


SMED is short for Swedish Environmental Emissions Data, which is a collaboration between IVL Swedish Environmental Research Institute, SCB Statistics Sweden, SLU Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and SMHI Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute.The revised emission factors that are proposed in the current project have a quite large effect on the Swedish national emissions within the public electricity and heat production sector. The emissions are lower for all air pollutants with the new emission factors, in particular for particulate matter, NH3, CO, dioxins, PAH, Se and Zn. For greenhouse gases, emissions of CH4 and N2O are much lower, however, CO2 emissions are slightly higher for the last year. In total there is a small decrease for the whole time series in greenhouse gas emissions expressed as CO2 equivalents.Many of the current emission factors that are used within the energy sector for the Swedish emission inventory were last reviewed and updated more than ten years ago. Since then, much more measurement data has become available that can serve as a basis to update the emission factors. In addition, technology development during the last ten years have in many cases led to reduced emissions, which needs to be reflected in the Swedish air emission reporting.Within the current project, all national emission factors for the public electricity and heat production sector, with the exception of CO2, have been reviewed. Only CO2 from waste incineration has been included in the review. In cases where new data and information have motivated a change of emission factors, revised factors have been proposed for the year 2015 as well as for historic years from 1990. For revised emission factors, corresponding emission factors for scenarios and uncertainty estimates have been adjusted.


Climate change and global warming pose great sustainability challenges to the aviation industry. Alternatives to petroleum-based fuels (hydrogen, natural gas, etc.) have emerged as promising aviation fuels for future aircraft. The present study aimed to contribute to the understanding of the impact of material selection on aviation sustainability, accounting for the type of fuel implemented and circular economy aspects. In this context, a decision support tool was introduced to aid decision-makers and relevant stakeholders to identify and select the best-performing materials that meet their defined needs and preferences, expressed through a finite set of conflicting criteria associated with ecological, economic, and circularity aspects. The proposed tool integrates life-cycle-based metrics extending to both ecological and economical dimensions and a proposed circular economy indicator (CEI) focused on the material/component level and linked to its quality characteristics, which also accounts for the quality degradation of materials which have undergone one or more recycling loops. The tool is coupled with a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodology in order to reduce subjectivity when determining the importance of each of the considered criteria.


Prion diseases are neurodegenerative conditions caused by misfolding of the prion protein, leading to conspicuous neuronal loss and intense microgliosis. Recent experimental evidence point towards a protective role of microglia against prion-induced neurodegeneration, possibly through elimination of prion-containing apoptotic bodies. The molecular mechanisms by which microglia recognize and eliminate apoptotic cells in the context of prion diseases are poorly defined. Here we investigated the possible involvement of signal regulatory protein α (SIRPα), a key modulator of host cell phagocytosis; SIRPα is encoded by the Sirpa gene that is genetically linked to the prion gene Prnp. We found that Sirpa transcripts are highly enriched in microglia cells within the brain. However, Sirpa mRNA levels were essentially unaltered during the course of experimental prion disease despite upregulation of other microglia-enriched transcripts. To study the involvement of SIRPα in prion pathogenesis in vivo, mice expressing a truncated SIRPα protein unable to inhibit phagocytosis were inoculated with rodent-adapted scrapie prions of the 22L strain. Homozygous and heterozygous Sirpa mutants and wild-type mice experienced similar incubation times after inoculation with either of two doses of 22L prions. Moreover, the extent of neuronal loss, microgliosis and abnormal prion protein accumulation was not significantly affected by Sirpa genotypes. Collectively, these data indicate that SIRPα-mediated phagocytosis is not a major determinant in prion disease pathogenesis. It will be important to search for additional candidates mediating prion phagocytosis, as this mechanism may represent an important target of antiprion therapies.


This study determined whether storage conditions over six months affected grain anthocyanin content and antioxidant capacity of four purple rice genotypes with different initial anthocyanin content. Two forms of grain, paddy and brown rice were stored at three temperatures -25 °C, room temperature (25-30 °C) and 60 °C with three replications. In the two high-anthocyanin genotypes, the anthocyanin continued to decrease until the last month of storage, while the low-anthocyanin genotypes were not affected by storage time. Storage at 60 °C decreased the average anthocyanin content by 42%, compared to the 30% loss for grain stored at either -25 °C or room temperature. Brown rice retained more of its anthocyanin than paddy rice in the high anthocyanin genotypes. Antioxidant capacity substantially declined during storage in all genotypes and the capacity was higher in brown than paddy rice. There was a significant correlation between anthocyanin content and antioxidant capacity in the two high-anthocyanin genotypes, but not in the low-anthocyanin genotypes, indicating the possibility of different anti-oxidative key compounds between the low- and high-anthocyanin genotypes. These results suggest that the anthocyanin content and antioxidant capacity in purple rice genotypes would be most stable when stored at low temperature as brown rice.


Dithizone, a chelating compound, was immobilized on the surface of three different types of alumina, acidic, neutral and basic, via physical adsorption as a simple, direct, efficient and environment friendly technique. Surface characterization of the newly modified alumina-functionalizeddithizone (I-III) was accomplished by 70-eV EI-MS as a promising technique for surface and thermal evaluations as well as infrared analysis and determination of the surface coverage values. The metal interaction properties of the newly modified alumina phases were studied for a series of heavy metal ions via determination of metal capacity under the influence of various factors. The results of distribution coefficient and separation factor revealed that the newly modified alumina phases are highly selective for Pb(II) and Cr(III). The potential suitability and applicability of modified alumina phases as solid chelating ion exchangers, extractors and preconcentrators for Pb(II) fromreal water and waste water samples were successfully accomplished with percentage removal, extraction and recovery values in the range of 93.0±6.0%-99.6±4.0% and a preconcentration factor equals 200 and without any interference of the matrix effect.


Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the widespread but fragmented application of Lean Six Sigma within the UK public sector, providing the context of some of the challenges faced within the sector as well as some of the successful applications of Lean Six Sigma. The paper fundamentally seeks to challenge the concept that Lean Six Sigma is not suitable for use in the public sector.

Design/methodology/approach

A summary of the challenges facing the public sector is shown from current literature and this is presented as drivers for change. A number of successful applications of Lean Six Sigma are then evidenced demonstrating examples across areas of the public sector.

Findings

This paper concludes that while Lean Six Sigma is applicable to the UK public sector additional work is required to better evidence the benefits and return on investment that can be delivered as well as considering more holistic approaches on an agency wide basis.

Research limitations/implications

This paper seeks to contribute to and broaden the limited body of evidence of the applicability of Lean Six Sigma to the UK public sector and identifies areas for further research and review.

Practical implications

Understanding the applicability of Lean Six Sigma affords opportunities to public sector agencies in the current budget climate but additionally affords ways in which quality of service can be enhanced. In some cases, it provides opportunities to meet new statutory requirements around community empowerment.

Originality/value

The paper contributes to the body of evidence that demonstrates the effectiveness of Lean Six Sigma within the public sector and suggests opportunity for those agencies to meet funding challenges faced across the UK.


One challenge in using multilevel models is determining how to report the amount of explained variance. In multilevel models, explained variance can be reported for each level or for the total model. Existing measures have been based primarily on the reduction of variance components across models. However, these measures have not been reported consistently because they have some undesirable properties. The present study is one of the first to evaluate the accuracy of these measures using Monte Carlo simulations. In addition, a measure based on the full partitioning of variance in multilevel models was examined. With the exception of the Level 2 explained variance measure, all other measures performed well across our simulated conditions.


The accelerated proximal methods (APM) have become one of the most important optimization tools for large-scale convex composite minimization problems, due to their wide range of applications and the optimal convergence rate in first-order algorithms. However, most existing theoretical results of APM are obtained by assuming that the gradient oracle is exact and the proximal mapping must be exactly solved, which may not hold in practice. This work presents a theoretical study of APM by allowing to use inexact gradient oracle and approximate proximal mapping. Specifically, we analyze inexact APM by improving the approximate duality gap technique (ADGT) which was originally designed for convergence analysis for first-order methods with both exact gradient oracle and proximal mapping. Our approach has several advantages: 1) we provide a unified convergence analysis that allows both inexact gradient oracle and approximate proximal mapping; 2) our proof is generic that naturally recovers the convergence rates of both accelerated and non-accelerated proximal methods, on top of which the advantages and the disadvantages of acceleration can be easily derived; 3) we derive the same convergence bound as previous methods in terms of inexact gradient oracle, but a tighter convergence bound in terms of approximate proximal mapping.


Substrate type is an important factor determining growth and yield of oyster mushroom. Five different substrates namely rice straw, maize husks, banana leaves, fingermillet husk and mixture of rice straw and black gram pod shell (1:1) were evaluated for the yield and related attributes of Pleurotus ostreatus. Standard cultivation practice was followed with steam sterilization and spawning was done on 575 g of substrate in individual poly-bag. The data of three flushes were recorded. Our results revealed that full spawn run completed earlier (18.57 days) in fingermillet husk as compared to any other tested substrates. The highest total quantity yield was obtained in fingermillet husk (1024.57g/bag) and rice straw (956.14g/bag) with corresponding biological efficiency 178.19% and 166.29%, respectively which were significantly higher than all other treatments (Mandeel et al., 2005). The cropping duration was significantly higher in maize husks and banana leaves as compared to rest of three treatments viz., fingermillet husk, rice straw and mixture of rice straw and black gram pod shell (1:1). These three treatments were not statistically different for cropping duration with each other. Considering the biological efficiency and earliness of crop the performance of fingermillet husk, followed by rice straw was found to be better.


We developed a mass spectrometric method to determine the p K a values of individual histidine residues in proteins. The method is based on the fact that the imidazole C 2-proton undergoes pH-dependent hydrogen-deuterium exchange reaction, of which the rate constant ( k phi) reflects the p K a for the ionization of imidazole to imidazolium. The experimental procedure consists of the following: (1) protein incubation in D 2O solvent at various pH values, (2) protein digestion by proteolytic enzyme(s), during which all the rapidly exchanging deuterons such as those in amide and hydroxyl groups are back-exchanged for protons, and (3) measurement of the mass spectrum of each histidine-containing peptide by LC/ESI-MS. The k phi of the H-D exchange reaction is obtained from the mass spectrum reflecting the extent of deuterium incorporation. The p K a value is then determined from a plot of k phi versus pH, which gives a typical sigmoidal curve. Unambiguous assignment of the p K a values to individual histidine residues can be achieved simultaneously based on the observed molecular mass of the peptide. The p K a values of three of four histidine residues (His12, -105, and -119) in RNase A were successfully determined by this method and were in good agreement with those determined by (1)H NMR and hydrogen-tritium exchange methods. The method uses subnanomole quantities of protein, allowing measurement at a much lower concentration than that of 1 mM required for the conventional NMR approach that is currently almost exclusively the method of choice.


Abstract Decentralization can be generally described as a process in which selected functions are assigned to sub-national units. The literature identifies a number of positive consequences of decentralization which all lead to a better satisfaction of citizens' needs for public services. Although the decentralization process in Croatia started more than ten years ago, it has not yet been completed. While leading to a new allocation of authorities and responsibilities to local government units, the level of fiscal decentralization remained lower than in the EU countries. In this paper we analyze the fiscal capacity of local government units to provide an insight into the main problems of decentralization in Croatia. We show that most local government units have very low fiscal capacity, which is insufficient for financing basic public functions with their own resources. The paper presents the results of a survey relating to the decentralization process conducted among local councilors at the regional level in Croatia. We explore how local councilors at the regional level evaluate different goals of decentralization. With the lack of fiscal capacity in mind, we identify two possible solutions for an optimal provision of public functions. The first one is the level of political will for a joint provision of public functions by different local units, and the second one is a change in the territorial organization of the country. We measure the difference in the attitudes toward these questions across counties.


Multi-touch interaction on tabletop displays is a very active field of todays HCI research. However, most publications still focus on tracking techniques or develop gesture configurations for a specific application setup using a small set of simple gestures. In this work we present a new approach to easily set up the recognition of even complex gestures for multi-touch applications. Our gesture recognition module is based on Hidden Markov Models, which offer a robust recognition of multiple gestures in real-time. An X3D interface of the recognition module is provided to qualify designers and other non-programmers to apply gesture recognition functionalities to multi-touch applications in an easy and straightforward manner.


ABSTRACT-Tuberculosis (TB) is still a public health problem that has become a global and national challenge. Indonesia is currently ranked 4th out of 22 countries that have a high TB burden. While the number of TB cases in Indonesia in Central Java is still below the global target. In Surakarta, TB discovery cases show a number that is less consistent from year to year. With a high population growth, the number of TB cases is less significant. In order to increase TB case screening, it can be done through Early Detection of TB Cases by cadres. Through the Early Detection Model TB cases by cadres are better because they are consistent with one of the elements of the WHO's new strategy to stop TB, namely patient and community empowerment. This study aims to find out and analyze how Community TB Care 'Aisyiyah Surakarta cadres conducts social penetration processes to TB suspects so that they are willing to conduct early detection of TB disease. In this study, the author focused on the stages of social penetration carried out by cadres. The writing of this thesis uses a qualitative descriptive method. The source of the data came from in-depth interviews and observations with Community TB Care 'Aisyiyah cadres The results of the study show that the cadre of Tb Care 'Aisyiyah community is in the orientation phase using a combination of active and informative strategies to find TB suspects. Then in the exchange of affective assessments and affective exchanges, costs and rewards incurred are equitable and stable exchange occurs when the cadre becomes a companion cadre taking medication for TB patients. With this social penetration, it is expected that the Aisyiyah Surakarta Community TB Care cadre can perform their role well so that the discovery numbers meet the target and Indonesia can be free from TB disease in 2020. Keywords: Social Penetration, Community TB Care 'Aisyiyah Cadre, Suspect TB, Early Detection of TB, Tuberculosis (TB)


This study aimed to compare the effect of using conceptual map and traditional instruction on cognitive learning of Senior high school students in thinking and media literacy course. This is a quasi-experimental research using experimental and control groups. Three classes were chosen randomly (one for conceptual map teaching, one for the combination of lecture-based and conceptual map teaching (combined) and one as the control group).  In the combined group, learners were taught though conceptual mapping while the experimental group was exposed to both teacher-made conceptual map and combined method in eight sessions and the control group experienced traditional instruction. All the three groups completed the teacher-made academic achievement test in both levels of knowledge and high level of thinking.  The validity of the instrument measured through S. H. Lawshe formula was 0.78 and the reliability measured through Kuder - Richardson was 0.807. In order to analyze the data, covariance analysis was used. The findings of this study showed that the instruction was not effective at the level of knowledge, but there was a significant difference in the high level of comprehension which means that the highest effect was observed in the lecturing and conceptual mapping group (combined) while the lowest effect was attributed to the control group.  Keywords: Presentation and construction of concept map, Bloom cognitive levels, Concept map, Meaningful learning


Background and purpose: In recent years, consumption of commercial protein supplements and hormones that improve body appearance endangers the health of athletes especially in bodybuilding sport. Recently, use of plant extracts to reduce the side effects of drugs and improving physical activity has gained a lot of attention. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a supplement (mixture powder of Fenugreek seeds, rhizomes of Ginger and Alhaji manna) on increasing muscle strength and body composition in athletes in Mashhad, Iran, 2015. Materials and Methods: A quasi-experimental study with pretest and posttest design was carried out in which 40 male athletes were selected using stratified random sampling. The participants had at least one year activity in fitness clubs. They were divided into control and experimental groups (n = 20 per group). The experimental group performed specific exercises for six weeks and had a daily intake of 5 grams of the supplement (in non-training days and one hr before the exercises). Data analysis was done in SPSS V.20 applying Mann Whitney and Wilcoxon tests. Results: The Wilcoxon test showed that taking the supplement in six weeks of bodybuilding exercises increased the factors influencing body composition and muscle strength in the experimental group (p≤0.05). Conclusion: According to this study, a mixture powder of Fenugreek seeds, rhizomes of Ginger and Alhaji manna is helpful in improving muscle strength and body composition in athletes.


The wireless broadcast nature enables a video source to multicast a stream to a group of mobile clients efficiently. However, since different clients might experience heterogeneous wireless channel conditions, the throughput of single-hop multicast schemes is bounded by the clients that experience a poor channel condition. This paper presents a relay-based video multicast scheme that allows the clients experiencing a better channel condition to select a suitable transmission bit-rate and relay data for neighboring poorly-connected clients. We first formulate a joint time-allocation and rate-selection model that allocates bandwidth resources to each relay node, and then propose a network-coding-based forwarding scheme to determine which video frames should be forwarded by each relay. Our evaluation results show that the proposed relay-based scheme can utilize channel bandwidth more efficiently, and, therefore, improve the average visual quality by up to 5dB as compared to single-hop multicast.


Introduction The purpose of this paper is to present the experience at the Duke University Medical Center with inferior vena caval ligation for thromboembolic disease. A detailed historical review of inferior vena caval ligation is not intended, since a comprehensive review of the subject was recently published by Dale. 1 In this discussion, special emphasis is given to (1) the indications for vena caval ligation; (2) venous pressure studies as a guide to the physiologic effect of ligation in the individual patient; (3) phlebography to outline the extent of venous occlusive disease; (4) immediate postoperative complications, and (5) late sequelae and long-term socioeconomic disability. Analysis of Cases Forty patients underwent vena caval ligation for thromboembolic disease; 23 patients were seen at the Duke University Medical Center and 17 patients were treated at the Durham Veterans Administration Hospital. There were 26 male and 14 female patients in the group, and the


In Germany the number of casualties in passenger car to pedestrian crashes has been reduced by a considerable amount of 40% as regards fatalities and 25% with regard to seriously injured pedestrians since the year 2001. Similar trends can be seen in other European countries. The reasons for that positive development are still under investigation. As infrastructural or behavioral changes do in general take a longer time to be effective in real world, explanations related to improved active and passive safety of passenger vehicles can be more relevant in providing answers for this trend. The effect of passive pedestrian protection – specified by the European New Car Assessment Programme (EuroNCAP) pedestrian test result – is of particular interest and has already been analyzed by several authors. However, the number of vehicles with some valid Euro NCAP pedestrian score (post 2002 rating) was quite limited in most of those studies. To overcome this problem of small datasets German National Accident Records have been taken to investigate a similar objective but now based on a much bigger dataset. The paper uses German National Accident Records from the years 2009 to 2011. In total 65.140 records of pedestrian to passenger car crashes have been available. Considering crash parameters like accident location (rural / urban areas) etc., 27.143 of those crashes have been classified to be relevant for the analysis of passive pedestrian safety. In those 27.143 records 7.576 Euro NCAP rated vehicles (post 2002 rating) have been identified. In addition it was possible to identify vehicles which comply with pedestrian protection legislation (2003/102/EG) where phase 1 came into force in October 2005. A significant correlation between Euro NCAP pedestrian score and injury outcome in real-life car to pedestrian crashes was found. Comparing a vehicle scoring 5 points and a vehicle scoring 22 points, pedestrians' conditional probability of getting fatally injured is reduced by 35% (from 0.58% to 0.37%) for the later one. At the same time the probability of serious injuries can be reduced by 16% (from 27.4% to 22.9%). No significant injury reducing effect, associated with the introduction of pedestrian protection legislation (phase 1) was detected. Considerable effects have also been identified comparing diesel and gasoline cars. Higher engine displacements are associated with a lower injury risk for pedestrians. The most relevant parameter has been "time of accident", whereas pedestrians face a more than 2 times higher probability to be fatally injured during night and darkness as compared to daytime conditions.


A Proactive Recommender System (PRS) actively pushes recommendations to users when the current context seems appropriate. Despite the advantages of PRSs, especially in the mobile scenario where users could be provided with relevant items on-the-fly when needed, the area of PRSs is still unexplored with many challenges. In particular, it is crucial to identify the relevant items for the target users as well as to determine the right context for pushing these items, since otherwise the user acceptance, and therefore system success, will be negatively impacted. In this paper, we propose a new model that scores each item on two dimensions, preference fit and context fit, to proactively push relevant items to the target user in the right context. Furthermore, we present the preliminary design of a prototype of a mobile Point of Interest (POI) recommender which will be implemented in order to evaluate the practicality and effectiveness of our proposed model.


Mentha piperita L., as an aromatic culinary herb and a source of variety of phytochemicals including effective antioxidants, is overexploited by food industry. It demands rapid conservation by means of in vitro propagation of improved clones. Here, we have made an attempt to evaluate and augment the antioxidative potential of M. piperita L. by additing a precursor to the tissue culture derived clones and compared it with the in vivo plants so that tissue culture derived plants can serve as an alternative source of drug. M. piperita L. were analyzed for total phenol, flavonoids, total antioxidant activity, free radical scavenging activity and lipid peroxidase activity. Total phenol content in in vivo plants was lesser than in in vitro. In case of total flavonoid content, it also varies through the season where tissue culture derived plants showed similar and continuous production of total flavonoids content. The percentage inhibition of the in vitro plant extract of precursor fed clone was higher than that of in vivo plant extract. Antioxidant capacity of ascorbic acid was used as a reference standard from which plant extracts with potential antioxidant activity were compared. After addition of precursor, the in vitro mint plant proved more efficient in inhibiting lipid peroxidation after one hour than the in vivo plant, which has high absorbance value indicating lipid peroxide formation.


Furfural is a toxic aromatic aldehyde that can cause a severe environmental problem especially the wastewater drown from petroleum refinery units. In the present work, a useless by-product from local furniture manufacturing industry; sawdust was used as raw material for the preparation of activated carbon which is chemically activated with phosphoric acid. The effect of adsorption variables which include initial pH of solution (2-9), agitation speed (50-250) rpm, agitation time (15-120) min, initial concentration of furfural (50-250) ppm, and amount of adsorbent material (0.5-2.5) g for the three adsorbents used (prepared activated carbon, commercial activated carbon and raw sawdust) were investigated in a batch process in order to obtain the maximum furfural removal from wastewater. The results obtained from the experimental investigation show that the percentage removal of furfural increases with increasing pH and agitation speed until a maximum value after that it decreased with increasing pH and agitation speed. Also increases with increasing amount of adsorbent material and agitation time until a maximum value then reaches a constant value approximately, and decreasing with increasing furfural concentration. The maximum removal percent of furfural was 97.8, 94.4 and 55.9% for prepared activated carbon, commercial activated carbon, and raw sawdust respectively, which is obtained at a pH of 7.0, agitation speed of 150 revolutions per minute, agitation time of 105 minutes, furfural concentration of 100mg/L, and adsorbent amount of 1.5gm. Langmuir model is best fitted the data than Freundlich model.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of a structured handwriting readiness program on improving fine motor skills of preschool children attending a rural Head Start. Pre- and post-testing of an experimental classroom and a control classroom was completed using the Fine Manual Control and Manual Coordination composites of the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency Second Edition (BOT-2). The experimental classroom was exposed to the Fine Motor and Early Writing curriculum during center time in approximately four 5-10 minute increments twice a week for 16 weeks. Data analysis indicated that the experimental class had an increase greater than the control class in mean total point scores between pre-test and post-test in the Fine Motor Integration and Manual Dexterity subtests. The data also supported the use of the Fine Motor and Early Writing curriculum with preschool students with the largest deficit in fine motor skills by indicating an increase in scores for the lower quadrant of scores for the Fine Motor Control Fine Motor Integration Manual Dexterity and Upper-Limb Coordination subtests. Overall data analysis suggests that the Fine Motor and Early Writing curriculum has a positive effect on the development of fine motor integration and manual dexterity skills in preschool children and an even greater effect on the students with greater fine motor delay.


Focuses on the impact of supercenters on traditional food retailers in four markets, including two small cities (Victoria, Texas; Gainesville, Georgia) and two large cities (Columbus, Ohio; Omaha, Nebraska). Consumer surveys were conducted in order to assess the effects of the entry of Meijer, Wal‐Mart, Kmart, and Target supercenters. The results show supercenters can gain from 15 to 20 percent of primary shoppers and an even greater proportion of secondary shoppers. Furthermore, the supercenter primary shoppers, and especially those of Wal‐Mart and Meijer, identified low price and assortment more often as the reason for store choice. In comparison, traditional supermarket primary shoppers were less willing to trade off locational convenience or, in some cases, quality and assortment. Wal‐Mart is predicted to continue to rapidly gain share at the expense of competitors who do not differentiate themselves in some significant way.


Requirements engineering isn't recognized as a creative process. However, as new systems and products emerge, stakeholders are increasingly creating and inventing ideas that they express as requirements. Requirements engineering, with its focus on elicitation, analysis, and management, has yet to fully grasp this trend. We applied techniques to encourage creative thinking during the requirements process for a software-based system in a naturally conservative domain - air traffic management (ATM). We applied unusual theories, such as analogical reasoning from cognitive science, to underpin the use of these techniques, and we report basic results and lessons learned. We focus on the creativity techniques we applied (see the sidebar) and demonstrate them with examples from the ATM domain.


Modeling water distribution and flow in partially saturated soils requires knowledge of the soil water characteristic (SWC). However, measurement of the SWC is challenging and time-consuming and, in some cases, not feasible. This study introduces two predictive models (FW–model and AW–model) for the SWC, derived from readily available soil properties such as texture and bulk density. A total of 46 undisturbed soils from different horizons at 15 locations across Denmark were used for model evaluation. The FW–model predicts the volumetric water content as a function of volumetric fines content (organic matter and clay). It performed reasonably well for the dry-end of SWC (above a pF value of 2.0; pF = log(|ψ|), where ψ is the matric potential in cm), but did not do as well closer to saturated conditions. The AW–model predicts the volumetric water content as a function of volumetric content of different particle size fractions (organic matter, clay, silt, and fine and coarse sands). The volumetric content of a particular soil particle size fraction was considered if it contributed to the pore size fraction still occupied with water at the given pF value. Hereby, the AW–model implicitly assumes that a given particle size fraction creates an analogue pore size fraction and further this pore size fraction filled with water is corresponding to a certain pF value according to the well-known capillary rise equation. The AW–model was found to be quite robust, and it performed exceptionally well for pF values ranging from 0.4 to 4.2 for different soil types. For prediction of the continuous SWC, it is recommended to parameterize the van Genuchten model based on the SWC data points predicted by the AW–model.


Calcium-parathyroid hormone (Ca-PTH) relationships were studied perioperatively in 35 patients with primary hyperparathyroidism. Twenty-nine patients had solitary adenomas that caused preoperative hypercalcemia; those patients whose remaining glands were subjected to biopsy were classified as having either microscopic evidence of suppression in those glands (15 patients) or no evidence of suppression (less than or equal to 30% stromal fat on biopsy cross sections, 11 patients). Before surgery, all patients showed the expected positive slopes for Ca-PTH linear regression curves. After surgery, all patients with adenomas showed an immediate and sustained shift of the Ca-PTH regression to the right; this shift achieved statistical significance only in those patients whose remaining glands showed microscopic evidence of suppression (greater than 30% fat, p less than 0.05). Moreover, the slope of the Ca-PTH regression curve for these patients assumed a negative value 1 month after surgery. All patients with adenomas were eucalcemic after surgery, regardless of the cellularity of the remaining in situ glands. We conclude that the absence of microscopic suppression in grossly suppressed parathyroid glands at the time of adenoma resection for hyperparathyroidism does not affect postoperative results. However, the presence of microscopic hyperplasia in macroscopically normal or suppressed glands may represent a persistent alteration in biologic function, evidenced by failure of these glands to achieve negative calcium regulation.


The recent development of tool steels and high-speed steels has led to a significant increase in alloy additions, such as Co, Cr, Mo, N, V, and W. Knowledge about the phase relations in these multicomponent alloys, that is, the relative stability between different carbides or the solubility of different elements in the carbides and in the matrix phase, is essential for understanding the behaviour of these alloys in heat treatments. This information is also the basis for improving the properties or designing new alloys by controlling the amount of alloying elements. Thermodynamic calculations together with a thermodynamic database is a very powerful and important tool for alloy development of new tool steels and high-speed steels. By thermodynamic calculations one can easily predict how different amounts of alloying elements influence on the stability of different phases. Phase fractions of the individual phases and the solubility of different elements in the phases can be predicted quickly. Thermodynamic calculations can also be used to find optimised processing temperatures, e.g. for different heat treatments. Combining thermodynamic calculations with kinetic modelling one can also predict the microstructure evolution in different processes such as solidification, dissolution heat treatments, carbide coarsening, and the important tempering step producing secondary carbides. The quality of predictions based on thermodynamic calculations directly depends on the accuracy of the thermodynamic database used. In the present work new experimental phase equilibria information, both in model alloys containing few elements and in commercial alloys, has been determined and was used to evaluate and improve the thermodynamic description. This new experimental investigation was necessary because important information concerning the different carbide systems in tool steels and high-speed steels were lacking. A new thermodynamic database for tool steels and high-speed steels, TOOL05, has been developed within this thesis. With the new database it is possible to calculate thermodynamic properties and phase equilibria with high accuracy and good reliability. Compared with the previous thermodynamic description the improvements are significant. In addition the composition range of different alloying elements, where reliable results are obtained with the new thermodynamic database, have been widened significantly. As the available kinetic data did not always predict results in agreement with new experiments the database was modified in the present work. By coupling the new thermodynamic description with the new kinetic description accurate diffusion simulations can be performed for carbide coarsening, carbide dissolution and micro segregation during solidification.


P-T conditions of the Alpine regional metamorphism of carbonate successions which form the cover sequence of the southern Veporicum crystalline basement have been determined. The P-T estimates were calculated on the basis of microprobe chemical analyses of equilibrium mineral assemblages together with analyses of bulk rock chemical composition. The calibrated geothermic reactions Cal-Dol and Kfs-Phl were used. Geothermometric and geobarometric data were obtained using the SOLVCALC, TWQ and PERPLEX software programs in combination with phengite geobarometry. The metacarbonates were formed from a sedimentary-carbonate protolith in low-pressure and low-temperature conditions of greenschist facies in the kyanite stability field: TCal = 354-476°C, TAb-Or = 329-453°C, P = 0.3-0.5 GPa, during Cretaceous orogeny


Abstract This research contribution instantiates a framework of a hybrid cascade neural network based on the application of a specific sort of neo-fuzzy elements and a new peculiar adaptive training rule. The main trait of the offered system is its competence to continue intensifying its cascades until the required accuracy is gained. A distinctive rapid training procedure is also covered for this case that offers the possibility to operate with non-stationary data streams in an attempt to provide online training of multiple parametric variables. A new training criterion is examined for handling non-stationary objects. Additionally, there is always an occasion to set up (increase) the inference order and the number of membership relations inside the extended neo-fuzzy neuron.


The Mn3XN(X=Zn, Cu, Sn) compounds and their solid solutions with anti-perovskite structure were prepared by solid state reaction. Their magnetic transition and simultaneous abnormal thermal expansion behaviors were studied by SQUID and variable temperature X-ray diffraction. The lattice contraction was found in Mn3Cu0.5Sn0.5N and Mn3Zn0.5Sn0.5N during the magnetic transition process, however not in pure Mn3XN(X=Zn, Cu, Sn). The mechanism is discussed, combined with the different doping effects. It seems that the lattice contraction behavior is sensitive to the number of valence electrons at the X site in Mn3XN series.


We studied the effectiveness of protected area management within a Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) priority place for conservation investment, located in the coastal areas of Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique. At least 473 sites in this region have completed Management Effectiveness Tracking Tool (METT) assessments since 2003, often associated with Global Environment Facility (GEF) funded projects, but also through work funded by other donors and WWF itself. We show that community managed reserves score higher using the METT tool when compared with sites managed by the state forest agencies. We situate this within the context of approaches to reserve management in Tanzania, where state-managed Forest Reserves have received little in terms of funding support and score lowest when compared with all other management types in Tanzania. Further, we show that slightly higher average METT scores for sites where WWF are working across Kenya, Tanzania and Mozambique, when compared with all other sites, are most pronounced in elements of the METT tool relating to inputs, process and planning, and are not seen in outputs or outcomes. We discuss the utility of the METT tool for organisations like WWF to evaluate their impact in protected area management, including the issue of systematic bias in data recording (WWF facilitation of assessments) and that more time may be required to see the outcomes and impacts from any management improvements that have been achieved.


Density functional theory calculations of hydrogen storage capacity for different organometallic structures have been carried out. Complexes involving Sc, Ti and V bound to C4H4, C5H5, C5F5 and B3N3H6 molecules have been considered, and all present a hydrogen storage capability limited by the 18-electron rule. In order to stabilize the complexes, which the 18-electron rule is not completed, additional ligands are considered, namely -H, -CH3, -NH2, -OH and -F. These ligands affect the H2-metal bond; particularly the back donation effect from the metal atom to the * antibonding state of H2 and then its H2 storage capacity.


For a full-Stokes polarimeter (FSP), generally there are two types of noise, signal-dependent Poisson shot noise and signal-independent additive Gaussian noise, which will degrade the signal-to-noise ratio on the measured Stokes parameters. The relation between the immunity to Gaussian noise and the condition of the measurement matrix has been widely studied in the recent literature. In this paper, we present a new merit function and use it to achieve optimal configurations with immunity to both types of noise. The numerical results show that, for the FSP consisting of variable retarders followed by a fixed polarizer, the four measurement channels immune to these two types of noise can be optimally composed by a 102.2° retardance with a pair of azimuths ±71.9° and a 142.1° retardance with a pair of azimuths ±34.95°, or by two quarter-wave plates with four pairs of azimuths (±70.15°, ±87.84°) and (±42.82°, ±19.14°). The tolerances of the retardances or azimuths in the optimized configurations are evaluated for practical manufacturing, assembling and alignment.


Despite much publicity given to the criticisms relating to product cost
measurement and the prevailing costing systems since the mid-1980s, there was
a scarcity in surveys relating to this area. In the 1990s, studies on management
accounting practices and product-costing, focusing on the Activity-Based Costing
(ABC) increased, but mainly in Europe and the US. Therefore this research is
undertaken in Malaysia, to study the product-cost system design from a broader
perspective, and investigate the criticisms. The over-riding objective is to explore
the influence of explanatory variables on the design of product costing systems,
using the contingency theory framework explicitly, one of the major contributions
for this study. Other objectives include examining the extent to which different
cost information is used for different purposes; sophistication level of productcost
system maintained; prevalence of financial accounting mentality; treatment
of non-manufacturing costs in manufacturing companies; extent of ABC usage;
nature, content and role of profitability analysis.
A postal questionnaire survey was conducted giving a response rate of 27%.
Concrete evidence on the prevalence of financial accounting mentality is not
available as the overall findings indicated mixed responses. Investigation
revealed that 51% of the firms use unsophisticated, 42% maintain low
sophistication level and 7% maintain sophisticated systems. Only 6.5% of the
firms adopted ABC. Nevertheless the respondents were satisfied and perceived
their costing systems to be accurately assigning costs to products/services.
Although periodic profitability analysis is considered to be important for decisionmaking,
the content of it is questionable as a large number of firms use full costs
with arbitrary allocation bases or inappropriate cost drivers.
Only the variables 'size' (significant) and 'competitive environment' (weak
significant) influence sophistication levels maintained.
Finally the limitations of this study that may affect the possibility of generalising
the findings are acknowledged and suggestions for areas of future research
highlighted.


Uncontrolled releases of petroleum compounds that are carcinogenic, mutagenic and are potent immunotoxicants into soil and groundwater poses a serious threat to human and animal health. Biodegradation of hydrocarbon-contaminated soils has been established as an efficient, economic, versatile and environmentally sound treatment. Ten indigenous microorganisms were isolated from contaminated soils using the enrichment technique. Five isolates with the highest degradation potentials under standard degradation conditions were identified as Acinetobacter calcoaceticus (LT1 and ETS2), Acinetobacter sp. (LT1A), Citrobacter freundii (MRC3) and Bacillus pumilus (JLB). B. pumilus achieved 86.94% of diesel degradation in 2 weeks. Additional degradation assay was carried out in liquid media using 3 local commercial fertilizers as nutrient supplements in comparison with the Bushnell-Haas (BH) media. The results show that the addition of fertilizer F1 stimulated diesel degradation by all isolates especially B. pumilus while the addition of fertilizer F3 seemed to strongly inhibit the bacterial ability of diesel degradation. The inoculation with the consortia did not show a higher degradation potential than the individual isolate. The results strongly indicate that environmental conditions of the contaminated sites play a crucial role in the degradation even though additional diesel-degrader has been introduced into the contaminated site.


1. The spontaneous occurrence of myeloid leukemia of the fowl is confirmed 2. Myeloid leukemia of the fowl is transmissible by intravenous or intraperitoneal injection of an organic emulsion. The latter is in confirmation of the work of Ellermann and Bang (6, 7), who first successfully transmitted the disease. They were followed by Hirschfeld and Jacoby (13)) whose successful transmissions, however, seem to be limited to a strain which had its origin in a fowl presented to them by Ellermann and Bang. Burckhardt (14, 15) likewise transmitted the disease, but here again the stock animal came from Hirschfeld and Jacoby and therefore indirectly from Ellermann and Bang. The transmission reported above is of special interest, because it originated in an animal absolutely unrelated to that of the previous investigators


Sequestration of misfolded proteins into pericentriolar inclusions called aggresomes is a means that cells use to minimize misfolded protein-induced cytotoxicity. However, the molecular mechanism by which misfolded proteins are recruited to aggresomes remains unclear. Mutations in the E3 ligase parkin cause autosomal recessive Parkinson's disease that is devoid of Lewy bodies, which are similar to aggresomes. Here, we report that parkin cooperates with heterodimeric E2 enzyme UbcH13/Uev1a to mediate K63-linked polyubiquitination of misfolded DJ-1. K63-linked polyubiquitination of misfolded DJ-1 serves as a signal for interaction with histone deacetylase 6, an adaptor protein that binds the dynein–dynactin complex. Through this interaction, misfolded DJ-1 is linked to the dynein motor and transported to aggresomes. Furthermore, fibroblasts lacking parkin display deficits in targeting misfolded DJ-1 to aggresomes. Our findings reveal a signaling role for K63-linked polyubiquitination in dynein-mediated transport, identify parkin as a key regulator in the recruitment of misfolded DJ-1 to aggresomes, and have important implications regarding the biogenesis of Lewy bodies.


"Results obtained by numerical taxonomic and biometric methods suggest the occurrence of three species (two new). The mathematical procedures used are vectorial analysis, the multivariate biometric methods of principal component analysis and the study of homogeneity of covariance matrices. Principal component analysis is employed as a numerical taxonomic device for identifying consistent and significant differences in cytherellids."


The physical interaction of robots with its environment requires a touch sensory system to function effectively. This sensory system measures the robot-environment interactive force and pressure information that can be converted to electrical signals. We fabricated and compared a series of of electronic textile (e-textile) tactile sensors using flexible piezoresistive materials and two types of conductive textile materials with varying layer constructions. Compared with conventional rigid counterparts, the tactile sensors have advantages in terms of light weight, flexible simple design, high sensitivity, low power consumption, and stretchability and thus is operable at varying curvy surfaces and dynamic forces.


The arab poetry is born among the wandering bedouins of the desert. The long odes (qasidat), were born to be recited in the camp, at night, under the stars and around the fire. The ode includes always a section named nasib wich intention is to describe the erratic course of the desert rider in search of his beloved woman. On the other hand, throughout centuries and with rare exceptions, the social conditions of arab poets were precarious. This meant that they were obliged to wander between courts to find patrons, in order to guarantee means of subsistence. These two circumstances, together with the hazards of existing politics, determined the erring matrix of life of the ancient arab poets: most of them, despite their outstanding talent, were compelled to being mainly vagrant panegyrists.


This paper concerns stereoscopic virtual reality displays in which the head is tracked and the display is stationary, attached to a desk, tabletop or wall. These are called stereoscopic HTDs (head-tracked displays). Stereoscopic displays render two perspective views of a scene, each of which is seen by one eye of the user. Ideally, the user's natural visual system combines the stereo image pair into a single, 3D perceived image. Unfortunately, users often have difficulty fusing the stereo image pair. Researchers use a number of software techniques to reduce fusion problems. This paper geometrically examines and compares a number of these techniques and reaches the following conclusions: In interactive stereoscopic applications, the combination of view placement, scale, and either false eye separation or /spl alpha/-false eye separation can provide fusion control that is geometrically similar to image shifting and image scaling. However, in stereo HTDs, image shifting and image scaling also generate additional geometric artifacts that are not generated by the other methods. We anecdotally link some of these artifacts to exceeding the perceptual limitations of human vision. While formal perceptual studies are still needed, geometric analysis suggests that image shifting and image scaling may be less appropriate than the other methods for interactive, stereo HTDs.


Relations between self-injuring behavior (SIB), the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) stress axis, and response to an opiate antagonist were examined. Subjects were observed in their residential settings, while behavior was recorded. Blood was collected in the morning, evening, and immediately after SIB. Plasma beta-E was uncoupled from ACTH after SIB but not during the morning baseline. A significant number of the subjects (a) reduced their SIB at least 25% at all doses of naltrexone (NTX) and (b) reduced their SIB over 50% for at least one dose of NTX. The lowest dosage of NTX significantly reduced SIB in subjects with baseline levels of beta-E higher than after SIB. Results support previous reports that the HPA axis is disturbed among subjects exhibiting SIB.


BACKGROUND
The risk for venous thromboembolism (VTE) is elevated with albuminuria or a low estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR). However, the VTE risk due to the combined effects of eGFR and albuminuria are unknown.

STUDY DESIGN
Population-based cohort study.

SETTINGS & PARTICIPANTS
694,956 adults in Ontario, Canada, from 2002 to 2012.

FACTORS
eGFR and albumin-creatinine ratio (ACR).

OUTCOME
VTE.

RESULTS
15,180 (2.2%) VTE events occurred during the study period. Both albuminuria and eGFR were independently associated with VTE. The association of albuminuria and VTE differed by level of eGFR (P for ACR × eGFR interaction < 0.001). After considering the competing risk for death, there was a 61% higher rate of VTE in patients with normal eGFRs (eGFRs>90mL/min/1.73m2) and heavy albuminuria (ACR>300mg/g) compared with those with normal eGFRs and no albuminuria (subdistribution HR, 1.61; 95% CI, 1.38-1.89). Among those with reduced kidney function (eGFR, 15-29mL/min/1.73m2), the risk for VTE was only minimally increased, irrespective of albuminuria (subdistribution HRs of 1.23 [95% CI, 1-1.5] and 1.09 [95% CI, 0.82-1.45] for ACR<30 and >300mg/g, respectively).

LIMITATIONS
Only single determinations of ACR and eGFR were used. Diagnostic/International Classification of Diseases codes were used to define VTE.

CONCLUSIONS
Albuminuria increases the risk for VTE markedly in patients with normal eGFRs compared with those with lower eGFRs.


We report a case of Propionibacterium acnes septic arthritis of a shoulder following two joint access procedures. Methodical investigation of these two procedures was performed using the Joint Commission root cause analysis matrix, which involved examination of protocols, interviews with technologists and physicians, and inspection of the procedure rooms and equipment. No procedural error or other causal factor for infection was found other than the injection through a five day-old tattoo during the first procedure. We could find no other reported cases of Propionibacterium acnes seeding a joint via an arthrogram needle. This may be an under-reported phenomenon or could be a unique case. In either instance, the occurrence bears notice by anyone performing joint access procedures.


The present study explored the risk behaviors for HIV transmission of adolescent and young female sex workers (FSW) from three large cities of Romania. A snowball sample of 300 FSW aged 13-24 years old identified the main risk factors for HIV infection, based on measures of association between variables (Pearson chi square), tests for differences of means (t tests) and logistic regressions for predicting the vulnerabilities of respondents. The main risks identified were: injecting drugs and selling sex, being younger (under 18 years old), inconsistent condom use, belonging to the Roma ethnic group and having low education. Context-specific indicators of vulnerability include not having ID papers, having forced sex (reported by more than half of FSW) or having anal sex. Data reveal that younger FSW (under 18 years old) and of Roma ethnicity are experiencing higher risks than older ones and non Roma. While increased vulnerability among younger FSW has previously been identified, this study reveals that ethnic Roma FSW are overrepresented within this group and are particularly at high risk for HIV transmission.


3D models of urban sites with geometry and facade textures are needed for many planning and visualization applications. Approximate 3D wireframe model can be derived from aerial images but detailed textures must be obtained from ground level images. Integrating such views with the 3D models is difficult as only small parts of buildings may be visible in a single view. We describe a method that uses two or three vanishing points, and three 3D to 2D line correspondences to estimate the rotational and translational parameters of the ground level cameras. The valid set of multiple combinations of 3D to 2D line pairs is chosen by a hypotheses generation and evaluation Some experimental results are presented.


The urinary bladder of the toad Bufo marinus has been used to examine the effect on sodium transport, measured by short-circuit current, of natural antidiuretic hormones and several synthetic peptide analogs. In mammals, these synthetic analogs show specificity for different receptors, designated V1 and V2 receptors, whose biological responses are mediated by phosphatidyl inositol breakdown products or adenylate cyclase activity, respectively. All analogs stimulated SCC, with relative potencies AVT greater than AVP greater than Phe2 OVT (V1 agonist) much greater than d(CH2)5Tyr(Me)AVP (V1 antagonist) = d(CH2)5[D-Ile2,Abu4]AVP (V2 antagonist). The V1 and V2 antagonists inhibited the SCC response to AVT and Phe2OVT, with similar inhibitory potencies. We conclude that the stimulation of sodium transport by antidiuretic hormones involves one hormone receptor which does not show the selectivity of mammalian antidiuretic hormone receptors, and may represent a more primitive type of receptor.


Infectious diseases of the breast can demonstrate a wide variety of clinical presentations and imaging appearances. Breast abscesses are often a complication of infectious mastitis of the breast. Puerperal mastitis is the most common cause of breast abscess, typically affecting postpartum females. Often diagnosed clinically, it is usually treated with antibiotics without need for imaging. Non-puerperal mastitis is relatively uncommon and typically subareolar in location. Patients can present with asymmetric breast thickening, a palpable lump, nipple discharge, or axillary adenopathy. These presentations can mimic malignancy. Herein, this pictorial review demonstrates imaging findings of common and uncommon infectious processes of the breast and clinically important mimickers of breast infection.


Small businesses often display a lack of concern towards cybercrime and information security problems. A lack of concern usually results in delayed or incorrectly implemented security measures, which increases vulnerability to cybercrime. This paper presents an empirical study of 122 small business owners from the state of Hawaii with regards to their information security concerns. These results are compared with earlier studies conducted in 2000 and 2003. The results of this study showed a significant evolution of information security issues within small businesses. This research suggests that small businesses leaders need to demonstrate leadership, technical knowledge and actions to broaden their preparation against a range of information security issues and problems. The findings may be applicable to small business leaders who proactively search for a cost-effective and optimal combination of leadership styles, technologies, and policies that will mitigate the evolving threats of cybercrime and information security problems.


The logic programming language λProlog is based on the intuitionistic theory of higher-order hereditary Harrop formulas, a logic that significantly extends the theory of Horn clauses. A systematic exploitation of features in the richer logic endows λProlog with capabilities at the programming level that are not present in traditional logic programming languages. Several studies have established the value of λProlog as a language for implementing systems that manipulate formal objects such as formulas, programs, proofs and types. Towards harnessing these benefits, methods have been developed for realizing this language efficiently. This work has culminated in the description of an abstract machine and compiler based implementation scheme. An actual implementation of λProlog based on these ideas has recently been completed. The planned presentation will exhibit this system—called Teyjus—and will also illuminate the metalanguage capabilities of λProlog.


Initiation and progression of cracks in a saturated porous media is an important topic which has attracted considerable attention from researchers in the recent years. Extended finite element method (EFEM) is a contemporary technique removing the necessity of consecutive meshing of the problem in the analysis process. In the EFEM by enriching the elements whose discontinuity there exists, there is no need for re-meshing at each step of the analysis. .In this paper, EFEM is used to evaluate progression of cohesive crack in a two phase saturated porous media. To analyze the saturated porous media, at the first, the equations of mass conservation, momentum conservation, and energy conservation are established to consider simultaneous effects of displacement, pressure, and temperature on the crack progression. The cohesive model is used to simulate crack progression. Heavy-side functions are used to enrich finite elements and the resulting system of equations are solved by Newton Raphson method. Finally, the numerical model were analyzed by other researchers is considered to evaluate the derived relationships. Numerical result show that maximum variation by other researchers is 5%. Review History: Received: Revised: Accepted: Available Online:


Recognizing that information from different sources refers to the same (real world) entity is a crucial challenge in instance-level information integration, as it is a pre-requisite for combining the information about one entity from different sources. The required entity matching is time consuming and thus imposes a crucial limit for large-scale, dynamic information integration. An increased re-use of entity identifiers (or names) across different information collections such as RDF repositories, databases and document collections, eases this situation.In the ideal case, entity matching can be reduced to the trivial problem of spotting the same entity identifier in different information collections. In this paper we propose the use of an entity name system (ENS) - as it is currently under development in the EU-funded project OKKAM - for systematically supporting the re-use of entity identifiers. The main purpose of the ENS is to provide unique and uniform names for entities for the use in information collections, so that the same name is used for an entity, even when it is referenced in different contexts. Of course the creation of an ENS that can efficiently deal with entities on the Web scale raises scalability issues of its own. This paper focuses on the role of an ENS in contributing to the scalability of ad-hoc and on demand information integration tasks.


Urotensin II (UII) is a vasoactive peptide with potent cardiovascular effects through a G protein-coupled receptor. Hypoxia stimulates the secretion of UII and atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP). However, the effect of UII on hypoxia-induced cardiac hypertrophy is still controversial. The present study was conducted to determine whether human UII (hUII)-mediated ANP secretion influences hypoxia-induced cardiac hypertrophy using in vitro and in vivo models. Hypoxia caused an increase in ANP secretion and a decrease in atrial contractility in isolated perfused beating rat atria. hUII (0.01 and 0.1 nM) attenuated hypoxia-induced ANP secretion without changing the atrial contractility, and the hUII effect was mediated by the UII receptor signaling involving phospholipase C, inositol 1,3,4 trisphosphate receptor, and protein kinase C. Rats treated with monocrotaline (MCT, 60 mg/kg) showed right ventricular hypertrophy with increases in pulmonary arterial pressure and its diameter and plasma levels of UII and ANP that were attenuated by the pretreatment with an UII receptor antagonist, urantide. An acute administration of hUII (5 μM injection plus 2.5 μM infusion for 15 min) decreased the plasma ANP level in MCT-treated rats but increased the plasma ANP level in MCT plus urantide-treated and sham-operated rats. These results suggest that hUII may deteriorate MCT-induced cardiac hypertrophy mainly through a vasoconstriction of the pulmonary artery and partly through the suppression of ANP secretion.


A study of bacteriuria was conducted among 426 of the 436 children under the age of 13 in a general practice in north-west London. Three girls and one boy were found to have asymptomatic bacteriuria, and a further girl with bacteriuria presented with abdominal pain and fever. The calculated incidence of urinary tract infection was 1·4% per annum. Most of the childhood urinary infections in this practice occurred before the age of 5 years, and the incidence of significant bacteriuria in this age group was 4·9% per annum. Five other children (four girls and one boy) in the practice were known to have had proved urinary tract infection. Of the total of eight children known to have had significant bacteriuria and investigated radiologically, three girls and two boys had radiological abnormalities in the urinary tract. Pyuria and proteinuria did not prove to be useful in the prediction of asymptomatic bacteriuria. Urinary tract infection with renal tract abnormality was found in this practice to be at least five times as common as diabetes in childhood.


Abstract Posaconazole, a fluorinated triazole antifungal drug, is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for (1) prophylaxis against Aspergillus and Candida infections in immunocompromised patients at high risk for these infections and (2) oropharyngeal candidiasis (OPC), including cases refractory to fluconazole and/or itraconazole. The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved posaconazole for (1) treatment of aspergillosis, fusariosis, chromoblastomycosis, and coccidioidomycosis in patients who are refractory to or intolerant of other azoles or amphotericin B; (2) first-line therapy for OPC for severe disease or in those unlikely to respond to topical therapy; and (3) prophylaxis of invasive fungal infections in high-risk hematologic patients and stem cell transplant recipients. In addition to approved indications, posaconazole has been used with success as salvage therapy for invasive mold infections and endemic mycoses in patients who are refractory to or intolerant of other antifungal agents, and as prophylaxis or salvage therapy in children, for whom indications are more limited owing to a paucity of data. Posaconazole has potent in vitro activity against a broad range of fungi and molds, including Aspergillus, Candida, Cryptococcus, filamentous fungi, and endemic mycoses including coccidioidomycosis, histoplasmosis, and blastomycosis. Importantly, posaconazole is much more active than other azoles against many Mucorales species and the combination of posaconazole with other antifungal agents may be synergistic. Hence, posaconazole is a potential candidate as a single or combination agent for difficult-to-treat fungal infections. Posaconazole has an excellent safety profile; to date, serious side effects are rare, even with prolonged use. However, newer posaconazole formulations achieve higher blood levels and it remains to be seen whether this may lead to an increase in the rate of adverse effects. Currently, posaconazole is used predominantly for prophylaxis and salvage therapy of fungal infections in adults. Indications for use as initial therapy of fungal infections and for broader use in children will depend on the accrual of additional clinical data.


ABSTRACT Background: Connected speech (CS) deterioration appears early in the progression to Alzheimer's disease (AD) and in mild cognitive impairment (MCI). As such, CS assessment may prove a quick, clinical speech tool and contribute to the early detection of subtle, yet significant speech changes pointing to pathological cognitive ageing. Aims: We performed a scoping review to extensively map the methodology used to assess CS in AD and MCI populations in the literature. Methods & Procedures: Outcomes & Results: The scoping review revealed the majority of articles on CS in AD and MCI populations studied relatively small samples of English-speaking patients, most of which were in the early to moderate stages of AD and relied mostly on descriptive methods (namely, single-picture description tasks) and manual analysis to collect and analyse CS data. The review also highlighted the diversity of outcome measures of CS studied, with semantic and fluency outcome measures being most common across included articles, and a synthesis of the key findings revealed these outcomes measures to be most relevant in identifying early changes to CS in pathological ageing. Conclusions: This scoping review identifies a considerable heterogeneity across articles on the assessment of CS in AD and MCI, in terms of populations (sample size, disease severity, diagnosis criteria used, etc.) and methods (tasks used to assess CS, outcome measures of interest, etc.). It also provides recommendations for future research on CS and highlights the potential of interesting research avenues, such as unstructured tasks and automatic speech analysis to obtain and analyse CS data.


ABSTRACT Perioperative chemotherapy enhances the survival rates for patients with esophageal and gastric (EG) adenocarcinoma, but not all patients benefit from this additional treatment. Chemotherapeutic agents have been demonstrated to alter the immune cell (IC) composition in the tumor microenvironment. Hence, there is a rationale to investigate the influence of neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) on different IC subsets, to better understand and compare their utility as complementary prognostic or predictive biomarkers in a clinically relevant context. The density of T cells (CD8+ and FoxP3+), B cells (CD20+) and the expression of PD-L1 on ICs and tumor cells (TC) was assessed by immunohistochemistry on paired biopsies from primary tumors (PT) pre-NAC, and resected PT and lymph node metastases post-NAC. The cohort encompasses 148 patients with resectable EG adenocarcinoma, all of whom received NAC. The density of CD8+ cells was decreased and the density of FoxP3+ cells and CD20+ cells was increased in PT post-NAC. PD-L1 expression was not altered following NAC. In pre-NAC specimens, high FoxP3+ density and high PD-L1 expression on ICs were favorable prognostic factors, whereas high CD8+ density was an unfavorable prognostic factor. In post-NAC specimens, however, high FoxP3+ density was an unfavorable prognostic factor, and high PD-L1 expression on TC was associated with a shorter survival. There were no significant associations between IC density or PD-L1 expression in PT pre-NAC and histopathological regression. These findings propose that NAC might alter the density and prognostic impact of some IC subsets in EG adenocarcinoma.


Fieldwork coupled with U–Pb dating has clarified the relationships between the Exploits and Gander-derived rocks in central Newfoundland during the Mid-Ordovician opening of the Exploits back-arc basin, reinforcing correlation across the peri-Gondwanan segments of the Appalachian–Caledonian orogen. We have separated a new back-arc-related unit, the Red Cross Group, from the arc-related Victoria Lake Supergroup. This group includes 466 ± 3 Ma felsic volcanic rock interlayered with alkali basalt–enriched mid-ocean ridge basalt, 457 ± 6 Ma gabbro, Llanvirn–Caradoc normal mid-ocean ridge basalt–island arc tholeite, limestone, black shale and mélange. Locally the Red Cross Group is in parautochthonous contact with low-grade Gander psammite. This contact was overrun by the Meelpaeg Metamorphic Nappe during the Devonian. The nappe contains Gander metapsammite (Meelpaeg Subzone) and the coticule-bearing Howley Waters Complex (Exploits), which hosts 467 ± 3 Ma felsic porphyry. The Gander and Exploits metasediments in the nappe are stitched by Arenig–Llanvirn granite (467 ± 6 Ma and 468 +3.5/−3 Ma) and Caradoc intrusions (458 ± 3 Ma and 454 ± 2 Ma). Metamorphic monazite (462 ± 1 Ma) and titanite (460 ± 3 Ma) from the nearby Mount Cormack Subzone (Gander) indicate the coeval formation of a low-pressure–high-temperature metamorphic dome. The widespread presence of Caradoc magmatism suggests that the width of the back-arc basin remained relatively narrow.


Background: Health-benefit properties of natural pigments have been intensely studied, especially the anthocyanins. In the last few decades, research on anthocyanins has attracted biologists by the increasing evidence of their health beneficial effects. Osbeckia, belongs to Melastomataceae and is well-known for colouring pigments and other bioactive compounds. In the present study, total anthocyanin and antioxidant capacity indicators were evaluated from 8 Osbeckia spp. and anthocyanin was extracted from in vitro cultures of O. aspera and O. reticulata. Materials and Methods: The antioxidant effect was studied using ABTS (2, 2'-azino-bis-3-ethyl benzthiazoline-6-sulphonic acid) radical cation decolourisation assay, the FRAP, the scavenging ability of hydroxyl radicals and the superoxide anion scavenging activity. Anthocyanin extracted from in vitro cultures were purified and fractionated using column chromatography and LC-MS MS analysis. Results: In vitro cultures of O. aspera was obtained in MS medium fortified with various combinations of Benzyl Adenine (BA), Naphthalene acetic acid (NAA) and 2, 4-D. The chromatograms of O. aspera revealed the presence of malvidin-3 -diglucoside, peonidin, delphinidin and cyanindin whereas O. reticulata cultures accumulated large amounts of malvidin, cyanindin and cyanidin aglycone. The purified anthocyanins of these species were evaluated for their antioxidant potential and was found more remarkable than the crude extracts. Conclusion: Osbeckia species are rich in anthocyanin and therefore display potential AOX power. O. aspera and O. reticulata callus was induced in vitro production of anthocyanins. The pool of anthocyanins was purified and fractionated by LCMS/MS and AOX assays were performed with the purified anthocyanin which showed higher level activities.


To the Editor:—We are pleased that Rosero et al. pursued a study of the epidemiology of malignant hyperthermia (MH). We agree with Rosero et al. that reporting to the North American Malignant Hyperthermia Registry may underestimate MH mortality. From the Malignant Hyperthermia Association of the United States Hotline and the American Society of Anesthesiologists Closed Claims Project database we are aware of deaths clearly due to MH that were not reported to the Registry. Reports to the North American Malignant Hyperthermia Registry are voluntary, but provide key details that administrative databases cannot.† We encourage readers to report suspected MH episodes to the Registry, using forms that are available online at www.mhreg.org. Rosero et al. define MH cases by the hospital discharge diagnosis code of malignant hyperthermia as a result of anesthetics, after excluding other conditions associated with hyperthermia. Did the authors attempt to confirm that the 2,312 MH cases not admitted from another health facility had been exposed to an anesthetic, for example by linking them to surgical or procedural International Classification of Disease, ninth revision (ICD-9) codes? The diagnosis of MH would be more certain if there was some evidence of anesthetic exposure, not just a code. Like any database, the "output" depends on the accuracy of the data entered. The Nationwide Inpatient Sample depends on accurate coding by medical records departments, which in turn are dependent on clinical documentation. The diagnosis of MH requires no supporting evidence to be coded as such. Other studies have shown that incorrect coding and diagnostic inaccuracy can undermine calculations derived from administrative databases. Rosero et al. conclude that the incidence of MH increased from 2000 to 2005. An equally plausible explanation is reporting bias: As coders became aware of the new ICD-9 code for MH, they used it more often. This code (995.86) was approved in 1997, thanks to the efforts of the Malignant Hyperthermia Association of the United States and American Society of Anesthesiologists, and coders may have been unaware of its existence, given the rarity of MH. Finally, we point out an error in Rosero et al.'s paper. The 2007 review by Rosenberg et al. did not consider our 2008 report of an MH-associated mortality rate of 1.4% to be "controversial." Their review was published almost a year before our paper, making it impossible to cite.


Blueberry fruits from five commercial cultivars and 13 breeding selections grown at the same locations over two growing seasons were analysed for total phenolics (TPH), total anthocyanins (ACY), total hydroxycinnamic acids (HCA), total flavonols (FLA), fruit weight and oxygen radical-absorbing capacity (ORAC). Variation in ORAC, TPH, ACY, HCA, FLA and fruit weight among genotypes was much greater than that observed between growing seasons, indicating that genetics plays a more important role than growing season in influencing ORAC and phenolic content in blueberries. Significant main effects for growing season and genotype × growing season observed for ORAC, ACY, HCA and fruit weight demonstrate that environmental growing conditions can impact levels of phenolics and ORAC in blueberries and that certain genotypes vary in their capacity to synthesise phenolics under different growing conditions. In general, genotypes with smaller berries had higher ORAC values and levels of TPH, ACY, HCA and FLA than large-berried genotypes. Over both growing seasons, ORAC correlated highly with TPH, ACY, HCA and FLA, while fruit weight correlated inversely with all phenolics measured. Our results indicate that blueberry genotypes should be screened over multiple growing seasons in order to identify antioxidant- and phenolic-rich germplasm. Copyright © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry


Nowadays, both gene mutations detection and function investigation are expected to assume a key role in diseases understanding and in many other biotechnological fields. In fact, gene mutations are often cause of genetic diseases and gene function analysis itself can help to have a broader vision on cells health status. Traditionally, gene mutations detection is carried out at pre-translational/sequence level (transcriptomic approach). On the other hand, the function of innumerable sequenced genes can be investigated by delivering them into cells through transfection methods and observing their expression result at post-translational level (proteomic approach). In this context, Micro-ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMSs) offer the intrinsic advantages of miniaturization: low sample and reagent consumption, reduction of costs, shorter analysis time and higher sensitivity. Their applications range from the whole cell assays to molecular biology investigations. On this subject, the thesis deals with two different tools for gene analysis: a Lab-on-Cell and cantilever-based sensors for in-vitro cell transfection and label-free Single Nucleotide Poly-morphisms (SNPs) detection, respectively. Regarding the first topic, an enhanced platform for single-site electroporation and controlled transfectants delivery has been presented. The device consists of a gold MicroElectrode Array (MEA) with multiple cell compartments, integrated microfluidics based on independent channels and nanostructured titanium dioxide (ns-TiO2) functionalized electrodes. Different activities have been reported, from the study of the microfabrication substrates bioaffinity and device development to the electroporation results. The functional characterization of the system has been carried out by electroporating HeLa cells with a small fluorescent dye and then, in order to validate the approach for gene delivery, with plasmid for the enhanced expression of the Green Fluorescent Protein (pEGFP-N1). The second research activity has been focused on a detection module aimed at the integration in a Lab-on-Chip (LOC) for the early screening of autoimmune diseases. The proposed approach consists of piezoresistive SOI-MEMS cantilever arrays operating in static mode. Their gold surface (aimed at the binding of specific thiolated DNA probes) has been deeply analyzed by means of Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM) and X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) revealing an evident gold non-uniformity and low content together with oxygen and carbon contaminations. Different technological and cleaning solutions have been chosen in order to optimize the system. However, other improvements will be required. Moreover, the feasibility of the spotting technique has been demonstrated by verifying microcantilever mechanical resistance and good surface coverage without cross-contaminations. Finally, as future perspective, possible biological protocols and procedures have been also proposed and discussed starting from literature.


Abstract — A new dynamic comparator is proposed and it is compared with two existing comparators in terms of voltage, delay and frequency. CMOS dynamic comparator which has dual input, dual output inverter stage suitable for high speed ADCs with low voltage and low power dissipation. A conventional comparator is replaced with dynamic comparator which reduces the delay and voltage which increases the speed. The technology scaling of MOS transistors enables low voltage and low delay which decreases the offset voltage of the comparator. The proposed system has less number of voltage and delay when compared to other comparators. The need for ultra low-power, area efficient, and high speed analog-to-digital converters is pushing toward the use of dynamic regenerative comparators to maximize speed and power efficiency.


Activin, a dimer formed by the beta subunits of inhibin, has an effect that is opposite to that of inhibin in a number of biological systems. Which cell types secrete activin in vivo is not known. TM3 cells, a Leydig-derived cell line, contained messenger RNAs that hybridized with human beta A and beta B complementary DNA probes and were similar in size to the porcine messenger RNA for the beta subunits of inhibin. No hybridization to the inhibin alpha subunit was detectable in the TM3 cells. Conditioned medium from TM3 cells and from primary cultures of rat and porcine interstitial cells stimulated the release of follicle-stimulating hormone in a pituitary cell culture assay. It is likely that, in the testis, the Leydig cells secrete activin and the Sertoli cells produce inhibin, or a combination of both.


Plastic pollution is a significant problem in all oceans of the world and accounts for up to 90% of marine debris. Ingestion of plastic by seabirds and its effects are well documented, particularly in the Northern Hemisphere. However, fewer data exist for levels of plastic in seabird and coastal bird species in Australian waters or the southwestern Pacific. In this study, the stomach contents of a variety of seabirds and coastal birds (migratory and resident) were analysed for plastic. Nine (30%) of the birds sampled contained plastic. The median mass of plastic per bird was 41.7 mg and median number of pieces was 3.0. Shearwaters Puffinus spp. had significantly higher plastic mass and number of pieces than other species, and the most common type of plastic was manufactured. However, industrial pellets also contributed substantially. Plastics were primarily dark in colour. No clear indication of the influence of plastic ingestion on body condition could be found, however, internal physical damage and intestinal blockage was noted. Further assessment of the incidence and the effects of plastic ingestion in seabird and coastal bird species in Australian waters is required.


The objective of this study was to determine the influence of plasmapheresis on clinical and haematological recovery time of whole blood or plasma donor goats. For this, 20 clinically healthy adult goats were divided into two groups of ten animals each: control group (not-treated whole blood donor animals), and experimental group (donor animals which were treated with plasmapheresis). Goats were selected and evaluated through physical examination (vital functions) and complementary tests (complete blood counts, total proteins, albumin, globulin, albumin:globulin ratio, urea nitrogen, creatinine, and plasma free haemoglobin) were carried out at the following moments: immediately before and after blood donation, 12, 24, 72, 120, 240, 360, 480, and 720 hours after the procedures. Results were analysed comparing animals in and between both groups (at differents moments of the study). The clinical observations made during the period of 30 days after donation of 20% of total blood volume, with or without plasmapheresis in the animals of studied groups, were not influenced by these procedures. The results revealed significant variation of eritrogram components, showing the experimental group to have better recovery rates according to time. Based on the results obtained in the present study, plasmapheresis technique application in goats showed to be efficient as a resource to optimize recovery time of blood cell values of plasma donor animals, and did not cause hemolisis during its procedure.


: Managed care by healthcare providers is becoming the method of choice for controlling costs. Insurance companies, employers, employees as well as healthcare providers are all doing what they can to understand and practice economical managed care. With financial systems that reimburse healthcare providers now moving to a capitated approach, providers need to get away from a cost-plus mentality. More than ever materiel managers need to realize that providers are moving from revenue to expense accounting. Under capitation many, if not all, of management philosophy must change to compete in the new healthcare delivery environment.


This research identified the forms of share market, to calculate the price received by farmers and  middlemen, and analyze marketing margins of beef cattle market. This research was conducted in June to  August 2011, in Aceh Besar regency of Aceh province. The method used in this study was a survey  method and field direct observations and interviews using questionnaires to farmers, middlemen (mugge)  and meat traders respondent. The number of samples were 420 respondents, including 270 respondents  of livestock farmers,105 respondents of middlemen (mugee) and 45 respondents of meat traders (final  consumer)from the three districts. This study used regression analysis to determine the effect of variables  simultaneously observed the marketing margin. The results showed there were 2 channel marketings,  channel marketing I of farmers to the final consumer through two market participants were mugee and  meat traders,while the marketing channel II from farmers to consumers through one market participants  that was meat traders. In marketing channels I mugee get income share 24.89% with 10.38% share of the  cost, while the meat traders got incomeshare 47.70% with 17.03% share of the cost. In marketing  channels II meat tradersgot income share 83.00% with17.00% share of the cost. In marketing channels I  mugee marketing margin of Rp1,026,293.10/head and the meat traders of Rp1,883,045.98/head, while  the meat traders of Rp2,944,838.00/head. The coefficient ofdetermination (R 2 ) equalto 0.337321, which  means cattle marketing margin could be explained jointly by 33.73% by the marketing costs, the price at  the farmer level and the number of middlemen. The test results of the marketing costs (x1) significantly  (P<0.05) on the marketing margin, the price at the farmer level (x2) was highly significant (P<0.01) on the  marketing margin and the number of middlemen (x3) didnot affect the marketing margin. (Keywords: Cattle, District of Aceh Besar , Market share, Marketing margin)


Future building automation will require complex (humanlike) perception and decision-making processes not being feasible with classical approaches. In this paper, we address both the perception and the decision-making process and present an alerting model that reacts to perceived situations in a building with decisions about possible alerts. Perception is based on the neurosymbolic information-processing model, which detects candidate alerts. Integrated with perception, decision making is based on the rule model of the Rule Markup Language, which computes alerts to relevant building occupants about current opportunities and risks. A general model of neurosymbolic alerting rules is developed and exemplified with a use case of building alerts.


This research objective is to examine the impact of Digital Leadership competencies on Virtual Team Effectiveness in MNC companies in Penang, Malaysia. The survey was conducted among 150 respondents who are working in MNC companies in Penang, with experience in a virtual team. The diversified range of respondents was chosen to predict the impact of digital leadership competencies on virtual team effectiveness. Data collected was analysed using SmartPLS. Hypotheses were tested based on the structural equation model. The results come out with 2 variables (E-Communication Competency & E-Trust Competency) having a positive & significant relationship with virtual team effectiveness. The remaining four variables, namely E-Social Competency, E-Team Competency & E-Change Competency, found to be no significant relationship towards virtual team effectiveness. Firstly, MNC companies size varies; as such, the study may be slightly biased. As more virtual teams are available to sample this analysis from large MNC companies, the outcome will appear to lean towards them. Secondly, due to the data collection limitation, virtual teams are represented by only one respondent per team in this study. As such, it may represent some bias if the response being used to represent the team. Results of this research can be used as guidance for organization Leaders in managing virtual teams more effectively. The E-Communication competency & E-Trust Competency can be applied and eventually enhance virtual team efficiency. This analysis will benefit future researchers or leaders of organizations to call attention to variables that contribute to virtual teams' effectiveness. This study is to investigate factors that have a positive influence on virtual team effectiveness. Digital Leadership Competency is chosen as independent variables that potentially have a great impact on virtual team effectiveness. As part of measuring Virtual Team effectiveness, Media Richness Theory is taken into consideration to underpin this study.


To increase disease survival rates, there is a vital need for diagnosis at very preliminary stages. Then, low concentrations of biomarkers are present which must be effectively detected and quantified for reliable diagnosis. Fluorescent biosensing is commonly enabled through the labelling of these biomarkers with nanostructures and fluorophores. Metal Enhanced Fluorescence (MEF) is a phenomenon whereby the intensity of a fluorescent biosensor signal can be considerably enhanced by placing a metallic nanostructure and fluorophore in close proximity. Importantly, this allows for an even lower detection limit and thus earlier diagnosis. In recent years, extraordinary efforts have been made in the understanding of how the chemical and physical properties of nanomaterials may be exploited advantageously. Via precise nanoscale engineering, it is possible to optimize the optical properties of plasmonic nanomaterials, which now need to be refined and applied in diagnostics. Through MEF, the intensity of this signal can be related in direct proportion to analyte concentration, allowing for diagnosis of disease at an earlier stage than previously. This review paper outlines the potential and recent progress of applied MEF biosensors, highlighting their substantial clinical potential. MEF biosensors are presented both upon assay-based platforms and in solution, with comments on the various metallic nanoparticle morphologies available. This is explored across various emission wavelengths from ultra-violet to the second near infrared window (NIR-II), emphasising their wide applicability. Further to this, the importance of near infrared (NIR-I and NIR-II) biosensing is made clear as it allows for higher penetration in biological media. Finally, by developing multiplexing techniques, multiple and simultaneous analyses of analytes can be achieved. Through the incorporation of metal enhanced fluorescence into biosensing, it will be possible to diagnose disease more rapidly and more reliably than before, with the potential to save countless lives.


This paper presents a fast inverse kinematics (IK) algorithm. In recent years, the robotics computation theory is often applied for detailed and complex multi-body systems. However, the computational complexity of IK is too high to be implemented in large DOF systems. IK of multi-body system is often formulated as nonlinear optimization to minimize the residuals from the references. It usually requires the computation of the gradient vector of the evaluation function. In the method, the computation of the gradient is decomposed into two parts. First, the residuals are considered as external forces and are distributed to each link. Then, the gradient can be computed from static equilibrium by the recursive Newton-Euler algorithm. In addition with the efficient direction search algorithms of nonlinear programing, the computation complexity of IK can be dramatically reduced. The results of numerical evaluation using a large-DOF manipulator and a human musculoskeletal model are shown.


Analysis of the lateralization phenomena of a fused auditory image (FAI) was performed on the basis of the previously developed model of the binaural directional hearing. It was found earlier that, under conditions of auditory stimulation without interaural differences, the FAI was localized at the head midline only in about a quarter of subjects. In a greater part of the listeners, the FAI was lateralized within the range of -4.6 ... +11.2 degrees from the midline. It was shown that FAI localization with reference to the head midline may be determined by the extent of asymmetry and spatial contrast between the "active" neural zones in the left and right halves of the subjective auditory space. In turn, the asymmetry (or its absence) of these "active" zones fully depends on a distribution of neurons by characteristic time delays in the left and right halves of the subjective auditory field. The model also explains the fact of a decrease in localization precision with the FAI position just at the midline.