Abstract. Significance tests usually address the issue how to distinguish statistically significant results from those due to pure randomness when only one sample of the population is studied. This issue is also important when the results obtained using the wavelet analysis are to be interpreted. Torrence and Compo (1998) is one of the earliest works that has systematically discussed this problem. Their results, however, were based on Monte Carlo simulations, and hence, failed to unveil many interesting and important properties of the wavelet analysis. In the present work, the sampling distributions of the wavelet power and power spectrum of a Gaussian White Noise (GWN) were derived in a rigorous statistical framework, through which the significance tests for these two fundamental quantities in the wavelet analysis were established. It was found that the results given by Torrence and Compo (1998) are numerically accurate when adjusted by a factor of the sampling period, while some of their statements require reassessment. More importantly, the sampling distribution of the wavelet power spectrum of a GWN was found to be highly dependent on the local covariance structure of the wavelets, a fact that makes the significance levels intimately related to the specific wavelet family. In addition to simulated signals, the significance tests developed in this work were demonstrated on an actual wave elevation time series observed from a buoy on Lake Michigan. In this simple application in geophysics, we showed how proper significance tests helped to sort out physically meaningful peaks from those created by random noise. The derivations in the present work can be readily extended to other wavelet-based quantities or analyses using other wavelet families.


Abstract— Numerical modeling is a powerful tool for investigating the formation of large impact craters but is one that must be validated with observational evidence. Quantitative analysis of damage and deformation in the target surrounding an impact event provides a promising means of validation for numerical models of terrestrial impact craters, particularly in cases where the final pristine crater morphology is ambiguous or unknown. In this paper, we discuss the aspects of the behavior of brittle materials important for the accurate simulation of damage and deformation surrounding an impact event and the care required to interpret the results. We demonstrate this with an example simulation of an impact into a terrestrial, granite target that produces a 10 km‐diameter transient crater. The results of the simulation are shown in terms of damage (a scalar quantity that reflects the totality of fragmentation) and plastic strain, both total plastic strain (the accumulated amount of permanent shear deformation, regardless of the sense of shear) and net plastic strain (the amount of permanent shear deformation where the sense of shear is accounted for). Damage and plastic strain are both greatest close to the impact site and decline with radial distance. However, the reversal in flow patterns from the downward and outward excavation flow to the inward and upward collapse flow implies that net plastic strains may be significantly lower than total plastic strains. Plastic strain in brittle rocks is very heterogeneous; however, continuum modeling requires that the deformation of the target during an impact event be described in terms of an average strain that applies over a large volume of rock (large compared to the spacing between individual zones of sliding). This paper demonstrates that model predictions of smooth average strain are entirely consistent with an actual strain concentrated along very narrow zones. Furthermore, we suggest that model predictions of total accumulated strain should correlate with observable variations in bulk density and seismic velocity.


Purpose: Prostate tumor cells frequently show the features of osteoblasts, which are differentiated from bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. We examined human prostate cancer cell lines and clinical prostate cancer specimens for additional bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell properties. Experimental Design: Prostate cancer cell lines were induced for osteoblastogenic and adipogenic differentiation, detected by standard staining methods and confirmed by lineage-specific marker expression. Abnormal expression of the markers was then assessed in clinical prostate cancer specimens. Results: After osteoblastogenic induction, cells of the LNCaP lineage, PC-3 lineage, and DU145 displayed osteoblastic features. Upon adipogenic induction, PC-3 lineage and DU145 cells differentiated into adipocyte-like cells. The adipocyte-like cancer cells expressed brown adipocyte-specific markers, suggesting differentiation along the brown adipocyte lineage. The adipogenic differentiation was accompanied by growth inhibition, and most of the adipocyte-like cancer cells were committed to apoptotic death. During cyclic treatments with adipogenic differentiation medium and then with control medium, the cancer cells could commit to repeated adipogenic differentiation and retrodifferentiation. In clinical prostate cancer specimens, the expression of uncoupling protein 1 (UCP1), a brown fat-specific marker, was enhanced with the level of expression correlated to disease progression from primary to bone metastatic cancers. Conclusions: This study thus revealed that prostate cancer cells harbor the stem cell properties of bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells. The abnormally expressed adipogenic UCP1 protein may serve as a unique marker, while adipogenic induction can be explored as a differentiation therapy for prostate cancer progression and bone metastasis. Clin Cancer Res; 17(8); 2159–69. ©2011 AACR.


Prolonged effect (6-12 months) of verapamil and nifedipine on the systolic and diastolic function of the myocardium was studied in 48 patients with hypertensive disease (stage II). It was established that in patients with a high ejection fraction (55% and more) the two drugs produce a distinct reduction of the pumping heart function. The two drugs increase the rate of early diastolic filling. They also may reduce the arterial pressure via different hemodynamic mechanisms: vasodilatation or via reduction of cardiac output.


Although ions play important roles in the cell and chloroplast metabolism, little is known about ion transport across the chloroplast envelope. Using a proteomic approach specifically targeted to the Arabidopsis chloroplast envelope, we have identified HMA1, which belongs to the metal-transporting P1B-type ATPases family. HMA1 is mainly expressed in green tissues, and we validated its chloroplast envelope localization. Yeast expression experiments demonstrated that HMA1 is involved in copper homeostasis and that deletion of its N-terminal His-domain partially affects the metal transport. Characterization of hma1 Arabidopsis mutants revealed a lower chloroplast copper content and a diminution of the total chloroplast superoxide dismutase activity. No effect was observed on the plastocyanin content in these lines. The hma1 insertional mutants grew like WT plants in standard condition but presented a photosensitivity phenotype under high light. Finally, direct biochemical ATPase assays performed on purified chloroplast envelope membranes showed that the ATPase activity of HMA1 is specifically stimulated by copper. Our results demonstrate that HMA1 offers an additional way to the previously characterized chloroplast envelope Cu-ATPase PAA1 to import copper in the chloroplast.


In a progressively complex and fragmented health care system and in response to the need to provide whole-person, quality care to greater numbers of patients than ever before, primary care practices throughout the United States have turned their attention and efforts to integrating behavioral health into their standard service-delivery models. With few resources and little guidance, systems struggle to gather the support required to establish effective integrated programs. Based on first-hand experience, we describe a working integrated primary care model, currently utilized in a large community health center system in Colorado, that encompasses universal screening, consultation, psychotherapy, and psychological testing. With appreciation for the way an organization's unique circumstances inform the best approach for that particular organization, we highlight the clinicallevel and system-level variables that we consider necessary for successful practice development and address how our behavioral health program operates despite funding limitations. We conclude that organizations that aim for integrated primary care must mobilize leadership to implement systemic changes while making difficult decisions about program development, financing, staffing, and interagency relationships.


Abstract Heart patients displays several symptoms and it is hard to point them. Data envelopment analysis (DEA) provides a comparative efficiency degree for each decision-making units (DMUs) with several inputs and outputs. Evaluating of hospitals is one of the major applications in DEA. In this study, a comparison of additive model with standard input oriented and output oriented Malmquist productivity index (MPI) are used. The MPI is calculated to measure productivity growth relative to a reference technology. Two primary subjects are addressed in computation of MPI growth. What are generally referred to as a "catching-up" effect or technical efficiency change (TEC) and a "frontier shift" effect or technological change (TC). The data covers a six-year span from 2011 to 2016 for 15 local heart hospitals. Two inputs, one intermediate element and two outputs are chosen in two-stage model and these factors reflect the main function of hospitals. Conversion of two-stage to single-stage model is introduced. This model is proposed to fix the efficiency of a two-stage process, and avoid the dependence to various weights. Finally, the results indicated that geometry average of MPI in input oriented pure technical efficiency (PTE) in the tenth Hospital (2.1517) is introduced as the highest performance hospital with highest productivity growth.


This paper provides insights into fine particulate matter pollution in the urban atmosphere of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), the most populous city in Vietnam. Fine particulate matter (PM2.5) samples were collected daily at five exposed sites from March 2017 to March 2018. PM10 data (daily) and real-time PM2.5 (hourly) data were recorded concurrently at a roadside site. Daily particulate pollutant levels (i.e., PM2.5 and PM10) were determined using the gravimetric method using an impact sampler, and real-time PM2.5 data were measured using a continuous monitor. The measured PM2.5 concentrations varied from 10.4 to 110.8 µg m–3, with an annual mean of 36.3 ± 13.7 µg m–3. All annual mean concentrations at the exposed sites exceeded the value limits of the Vietnamese standard (25 µg m–3) and World Health Organization air quality guideline (10 µg m–3), indicating high health risk at these sites. Although the sampling sites varied in their exposure levels, they exhibited very strong correlations and low differences in PM2.5 levels. Diurnal variation with a pronounced peak 2 hours after the morning rush hour was observed. This peak is likely attributable to not only primary sources (e.g., traffic-related sources) but also secondary aerosol formation. The urban atmosphere of HCMC was affected by strong local emission sources, as evidenced by the pronounced peak during morning rush hour as well as the significant negative correlation between PM2.5 and wind speed. In addition, monthly PM2.5 levels exhibited remarkable seasonal variability, with the lowest and highest levels observed during the rainy and dry seasons, respectively. However, elevated PM2.5 levels were observed during the months with heavy rains, highlighting the influence of strong emission sources, likely the biomass burning of rice straw residues in the Mekong Delta area.


Platelets aggregate in response to an adhesin and the platelet aggregation-associated protein (PAAP) expressed on the cell surfaces of certain strains of Streptococcus sanguis. We sought to identify the corresponding PAAP receptor and accessory adhesin binding sites on platelets. Since the adhesion(s) of S. sanguis for platelets has not been characterized, an anti-idiotype (anti-id) murine monoclonal antibody (MAb2) strategy was developed. First, MAb1s that distinguished the adhesin and PAAP antigens on the surface of S. sanguis I 133-79 were selected. Fab fragments of MAb1.2 (immunoglobulin G2b [IgG2b]; 70 pmol) reacted with 5 x 10(7) cells of S. sanguis to completely inhibit the aggregation of human platelets in plasma. Under similar conditions, MAb1.1 (IgG1) inhibited the adhesion of S. sanguis cells to platelets by a maximum of 34%, with a comparatively small effect on platelet aggregation. Together, these two MAb1s inhibited S. sanguis-platelet adhesion by 63%. In Western immunoblots, both MAb1s reacted with S. sanguis 133-79 87- and 150-kDa surface proteins and MAb1.2 also reacted with purified type I collagen. The hybridomas producing MAb1.1 and MAb1.2 were then injected into BALB/c mice. Enlarged spleens were harvested, and a panel of MAb2 hybridomas was prepared. To identify anti-ids against the specific MAb1s, the MAb2 panel was screened by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for reaction with rabbit polyclonal IgG antibodies against the 87- and 150-kDa antigens. The reactions between the specific rabbit antibodies and anti-ids were inhibited by the 87- and 150-kDa antigens. When preincubated with platelets, MAb2.1 (counterpart of MAb1.1) inhibited adhesion to platelets maximally by 46% and MAb2.2 (anti-MAb1.2) inhibited adhesion to platelets maximally by 35%. Together, both MAb2s inhibited the adhesion of S. sanguis to platelets by 81%. MAb2.2 also inhibited induction of platelet aggregation. MAb2.2 immunoprecipitated a biotinylated platelet membrane antigen of 170 kDa (unreduced); MAb2.1 precipitated membrane antigens of 175- and 230-kDa (unreduced). Therefore, platelet binding sites and the receptor for the S. sanguis adhesin and PAAP, respectively, are distinguished by the anti-id MAb2s.


neutrophils in the submucosa. There was no evidence of malignancy, and cultures of biopsy tissue for viruses, fungi and mycobacteria produced no growth. A two-weeks course of acyclovir (1000 mg/day) provided no symptomatic relief, and repeat endoscopy showed no change in the appearance of the ulcers. Tissue histology and cultures were again non-diagnostic. Treatment was begun with thalidomide' (200 mg/day), and symptomatic improvement occurred within seven days. Complete resolution followed, and this was confirmed endoscopically when thalidomide was withdrawn after two weeks. The therapy was well tolerated, and there has been no recurrence of symptoms after four months of follow-up. Thalidomide has previously been found useful in the treatment of patients with orogenital ulceration of the Behcet type.' Recently, a group of HIV-infected patients with resistant aphthous ulceration was reported to respond to a two-weeks course of thalidomide followed by an intermittent maintenance regimen.' Relapse within one to five months was documented in those patients who were withdrawn from maintenance treatment. Biopsies of similar ulcers in the oesophagus of our patient showed no diagnostic histological changes. However, treatment with thalidomide for two weeks gave a rapid and complete symptomatic and endoscopic cure without evidence of early relapse. The mode of action of thalidomide in this instance, as in cases reported previously.. .s remains unknown. This report and the previous publication' suggest that further studies to establish the true place of thalidomide in the treatment of HIV -related oesophageal and oral ulceration are indicated. Paul R. Georgblou, FRACP Ricbard J. Kemp, FRACP Department of Infectious Diseases Royal Brisbane Hospital, Herston, QLD 4029 I. Rabeneck R, Boyko WJ, Mclean OM, et al. Unusual esophageal ulcers containing enveloped viruslike particles in homosexual men. Gastroemerology 1986; 90: 1182-1189. 2. Rauffman J-P. Odynophagia/dy.phagia in AIDS. Gastroent Clin N Am 1988; 27: 599-614. 3. Obtained from St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney, with approval from the Drug Evaluation Branch of the Commonwealth Department of Community Services and Health, and with permission of the Queensland Director-General of Health and Medical Services, 4. Jenkins JS, Powell RJ, Allen BR, et aI. Thalidomide in severe orogenital ulceration. Lancet 1984; 2: 1424-1426. 5. Youle M, Clarbour J, Farthing C, et aI. Treatment of resistant aphthous ulceration with thalidomide in patients positive for HIV antibody. Br Med J 1989; 298: 432.


The rice process generates a large amount of husk, which can become an environmental contaminant if it does not receive an adequate management. Because rice husk is a natural source of silica, in this work silica nanoparticles were obtained as an alternative use for this residue. The synthesis was carried out with the incineration, acid leaching process, and particle size reduction through high-energy mechanical ball milling. For its characterization, thermal, chemical, morphological, structural and superficial area analyses were performed with thermogravimetric analysis, X-ray fluorescence method, scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and Nitrogen adsorption/desorption isotherm techniques. The results indicated that between 150-450°C the organic material of the rice husk was released, and above 550°C was obtained ash rich in silica. The silica purity was effectively increased to 98.48%, through acid leaching with acid nitric. The reduction of particle size by mechanical milling at 600 rpm for 3 h was achieved up to nanometer size. Most of the nanoparticles were spherical with a diameter between 14 and 28 nm. Silicon oxide was the principal structural phase of the nanoparticles corroborated by the broad peak corresponding to the (101) plane shown by XRD pattern. A substantial increase of two magnitude orders of the specific surface area of nanoparticles was reached in comparison with particles without milling. The nanosilica particles obtained from rice husk can be used for the production of high-performance silicon or they can be also used as supplementary cementitious materials. Copyright © 2019 VBRI Press.


Pixel-wise losses, i.e., cross-entropy or L2, have been widely used in structured prediction tasks as a spatial extension of generic image classification or regression. However, its i.i.d. assumption neglects the structural regularity present in natural images. Various attempts have been made to incorporate structural reasoning mostly through structure priors in a cooperative way where co-occurring patterns are encouraged. We, on the other hand, approach this problem from an opposing angle and propose a new framework, Adversarial Structure Matching (ASM), for training such structured prediction networks via an adversarial process, in which we train a structure analyzer that provides the supervisory signals, the ASM loss. The structure analyzer is trained to maximize ASM loss, or to emphasize recurring multi-scale hard negative structural mistakes usually among co-occurring patterns. On the contrary, the structured prediction network is trained to reduce those mistakes and is thus enabled to distinguish fine-grained structures. As a result, training structured prediction networks using ASM reduces contextual confusion among objects and improves boundary localization. We demonstrate that ASM outperforms its pixel-wise counterpart and commonly used structure priors, GAN, on three different structured prediction tasks, namely, semantic segmentation, monocular depth estimation, and surface normal prediction.


Uganda designated 16% of its land as Protected Area (PA). The original goal was natural resources, habitat and biodiversity conservation. However, PAs also offer great potential for carbon conservation in the context of climate change mitigation. Drawing on a wall-to-wall map of forest carbon change for the entire Uganda, that was developed using two Digital Elevation Model (DEM) datasets for the period 2000–2012, we (1) quantified forest carbon gain and loss within 713 PAs and their external buffer zones, (2) tested variations in forest carbon change among management categories, and (3) evaluated the effectiveness of PAs and the prevalence of local leakage in terms of forest carbon. The net annual forest carbon gain in PAs of Uganda was 0.22 ± 1.36 t/ha, but a significant proportion (63%) of the PAs exhibited a net carbon loss. Further, carbon gain and loss varied significantly among management categories. About 37% of the PAs were "effective", i.e., gained or at least maintained forest carbon during the period. Nevertheless, carbon losses in the external buffer zones of those effective PAs significantly contrast with carbon gains inside of the PA boundaries, providing evidence of leakage and thus, isolation. The combined carbon losses inside the boundaries of a large number of PAs, together with leakage in external buffer zones suggest that PAs, regardless of the management categories, are threatened by deforestation and forest degradation. If Uganda will have to benefit from carbon conservation from its large number of PAs through climate change mitigation mechanisms such as REDD+, there is an urgent need to look into some of the current PA management approaches, and design protection strategies that account for the surrounding landscapes and communities outside of the PAs.


The usage of the results of research and development works realised by schools as well as scientific and technical backup of industry is unsatisfactory. This problem gains special importance in the period of economy transformation. Marketing can be used as a tool for managing the research and development works. The proposed solution presents the following aims: the functions of the system of marketing the research and development works, its organisation and structure on the basis of the Polytechnic department. The model solution, in the scope of managing the research and development works, provides for gaining information, shows the channels of its distribution and usage, collecting and processing data with a usage of the marketing structure of a database.


The 2,6,9-trisubstituted purine group of cyclin dependent kinase inhibitors have the potential to be clinically relevant inhibitors of cancer cell proliferation. We have recently designed and synthesized a novel dansylated analog of purvalanol B, termed VMY-1-103, that inhibited cell cycle progression in breast cancer cell lines more effectively than did purvalanol B and allowed for uptake analyses by fluorescence microscopy. ErbB-2 plays an important role in the regulation of signal transduction cascades in a number of epithelial tumors, including prostate cancer (PCa). Our previous studies demonstrated that transgenic expression of activated ErbB-2 in the mouse prostate initiated PCa and either the overexpression of ErbB-2 or the addition of the ErbB-2/ErbB-3 ligand, heregulin (HRG), induced cell cycle progression in the androgen-responsive prostate cancer cell line, LNCaP. In the present study, we tested the efficacy of VMY-1-103 in inhibiting HRG-induced cell proliferation in LNCaP prostate cancer cells. At concentrations as low as 1 µM, VMY-1-103 increased both the proportion of cells in G1 and p21CIP1 protein levels. At higher concentrations (5 µM or 10 µM), VMY-1-103 induced apoptosis via decreased mitochondrial membrane polarity and induction of p53 phosphorylation, caspase-3 activity and PARP cleavage. Treatment with 10 µM Purvalanol B failed to either influence proliferation or induce apoptosis. Our results demonstrate that VMY-1-103 was more effective in inducing apoptosis in PCa cells than its parent compound, purvalanol B, and support the testing of VMY-1-103 as a potential small molecule inhibitor of prostate cancer in vivo.


High Frequency Peakers (HFPs) are known to be promising targets to study the AGN properties at their very early evolutionary stage. To date, HFP classification has been usually relied on the spectral shape with the relatively sparse or short time range monitoring. However, HFP samples are often contaminated by blazars which are compact and highly variable, and hence may behave in similar ways to HFPs. In this work, we challenge to identify genuine young AGNs by long-term monitoring of HFP candidates at high radio frequencies. We performed single-dish monitoring of 19 candidates in 18 epochs over 2.5 years at 22 and 43 GHz simultaneously, using the Korean VLBI Network (KVN). Also, using the KVN and VERA array (KaVA), we carried out 22 and 43 GHz VLBI observations of seven candidates from our sample, and investigated their parsec-scale (milli-arcsecond scale) morphology. We discuss the results of the source classification from our long-term single dish monitoring observation and the preliminary results of follow-up VLBI observation. (© 2016 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Protease-activated receptor-2 (PAR-2) can be activated after proteolysis of the amino terminal of the receptor by trypsin or by synthetic peptides with a sequence corresponding to the endogenous tethered ligand exposed by trypsin (eg, SLIGRL-NH(2)). PAR-2 mediates nitric oxide (NO)-dependent dilatation in cerebral arteries, but it is unknown whether PAR-2 function is altered in cardiovascular diseases. Since hypertension selectively impairs NO-mediated cerebral vasodilatation in response to acetylcholine and bradykinin, we sought to determine whether PAR-2-mediated vasodilatation is similarly adversely affected by this disease state.

METHODS
We studied basilar artery responses in Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY) (normotensive) and spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) in vivo (cranial window preparation) and in vitro (isolated arterial rings). The vasodilator effects of acetylcholine, sodium nitroprusside, and activators of PAR-2 and protease-activated receptor-1 (PAR-1) were compared in WKY versus SHR. Immunohistochemical localization of PAR-2 was also assessed in the basilar artery.

RESULTS
Increases in basilar artery diameter in response to acetylcholine were 65% to 85% smaller in SHR versus WKY, whereas responses to sodium nitroprusside were not different. In contrast to acetylcholine, vasodilatation in vivo to SLIGRL-NH(2) was largely preserved in SHR, and SLIGRL-NH(2) was approximately 3-fold more potent in causing vasorelaxation in SHR versus WKY in vitro. In both strains, responses to SLIGRL-NH(2) were abolished by N(G)-nitro-L-arginine, an inhibitor of NO synthesis. Activators of PAR-1 had little or no effect on the rat basilar artery. PAR-2-like immunoreactivity was observed in both the endothelial and smooth muscle cells of the basilar artery in both strains of rat.

CONCLUSIONS
These data indicate that NO-mediated vasodilatation to PAR-2 activation is selectively preserved or augmented in SHR and may suggest protective roles for PAR-2 in the cerebral circulation during chronic hypertension.


On the State of Protection of German Cultural Heritage in the Czech Borderlands: The View from  Chomutov This discussion highlights the unsatisfactory state of care for local German cemeteries in the Czech borderlands, a topic that deserves attention not only in the context of the Czech-German relations, but also in the context of the celebration of 2018 as the European Year of Cultural Heritage. The author served as a director of the Regional Museum in Chomutov (Komotau), a town in north-western Bohemia. Against this background, he reflects on the causes of this dire state, pointing to the insufficient performance of the relevant Czech authorities in the protection of cultural heritage. Furthermore, he presents positive examples of civic engagement towards Czech-German reconciliation. Keywords: Czech Republic; cultural heritage; cemeteries; Sudeten Germans; Czech-German relations; reconciliation DOI: 10.14712/23363231.2019.3


Energy transfer process from Tm3+ ions to Tb3+ ions was investigated in CsCdBr3:Tb,Tm and KPb2Cl5:Tb,Tm crystals. Energy transfer quantum efficiency were found as high as qtr = 68 % for the CsCdBr3:Tm(1.0%),Tb(0.5%) crystal and qtr = 22% for the KPb2Cl5:Tm(2.5%),Tb(0.2%) crystal. It is shown that they are promising candidates as laser crystals for MIR, suitable for diode laser pumping at 0.8 μm in Tm3+ absorption band.


In this paper, we analyze data collected from Yelp to understand the importance of the social networks created between Yelp reviewers, and the impact it has on the businesses they patronize. We then look at the shape of the social network generated by reviews and identify differences between the behavior of "elite" users vs. non-elite users. We then view the trends in network formation for particular businesses over time, and use features of the network of the business early in its development in order to predict its future success. We construct linear regression and random forest models that solely use features derived from review data, as well as models that are built using a combination of review and social network features. We see that the additional network features are statistically signifant, and help reduce the root mean squared error of our models by a significant percentage. Ultimately, using our network features of reviewers from the first three months of business, we can predict the number of reviewers for a business within its first year with an error of less than 2.5 reviews, an error of 8.5 over two year, and 13 over three.


BACKGROUND
Venous thromboembolism (VTE) disease prophylaxis rates among medical inpatients have been noted to be <50%.

OBJECTIVE
Our objective was to evaluate the effectiveness and safety of a computerized decision support application to improve VTE prophylaxis.

DESIGN
Observational cohort study.

SETTING
Academic medical center.

PATIENTS
Adult inpatients on hospital medicine and nonmedicine services.

INTERVENTION
A decision support application designed by a quality improvement team was implemented on medicine services in September 2009.

MEASUREMENTS
Effectiveness and safety parameters were compared on medicine services and nonmedicine (nonimplementation) services for 6-month periods before and after implementation. Effectiveness was evaluated by retrospective information system queries for rates of any VTE prophylaxis, pharmacologic VTE prophylaxis, and hospital-acquired VTE incidence. Safety was evaluated by queries for bleeding and thrombocytopenia rates.

RESULTS
Medicine service overall VTE prophylaxis increased from 61.9% to 82.1% (P < 0.001), and pharmacologic VTE prophylaxis increased from 59.0% to 74.5% (P < 0.001). Smaller but significant increases were observed on nonmedicine services. Hospital-acquired VTE incidence on medicine services decreased significantly from 0.65% to 0.42% (P = 0.008) and nonsignificantly on nonmedicine services. Bleeding rates increased from 2.9% to 4.0% (P < 0.001) on medicine services and from 7.7% to 8.6% (P = 0.043) on nonmedicine services, with nonsignificant changes in thrombocytopenia rates observed on both services.

CONCLUSIONS
An electronic decision support application on inpatient medicine services can significantly improve VTE prophylaxis and hospital-acquired VTE rates with a reasonable safety profile.


European colonialism and missionization in Africa initiated a massive orthographic shift across the continent, as local languages that had been written for centuries in Arabic letters were forcibly re-written in Roman orthography through language standardization reforms and the introduction of colonial public schools. Using early missionary grammars promoting the "conversion of Africa from the East," British colonial standardization policies and educational reforms, as well as petitions and newspaper editorials by the local Swahilispeaking community, I trace the story of the Romanization of Swahili in Zanzibar, the site chosen as the standard Swahili dialect. While the Romanization of African languages such as Swahili was part of a project of making Africa legible to Europeans during the colonial era, the resulting generation gap as children and parents read different letters made Africa more illegible to Africans themselves.


Beatriz Espejo has worked in Barcelona as a trans-sex-worker since the 1980s, and in 1993 she founded the CTC, one of the leading activist organisations in the Spanish trans movement during the '00s. The CTC had a direct impact on the definition of the Spanish law on gender identity. Although it may seem like a success story, this activist articulation has been conflicted and complicated: alliances between multiple and divergent political positions have proven difficult. This article explores the interconnections between personal experiences, implications of social policies, academic reflections and historical documents in order to unfold memories about im/possible articulations and dis/tensions between and among asymmetric positions; stories about how the sustainability of collective action may need institutional support and require unclear tactical transformations of political demands.


Digital technologies have recently shaped the way in which individuals and communities interact. This paper examines the unique social contexts of Latino youth and their use of digital technologies to support access to health information and extend social support. The design and use of digital health tools are complex and should not take a one-size-fits-all approach. In order to better understand community assets and systemic issues of power, this paper explores interactions between developmental, contextual, and technological factors that may empower Latino youth to use digital tools to support their wellbeing, especially in the era of COVID-19 (C-19). Therefore, we first review the nuances of culture and behaviors Latino youth to highlight opportunities for strength identification support. Next, we review traditional co-design processes and how they might be refined to support an assets-based approach. Finally, we present an assets-based approach and framework to be used as a lens through which designers can gain better understanding of Latino youth and their use of digital technologies to navigate unique challenges. Through this approach, designers may avoid amplifying structural inequities and discriminatory processes in marginalized communities. ___________________________________________________________________________________


Abstract Ice shelves restrain flow from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. Climate-ocean warming could force thinning or collapse of floating ice shelves and subsequently accelerate flow, increase ice discharge and raise global mean sea levels. Petermann Glacier (PG), northwest Greenland, recently lost large sections of its ice shelf, but its response to total ice shelf loss in the future remains uncertain. Here, we use the ice flow model Úa to assess the sensitivity of PG to changes in ice shelf extent, and to estimate the resultant loss of grounded ice and contribution to sea level rise. Our results have shown that under several scenarios of ice shelf thinning and retreat, removal of the shelf will not contribute substantially to global mean sea level (<1 mm). We hypothesize that grounded ice loss was limited by the stabilization of the grounding line at a topographic high ~12 km inland of its current grounding line position. Further inland, the likelihood of a narrow fjord that slopes seawards suggests that PG is likely to remain insensitive to terminus changes in the near future.


A recent (2010) population-based questionnaire survey of 4535 children aged 5-15 years in Katowice District, Poland yielded 186 cases (3.9%) of physician-diagnosed asthma. In the last 12 months 5.9% of asthmatic children underwent respiratory hospitalization and 44.0% were seen by physician, 30.6% had spirometry, and 24.7% skin prick tests, and all of those outcomes strongly depended on asthma attacks in the last 12 months. The goal of the study was to find out if other than health-related factors could also explain the examined outcomes. In univariate analyses hospitalization was related to age (p=0.007), medical visits to age (p=0.009), spirometry to rural residence (p=0.007), skin prick tests to age (p=0.001) and number of siblings (p=0.01). The identified correlates were tested by a multivariate regression - the table shows logistic Odds Ratios (and 95% CIs) if p=<0.1:

View this table:

Clinical status of asthmatic children and their young age are important determinants of utilization of medical care and diagnostic procedures. The effect of rural residence and family size may reflect a better maternal care over a sick child and/or better compliance with medical advice – in both settings (rural and urban) diagnostic tests require time consuming arrangements with specialized centers, usually located at a distance from family physicians' surgeries.


WiFi fingerprint positioning has been widely used in the indoor positioning field. The weighed K-nearest neighbor (WKNN) algorithm is one of the most widely used deterministic algorithms. The traditional WKNN algorithm uses Euclidean distance or Manhattan distance between the received signal strengths (RSS) as the distance measure to judge the physical distance between points. However, the relationship between the RSS and the physical distance is nonlinear, using the traditional Euclidean distance or Manhattan distance to measure the physical distance will lead to errors in positioning. In addition, the traditional RSS-based clustering algorithm only takes the signal distance between the RSS as the clustering criterion without considering the position distribution of reference points (RPs). Therefore, to improve the positioning accuracy, we propose an improved WiFi positioning method based on fingerprint clustering and signal weighted Euclidean distance (SWED). The proposed algorithm is tested by experiments conducted in two experimental fields. The results indicate that compared with the traditional methods, the proposed position label-assisted (PL-assisted) clustering result can reflect the position distribution of RPs and the proposed SWED-based WKNN (SWED-WKNN) algorithm can significantly improve the positioning accuracy.


: The Brief Core Schema Scales (BCSS; Fowler, Freeman, Smith, kuipers, Bashforth, Coker, Hodgekins, Gracie, Dunn, and Garety, 2006) were devised to assess schemata concerning the self and others. In the BCSS, four schemata--Negative Self (NS), Positive Self (PS), Negative Others (NO), and Positive Others (PO)--are assessed by means of self-ratings. In this study, we developed the Japanese version of the BCSS (JBCSS) and reported the reliability and validity of the scales, using Japanese undergraduates. There were 200 students in the first survey (Time 1) and 128 in the second survey (Time 2). The results revealed that the JBCSS had a four-factor structure, good internal consistency, and acceptable test-retest reliability. In addition, multiple regression analyses with schemata as the independent variables and paranoid ideation and grandiose ideation as the dependent variables indicated that negative schemata about the self and others were generally associated with paranoid ideation, and positive schemata about the self were associated with grandiose ideation. The analyses suggested that the JBCSS had good reliability and validity as a measure of schemata about the self and others related to paranoid and grandiose ideation.


A directly modulated and coherently injection-locked WRC-FPLD transmitter is preliminarily employed to perform the 16-QAM-OFDM data transmission by using an OFDM subcarrier amplitude pre-leveling technique. The maximum transmission bit-rate of 20-Gbit/s is reported by fusing the OFDM subcarrier pre-leveling with the coherent injection-locking techniques in such a directly modulated WRC-FPLD. Without pre-leveling the OFDM subcarrier, the coherently injection-locked L-band WRC-FPLD suppresses its mode-partition noise to improve the EVM of the 16-QAM-OFDM data only from 13.52% to 10.2%. The OFDM subcarrier pre-leveling effectively compensate the finite bandwidth and unflattened modulating response of the injection-locked WRC-FPLD to improve the transmission EVM and SNR performances. The received constellation plot reveals that the EVM and SNR of the back-to-back transmitted 16-QAM-OFDM data are significantly improved to 5.58% and 17 dB, respectively. With the use of both injection-locking and pre-leveling techniques, the directly 16-QAM-OFDM modulated WRC-FPLD transmitter can reach the FEC limited BER of 3.8 × 10-3 at a receiving power sensitivity of -10 dBm. The OFDM subcarrier pre-leveling technique helps the WRC-FPLD to reduce the overall BER of 16-QAM-OFDM data by one order of magnitude, providing a minimum BER of 4.5 × 10-5 at a receiving power of -2 dBm.


The recent introduction of simple, web-based geographic visualization interfaces has unleashed a tidal wave of new geographic content now available on the Internet. There has been enormous attention on the development of data interchange standards and programming interfaces that make all this content interoperable, but far less thought about how the user experience should change when users have their choice of 10,000 maps. To inform the design of online mapping systems, we investigate the case of queries that require correlation of multiple maps---that is, discovery and synthesis of several map layers. We based our study on interviews with expert users of maps: archivists and librarians. This paper describes our user-task taxonomy distilled from these interviews, and presents MapSynthesizer, a prototype system that allows users to efficiently query, discover, and integrate many maps from a corpus of thousands.


The objective of the present study is to understand fluctuation phenomena in a multiphase AC arc as a heat source for material processing based on the high-speed visualization technique of the temperature field. The multiphase AC arc is one of the most attractive thermal plasmas which possess extremely high temperature, high chemical reactivity, rapid quenching capability, and selectivity of the reaction atmosphere in accordance with required chemical reaction. In particular, the multiphase AC arc has a strong advantage on higher energy efficiency compared with other thermal plasmas. Therefore, this heat source has been applied to innovative material processing such as in-flight glass melting. However, the temporal and spatial characteristics of the multiphase AC arc have not been clarified although these are essential to control the characteristics of the products such as particle size distribution, yields of the desired materials. The high-speed visualization of the temperature field of the multiphase AC arc was conducted at 1x10 fps as typical framerate to observe the dynamic behavior of the multiphase AC arc in millisecond time scale. An optical system including the band-pass filters was combined with the high-speed camera to observe particular line emissions from atomic argon with negligible emissions from thermal plasma. The obtained experimental results indicated that the temperature of the multiphase AC arc was around 1.0x10 K. The arc temperature fluctuated in the range from 0.6x10 to 1.3x10 K. Consequently, the arc temperature in the multiphase AC arc is sufficiently high to treat the refractory metals and/or ceramics powders. Furthermore, the obtained temperature was well-validated by the conventional spectroscopic method with high accuracy.


To say that Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has become a sensation would be a bit of a cliche by now. The French economist's sevenhundred-page analysis of wealth and inequality over the past three centuries has dominated not merely the financial press but the popular press as well since its March 2014 appearance in English translation. By late April, the book had rocketed to #1 on Amazon (of all genres) and was sold out (my own copy took three weeks to arrive); a month later, it seized the coveted #1 spot on the relevant New York Times best-seller list, a position it held for several weeks. For months, the blogosphere was buzzing with reviews, critiques, rebuttals, praise, slanders, and occasionally bewilderment—all of this for an academic work of economics, an almost unheard-of feat. W. Bradford Littlejohn, "Review Essay: Thomas Piketty and His Discontents," Journal of Markets & Morality 17, no. 2 (Fall 2014): 505-514.


The research concerns of this work centre around the disruption of perspective and the tension between the organic and the constructed, fractional, angular and many-sided. Correspondingly, the movement, design and sound form different dimensions that variously overlap, outflank or upstage each other, producing a kind of composite view of the stage. In opposition to this, the piece also explores more organic, natural forms and at times the stage is presented as an inhabited place with a table, a chair and imaginary doors. It moves between sounds and sights that are angular, divided and synthetic, and those that are more curved, integrated and organic. The movement vocabulary also presents these oppositions with the contemporary and idiosyncratic in dynamic exchange with more formal, classical features, and the interplay of curved versus angular forms.The disruption to perspective also occurs through time and the work explores a notion of restlessness as a core feature – this is designed to destabilise any single, fixed view held by the spectator addressing the reality of mobility and fluidity that features in contemporary lives.
Collaborators: Music - Michael Nyman; Stage lighting - Lucy Carter; Film - Nichola Bruce.


Materials chemistries for hydrogel scaffolds that are capable of programming temporal (4D) attributes of cellular decision‐making in supported 3D microcultures are described. The scaffolds are fabricated using direct‐ink writing (DIW)—a 3D‐printing technique using extrusion to pattern scaffolds at biologically relevant diameters (≤ 100 µm). Herein, DIW is exploited to variously incorporate a rheological nanoclay, Laponite XLG (LAP), into 2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA)‐based hydrogels—printing the LAP–HEMA (LH) composites as functional modifiers within otherwise unmodified 2D and 3D HEMA microstructures. The nanoclay‐modified domains, when tested as thin films, require no activating (e.g., protein) treatments to promote robust growth compliances that direct the spatial attachment of fibroblast (3T3) and preosteoblast (E1) cells, fostering for the latter a capacity to direct long‐term osteodifferentiation. Cell‐to‐gel interfacial morphologies and cellular motility are analyzed with spatial light interference microscopy (SLIM). Through combination of HEMA and LH gels, high‐resolution DIW of a nanocomposite ink (UniH) that translates organizationally dynamic attributes seen with 2D gels into dentition‐mimetic 3D scaffolds is demonstrated. These analyses confirm that the underlying materials chemistry and geometry of hydrogel nanocomposites are capable of directing cellular attachment and temporal development within 3D microcultures—a useful material system for the 4D patterning of hydrogel scaffolds.


We present a novel computational method that makes it possible to directly extract dislocation lines and their associated Burgers vectors from three-dimensional atomistic simulations. The on-the-fly dislocation detection algorithm is based on a fully automated Burgers circuit analysis, which locates dislocation cores and determines their Burgers vector. Through a subsequent vectorization step, the transition from the atomistic system to a discrete dislocation representation is achieved. Using a parallelized implementation of the algorithm, the dislocation analysis can be efficiently performed on the fly within a molecular dynamics simulation. This enables the visualization and investigation of dislocation processes occurring on sub-picosecond time scales, whose observation is otherwise impeded by the presence of other crystal defects or simply by the huge amount of data produced by large-scale atomistic simulations. The presented method is able to identify individual segments as well as networks of perfect, partial and twinning dislocations. The dislocation density can be directly determined and even more sophisticated information is made accessible by our dislocation analysis, including dislocation reactions and junctions, as well as stacking fault and twin boundary densities.


Present study was followed with the aim that selection of more efficient strains of fungal species from the forest soils for the production of industrially important fungal cellulase under submerged fermentation (SmF). Isolation and characterization of cellulolytic fungal strains from the nutrient enrichment method yields 22 fungal species. More efficient eight fungal strains were selected based on the rate of zone of clearance on the CMC agar plates by Congored test. Production of cellulase was studied in Czapek broth supplemented with 2% CMC at an optimal conditions of temperature 28±1oC, pH-7.0 and 5 th days of incubation under shake culture. Maximum Corboxymethyl cellulase activity showed by Penicillium pallidum (0.059±0.001 U/mL), Aspergillus terreus (0.056±0.001 U/mL) and Trichoderma viridae (0.052±0.003 U/mL). Filter Paperase activity by Penicillium pallidum (0.057±0.001 U/mL), Trichoderma viridae (0.054±0.002 U/mL) and Aspergillus terreus (0.050±0.005 U/mL) than the other isolates. Soluble crude proteins were maximum by Penicillium sp. (170±5 µg/mL), Penicillium pallidum (170±2.64 µg/mL) and Aspergillus niger (170±2 µg/mL) and partial purified protein was maximum by Penicillium pallidum (115±2 µg/mg), Cunninghamella echinulata (80±2 µg/mg) and Trichoderma viridae (75±2.64 µg/mg) than the other isolates at 5 th day of incubation.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Endovascular therapy has become an acceptable alternative to traditional clipping for the management of intracranial aneurysms. However, a limited number of studies have examined outcomes and complications specific to embolization of anterior communicating artery aneurysms. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A systematic review of the literature was conducted with the use of multiple data bases to identify reports on endovascular treatment of anterior communicating artery aneurysms between 1994 and 2012. Angiographic results, clinical outcomes, and complication rates were pooled across studies by using random-effects meta-analysis with subgroup analysis of outcomes by rupture status and time trend stratification. RESULTS: Fourteen studies, consisting of 1552 treated anterior communicating artery aneurysms, were included in this meta-analysis. The rate of immediate and long-term complete and near-complete angiographic occlusion was 88% (95% CI = 81–93%) and 85% (95% CI = 78–90%), respectively. Intraprocedural rupture rate was 4% (95% CI = 3–6%). The re-bleeding rate was 2% (95% CI = 1–4%) and the retreatment rate was 7% (95% CI = 5–12%). Morbidity or mortality caused by perioperative stroke occurred at a 3% (95% CI = 2–6%) rate. Overall procedure-related morbidity and mortality were 6% (95% CI = 4–8%) and 3% (95% CI = 2–4%), respectively. Outcomes did not differ between ruptured and unruptured aneurysms, nor did outcomes change over time, though these latter subanalyses were relatively underpowered. CONCLUSIONS: Endovascular therapy for anterior communicating artery aneurysms is associated with a high rate of complete angiographic occlusion. However, the procedure-related permanent morbidity and mortality are not negligible for aneurysms in this location.


Bloom filters are a very popular and efficient data structure for approximate set membership queries. However, Bloom filters have several key limitations as they require 44% more space than the lower bound, their operations access multiple memory words, and they do not support removals. This paper presents TinySet, an alternative Bloom filter construction that is more space efficient than Bloom filters for false positive rates smaller than 2.8%, accesses only a single memory word and partially supports removals. TinySet is mathematically analyzed and extensively tested and is shown to be fast and more space efficient than a variety of Bloom filter variants. TinySet also has low sensitivity to configuration parameters and is therefore more flexible than a Bloom filter.


Hereditary spherocytosis (HS) is a condition of abnormal red cell morphology seen microscopically as erythrocytes that have lost the central pallor characteristic of the biconcave disc shape. The red cells are instead rounder, denser, more fragile, and susceptible to extravascular haemolysis in the spleen. HS is the most common of the haemolytic anaemias that are caused by a red cell membrane defect. It derives from alterations of the ANK1, EPB3, ELB42, SPTA1 or SPTB genes and is clinically, biochemically and genetically heterogeneous. The osmotically fragile spherocytes are selectively trapped in the spleen and destroyed by phagocytes, the increased red blood cell destruction causing the three main clinical signs associated with the disease of anaemia, jaundice and splenomegaly. In the late 1990s there were major advances in the understanding of the molecular basis of HS, in which mutational analysis has clarified many questions about the structure-function relationship of components of the red cell membrane. Some of those recent findings, such as the mutations associated with the structural proteins of the membrane skeleton, are the subject of this review. The diagnosis of HS is based on red cell morphology and other conventional tests such as osmotic fragility, autohaemolysis and acidified glycerol lysis. However, milder cases are at times difficult to diagnose. Recently, a flow cytometric method has been described for quantitating the fluorescence intensity of intact red cells after incubation with the dye eosin-5'-maleimide (EMA), which binds specifically to the anion transport protein (band 3). This has been shown to be an effective screening test for red cell membrane disorders, particularly hereditary spherocytosis.


Introduction Wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) is a well established technique for imaging the small bowel, with an increasing clinical uptake and range of indications. We aimed to evaluate the utility of WCE, comparing the diagnostic yield of procedures by indication. Methods We performed a retrospective analysis of all WCE procedures performed at our centre, January 2007 to March 2013. Results A total of 293 procedures were performed in 279 patients, male 47%. Median age at time of procedure was 59 (IQR 45–71). The indications were: iron deficiency anaemia (IDA)/occult GI bleeding 154 (53%), known Crohn's disease requiring assessment 58 (20%), abdominal pain (+/- other symptoms) 33 (11%), overt GI bleeding 20 (7%), isolated diarrhoea 10 (3%), coeliac disease 6 (2%), isolated weight loss 4 (1%), other 8 (3%). Of those undergoing WCE for symptoms (47; 16%), Crohn's disease was excluded (an aim of performing the study) in 34 (72%). The median gastric transit time was 27 min (IQR 14–55), small bowel transit time 243 min (IQR 181–300). Unplanned endoscopy for failure of capsule progression was required in 8 cases (3%). 5 procedures (2%) failed to image the small bowel (failed to leave stomach (3), battery failure (1), poor views (1)). A prokinetic was used in 9% (n = 27) of procedures. Overall the diagnostic yield was 50%. Separating by indication, the diagnostic yield was highest for overt GI bleeding, 70% overall (n = 14), identifying both 9/20 small bowel causes and 5/20 in colon/upper GI tract. Yield for Crohn's disease assessment was 63%, IDA/occult GI bleeding 46%, abdominal pain (+/- other GI symptoms) 47%. The diagnostic yield of WCE for abdominal pain in the absence of other symptoms or abnormal radiology/ileoscopy was only 14%. 23 out of 27 patients evaluated for symptoms (in the absence of anaemia/known Crohn's) were discharged requiring no further investigation following a negative result. Conclusion Wireless capsule endoscopy has a good diagnostic yield, especially for evaluating GI blood loss (overt or occult) and assessing small bowel Crohn's disease. Among highly symptomatic patients, WCE can facilitate completion of investigatory pathways and enable discharge to primary care. The utility of WCE in investigating isolated abdominal pain appears limited. Disclosure of Interest None Declared.


The focal point of this research is to gauge the relationship between the reading comprehension level, problem-solving skills and academic performance of Grades 6 pupils of all the elementary schools in Carmen West District, Division of Bohol, Philippines. Specifically, this study sought to determine the academic performance of the elementary pupils in terms of four key subjects, namely: English, Science, Mathematics and other subjects such as Filipino, HEKASI, EPP and MAPEH. Further, this study presented also the profile of the pupils' reading comprehension based on the following levels: Literal, Interpretative, Critical-Analysis and Application and their problem-solving skills' profile. Pearson Moment Product Correlation Coefficient was employed to determine the correlation between the level of reading comprehension and the two identified variables, namely: academic performance and problem-solving skills of the respondents. To prove the validity and reliability of the obtained Pearson r, it was checked against the Table of Critical Values of the Pearson r at .05 level of significance. On the reading comprehension level and academic performance, results unfolded that there is a significant correlation between reading comprehension and academic performance and this finding implies that the reading comprehension is a contributory factor to improve pupils' academic performance. Moreover, on the reading comprehension level and problem-solving skills, the result indicates that there is a significant correlation between reading comprehension and problem-solving skills. This study concludes that reading comprehension is a contributory factor to the improvement of pupils' academic performance and problem-solving performance. The researcher recommends that school administrators look into the possibilities of providing more supplementary materials in the form of books and other reading materials so that pupils can use it for further learning and to organize seminars and workshops, special trainings in order to fully equip the teachers with more knowledge and skills in teaching reading strategies. Teachers may organize functional educational programs, remedial classes and enrichment activities to improve pupils' comprehension skills through systematic comprehension instruction.


Whereas lung cancer is strongly associated with cigarette smoking, and upper alimentary tract cancers with both alcohol and cigarettes, the situation has been less clear‐cut for laryngeal cancer. This century's time trends in laryngeal cancer death rates in Australia follow those of oesophageal cancer rather than lung cancer. Further, the trends correlate with those for alcohol consumption rather than cigarette consumption. The separate analyses of trends in age‐specific death rates for men and women reveal a pattern of laryngeal cancer risk variation between successive generations which is consistent with a causal role of alcohol consumption. Biological mechanisms, and synergism, between alcohol and cigarette consumption are discussed.


Objectives: This study evaluated the effectiveness of behavioral interventions (brief counseling, nonspecific psychological support in groups — NSGS and cognitive behavioral group therapy — CBGT) in combination with bupropion SR for smoking cessation in the field, through a smoking cessation clinic. Methods: Two-hundred-and-five smokers were enrolled in a 19-week course during 2007/ 2008, and were randomly assigned to: bupropion SR combined with brief counseling (group A), bupropion SR combined with NSGS (group B), bupropion SR combined with CBGT (group C), or CBGT as the only approach (group D). Results: Continuous abstinence rates at the end of therapy were 53.2% for group A, 62.9% for group B, 50.0% for group C, and 22.2% (p < 0.05) for group D. Sustained abstinence rates in 12 months were 29.6%, 28.1%, 34.3% and 19.4% (p > 0.05), respectively. Conclusions: Bupropion SR is an effective aid for smoking cessation in clinical practice. NSGT increased the chances for success at the end of therapy when combined with bupropion SR, while CBGT as monotherapy was less effective compared with the approaches including pharmacotherapy. It is suggested that smoking cessation interventions in real-life healthcare settings should be implemented through comprehensive programs using pharmacotherapy where applicable, combined with NSGT, and integrated by specialized healthcare professionals.


: In recent years, the possibility to deal with ecodesign challenges, the learning methods used in the academic field have started to play a crucial role in preparing today's students - tomorrow's designers. Ecodesign should not be limited university-level core courses and potential problems that might appear in using the ecological design methods and tools. To achieve maximum efficiency in ecodesign instruction, it is necessary to create a framework that allows the mixing of traditional face-to-face and online education methods, ie, blended learning (b-learning). The purpose of this research is to investigate pros and cons of blended learning over face-to-face classroom teaching or online learning from the students' perspective. The present study was conducted for a target group of Master students which studied Ecodesign for a semester. The paper is structured into two fundamental parts: Part1 describes teaching and learning methods (TLM) in higher education (HE); Part 2 examines the best practices instructional strategies for use of b-learning (setting the stages, ensuring responsibility for online activities, use of a highly structured, active learning format, short reviews of online material during class, collection and use of student feedback on quality and standards of learning etc.). The asynchronous or synchronous learning or a combination of the two are only possible if the professor offers innovative learning methods in the field of ecodesign. Ecodesign course based on b-learning was designed to provide opportunity for integrating the learning management system "Moodle" with face-to-face interaction. In order to test the effectiveness of a b-learning method for teaching and learning ecodesign, at the end of the teaching period, each student was asked to fill out a survey with questions on the benefits and limitations of this method for learning. The present survey revealed that blended learning is more favorable than e-learning and provides many benefits for students like interactive educational experience, flexibility of connecting to more information and accessing them at any time, optimizing learning time and individualization of learning. Based on the case studies presented here, the students were encouraged to develop their own practical projects, which will motivate other students. Future research will be focused on the enhancement of the b-learning method in the classroom through workshops, problem-solving sessions, multiple case studies, demonstration projects and more surveys (paper or online).


The nature of the enzymes will be denatured in the presence of the organic solvents. Solvents not only affect enzyme stability but also change enzyme specificity. Most of the reports have been published concerning solvent stable enzymes. However, these enzymes are not naturally solvent stable enzymes that direct attempts from screening of organic solvent tolerant bacteria. In this chapter, we review the production and characterization of organic solvent tolerant lipases on the first attemps to screen organic solvent tolerant lipases from Bacillus sphaericus 205y, Bacillus sp. stain 42 and Pseudomonas sp. S5. All of these bacteria were proven to be organic solvent tolerant lipase producers. These lipases were stable in the organic solvents with log P value between 2.0 to 3.6. Organic solvent tolerant lipases from Pseudomonas sp. S5, B. sphaericus 205y, Bacillus sp. strain 42 were successfully purified to homogeneity. The optimum temperatures of these lipases were 45◦C, 55◦C and 70◦C, respectively. These purified lipases exhibited great stability and high activity in most of the organic solvents tested, therefore, these valuable criteria should not be neglected as important products in different fields could be developed from these lipases.


We present a method of parallelizing flat histogram Monte Carlo simulations, which give the free energy of a molecular system as an output. In the serial version, a constant probability distribution, as a function of any system parameter, is calculated by updating an external potential that is added to the system Hamiltonian. This external potential is related to the free energy. In the parallel implementation, the simulation is distributed on to different processors. With regular intervals the modifying potential is summed over all processors and distributed back to every processor, thus spreading the information of which parts of parameter space have been explored. This implementation is shown to decrease the execution time linearly with added number of processors. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 26: 72–77, 2005


This study is concerned with the application of an approach combining the curvilinear grid generation and conjugate gradient (CG) methods for shape design of heat conduction problems. Shape design for a conductive medium that contains a heating object and features an isothermal outer surface is investigated. Several practical cases with multiply-connected domains associated with various imbedded heating objects and thermal boundary conditions are studied to demonstrate the performance of the approach. Optimal shape profiles that meet different heat transfer requirements are obtained. Meanwhile, a redistribution method is proposed to numerically regularize the ill-ordered grids, which are commonly found during the iterative optimization process. By using the redistribution method, the locations of the nodal points at the outer surface may be adjusted automatically once the ill-ordered grid patterns are detected, so that the convergence of the optimization process can be facilitated.


In this paper we present an atomic force microscopy (AFM) study on electrostatic and acid−base interactions between hydrophilic self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) with monoprotic ionizable acid functional groups (−COOH). As expected for surfaces composed of weak acid groups the surface potential and strength of interaction are sensitive to pH and ionic strength. Repulsive forces grow with the degree of ionization. At low fractional ionization, the surfaces experience attractions with a range larger than that expected for van der Waals interactions and the strength of adhesion is large. The strength of adhesion and extent of attractions diminish with increasing pH. As the surface groups ionize, at intermediate pH values, jump-in distances and adhesion grow with ionic strength and at high pH they saturate with increasing electrolyte concentration at values close to those expected for van der Waals interactions. However, the maximum charge is around 5% of the total expected for the surfaces. Thus, allowing sod...


An increase in external temperature or internal heating by writing can induce protrusion or strain of thin film layers in a magnetic recording head. To profile the protrusion, the surface topography and the temperature distribution are imaged in fixed heads by scanning probe and optical microscopy. Near the poles and the shields, the protrusion is at a peak, producing a risk of head-disk interaction. The dynamics are elucidated in flying heads over a disk by measuring the amplitude of a reference pattern with the read head. The temporal profiling technique can be applied both in component testing on spinstands and reliability testing in fully integrated disk drives. For either heating or cooling of the heads, the characteristic time constant for protrusion is 100 /spl mu/s and reaches 95% of the plateau after 1 ms. The protrusion is linear with temperature and is reversible, implying that the strains are within the elastic limit. Furthermore, variation of the write pulse shape suggests that Joule heating is more significant than eddy current or hysteresis losses in inducing protrusion.


SUMMARY: This study aimed to the discovery of new biologically active natural products with hormonelike activity from Butea frondosa Roxb., Family Leguminosae growing in Egypt. The investigation of estrogenlike activity showed that both the successive non-polar and methanolic extracts showed a significant estrogen-like activity in immature female rats. GLC analysis the non-polar bioactive revealed the presence of eicosane (22.5%) and β-amyrin (20.5%) as the major components in the unsaponifiable matter, while palmitic (24.9%) and linoleic (36.8%) acids were the main saturated and unsaturated fatty acids. The successive bioactive methanolic extract was subjected to chromatographic separation to yield five flavonoids identified as vicenin II, vitexin, chrysoeriol 7-o-β-D-glucuronic acid, 6,8-di-C-rhamnosyl apigenin and luteolin.


Recent Australian and Japanese second tier public sector performance measurement changes are compared and contrasted. The case analyses are presented within a theoretical structure derived from Hood's depiction of NPM which predicts an increased emphasis on explicit performance reporting. Significant differences and similarities are identified in terms of performance reporting effort and output; motivation for changed performance reporting; role of central agencies; and degree of resultant accountability discharge. NPM is a useful analytical framework and is enhanced by Luder's Contingency Model, epistemic community influence and governance. The explanatory factors identified reinforce views that NPM is a term best used solely in the context of the governmental traditions of each relevant public sector.


The reconstruction of the cell lineage tree of early zebrafish embryogenesis requires the use of in-vivo microscopy imaging and image processing strategies. Second (SHG) and third harmonic generation (THG) microscopy observations in unstained zebrafish embryos allows to detect cell divisions and cell membranes from 1-cell to 1K-cell stage. In this article, we present an ad-hoc image processing pipeline for cell tracking and cell membranes segmentation enabling the reconstruction of the early zebrafish cell lineage tree until the 1K-cell stage. This methodology has been used to obtain digital zebrafish embryos allowing to generate a quantitative description of early zebrafish embryogenesis with minute temporal accuracy and µm spatial resolution [1].


ARTCEREB, an irrigation and perfusion solution (Artcereb), is a preparation intended for the irrigation and perfusion of the cerebral ventricles, and it is therefore important to evaluate its effects on cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and on the surrounding cerebrospinal parenchyma. To confirm the kinetics of the perfusion fluid component, we performed whole body autoradiography and examined glucose balance during ventriculocisternal perfusion with (14)C-glucose labeled Artcereb in the rat model, which simulates ventricular irrigation or ventriculocisternal perfusion in clinical neurosurgery. We also performed ventriculocisternal perfusion with Artcereb, lactated Ringer's solution, or normal saline, and observed the effect of these solutions on animal condition and on brain tissue morphology. In the kinetic study, diffusion of (14)C-glucose from the perfused Artcereb to the cerebrospinal tissue was seen on whole body autoradiography, and almost 90% of the glucose in the perfusion fluid was distributed to the cerebrospinal tissue and the systemic circulation. These data indicated that the perfusion fluid interacted actively with the CSF, surrounding parenchyma and the systemic circulation, and suggested that the formation of perfusion fluid affected CSF composition and cerebrospinal tissue functions. Animals perfused with normal saline were associated with serious symptoms including tonic convulsions and death, and exhibited neuronal death in the cerebrum. However, these severe changes were not observed in animals perfused with Artcereb or lactated Ringer's solution. We therefore propose that during neurosurgery, it is extremely important to use a physiological solution like Artcereb which closely resembles normal human CSF, in order to maintain cerebrospinal function and to alleviate postoperative adverse events.


Objective—To explore the attitudes of Hong Kong Chinese towards the strengths and weaknesses of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medicine. Design—Qualitative study of subjects' opinions using semi-structured focus


Local rolling and other mechanical tensioning techniques can be highly effective at reducing residual stress and distortion in thin plate welds prone to buckling. However, the issues of high capital cost and low scalability currently prevent wider adoption of such processes. Pre-weld rolling aims to address these issues and can be applied easily to each component prior to fabrication. The results of an initial trial are presented, and indicate that post-weld distortion can be reduced by an average of 38% when correct rolling parameters are used. Finally, the mechanism by which pre-rolling acts to modify the state of residual stress around a weld line is discussed.


Beowulf, Hygelac, and Chlochilaichus On the Chronology in BeowulfThe first printed edition of the Old English poem Beowulf was published in Copenhagen in 1815 by an Icelander, Grimur Jonsson Thorkelin (1752-1829). After examining the content of the poem in a number of articles between 1815 and 1817, N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783-1872), published a Danish translation in 1820, the first ever in a modern language. Grundtvig was sure from the start that the poem dealt with real historical events, even though the centrepiece of the narrative was Beowulf's struggle against lake monsters and a dragon. Grundtvig, himself a poet and scholar, derived his vast knowledge of Denmark's earliest history from the books of Peter Friderich Suhm (1728-1798). It was on the basis of these writings that Grundtvig arrived at his renowned identification of Hygelac, Beowulf's King of the Geats, who fell in battle in Friesland, with King Chlochilaichus of the Danes, who fell in battle in the Kingdom of the Franks, a figure mentioned by Gregory of Tours (ca. 539-594) and others. Grundtvig's study claimed to show not only that the plot of the poem related real events, but that these could be dated on the basis of Gregory's text to about the year 515. "The identification of Chochilaicus with Hygelac is the most important discovery ever made in the study of Beowulf, and the foundation of our belief in the historic character of its episodes." (R. W. Chambers, 1921). This is still considered to be the "only certain fact in connection with the poem." (T. A. Shippey, 2001). The present study subjects this claim to closer scrutiny. The first part of the study deals with the way in which Suhm reached his views on the history of the period in question. In fact, only little analytical effort is required to ascertain that Suhm, who used Gregory of Tours, also employed other sources, since Grundtvig's references to Suhm show that the latter's texts include much more than can be found in Gregory. Suhm dealt with the topic in two of his books: Critisk Historie af Danmark (1779) and Historie af Danmark (1782). In the first of these works, where he devoted forty-five pages to the subject, Suhm drew on all the relevant literature known at his time, but he made no distinction between medieval sources and more recent and modern treatments of the period. Of Beowulf Suhm knew nothing for the good reason that he was long dead when the poem was published. He began on the basis of Saxo Grammaticus' tale of King Viglet and wonderously worked his way through numerous, contradictory identifications of Viglet to the conclusion that Viglet was identical to King Guitlach, who is mentioned by Geoffrey of Monmouth (d. 1155). Suhm's convolutions were wrapped in the context of a polemic directed against Claus Christoffersen Lyschander (1558-1624). According to Suhm King Viglet, alias Guitlach, was identical with King Chlochilaichus, who appears in Gregory of Tours. In analysing Suhm's attempt to support his claim the present study exams his various sources: Abbot William of AEbelholt (d.1203), Jacob Langebek (1710-1775), Johannes Meursius (1579-1639) and Hans Gram (1685-1748). Suhm contented that the king's campaign was waged to avenge Phinibertus, an otherwise unknown son of a Frankish king. For Phinibertus had fled to Guitlach for protection. The origin of this tale was most likely Jacques de Meyer (1491-1552), but it has to be rejected for lack of any basis in earlier sources. Suhm's treatment of the matter in Historie af Danmark is much shorter, covering only three pages. The context is entirely different, and without any explanation there is no longer any mention of King Viglet, but the identification of Guitlach with Chlochilaichus is upheld, and Phinibertus' plight is still the reason for the campaign. The whole episode, however, is based only on an erudite construction elaborated by Suhm, except perhaps for the direct quotations from Gregory. In the light of these facts, it must be asked whether it is still possible to uphold Grundtvig's identification of Hygelac with Chlochilaichus and therewith the chronology of events in Beowulf? The second part of the present study focuses, therefore, on an analysis of the Frankish sources, which consist of three texts. The first and most fundamental is Gregory of Tours' Libri Historiarum X. Book Three, where the story of Chlochilaichus is found, can be dated to sometime in the seventies of the sixth century. The analysis demonstrates the difficulties in understanding this text, including the problem of where Gregory obtained his information. The problem of name forms (Chlochilaichus, Hygelac, etc.) is discussed on the basis of the scholarly literature. It concludes that an identification of Hygelac with Chlochilaichus is highly hazardous. Consequently, it is also difficult to establish a chronology of the events related in Beowulf. The second text is Liber Historiae Francorum, which can be dated rather precisely to 726/727. Most of this text is copied from Gregory, but there is one particular piece of geographical information that has been used to decisively establish the link to Beowulf. The military campaign is situated in the land of the Attoarii, and Grundtvig was of the opinion that these were identical with the Hetware, mentioned in Beowulf in the context of Hygelac's campaign. This is still the conventional view of scholars. However, already in 1919 Godefroid Kurth showed that this geographical detail was no more than conjecture on the part of the anonymous author, albeit based on Gregory's text. The information is therefore merely of interpretive interest. Thus one of the major arguments for identifying Hygelac with Chlochilaichus proves invalid and with it the precise dating of events related in the poem. The third Frankish text, also by an anonymous author, is the Liber Monstrorum, which cannot be dated precisely, but it is presumably from the second half of the eighth century. One of the monsters it mentions is a king whose name resembles Hygelac - provided it is slightly corrected. Name forms in the five extant manuscripts of the work evidence variations. Moreover, the text belongs within an Anglo-Saxon rather than Frankish context, as was previously held. It is thus equally useless for the purpose of dating the tales told in Beowulf. The present study concludes that Grundtvig's identification of Hygelac with Chlochilaichus is no longer tenable, and as a consequence the events related in Beowulf can no longer be placed within a chronology of the sixth century. Beowulf remains what it always has been: a poem from the past, not a history of the past. Translated by Michael Wolfe


Hu proteins are a family of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) that are homologs of Drosophila ELAV, a protein required for nervous system development. Three of these proteins (HuB, HuC, and HuD) are primarily expressed in neurons. The fourth member, HuR is ubiquitously expressed in all tissues. At the molecular level, Hu proteins are known to interact with AU-rich instability conferring sequences in the 3' UTR of specific target mRNAs, stabilizing the mRNAs. These proteins are not only the best known mRNA stabilizers but also the earliest markers of the neuronal cell lineage. Among the neuronal Hu proteins, HuD has been shown to accelerate neuronal differentiation and axonal outgrowth in neurons both in culture and in vivo. In addition, HuD and other Hu proteins participate in synaptic plasticity mechanisms in the mature central nervous system and promote regeneration of peripheral nerves. Furthermore, HuD has been implicated in pathological conditions from neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease to childhood brain tumors. This review will focus on the involvement of HuD in nervous system function and pathology.


Introduction Weather as it affects glaciation is a subject which has been under observation during the past century. Remnants of the last glaciation still exist in Greenland, Antarctica, and on some of the islands of the polar regions and in the high mountain fastenesses of the temperate and tropical zones. Weather conditions are modifying these ice-masses; in fact, the variability of the weather causes glaciers to grow at certain times and wane during other periods. The changes that are going on today are apparently similar to those that took place during past ages. There is a distinction between weather and climate. Climate is the average of normal conditions of the atmosphere, while weather constitutes the variations from the normal. Weather changes are of a day-to-day occurrence. When averaged for the year and for longer periods, they yield differences which make the weather of one year vary from that of another, . . .


The design process for chip multiprocessors (CMPs) requires extremely long simulation times to explore performance, power, and thermal issues, particularly when operating system (OS) effects are included. In response, our novel FPGA-based emulation methodology models a full CMP design including applications and an OS. Activity counters programmed into the cores feed per-component microarchitectural power models. These models achieve under 10% error compared to detailed gate-level simulations. Our method retains software flexibility, but offers up to 35x speedup compared to corresponding full-system software simulations. We present our approach by emulating a 2-core Leon3 cache-coherent multiprocessor running Linux and parallel benchmarks. In an example case study, our emulated system uses activity counts (a proxy for temperature) to guide process migration between the CMP cores. Overall, this paper's methodology makes possible detailed power and thermal studies of CMPs and their operating systems.


Intracellular signalling is driven by protein-protein interactions. Members of the Death Domain superfamily mediate protein-protein interactions in both cell death and innate immune signalling pathways. They drive the formation of macromolecular complexes that act as a scaffold for protein recruitment and downstream signal transduction. Death Domain family members have low sequence identity, complicating their identification and predictions of their structure and function. We have taken all known human caspase recruitment domains (CARDs), a subfamily of the Death Domain superfamily, and generated a structure-guided sequence alignment. This alignment has enabled the identification of 14 positions that define the hydrophobic core and present a template for the identification of novel CARD sequences. We identify a conserved salt bridge in over half of all human CARDs and find a subset of CARDs likely to be regulated by tyrosine phosphorylation in their type I interface. Our alignment highlights that the CARDs of NLRC3 and NLRC5 are likely to be pseudodomains that have lost some of their original functionality. Together these studies demonstrate the benefits of structure-guided sequence alignments in understanding protein functionality.


This dissertation is concerned with static analysis of binary executables in a theoretically well-founded, sound, yet practical way. The major challenge is the reconstruction of a correct control flow graph in presence of indirect jumps, pointer arithmetic, and untyped variables. While static program analysis for proving safety properties or finding bugs usually targets source code, in many potential analysis scenarios only a binary is available. For instance, intellectual property issues can prevent source code from being accessible to verification specialists, and some analyses, such as malware detection, are by definition required to work with executables. Moreover, binary analysis can be useful even in situations where the source code is available, e.g., when the compiler is not part of the trusted computing base. In most of the existing work, a heuristic disassembler makes a best effort attempt to generate a plain text listing of the assembly instructions in the executable and feeds it to a separate static analysis component. The heuristics render this technique inherently unsound, and the control flow graphs retrieved from such listings are usually fragmented and incomplete. Several approaches have pointed out the possibility of using results of data flow analysis to augment disassembly and control flow reconstruction, but described this connection as suffering from a "chicken and egg" problem, since data flow analysis requires a control flow graph to work on. This dissertation argues for the integration of disassembly, control flow reconstruction, and static analysis in a unified process. It introduces a framework for simultaneous control and data flow analysis on low level binary code, which overcomes the "chicken and egg" problem and is proven to yield the most precise control flow graph with respect to the precision of the data flow domain. A very precise domain that lends itself well to control flow reconstruction is introduced in Bounded Address Tracking, a combined pointer and value analysis that supports pointer arithmetic. It tracks variable valuations up to a tunable bound on the number of values per variable per program location. Its path sensitivity generally allows strong updates to memory, i.e., heap regions are uniquely identified, and equips it with context sensitivity without assuming a correct layout of procedures. These building blocks are combined into an extensible program analysis architecture, which is implemented in a novel binary analysis tool. The tool, named Jakstab, works directly on binaries and disassembles instructions on demand while exploring the program's state space, allowing it to handle low level features such as overlapping instructions, which cause difficulties for regular disassemblers. The architecture is highly configurable to allow a wide range of analyses, from sound abstract interpretation to heuristics-supported disassembly. Its practical feasibility and improvements over existing approaches are shown through case studies on device driver binaries and system executables found on a regular desktop PC.


New technology is allowing marker-assisted selection to fulfill the promise of increasing efficiency of cultivar development However, these techniques depend upon the ability to extract DNA from large populations of plants. The objective of this project was to develop a high-throughput DNA extraction procedure without the need for greenhouse space or growing wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) plants. A sodium hydroxide rapid DNA extraction was modified for a 96-well format to reduce costs. Seeds were germinated in 8-well tissue culture plates, and 4-d-old seedling tissue was used to extract DNA by means of sodium hydroxide methodology. Approximately 1 μg of genomic DNA per 10 mg of tissue was isolated at a cost of about $0.10. The DNA quality was verified by amplification of microsatellite markers. Results were consistent with either fresh or stored tissue extracts. This technique allows one person to extract nearly 1000 storage-stable DNA samples daily, while keeping costs at a minimum.


Periodically harvested closures are frequently employed within the exploitation frameworks. Logistic model, with its variants, have been extensively investigated on evaluating different harvesting strategies. In this manuscript, we revisit Logistic model to evaluate the population dynamics and harvesting yields under periodically harvested frameworks. Sufficient conditions are obtained for global stability of positive periodic solutions. With the maximum annual-sustainable yield (MASY) as a management objective, the optimal harvest timing (or season) is determined for fixed harvesting effort and MASY is shown to depend solely on the duration of open harvesting season. Combining with the optimal harvesting effort, the higher annual-sustainable yield can be reached if the timing of harvesting is set as early as possible. Furthermore, the optimal harvesting policy, optimal harvesting effort, optimal harvest timing and their biological implications are discussed. Moreover, the paradoxical hydra effect observed in one-dimensional difference equation, where population size increases in response to additional mortality, is excluded for scalar continuous-time model. Our results offer a new perspective on setting the policy of harvesting closures.


In this study we use data from a large online survey of Australian women to examine whether the increased time spent at home, social isolation and financial stress resulting from COVID-19 containment measures were associated with a higher likelihood of physical and sexual violence among women in current cohabiting relationships with and without a history of violence. An increase in the amount of time spent at home with a partner did not in itself increase the likelihood of violence among either group. However, the probability of repeat or first-time violence was between 1.3 and 1.4 times higher for women who had less frequent contact with family and friends outside of the household during the pandemic. While financial stress prior to the pandemic was a strong predictor of violence for both groups, the probability of first-time violence was 1.8 times higher among women who experienced an increase in financial stress. We conclude that the pandemic was associated with an increased risk of violence against women in current cohabiting relationships, most likely from a combination of economic stress and social isolation.


The importance of music has been embraced by the Kenyan pre-school curriculum and impacts on childrenrsquos development in self-confidence, listening skills, enjoyment, relaxation and interaction. However, teaching of oral skills has been a challenge and the rate at which pre-school learners grasp speaking and listening skills is below expectations. Pre-school children in Kitengela are experiencing a number of challenges especially when it comes to reading, writing or spelling of words. Thus, the purpose of the study was to assess the determinants influencing pre-school teachersrsquo use of music on teaching oral skills in Kitengela Zone, Kajiado County, Kenya. Questionnaires were used to collect data from pre-school teachers and observation checklists from pre-school learners. Data analysis began by identifying common themes from the respondentsrsquo description of their experiences. Frequency counts of the responses were then obtained to generate information about the respondents. Qualitative data was analyzed thematically along the objectives and presented in narrative forms whereas quantitative data was analyzed descriptively using frequencies and percentages and inferentially using Chi-Square with the help of Statistical Packages for Social Science (SPSS 23) and results presented using tables and charts. The study established that pre-school teachersrsquo training in music, experience and perceived music abilities influence teaching of oral skills. The study recommends that, toimprove the use of music as a medium ofinstruction in pre-schools, pre-primary school teachers should be trained on howto use music as a medium of teaching oral skills. There is also need to organize programmes to expose pre-school teachers to use of music to teach oral skills.


I walk into the room and the smell of burning wood hits me immediately. The warmth from the fireplace grows as I step nearer to it. The fire needs to heat the little cottage through night so I add a log to the fire. There are a few sparks and embers. I throw a bigger log onto the fire and it drops with a thud. Again, there are barely any sparks or embers. The heat and the smell stay the same. They don't change and I do not become habituated to it. Rather, they are just a steady stream, so I take off my VR headset and give my recommendations to the team programming the gameified world of the virtual museum of the future (one depicting an ancient Turkish settlement, being built now at the institution where one of us works). As much as this technological world seems almost too futuristic, it actually retrieves obsolete items from the past—a heater, a piece of wood, and a spray bottle—in keeping with McLuhan's (1973) insights regarding media that provide strong participation goals and the rubric for achieving them. Moreover, the VR world extends the progression of game AI that occasioned the love-hate relationship with the "walking sim." The stronger the AI, the more clearly defined the rubric for participation. In the VR interactive museum the designers want people to be able to "play" with haptic devices—like the smell, smoke, and heat generators—in order to heighten not only the immersion but also the perception of being there, or what Bolter and Grusin (1999) call "immediacy." Indeed, Bolter and Grusin argue that the need for immediacy overwhelmingly takes over, regardless of the media's intrusion. However, in the example above, the system fell short because the designers had not figured for someone laying down the "log" on the virtual fire and having it send a representative—that is, a perceptual, based on experience, intuition, etc.—amount of sparks and heat. Someone else could throw the log as hard as they want. The machine only senses log in or log out. This corresponds precisely with how we feel about phenomena, for machines and AI are based upon a model of intelligence which prioritises mental representation and symbolic manipulation. For Laird and van Lent (2001), in their field defining presentation, the "killer app" of human-level AI was going to be computer games. Writing a decade later in the same conference proceedings, Weber, Mateas, and Jhala (2011), are still responding to this original position, by way of AI in strategy games. Writing for this year's, IEEE meeting Petrović (2018) also makes the case for human-level AI in games. What becomes clear, then, is that as much as we have wanted games to offer human behaviours, perception has taken a backseat in the extant models.As phenomenology makes clear, the emphasis on behaviour over perception leaves out the crucial, indeed foundational mode of intelligence: affective intentionality. Simply put, how we feel about phenomena impacts how we perceive phenomena as significant, inconsequential, interesting, etc. Thus, we should be asking if machines can understand significance? Can they feel any particular way about a game, a move, or the phenomenon of play? This becomes important when mental representation provides the mode of symbolic manipulation and vice versa. This occurs in and through a given game or gameified world's ability to instill, simulate, or otherwise produce affective intentionality. We would argue that herein lies the crux of the mixed reactions to Red Dead Redemption 2. Similarly, the example from the virtual museum highlights the ongoing omission. Human-level AI should not just reproduce a human's response to inputs, but should produce responses that a human would perceive. In short human-level AI needs to perceive perception itself. Indeed, this is the primary cognitive and affective response. Phenomenology does not tell us that; first principles semiotics tells us that. However, phenomenology gives us the means and methods to understand the response to affective intentionality and, more importantly, to develop the contingent hermeneutic (Merleau-Ponty, 2013). Moreover, semiotics will never encompass the materiality required of such a system, let alone the simulated materiality that exists through the interaction with the AI device and its interface, a device that bears the mark of the maker, just as surely as a bespoke shirt does. Thus, our paper will consider the production of affective intentionality and the ways VR games and gameified systems, like the virtual museum and Red Dead Redemption 2, facilitate, impede, and especially teach the perception of perception. As a corollary, then, our paper necessarily considers meta-cognitive processes—that is, the strategies for learning about learning—that occur in and through interaction with AI in games and devices (cf Hacker, 1998, 2016). Indeed, meta-cognition becomes a contingent component for instilling affective intentionality.