Describes a two-phase, decision-oriented process that overcomes many of the system usability problems and unfavorable cost/effectiveness consequences resulting from current design and development processes. The system design and development approach presented combines the use of a unique version of prototyping, a decision-oriented prototype, detailed requirements analysis, strong user involvement and extensive user operational testing throughout design and development. The first phase ends with a user-tested and user-endorsed prototype. This prototype becomes the source of a preliminary system specification that launches the second phase, which includes formal specification development, hardware and software implementation, and predeployment formal usability testing. The intent of this approach is to provide a seamless match between user-centered design and overall system design. >


Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a group-based self-management program for people with chronic fatigue syndrome. Design: A randomized controlled trial. Setting: Four mid-sized towns in southern Norway and two suburbs of Oslo. Subjects: A total of 137 adults with chronic fatigue syndrome. Intervention: A self-management program including eight biweekly meetings of 2.5 hours duration. The control group received usual care. Main measures: Primary outcome measure: Medical Outcomes Study-Short Form-36 physical functioning subscale. Secondary outcome measures: Fatigue severity scale, self-efficacy scale, physical and mental component summary of the Short Form-36, and the illness cognition questionnaire (acceptance subscale). Assessments were performed at baseline, and at six-month and one-year follow-ups. Results: At the six-month follow-up, a significant difference between the two groups was found concerning fatigue severity (p = 0.039) in favor of the control group, and concerning self-efficacy in favor of the intervention group (p = 0.039). These significant differences were not sustained at the one-year follow-up. No significant differences were found between the groups concerning physical functioning, acceptance, and health status at any of the measure points. The drop-out rate was 13.9% and the median number of sessions attended was seven (out of eight). Conclusions: The evaluated self-management program did not have any sustained effect, as compared with receiving usual care.


In response to the recent debate on the media, this paper examines the effect of media coverage on firm earnings management. Even if prior studies (Miller 2006; Dyck et al. 2010) have documented the media's role in detecting and deterring accounting fraud (or extreme earnings management), it is unclear ex-ante whether the media amplifies or curbs less egregious earnings management. Our results show that media coverage is negatively associated with both accrual-based and real earnings management, suggesting that the media serves as an external monitor that curbs managers' opportunistic earnings management behaviors. Further analyses show that the effect of media coverage on earnings management is more pronounced when monitoring from auditors is weak and when the other information intermediaries are active. Overall, the findings suggest a monitoring role of the media in firm financial reporting practices.


The erector muscles are frequently strained through improper lifting. Stability of the
spine is maintained by the muscles, ligaments and pressures inside the body cavities. Modelling
of this stability has been achieved using a new arch spine model developed using optimisation
techniques. The position of the thrust line in the arch spine model can be used to analyse
stability of the spine, and muscle forces introduced to change the position of this thrust line.
The erector muscles move the thrust line forward to the centre line of the spine in a weight
lifting task in a stooped posture. A method to calculate muscle forces stabilising the spine and
to calculate internal forces in the vertebrae is presented. Calculations show that L3/L4 disc
loads increase with muscle and ligament forces in the lumbar region.


This paper introduces the concept of "world author," taking as its exemplar the Chinese British writer and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo. It investigates how Guo utilizes her bilingualism to construct and negotiate her creative agency, especially when dealing with the political and commercial forces imposed on diasporic authors. Through engaging with Rebecca Walkowitz's idea of world literature as being "born translated," I point out that the translational should not be limited to the thematic and representational arrangements internal to a given text. Instead, translation as movements between linguistic systems and media forms can generate multiple versions of a text, to the point that such translational multiplicity fundamentally challenges its supposed singularity. This argument is demonstrated with Guo's self-translation of the stories of Fenfang and her filmic adaptation of the novel UFO in Her Eyes . Through these examples of what I call "translational rebirths," I demonstrate the importance of paratextual details and intertextual connections between clusters of an author's creative output for the interpretation and appreciation of l'œuvre d'un auteur instead of une œuvre d'art . This case study also shows the need for the academic debates on world literature to go beyond the singularity of texts and evaluative criteria of worldliness based on this assumption, so that the discipline can realize its full potential in accommodating multilingual transnational authors like Guo.


Spark erosion has re-emerged in a number of air-cooled generator units installed in the United States from 1998 to 2006. The purpose of this technical paper and presentation is to review new inspection & repair methods to help operators to determine the best repair options. To develop better inspection methods one has to understand the root cause for spark erosion in generator stators. The theory of two different spark erosion phenomena is discussed in this paper. Spark erosion caused by capacitive slot discharges (partial discharges) is a well known effect in high voltage (HV) machines and very dangerous in respect to insulation damage. The vibration sparking phenomenon will also be explained, which is different from the partial discharge (PD) effect caused by interruption of current paths. As a next step inspection methods are described. In the past, inspections to identify spark erosion used only the visual method. This method could only provide the subjective opinion of the inspector and was a single input to decide the condition of the generator stator windings and possible life extension (rewind) solution. In order to give the operators more options, Alstom developed advanced electrical test methods to allow a more accurate condition assessment. The result of multiple inspection methods allows a much better understanding of the stator winding condition. Since spark erosion is a process that deteriorates the insulation of the stator bar over time, additional data points (multiple test methods) can help to utilize multiple repair options that will not require complete rewinding of the stator to reach expected reliability of the generator. Alternative repair options are then discussed in the paper.Copyright © 2011 by Alstom Technology Ltd.


Recent evidence implicating tissue factor and the protein C pathway in the hypercoagulable state associated with intestinal inflammation suggests that thrombin is likely to contribute to this response. The objective of this study was to assess the role of thrombin in the extraintestinal thrombosis associated with experimental colitis. Thrombus formation was quantified in microvessels of the cremaster muscle in mice with dextran sodium sulfate (DSS)-induced colonic inflammation. The light/dye endothelial injury model was used to elicit thrombus formation in DSS colitic mice treated with either hirudin, heparin, or antithrombin III. The initiation and propagation/stabilization phases of thrombus formation were quantified using the time of onset of the thrombus and time to blood flow cessation, respectively. Thrombus formation was accelerated in arterioles of DSS colitic mice, as exhibited by significant reductions in the time of thrombus initiation and propagation/stabilization. Colitic mice treated with hirudin, heparin, or antithrombin III did not exhibit a significant change in the time of onset of the thrombus compared with untreated colitic mice. However, all three antithrombin agents largely prevented the DSS-induced reduction in the time to flow cessation following light/dye injury, with hirudin offering complete protection. These findings indicate that thrombin plays a major role in the extraintestinal thrombus formation associated with experimental colitis. Thrombin appears to contribute to the propagation/stabilization, rather than initiation, phase of the colitis-associated thrombogenesis at the distant vascular site. The results support the therapeutic use of antithrombin agents for reducing the risk of thromboembolism in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.


ABSTRACT Objective To compare pharyngeal airway dimensions and hyoid bone position in different craniofacial growth patterns. Methods In total, 611 patients divided into 9 subgroups were compared according to malocclusion classification and vertical growth pattern, and these subgroups were compared in terms of pharyngeal airway and hyoid measurements. A two-way ANOVA test was used to compare the findings of the subgroups. Results No significant difference was found for the pharyngeal measurements between the groups (p>0.05). The vertical airway length (PNS-Ep) was significantly shorter in the Class III malocclusion group (p<0.05) and in the hypodivergent group (p<0.05). No statistically significant difference was found between any subgroups in any measurements of the position of the hyoid bone (p>0.05). Conclusion The pharyngeal airway dimensions and hyoid bone position are similar among individuals in the sagittal direction. The vertical airway length is significantly shorter in Class III and hypodivergent individuals.


Tests using American data from 1970 to 2015 support the behavioral hypothesis that firms Cater to investor whims. We show that the standard tests cannot distinguish between the behavioral interpretation, and a rational model in which the firm optimally chooses investment, equity issuance, and dividends; while investors optimally choose consumption, equity, and bank account deposits. The rational model shows the importance of two-way financial flows between investors and firms that are generally ignored in the literature. Using booms, sentiment, and behavioral mispricing measures, we construct new tests of behavioral Catering Theory. In all cases that theory is rejected.


Abstract. Photogrammetry provides a powerful tool to digitally document protected, inaccessible, and rare fossils. This saves manpower in relation to current documentation practice and makes the fragile specimens more available for paleontological analysis and public education. In this study, high resolution orthophoto (0.5 mm) and digital surface models (1 mm) are used to define fossil boundaries that are then used as an input to automatically extract fossil length information via central lines. In general, central lines are widely used in geosciences as they ease observation, monitoring and evaluation of object dimensions. Here, the 3D central lines are used in a novel paleontological context to study fossilized oyster shells with photogrammetric and LiDAR-obtained 3D point cloud data. 3D central lines of 1121 Crassostrea gryphoides oysters of various shapes and sizes were computed in the study. Central line calculation included: i) Delaunay triangulation between the fossil shell boundary points and formation of the Voronoi diagram; ii) extraction of Voronoi vertices and construction of a connected graph tree from them; iii) reduction of the graph to the longest possible central line via Dijkstra's algorithm; iv) extension of longest central line to the shell boundary and smoothing by an adjustment of cubic spline curve; and v) integration of the central line into the corresponding 3D point cloud. The resulting longest path estimate for the 3D central line is a size parameter that can be applied in oyster shell age determination both in paleontological and biological applications. Our investigation evaluates ability and performance of the central line method to measure shell sizes accurately by comparing automatically extracted central lines with manually collected reference data used in paleontological analysis. Our results show that the automatically obtained central line length overestimated the manually collected reference by 1.5% in the test set, which is deemed sufficient for the selected paleontological application, namely shell age determination.


Analyses of ethnic and racial wage differentials neglect the fact that minorities cluster in urban and in more deprived areas. This paper estimates ethnic wage differentials by comparing minorities to the majority in the same local labour market and therefore facing similar socio-economic conditions. Location is important: in the UK ethnic wage differentials and their variation across areas are partly explained by job characteristics and especially occupation. Since minorities in some areas are worse off compared to minorities in other areas, there may be scope for policy to incentivise mobility of specific groups.


Recent work by Kahan et al. (2017) on the psychology of motivated numeracy in the context of intracultural disagreement suggests that people are less likely to employ their capabilities when the evidence runs contrary to their political ideology. This research has so far been carried out primarily in the USA regarding the liberal–conservative divide over gun control regulation. In this paper, we present the results of a modified replication that included an active reasoning intervention with Western European participants regarding both the hierarchy–egalitarianism and individualism–collectivism divides over immigration policy (n = 746; considerably less than the preregistration sample size). We reproduce the motivated numeracy effect, though we do not find evidence of increased polarization of high-numeracy participants.


In an opportunistic spectrum sharing system, secondary users equipped with cognitive radios opportunistically access spectrum that is not being used by the primary users, i.e., the licensed spectrum users, without causing harmful interference to the primary users. We present an analytical performance model of opportunistic spectrum access in a military environment consisting of a group of secondary users sharing a set of channels with primary users in a coverage area. A secondary user occupying a given channel detects when a primary user accesses the channel and then either moves to another idle channel or is placed in a virtual queue where it waits until either a channel becomes available or a maximum waiting time is reached. Using a two-dimensional Markov model, we derive expressions for the blocking probabilities and reconnection probability and evaluate the performance metrics under a range of parameter settings.


Traditional time based preventive maintenance is used to constant maintenance interval for equipment life. In order to consider economic aspect for time based preventive maintenance, preventive maintenance is scheduled by RCM(Reliability-Centered Maintenance) evaluation. So, Markov state model is utilized considering stochastic state in RCM. In this paper, a Markov state model which can be used for scheduling and optimization of maintenance is presented. The deterioration process of system condition is modeled by a Markov model. In case study, simulation results about RCM are used to the real historical data of combustion turbine generating units in Korean power systems.


The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) plays an important role in the development and progression of solid tumors. Growing evidence suggests that EGFR activation also mediates resistance to chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Studies elucidating the biochemical basis of these observations have demonstrated that EGFR inhibition down-modulates mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) or PI3-K/Akt-dependent survival pathways in many tumor types and is associated with a proapoptotic shift in Bcl-2 expression and/or activation. Although research to date has focused on well-characterized survival pathways, other pathways in the complex EGFR signaling network may also be involved in tumor survival. Whereas suppressing EGFR signaling may be insufficient to fully induce apoptosis, it may prime neoplastic cells for apoptosis induced by other cytotoxic stimuli. Preclinical and clinical data show that inhibition of EGFR, together with enhanced induction of apoptosis, may counter resistance to chemotherapy and radiation therapy, both of which have been shown to induce EGFR-dependent survival responses. Further study of EGFR-modulated apoptotic pathways may facilitate the rational development of improved combination regimens.


Current management goals of the natural lands section of the Morris Arboretum revolve heavily around invasive species control. One of the most prolific invaders is reed canarygrass (Phalaris arundinacea), a cool season perennial grass. Reed canarygrass has formed a dense stand in a section of the meadow that experiences seasonal inundation of Wissahickon Creek flood waters and is occurring in adjacent areas within the floodplain meadow. Heavy seeding and planting with natives is recommended following removal of P. arundinacea to prevent re-establishment through competition (Wisconsin Reed Canary Grass Management Working Group, 2009). This project seeks to quantify and compare the species composition of the extant vegetation and the soil seed bank to assess environmental sources of native viable propagules for restoration. Species richness and relative percent cover were measured in plots placed in both the reed canarygrass dominated and adjacent uninvaded areas in the floodplain as well as the sloping upland section of meadow. Associated soil cores were collected at 5-cm depth increments to 15-cm, cold stratified, and assayed for viable seed in a controlled greenhouse. Viable seed reduced with depth in the soil column. Seed samples from the reed canarygrass section of the meadow exhibited higher species richness than the associated extant vegetation and canarygrass seedling abundance reduced with depth. This data on the composition of the soil seed bank are integral to developing appropriate management actions designed to promote target restoration species while controlling invasives.


Within a suspended photonic wire, the periodically-spaced nanotethers sustaining the wire can behave as damped transverse resonators that interact with the partially reflecting effect of the wire-tether intersection, and thus modify the Bragg reflection mechanism. This specific resonant mechanism is explored using a transfer matrix model, and is shown to result in an ultrasharp filter edge. This sharp behavior is evidenced experimentally on 300–400-nm-wide InP suspended wires through transmission data and further consolidated by optical low coherence reflectometry time-frequency analysis.


We reviewed forty medical histories of patients with primitive cutaneous amyloidosis registered in the Unit of Dermatology, Venereology and Allergy of the Ecuadorian Social Security Institute of Guayaquil, who have abandoned the treatment for four or more years, finding a favorable evolution in the 37.5% of patients.


Diet, Habitat and Ecomorphology of Cichlids in the Upper Bladen River, Belize. (August 2008) Jennifer L. Cochran, B.S.; M.A., Saint Mary's University of Minnesota Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Kirk O. Winemiller Cichlids are among the most species rich and ecologically diverse families of freshwater fishes. Life history attributes vary greatly among cichlids across their global range, and in the Neotropics alone studies have revealed a great deal of diversity in cichlid ecology, morphology and behavior. This study investigated the habitat use, diet, and ecomorphology of an assemblage of cichlids in the Upper Bladen River, Belize. Mesohabitats, including riffles, runs, deep pools, vegetated areas and adjacent streams, were surveyed and snorkeled, and physicochemical and habitat variables were measured at each site where cichlids were observed or collected. Between 12 and 65 stomachs of each cichlid species were analyzed for diet composition. In addition, traditional morphometrics were completed on five individuals of each species in order to investigate the relationships between morphology, diet, and habitat use. The present study revealed patterns of trophic and morphological diversity consistent with a hypothesis of resource partitioning in accordance with adaptive divergence in morphological traits that influence ecological performance. The Bladen cichlid assemblage has one algivore with a long, coiled gut (Archocentrus spilurus), one piscivore with an elongated body and highly protrusbile jaws (Petenia splendida), two substrate sifters that feed extensively on benthic invertebrates (Astatheros robertsoni and Thorichthys meeki), one midwater invertebrate feeder


The article addresses the weakness of the Left to counter neo-liberalism even in times of economic crises and growing inequalities. Neo-liberalism seems to have been quite successful in discrediting the quest for equality by mobilizing ideologies of individual freedom and responsibility for oneself as values opposing equality. As any such ideology, the neo-liberal one connects itself to socially rooted desires which the power relations of capitalist societies actually betray. The article argues that the Left should take up the battle with neo-liberalism by remembering its own traditions of striving for the self-determination ("free association") of individuals. Taking it seriously, self-determination requires social preconditions which are in utter contrast to neo-liberalism: promoting equalities, social protection against the dependence on markets, and democracy in its strict sense.


OBJECTIVE
This study examined the assessment of the negative emotional constructs of depression, anxiety and stress with the short version (21 items) of the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) in elderly patients (age > 60 years) with persistent pain.

DESIGN
A convenience sample of 2,045 patients attending a tertiary referral pain centre were categorized by age and included a group aged 60 years and under (n=1,245) for assessment of age differences. Elderly patients (n=800) were divided into 3 groups: 61-70 years (n=366), 71-80 years (n=308) and 81 years and over (n=126). Patients completed the DASS-21 as part of an initial clinical assessment process.

RESULTS
The failure rate for scale completion increased across age groups and was significantly higher in the oldest group compared to the youngest group. All scales demonstrated reasonable convergent and divergent validity. Confirmatory factor analysis confirmed a three-factor structure and is consistent with previous studies. Age differences in depression, anxiety and stress scores were also assessed. Interestingly, patients aged 60 years and under had significantly higher Depression and Stress scores compared to all other age groups. This group also had significantly higher Anxiety scores compared to patients aged 61-70 years.

CONCLUSIONS
Overall, the DASS-21 is a reliable and valid measure of depression, anxiety and stress in elderly patients with persistent pain. There are some age differences in the normative values for the reporting of mood symptoms and these need to be taken into account when assessing pain-related mood disturbance in older populations.


Felis catus hairs from different parts of its body were examined. Examination of some hair parameters allow the author to propose the following strategy of cat identification: 1) hair length divides cats into long- and short-haired; 2) identification of the species: a) long-haired--by medullary substance/hair thickness ratio; b) short-haired--by the presence or absence of osteal and transition hairs, by thickness of the osteal hairs. This scheme allows identification of the species of an individual cat.


Distributed Constraint Problem solving represents a fundamental research area in distributed artificial intelligence and multi-agent systems. The constraint density, or the ratio of the number of constraints to the number of variables, determines the difficulty of either finding a solution or minimizing the set of variable assignment conflicts. Reducing density typically reduces difficulty. We present a fully distributed technique for reducing the effective density of constraint graphs, called Virtual Structure Reduction (VSR). The VSR technique leverages the occurrence of variables that must be assigned the same value based on shared constraints and can improve solver performance using existing algorithms. We discuss our Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem (DCOP) solver, integrated with the Distributed Stochastic Algorithm (DSA), called VSR-DSA. The VSR-DSA algorithm demonstrates performance gains vs DSA in both solution quality and time on 3-coloring problems.


Nickel foam-supported NiO spheres were prepared by an electrodeposition technique using nickel foam as the substrate, and then the Ag nanoparticles were loaded on the NiO spheres. SEM images showed that these NiO/Ag spheres are porous with a size of about 2 µm. As an anode for lithium-ion batteries, the nickel foam-supported NiO/Ag spheres exhibit higher coulombic efficiency, weaker polarization, and better cycling performance as compared to the NiO spheres. The improvements of these electrochemical properties are attributed to the Ag nanoparticles, which enhanced the electrical conduction of the electrode.


A literature review has been conducted on the topic of wind farm supervisory controls. The context is the development of a supervisory control system for the NOWITECH Reference Windfarm (NRW), which consists of 120 DTU 10 MW wind turbines. The NRW is representative of the next generation of large offshore wind farms which, from the perspective of the operator of the onshore electric grid, is expected to behave like a conventional powerplant. It was found that existing analysis methods and control strategies are insufficient for the NRW. It is recommended to develop engineering analysis methods for the atmospheric boundary layer over a large wind farm; to create a unified state-space model of the NRW, which includes aerodynamics, structural dynamics, control systems, and electrical load flow; to verify existing techniques for wind field state estimation using standard turbine sensors; and to evaluate the practice of using very simplified load metrics, like rotor hub loads, to represent the costs of fatigue degradation in the wind turbine structures. It is further recommended to use these analysis tools to develop an "offline" optimal control strategy, where the control laws, and the optimal tuning of selected parameters, are determined upfront.


Phytostabilization is a cost-effective long-term bioremediation technique for the immobilization of metalliferous mine tailings. However, the biogeochemical processes affecting metal(loid) molecular stabilization and mobility in the root zone remain poorly resolved. The roots of Prosopis juliflora grown for up to 36 months in compost-amended pyritic mine tailings from a federal Superfund site were investigated by microscale and bulk synchrotron X-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and multiple energy micro-X-ray fluorescence imaging to determine iron, arsenic, and sulfur speciation, abundance, and spatial distribution. Whereas ferrihydrite-bound As(V) species predominated in the initial bulk mine tailings, the rhizosphere speciation of arsenic was distinctly different. Root-associated As(V) was immobilized on the root epidermis bound to ferric sulfate precipitates and within root vacuoles as trivalent As(III)-(SR)3 tris-thiolate complexes. Molar Fe-to-As ratios of root epidermis tissue were two times higher than the 15% compost-amended bulk tailings growth medium. Rhizoplane-associated ferric sulfate phases that showed a high capacity to scavenge As(V) were dissimilar from the bulk-tailings mineralogy as shown by XAS and X-ray diffraction, indicating a root-surface mechanism for their formation or accumulation.


We discuss methods for visualizing neural network decision boundaries and decision regions. We use these visual-izations to investigate issues related to reproducibility and generalization in neural network training. We observe that changes in model architecture (and its associate inductive bias) cause visible changes in decision boundaries, while multiple runs with the same architecture yield results with strong similarities, especially in the case of wide architectures. We also use decision boundary methods to visualize double descent phenomena. We see that decision boundary reproducibility depends strongly on model width. Near the threshold of interpolation, neural network decision bound-aries become fragmented into many small decision regions, and these regions are non-reproducible. Meanwhile, very narrows and very wide networks have high levels of re-producibility in their decision boundaries with relatively few decision regions. We discuss how our observations re-late to the theory of double descent phenomena in convex models. Code is available at https://github.com/somepago/dbViz.


cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States, with more than 500,000 men, women, and children succumbing to the disease each year. The idea, then, that we can eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer in the United States by the year 2015 may appear impractical, if not irrational and impossible. It seems inconceivable that in the first part of the 21st century every patient could survive cancer. Doubt can be attributed to awareness of the biologic complexity of cancer and seeing the pace of clinical progress through the prism of the 20th century.


A background to the use of empirical indices (i.e. ratios and sums) in exploration geochemistry is presented, together with commentary on more sophisticated statistical multivariate procedures. Multivariate statistical procedures can assist in developing geochemical models upon which further investigations can be based, and in identifying geochemically anomalous samples. A case is made for a simple method, weighted sums, that is based on prior knowledge concerning the mineralogy and geochemistry of sought-after mineral resources. This procedure avoids many of the complications and pit-falls of more sophisticated multivariate statistical methods. Although weighted sums were introduced to exploration geochemistry over 20 years ago, they don't appear to have been used extensively. The objective of this paper is to reintroduce them, with a simple but clear exposition, as a tool worthy of consideration in the knowledge-based 21st century.


We point out that chiral condensates at nonzero temperature and magnetic fields are in strict connection to the space-time integral of corresponding two-point neutral meson correlation functions in the pseudoscalar channel via the Ward-Takahashi identity. Screening masses of neutral pseudoscalar mesons, which are defined as the exponential decay of the corresponding spatial correlation functions in the long distance, thus are intrinsically connected to (inverse) magnetic catalysis of chiral condensates. To study this we performed lattice simulations of (2 + 1)-flavor QCD on 32 × Nt lattices with pion mass Mπ ' 220 MeV in a fixed scale approach having temperature T ∈ [17, 281] MeV and magnetic field strength eB ∈ [0, 2.5] GeV. We find that screening lengths, i.e. inverses of screening masses of π, K and η ss̄, turn out to have the similar complex eB and T dependences of the corresponding chiral condensates. Although the transition temperature is found to always decrease as eB grows, we show that the suppression due to magnetic fields becomes less significant for hadron screening length and chiral condensates with heavier quarks involved, and ceases to occur for η ss̄ and strange quark chiral condensate. The complex eB and T dependences of both screening masses and chiral condensates, reflecting the crossover nature of the QCD transition, are attributed to the competition between sea and valence quark effects. These findings could be useful to guide low-energy models and effective theories of QCD.


The dental pulp is a unique tissue and its importance in the long-term prognosis of the tooth is often ignored by clinicians. It is unique in that it resides in a rigid chamber which provides strong mechanical support and protection from the microbial rich oral environment. If this rigid shell loses its structural integrity, the pulp is under the threat of the adverse stimuli from the mouth, such as caries, cracks, fractures and open restoration margins, all of which provide pathways for micro-organisms and their toxins to enter the pulp. The pulp initially responds to irritation by becoming inflamed and, if left untreated, this will progress to pulp necrosis and infection. The inflammation will also spread to the surrounding alveolar bone and cause periapical pathosis. The magnitude of pulp-related problems should not be underestimated since their most serious consequence is oral sepsis, which can be life threatening, and hence correct diagnosis and management are essential. Clinicians must have a thorough understanding of the physiological and pathological features of the dental pulp as well as the biological consequences of treatment interventions.


The dispersion characteristics for the linear vane-type waveguide are determined using the generalized scattering matrix (GSM) formed with the mode matching algorithm. This dispersion analysis technique includes determining the eigenvalues (cutoff frequencies) for the various waveguide modes that can propagate on the circuit, as well as forming a determinantal equation for a single period of the circuit from which the system normal mode dispersion characteristics are determined. The resulting GSM is easily manipulated for determining eigenvalues for single or multiple periods of a periodic circuit using either a perfect electrical conductor (PEG) or a re-entrant boundary condition. This boundary condition formulation using the GSM provides a generalized eigenvalue technique for 2-D and 3-D structures. Similarly, the GSM is easily manipulated to yield a new analytic expression for a determinantal equation to predict the dispersion of the system normal modes for the periodic circuit. The accuracy of the GSM eigenvalue and dispersion solution techniques are limited by the frequency resolution of the simulation and the relative convergence (RC) criterion. >


Cefozopran (SCE-2787, CZOP) was administered to patients with pediatric infections three to four times daily by intravenous injection or 30-minute intravenous drip infusion, and investigations were made in individual cases, on relationships among doses, pharmacokinetics, effects on pathogenic bacteria and MIC against them, and clinical effects. The following results on optimal doses of CZOP were obtained. 1. Clinical cases in which CZOP was administered at a dose of 10 mg (potency)/kg The subjects were 7 patients including 4 patients with pneumonia. Severities of the diseases were severe in one of the patients with pneumonia, and moderate in the other patients. The MIC against pathogenic bacteria (4 strains) isolated from these cases ranged from 0.2 to 1.56 micrograms/ml. The serum concentrations were in a range between 1.4 and 7.6 micrograms/ml at 4 hours after administration. In some cases, the serum concentrations were lower than the MICs, though slightly. In the clinical evaluation, CZOP was excellent in 3 cases, good in 2 cases and fair in 1 case. The evaluation was impossible in 1 case. The efficacy rate was 83.3% (5/6). In bacteriological evaluation, 3 out of the 4 strains disappeared. Adverse reactions and abnormal laboratory test values were not observed. 2. Cases in which CZOP was administered at a dose of 20 mg (potency)/kg The subjects were 5 patients including 2 with pneumonia, and severities were severe in one of the patients with pneumonia, and moderate in the other patients. The MICs against the pathogenic bacteria (3 strains) isolated from these cases ranged from 0.1 to 1.56 micrograms/ml. While, serum concentrations at 4 hours after administration were in a range between 3.0 and 7.7 micrograms/ml sufficiently exceeding the MICs. In the clinical evaluation, CZOP was excellent in 1 case and good in four cases, with an efficacy rate of 100% (5/5). In the bacteriological evaluation, all the 3 strains disappeared. No adverse reactions were observed, but an abnormal laboratory test value showing eosinophilia was noted in one case. 3. Cases in which CZOP was administered at a dose of 40 mg (potency)/kg The subjects were 5 patients including 3 with pneumonia. The severity was moderate in 2 of the pneumonia patients, and severe in the other three cases. The MICs against the pathogenic bacteria (4 strains) isolated from these cases were in a range between 0.1 and 0.78 micrograms/ml. The serum concentrations at 4 hours after administration ranged from 6.5 to 21.9 micrograms/ml, sufficiently exceeding the MICs. In the clinical evaluation, CZOP was excellent in 4 cases and good in 1 case, with an efficacy rate of 100% (5/5). The efficacy rate in the bacteriological evaluation was also 100%. As adverse reaction, red urine was observed in one case. Eosinophlia was noted in one case in the laboratory tests. When CZOP was administered to patients with pediatric infections at a dose of 10 mg (potency)/kg, the clinical effect of the drug was insufficient in a case in which serum concentration of CZOP at 4 hours after administration was lower than the MICs against the pathogenic bacteria. When CZOP was administered at a dose of 20 mg (potency)/kg, sufficient concentrations were obtained, and the drug efficacies were found to be excellent or good in all cases. Therefore, the effective dose normally used is considered to be 20 mg (potency)/kg. When CZOP was administered at a dose of 40 mg (potency)/kg, the drug was found to be excellent or good in all of the cases although the severities were high in more than half of the cases tested. In addition, the rate of excellent efficacies was 80% (4/5). Furthermore, no severe adverse reactions were observed. It was, therefore, confirmed that CZOP should be administered at a dose of 40 mg (potency)/kg in severe or intractable cases.


Davide Turcato, Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta's Experiments with Revolution, 1889-1900 Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. ISBN: 978-0230301795.Despite a recent surge of interest in the history of anarchism, scholars still face several obstacles when attempting to conduct research on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century anarchists. These include both historiographical misrepre- sentations and significant research hurdles: anarchist security-culture transcends geographic and linguistic borders and makes anarchists especially slippery subjects of study. However, despite these issues, progress in anarchist studies is being made by researchers such as Davide Turcato. Turcato's most recent publication, Making Sense of Anarchism: Errico Malatesta's Experiments with Revolution 1889-1900, represents a major methodological step toward grappling with this 'classical' period of anarchist history. In his dense but readable 250-page volume, Turcato provides a persuasive re-reading of anarchist ideas and actions that highlights the often misunderstood continuity of the anarchist tradition, the often ignored rationality and evolution of anarchist theory and the nearly invisible transnational character of anarchist networks. Turcato's book is thus something of a clarion call to historians of anarchism, providing both great insight into Malatesta's life and evolving political thought and delivering a resounding evisceration of the old stereotypes of anarchists perpetuated by authors such as James Joll and Eric Hobsbawm.To address the troubled historiography of anarchism Turcato employs what he calls 'methodological charity', an approach that begins with the assumption that the anarchists' actions were guided by reason and then seeks to interpret behaviour patterns as meaningfully as possible. For Turcato, this means that 'anarchist ration- ality, instead of being an empirical assertion to be demonstrated, becomes not only a methodological principle of interpretation, but also a heuristic principle, to be used in attempting to pierce through the deceptive appearance of anarchist action' (p. 12). This 'charitable approach' to history proves to be extremely useful when analysing events associated with Errico Malatesta, such as the 1891 May Day riots in Rome, the 1892 Jerez uprising in Spain, and the 1894 insurrection in Carrara. By starting off with the assumption of rationality, Turcato is able to reveal hidden motives and connections often overlooked by historians who have all too often relied on emotive and irrational explanations for anarchist behaviour. …


In Kenya and Kazakhstan, integration of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing results into the routine surveillance of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) proved feasible and useful. The integration process improved overall data quality and data validation capacity, and integrated data are a useful addition to routine cohort and treatment outcome data. Besides their importance for individual patient care, they provide trends on the association of MDR-TB and HIV in the routine programme setting. They also form a useful epidemiological basis for more specific studies, such as on nosocomial outbreaks. Whether the system itself is sensitive enough to monitor possible outbreaks needs further investigation.


Human resources are one of the most valuable resources of an organization and indeed an organization is nothing without human resources. This applies to companies and educational Institutions. Getting and keeping good people is critical to the success of every organization. Maintaining employees is about providing working conditions that are worker friendly, involvement in decision making, good salaries, recognition for good performance and so forth. Many companies are increasingly finding it difficult to retain employees. Turnover is becoming a serious problem in today's corporate environment. Turnover costs for many organizations are very high and can significantly affect financial performance of an organisation. Sony Sugar Company has been ranked at the lowest for two consecutive years by the government and has a high labour turnover as indicated in their newsletters. This study focused on Sony Sugar Company limited and its main objective was to asses the factors that contribute to labour turnover in parastatal organizations in Kenya. The study was able to find out the patterns of labour turnover and effects of labour turnover to Sony Sugar Company limited. The study used a sample size of 108 people out of the total population 1,008. Purposeful sampling was used to select the key respondents while random sampling was used to select the main respondents. The study used interview schedules and questionnaires to collect data; they were administered to the key and main respondents at their offices. Data was analyzed using statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) and frequency distribution tables were used. The study came up with many recommendations which includes; The management should introduce better overtime pay and workers encouraged to take up the opportunity, the managers should involve workers in decision making, the management of Sony Sugar Company should review its pay package, fringe benefits and opportunities for growth be put in place in order to retain its workforce, the management should implement the findings of labour turnover in order to reduce its effects, the management should streamline the promotion procedures and should be followed strictly and Worker friendly leadership styles be used by all managers in the company for instance democratic and laissez fair


The mechanisms of effect of adrenocortricotropic hormone on pain sensitivity were studied in anaesthetized Sprague-Dawley male rats. Systemic ACTH administration increased the pain thresholds (from 3 min up to the 30 min after injection) in rats with normal production of hormones. The initial stage of ACTH analgesic effect was fully eliminated by blockade of opiate receptors, ACTH-induced reaction was observed only from 15 up to 30 min after injection. In rats with deficiency of glucocorticoids production, the duration of ACTH-induced analgesic effect decreased to 15 min. The analgesic effect was completely prevented by combination of blockade of glucocorticoids production and blockade of opiate receptors. Thus the ACTH-induced analgesic effect is provided at least by two mechanisms: 1) appearing during the first minutes after injection (from 3 min up to 15 min) and mediated by opiate receptors rather than glucocorticoids, and 2) appearing from 15 min up to 30 min after injection and mediated by glucocorticoids but not opiate receptors.


Whole-genome duplication produces massive duplicated blocks in plant genomes. Sharing appreciable sequence similarity, duplicated blocks may have been affected by illegitimate recombination. However, large-scale evaluation of illegitimate recombination in plant genomes has not been possible previously. Here, based on comparative and phylogenetic analysis of the sequenced genomes of rice and sorghum, we report evidence of extensive and long-lasting recombination between duplicated blocks. We estimated that at least 5.5% and 4.1% of rice and sorghum duplicated genes have been affected by nonreciprocal recombination (gene conversion) over nearly their full length after rice-sorghum divergence, while even more (8.7% and 8.1%, respectively) have been converted over portions of their length. We found that conversion occurs in higher frequency toward the terminal regions of chromosomes, and expression patterns of converted genes are more positively correlated than nonconverted ones. Though converted paralogs are more similar to one another than nonconverted ones, elevated nucleotide differences between rice-sorghum orthologs indicates that they have evolved at a faster rate, implying that recombination acts as an accelerating, rather than a conservative, element. The converted genes show no change in selection pressure. We also found no evidence that conversion contributed to guanine-cytosine (GC) content elevation.


The current article seeks to present a model that reconciles Islamic teachings with the intellectual and scientific achievements of modernity. It attempts to develop a model that systematises the discourse on Islam and modernity while preserving its Islamic identity using qualitative methods. Thus, this article introduces a model called 'moderate Islamic modernism'. This model does not acknowledge the achievements of modernity in their entirety, but only those intellectual and scientific achievements that are free from certain bias elements. This article will first distinguish between the proposed moderate model and that of 'extreme Islamic modernism'. Secondly, this article compares the model with 'Islamic traditionalism'. In brief, the proposed moderate model advocates the reconciliation of Islamic teachings with the intellectual and scientific achievements of modernity, as well as reforming the traditional method. The article concludes that the 'moderate Islamic modernism' approach to modernity and its rational elements not only provides a theoretical solution but is also compatible with genuine Islamic teachings. It is hoped that the two methods proposed by the model, particularly its method for differentiating elements within modernity, and its new approach on Islamic studies, will benefit future research on the subject matter.


..................................................................................................................... i APPROVEMENT ........................................................................................................... ii LEGALIZATION .......................................................................................................... iii DECLARATION ............................................................................................................ iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENT .............................................................................................. v TABLE OF CONTENTS .............................................................................................. vii LIST OF TABLES ....................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER


In this paper, we study the three-dimensional (3D) path planning for a cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to minimize its flying distance from given initial to final locations, while ensuring a target link quality in terms of the expected signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) at the UAV receiver with each of its associated ground base stations (GBSs) during the flight. To exploit the location-dependent and spatially varying channel as well as interference over the 3D space, we propose a new radio map based path planning framework for the UAV. Specifically, we consider the channel gain map of each GBS that provides its large-scale channel gains with uniformly sampled locations on a 3D grid, which are due to static and large-size obstacles (e.g., buildings) and thus assumed to be time-invariant. Based on the channel gain maps of GBSs as well as their loading factors, we then construct an SINR map that depicts the expected SINR levels over the sampled 3D locations. By leveraging the obtained SINR map, we proceed to derive the optimal UAV path by solving an equivalent shortest path problem (SPP) in graph theory. We further propose a grid quantization approach where the grid points in the SINR map are more coarsely sampled by exploiting the spatial channel/interference correlation over neighboring grids. Then, we solve an approximate SPP over the reduced-size SINR map (graph) with reduced complexity. Numerical results show that the proposed solution can effectively minimize the flying distance/time of the UAV subject to its communication quality constraint, and a flexible trade-off between performance and complexity can be achieved by adjusting the grid quantization ratio in the SINR map. Moreover, the proposed solution significantly outperforms various benchmark schemes without fully exploiting the channel/interference spatial distribution in the network.


Currently, dynamic comparator approach necessitates in high-speed and power efficient analog-to-digital converter applications due to its high latching speed and ultra-low power consumption. In this paper, a~novel dynamic comparator is proposed to reduce latch delay and offset. The comparator benefits from add-on cross-coupled transistors in latch structure and unbalanced clocks to enhance comparison speed and to lessen input offset voltage occurred due to mismatch in cross-coupled circuits in latch stage. The derivations for delay and input offset voltage are presented for proposed dynamic comparator with meticulous Monte-Carlo simulations. The results are verified by simulations in CADENCE SPECTRE at 1V supply voltage and 90nm CMOS technology. A~comparative analysis between the proposed dynamic comparator and the previous reported comparators has been presented. It is observed that the delay is reduced up to 46% and 6% as compared to conventional and two phase dynamic comparator, respectively. Moreover, the proposed design consumes 53.36muW power only. The Monte-Carlo simulation shows that the standard deviation of input offset voltage is 10.8~mV which is 12% and 77% of conventional and two phase dynamic comparator, respectively.


Layers and broilers were concurrently intratracheally challenged with 0.5 mg Lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and 0.1 mg Human Serum Albumin (HuSA) at 3 weeks of age. Specific total and isotype-specific (IgM, IgG, IgA) Antibody (Ab) responses to HuSA during 3 weeks following immunization, cellular in vitro mitogen responses to Concanavalin A (Con A) and specific cellular responses in vitro to different dosages of HuSA, blood serotonin (5-HT) levels, plasma Corticosterone (CORT) levels at 6 weeks of age and ex vivo nitric oxide (NO) production in the presence of LPS, respectively, were measured in all birds. Higher in vitro cellular responses to HuSA, but not Con A, were found in the broilers than in the layers. Also higher total, IgM and IgG antibody responses to HuSA were found in the broilers. Higher ex vivo NO production was found in the layers. A heavier spleen weight was found in the broilers, but relative spleen weight was higher in the layers. The broilers grew much heavier and also maintained a higher growth during the first 24 and 48 h after i.t. challenge with LPS and HuSA. No breed effect was found for body temperature responses after i.t. challenge. Blood 5-HT levels and plasma CORT levels were significantly higher in the layers. Number and type of significant correlations between 5-HT levels, cachectin response to LPS, antibody levels and cellular immunity differed between breeds. Our data suggest comparable immune responses to i.t. HuSA challenge in broilers and layers of similar age and confirm the earlier reported higher humoral immune response in broilers. On the other hand, the cachectin response to LPS differed between broilers and layers. Our results do not confirm the earlier reported higher cellular immune response of layers. Different significant relationships between physiological parameters in broilers and layers were found. Our results suggest that selection for enhanced growth does not necessarily affect specific immune competence of poultry.


Social workers working with professionals from different fields are obliged to recognize and evaluate the structure of interdiscipline collaboration which determine process effectiveness, modernization of client services and professional development. The article is trying to highlight the components of interdiscipline collaboration and elements (factors) as well as their aspects in social work practice. Problem questions are raised to reach the objective: What structure components and elements (factors) of interdiscipline collaboration are significant for social work practice? What is the role of social workers in the collaboration process with health care specialists? What characteristics emphasize the interaction between social workers and medicians? The components of interdiscipline collaboration (interdependence; new activities created by professionals; flexibility; collective goal ownership; reflection of cooperation process) and factors (elements) (professional role, structural characteristics, personal features, cooperation development) as well as presented characteristics of social workers in collaboration with specialists from health care are distinguished according to science literature.


Mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) is a Portland cement (PC) based material used for sealing root canals however it has a long setting time which is undesirable for dental applications. This study investigated the effect of three different calcium sulphate additions for accelerating the initial setting of a PC based dental material, whilst attempting to maintain its high compressive strength and low relative porosity. Anhydrous calcium sulphate (CaS), Plaster of Paris, calcium sulphate hemihydrate (PoP) and Gypsum, calcium sulphate dihydrate (Gyp) were each added to PC at 5wt%, 10wt% and 20wt%. Initial setting times, compressive strengths and relative porosity were measured using the Gilmore Needles Test, a universal testing machine and a helium pycnometer respectively. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to observe any microstructural changes in cements. PoP and CaS had the most profound influence on the setting of PC. 20wt% CaS had the greatest effect on the setting time of PC (10min) although decreased the compressive strength by up to 40%, which may have arisen from the formation of microcracks, observed by SEM analysis. Additions of 10wt% PoP and CaS may have the potential to reduce the long setting time of PC based dental materials.


This book addresses one of the major theoretical issues that underlies, implicitly or explicitly, some recurrent controversies in macroeconomics - namely, whether a competitive monetary economy has built-in mechanisms that are strong enough to remove excess demands and supplies on all markets, through an automatic adjustment of the price system. Jean-Michel Grandmont sheds light on this complex subject by using the analytical techniques of general equilibrium theory alongside the methods of monetary analysis. The book warns against the indiscriminate use of the rational expectations hypothesis when approaching this topic, and conversely stresses the common-sense observation that short-run learning processes are among the most important characteristics of economic agents. Grandmont argues that such processes are deserving of careful theoretical study, and the result is a clear and rigorous analysis of all the issues involved.


Despite the flux in the political environment of Nigeria, Africa's largest economy and an emerging market, the country has witnessed a continuous inflow of Foreign Direct Investment. This paper investigates empirically the impact of political risk on firms by statistically analysing data from 74 multinational firms in Nigeria. The results reveal that the impact of political risk on multinational firms is significantly influenced by other factors such as degree of internationalisation, perception of political risk, outcome of political risk assessment, leverage and perceived rewards of internationalisation to specific emerging markets. The differences in these factors influence the impact of political risk on multinational firms in Nigeria, thus identifying a reason why some firms
internationalise to specific countries and why some have been able to manage and mitigate political risk. The paper offers an insight into the dynamics of the relationship between political risk and multinational firms


Purpose: To determine the toxicity, efficacy, and pharmacology of suramin in patients with recurrent or progressive recurrent high-grade gliomas. Patients and Methods: Fifty adults were to receive suramin. However, if no responses were seen in the first ten patients, the study was to be terminated. A total of 12 patients were enrolled onto this trial. Ten patients had glioblastoma multiforme, and 11 had received prior nitrosoureas. Results: Drug-related toxicities were modest and reversible. Three patients developed grade 3 to 4 neutropenia, constipation, diarrhea, or nausea. No CNS bleeding was observed. Median time to progression was 55 days (range, 17 to 242 days) and median survival was 191 days (range, 42 to 811 days). No partial or complete responses were seen at 12 weeks. However, the clinical outcome of three patients suggests that evidence of suramin activity may be delayed. One patient who "progressed" after 12 weeks of suramin had a subsequent marked reduction in tumor size and has maintained an excellent partial response for over 2 years without other therapy. Two others had disease stabilization and lived for 16 and 27 months. Pharmacokinetics from 11 patients revealed that all reached target suramin concentrations. Conclusion: This study demonstrates that suramin is well tolerated by patients with recurrent high-grade gliomas and may have efficacy in this disease. Its pharmacology seems unaffected by anticonvulsants. As a result of this data, suramin and radiation are now being administered concurrently to patients with newly diagnosed glioblastoma multiforme, with survival as the primary outcome. J Clin Oncol 19:3260-3266. © 2001 by American Society of Clinical Oncology.


We developed a new method for measuring serum 1,5-anhydroglucitol (1,5-AG), using liquid chromatography/atmospheric pressure chemical-ionization mass spectrometry (LC/MS). With this method we measured serum 1,5-AG concentrations in uremic and diabetic patients and compared these values with those determined by an enzymatic method. Serum 1,5-AG concentrations were significantly less in the undialyzed and dialyzed uremic patients and in diabetic patients; the values in the dialyzed patients decreased after hemodialysis. In uremic patients with high concentrations of serum myo-inositol, the 1,5-AG values determined by LC/MS were significantly lower than those determined enzymatically. There was no significant correlation between 1,5-AG and fructosamine in the uremic patients. These results demonstrate that serum 1,5-AG cannot be used as an index for glycemic control in uremic patients and that the LC/MS method is indicated in uremic patients with high concentrations of myo-inositol.


Fernando Zobel is an important figure in Philippine art history. His influence is wide and deep, from art making to formation of taste and to the production of discourse on iconography and identity. This essay focuses on his role in generating critical texts on the history of art in the Philippines, initiating a much-needed discussion on the categories of form, the cultural context of style, and the criteria for evaluating the value of objects. As a collector and connoisseur, Zobel endeavored to significantly set the terms with which the history of colonial and modern art would be written. Such an effort deserves to be revisited and subjected to critique, with the view of tracing the genealogy of the discourse of art history and prospecting new perspectives on the historiography of the colonial and the modern. Zobel is an exemplary personage in this regard because he was a polytropic agent. He made art, collected it, and historicized it. It finally offers analysis, too, of the political economy underlying this discourse; Zobel belonged to an economically ascendant clan in the country, created a coterie of taste makers, and pursued an "internationalist" ideal in the quest for modernism. Across the different roles that Zobel played may be discerned important aspects of consciousness, or better still, ciphers of the identity-effect: the "colonial," the "Filipino," the "modern," and "class."


Summary Objective: To measure doctors' and nurses' perceptions of organisational culture and relate this to their attitudes to, and satisfaction with, a hospital-wide mandatory computerised provider order entry (CPOE) system in order to illuminate cultural compositions in CPOE use. Methods: A cross-sectional survey design was employed. Data were collected by administering an organisational culture survey (Organisational Culture Inventory, OCI) along with a user-satisfaction survey to a population of 103 doctors and nurses from two clinical units in an Australian metropolitan teaching hospital. Clinicians from the hospital had used the CPOE system since 1991 to order and view clinical laboratory and radiology tests electronically for all patients. The OCI provides a measure of culture in terms of three general styles which distinguish between: constructive; passive/defensive, and aggressive/defensive cultures. The cluster which best describes the overall culture is the one that has the highest percentile score when the percentile scores of the four cultural norms included in the cluster are averaged. The user satisfaction survey asked questions relating to satisfaction with, and attitudes to, the system. Results: We found identifiable sub-cultures based on professional divisions where doctors perceived an aggressive-defensive culture (mean percentile score = 43.8) while nurses perceived a constructive culture (mean percentile score = 61.5). There were significant differences between doctors and nurses on three of the attitude variables with nurses expressing more positive views towards CPOE than doctors. Conclusion: The manifestation of sub-cultures within hospitals and the impact this has on attitudes towards clinical information systems should be recognized and addressed when planning for system implementation. Identification and management of the cultural characteristics of different groups of health professionals may facilitate the successful implementation and use of clinical information systems.


Heavy metal concentrations of the sediment from an inland river in Suzhou city, northern Anhui Province were determined, and the index of Geo-accumulation (Igeo) was calculated for evaluating the extent of heavy metals contamination. The results showed that the contents of Cr, Cu, Zn, As, and Pb are higher than those of the background values, and the Igeo data indicates that these metals can be subdivided into three kinds, un-pollution (Cr and As), slight pollution (Pb) and moderate pollution (Cu and Zn). Multivariate statistical approaches were applied for source discrimination of heavy metals. The multivariate statistical approaches drew the final conclusion: (1) Cluster I consisted with Cu and Pb is greatly impacted by the traffic emissions, corresponding to the PC1; (2) the high accumulation of Zn and As in Cluster II mainly derived from the pollutant emissions in industry area, representing the PC2; (3) Cluster III (only Cr) is considered to be controlled by the parent materials of soils and shows the character of PC3; (4)The high contamination of Cluster I and II are related to the human activities, the government should pay attention to the environment in the area.


This study reviewed the efforts and challenges of funding housing deficit in Nigeria and the way forward. It has identified some challenges to include inadequate appropriation of fund or poor funding, outdated mortgage laws or poor mortgage system, unfriendly compliance with the National Housing Fund scheme among others. The study concluded that adequate funding via appropriation or international aids, viable mortgage system and policy implementation are indispensable tools for bridging the housing deficit in this sector of the Nigeria Economy and recommended among others that government should collaborate with the private sector and international donors for provision of funds for effective housing delivery for Nigerians. While government at all levels should take off the huddles and hitches in getting land and the issuance of the certificate of occupancy.


1. Title: Randomised controlled trial comparing aggressive vs slow grading up of total parenteral nutrition in preterm neonates. 2. Department: Department of Neonatology, Christian Medical College, Vellore. 3. Name of the Candidate: Binu Govind 4. Degree and Subject: DM Neonatology 5. Name of Guide: Dr. Kurien Anil Kuruvilla 6. Word Count: 499 7. Background: Premature babies are not able to absorb the essential components of milk like their term counterparts because of immaturity of the gut. Hence, total parenteral nutrition is provided to meet their requirements. It is important to determine whether preterm babies can tolerate high amounts of lipid and amino acid from day 1 to improve the nutrition and whether the benefits outweigh the risks. 8. Objective: To compare the differences in the determinants of growth (weight, length and head circumference) following aggressive vs standard (slow grading up) TPN in preterm babies. 9. Setting: Tertiary care perinatal centre in south India 10. Methods: This was a double blind randomised control trial where preterm babies ≤1300g were given aggressive or standard TPN. Aggressive TPN group was started on 3.5g/kg of amino acid and 3 g/kg of lipid from day 1 of life. Standard TPN group was started on 1 g/kg of amino acid from day 1 and 1g/kg of lipid from day 2 of life; increasing by 0.5g/kg to a maximum of 3.5g/kg of amino acid and 3 g/kg of lipid over a period of 5-6 days. The two groups were compared for differences in gain in weight, length, head circumference; morbidity patterns, metabolic abnormalities, time to reach adequate enteral feeds and regain birth weight. 11. Results: Babies in the aggressive TPN group gained more weight compared to the standard group but the difference in rate of growth was not statistically significant (mean (SD) 10.06 (4.11) vs 9.61(3.91),p=0.66). Similarly, the gain in length and head circumference was also higher in the aggressive group (length in cm/week: 1.11(0.55) vs 0.98(0.62),p=0.40; head circumference in cm/week (0.80(0.19) vs 0.79(0.23),p=0.82). The time to regain birth weight was more in the standard group (14(5.62) vs 12.53(4.31), p=0.26) compared to the aggressive group. The time to reach nasogastric feeds of 100ml/kg/day was longer in the aggressive group, but the difference was not statistically significant (11.73 (4.60) vs 10.79 (3.86), p= 0.60). The duration of TPN administration was comparable between the aggressive and standard groups (7.86 (5.67) vs 7.57(3.33),p=0.75). 12. Conclusion: Providing increased amounts of amino acid and lipid from day one showed a trend towards a positive effect on weight, length and head circumference when compared to the standard method of TPN administration in preterm babies ≤1300g. However the difference did not reach statistical significance in this study. The number of days needed to attain full nasogastric feeds was longer in the aggressive group and days to regain birth weight was less in the aggressive group but the differences were not statistically significant. There was no significant difference in the morbidities and metabolic problems in babies in the aggressive and standard TPN groups.


ABSTRACT The debate over the age of Serpent Mound (33AD01) is important because without a cultural context it is impossible to make meaningful statements about what this monumental effigy mound might have meant to its builders. In this response to Romain and Herrmann's rejoinder, we clarify the provenience of the samples, which yielded the radiocarbon dates that contribute to our argument for a post–Late Woodland age for the effigy. In addition, we extend our critique of Romain and colleagues' arguments to include the results of an independent study of soil cores extracted from the Serpent and surrounding landscape, which fails to corroborate Romain and colleagues' assertion that a buried A horizon underlies the mound. Finally, we suggest that the construction of Serpent Mound may be historically linked to droughts in the Mississippi Valley that began at around AD 1100, which resulted in an influx of Mississippian refugees into the region.


Cases and statutory law are updated and the material reorganized; conforms with modern law school course in real property. Chapters open with brief outlines of the law encompassed within, providing an overview of rules in that area. This is followed by a series of factually-based problems designed to generate thoughts about how these rules could be applied in real life situations. In turn followed by statement of applicable law and analysis of legal issues raised, plus likely outcomes and current citations of the various laws.


Numerical analysis and experimental results are presented to define a method for quantitatively measuring the temperature distribution of a spherical diffusion flame using rainbow schlieren deflectometry in microgravity. The method employed illustrates the necessary steps for the preliminary design of a rainbow schlieren system. The largest deflection for the normal gravity flame considered in this paper is 7.4 x 10(-4) rad, which can be accurately measured with 2 m focal-length collimating and decollimating optics. The experimental uncertainty of deflection is less than 5 x 10-(5) rad.


We used oligonucleotide microarrays with probe sets to 22,283 genes to analyze the gene expression profile of lung adenocarcinoma. Cancerous and noncancerous tissue samples were obtained from 23 patients with stage I or II lung cancer; 18 tissue pairs and 5 cancerous tissues. A list of 2065 genes that differentiate between cancerous and noncancerous tissues was generated using Winsorized paired t-tests. We analyzed CDK5RAP3 and CCNB2, which are involved in cell cycle progression, and RAGE. The first 2 of these 3 genes proved to be overexpressed in tumor tissue, whereas the RAGE gene was suppressed in tumor tissue. When CDK5RAP3 and CCNB2 were examined in individual patients we found that in cases where one of these genes was only slightly overexpressed the other was highly overexpressed. The combined expression of the 2 cell cycle genes was found to be statistically significant for differentiating between cancerous and noncancerous tissues. Inclusion of the data for the RAGE gene made the differentiation more powerful. The gene expression ratio gave a clear result: when CDK5RAP3 was expressed more than RAGE, the tissue was carcinomatous, and vice versa. We therefore conclude that these 3 genes may be used as a very reliable biomarker of lung adenocarcinoma.


Medroxalol, a new antihypertensive agent with α- and β-adrenoreceptor blocking properties in both animals and humans, was administered in a single-blind study for 12 weeks to 29 patients with mild and moderate hypertension (standing blood pressure: 188–130/130–100 mm Hg). After 4 weeks of placebo administration, treatment with oral medroxalol was begun. Six weeks later, half the subjects added hydrochlorothiazide, 12.5 mg twice daily, to medroxalol for an additional 6 weeks, and the other half added placebo. During the final 4-week period medroxalol but not hydrochlorothiazide, was discontinued and placebo substituted. Oral medroxalol doses of 100–400 mg twice daily reduced standing diastolic pressure to less than 100 mm Hg in 21 of the 26 subjects who completed the study. Compared to the last values on placebo, mean standing blood pressure was decreased by 15.6/12.0 mm Hg during the first 6 weeks of medroxalol at mean daily doses of 388–407 mg. Addition of hydrochlorothiazide permitted some decrease in medroxalol dosage. Upon medroxalol withdrawal, blood pressure and heart rate returned toward pretreatment values, with subjects continuing on diuretic showing lower blood pressures than the untreated individuals. Tolerance to medroxalol, with or without hydrochlorothiazide. was good. Mild orthostatic dizziness was the most frequent complaint associated with therapy, but postural hypotension was not found on physical examination. Medroxalol appears to be effective and well tolerated for reducing the blood pressure of most patients with mild to moderate hypertension and may be useful for chronic oral therapy of this disease.


This paper examines how to support individual tourists in choosing locations/accommodation to visit during their stay in a locality. We show how this kind of decision making can be aided through a multi-stage verbal decision making process, including both formal and informal aspects, supported by an information system which can provide descriptions in both text and audio-visual form of the alternative under consideration at each stage of the process. The tourist decision-maker will need a structure in which he or she can express his or her initial preferences verbally. These will not be for named locations but, rather, for descriptions of aspects selected for detailed consideration. Thus we describe the provision of a generic preference structure of aspects on which the decision-maker can identify verbally expressed levels at which all the potential alternatives have been pre-classified. Since this generic structure is unlikely to contain classification information on all the aspects that an individual decision-maker may consider in the particular context, the system gives the decision maker the opportunity to explore particular alternatives (in multimedia where appropriate) to develop verbal descriptions of the levels on criteria which are personally relevant in deciding among alternatives.


Background: Nepal is not adequately prepared to tackle the increasing burden of diabetes, largely due to the lack of clarity on the integration of chronic disease management into health care delivery. Clear understanding of the opportunities and challenges of incorporating proven models of chronic disease care, such as the Chronic Care Model (CCM), into diabetes management is vital for any effort to improve diabetes care. Objectives: We aimed to: 1) describe the existing approach to diabetes management in Dhulikhel Hospital (DH), a community-based hospital in Dhulikhel, Nepal; 2) identify the opportunities and challenge of incorporating the components of the CCM into diabetes management at DH; and 3) develop a comprehensive plan for incorporating components of the CCM into diabetes management at DH. Methods: This cross-sectional mixed-methods study included qualitative and quantitative data collection strategies. We administered the Assessment of Chronic Illness Care Version 3.5 to obtain the perspectives of hospital leadership (n=2) and health providers (n=27) on the status of diabetes care at DH. Following a presentation of the CCM, we conducted in-depth interviews with hospital leadership (n=2) and health providers (n=8) to obtain their perspectives of the opportunities and challenges for incorporating CCM components into diabetes care. Findings were synthesized to develop a set of recommendations. Results: The overall score for the Assessment of Chronic Illness suggested stakeholders to perceive the presence of basic support for chronic disease (overall median program score of 5.4, IQ range: 2.8) at DH. There was consensus among the participants that CCM was highly relevant and important. Almost all of them said that the existing system addressed most of the components of CCM and believed that the ongoing activities and platform of DH provided opportunities for incorporating components of CCM into diabetes management. The components of delivery system design, decision support and organization of health care were considered already present in some form. However, there were concerns from the participants in the areas of community resources, self-management support and clinical information system. Conclusion: Recommendations based on data collected here provide feasible actions that may be taken at the leadership and provider level to improve diabetes care and management in Nepal. Many of these recommendations may be relevant to other low-income countries hoping to utilize the CCM for addressing the burden of diabetes and improving patient outcomes.


This paper examines major privately owned British railway companies before the First World War. Quantitative evidence is presented on return on capital employed (ROCE), total factor productivity (TFP) growth, cost inefficiency, and speed of passenger services. There were discrepancies in performance across companies but ROCE and TFP typically fell during our period. Cost inefficiency rose before 1900 but then was brought under control as a profits collapse loomed. Without the discipline of either strong competition or effective regulation, managerial failure was common. This sector is an important qualification to the conventional wisdom that late Victorian Britain did not fail.


Alcoholism is a complex multifactorial disorder which involves genetic and environmental factors. Comorbid psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, appear to be robust factors in the promotion of alcohol intake and may be associated with aberrant regulation of synaptic plasticity and epigenetic mechanisms. Alcohol-preferring (P) and alcohol-nonpreferring (NP) rats, which show high and low levels of anxiety respectively, serve as a useful model to study the association between anxiety and the genetic predisposition to alcohol preference. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its downstream target, activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated (Arc) protein, play a role in the regulation of synaptic plasticity and dendritic spine density (DSD). Histone deacetylases (HDAC) are involved in dynamic remodeling of chromatin structure and have been implicated in the regulation of specific BDNF exons involved the control of synaptic structure and function. In order to examine the role synaptic plasticity and epigenetic mechanisms in comorbid anxiety and alcohol preference, we investigated the effects of acute ethanol exposure on anxiety-like behaviors of P and NP rats and examined amygdaloid brain regions with regards to epigenetic regulation and synaptic plasticity. In comparison with NP rats, P rats had high anxiety-like behaviors associated with lower levels of BDNF, Arc and DSD that were related to increased HDAC2 levels resulting in hypoacetylation at BDNF exon IV in the central amygdala (CeA) and medial amygdala (MeA), but not in the basolateral amygdala (BLA). Acute ethanol treatment had an anxiolytic effect in P, but not in NP rats, and corrected aberrant protein levels in the CeA and MeA. We then specifically knocked down HDAC2 in the CeA of P rats via stereotaxic cannulation and intracranial delivery of HDAC2 siRNA. Following HDAC2 knockdown, P rats were found to have reduced anxiety levels and alcohol consumption, which was associated with increased BDNF and Arc associated with elevated histone acetylation at BNDF exon IV and Arc. These results implicates elevated HDAC2 levels in the aberrant regulation of BDNF and Arc levels associated with changes DSD in the CeA and MeA, which may be responsible for anxiety-like and alcohol-drinking behaviors of P rats.


Background: While the majority of quadriceps muscle strains can be managed nonoperatively, rare cases remain symptomatic despite nonoperative treatment. Purpose: The purpose of this study is to report on results of surgical treatment of a limited number of cases of persistently symptomatic tears of the reflected head of the rectus femoris. Study Design: Case series; Level of evidence, 4. Methods: The records of 5 patients with chronic tears of the rectus femoris treated with excision of the reflected head were reviewed. A telephone interview regarding return to sport and current limitations was completed if patients were available for further follow-up. Results: A review of 5 cases of surgical treatment of chronic tears of the reflected head of the rectus was completed. Patients included 1 woman and 4 men with an average age of 21 years (range, 18-24 years). Three patients played football (2 kickers) and 2 played soccer at a collegiate level. All 5 reported a significant decrease in pain during sport and activities of daily living and were able to return to collegiate athletics. Two patients had a late recurrence of pain with kicking that resolved with nonoperative treatment, 1 had residual thigh pain with intense play, 1 had no pain but noted decreased kicking accuracy, and 1 patient returned to play without symptoms. Conclusion: Strain injuries to the reflected head of the rectus femoris can benefit from delayed excision in rare cases that fail nonoperative management. High-level kicking athletes are likely to experience significant reduction in pain, but may have some residual or recurrent symptoms that limit competitive level of play postoperatively.


Handoffs in a mobile cellular communications environment will become an increasingly important issue as cell sizes shrink to accommodate the ever-growing service load demanded. When handoffs occur at the overlapping area of the cells in a cellular system, a mobile station (MS) must communicate with two different base stations (BS) for some period of time. In this case, an MS in the handoff area connects with two BS even though the MS does not move from the current cell to the other cell. The channel efficiency may increase to overcome this situation. Thus, analysis of handoff rate is the key to understanding and increasing channel efficiency. A simple and straightforward mathematical function for obtaining direction-based soft handoff rate in cellular systems is proposed.


Active safety systems must be used to manipulate the dynamics of autonomous vehicles to ensure safety. To this end, accurate vehicle information, such as the longitudinal and lateral velocities, is crucial. Measuring these states, however, can be expensive, and the measurements can be polluted by noise. The available solutions often resort to Bayesian filters, such as the Kalman filter, but can be vulnerable and erroneous when the underlying assumptions do not hold. With its clear merits in handling nonlinearities and uncertainties, moving horizon estimation (MHE) can potentially solve the problem and is thus studied for vehicle state estimation. This paper designs an unscented Kalman filter, standard MHE, modified MHE, and recursive least squares MHE to estimate critical vehicle states, respectively. All the estimators are formulated based upon a highly nonlinear vehicle model that is shown to be locally observable. The convergence rate, accuracy, and robustness of the four estimation algorithms are comprehensively characterized and compared under three different driving maneuvres. For MHE-based algorithms, the effects of horizon length and optimization techniques on the computational efficiency and accuracy are also investigated.


The global tidal energy resource for electricity generation is small, and converting tidal kinetic energy to electricity is expensive compared to solar-photovoltaic or land-based wind turbine generators. However, as the renewable energy content in electricity supplies grows, the need to stabilise these supplies increases. This paper describes tidal energy's potential to reduce intermittency and variability in electricity supplied from solar and wind power farms while lowering the capital expenditure needed to improve dispatchability. The paper provides a model and hypothetical case studies to demonstrate how sharing energy storage between tidal stream power generators and wind or solar power generators can mitigate the level, frequency, and duration of power loss from wind or solar PV farms. The improvements in dispatchability use tidal energy's innate regularity and take account of tidal asymmetry and extended duration low-velocity neap tides. The case studies are based on a national assessment of Australian tidal energy resources carried out from 2018 to 2021.


The vision research being performed under the Strategic Computing Initiative sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the US Department of Defense is discussed. The goal is to develop knowledge-based technology that will allow the construction of complete, robust, high-performance image-understanding systems. The projects address four critical areas: visual modeling and recognition, dynamic scene and motion analysis, vision-based obstacle avoidance and path planning, and implementation issues for parallel-computing architectures. The structure of the projects and the relationships among them are explained. This overview serves as an introduction to a series of articles on the DARPA projects.<<ETX>>


The announcement of the Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) by the European Central Bank on March 18, 2020 marks an unprecedented step in the European history of monetary integration. But it is a commensurate response to the global public health emergency that the COVID-19 outbreak continues to pose as well as the financial and economic shock that it triggered. The legality of the PEPP can be defended in light of both these extraordinary macroeconomic circumstances as well as the European Court of Justice's assessment of previous ECB bond purchase programmes. As this short essay shows, the Court's Gauweiler and the Weiss decisions have defined the boundaries within which the ECB may design its monetary policy measures. And the PEPP does not transgress these boundaries.

However, in order to mitigate the risk of any ex-post legal challenges, the legal act on which the PEPP is based should underscore the following principles, which are informed by the pertinent case law:

1. The PEPP's objectives are proportional because they address a malfunctioning of the smooth transmission of monetary policy signals across the currency area triggered by the sudden stop of economic activity, thereby undermining the singleness of monetary policy.

2. The PEPP's design is proportional because it entails the following safeguards: bond purchases are (i) restricted to EUR750 billion, (ii) limited to periods of malfunctioning monetary policy transmission channels, (iii) not selective, (iv) limited to securities with stringent eligibility criteria, and (v) subject to a limited loss-sharing arrangement.

3. The PEPP does not breach the monetary financing prohibition because it (i) has no equivalent effect to bond purchases on the primary markets (due to the safeguards mentioned in 2.) and (ii) does not incentivize Member States pursue unsound budgetary policies.


OBJECTIVE
To describe factors predicting frequent emergency department (ED) use among rural older adults receiving home care services in Ontario, Canada.

DESIGN
A cross-sectional examination of Ontario hospital administrative data linked to provincial home care data compares frequent ED users (i.e. >4 visits/year) with regular users (i.e. 1-3 visits/year) and no ED use over a 1-year period. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed using independent variables from home care health assessments.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Predictors of frequent ED use among rural older adults receiving home care services using adjusted odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).

RESULTS
Ontario's rural home care clients visited the ED an average of 4.9 times (SD = 11.9) over a year. Frequent ED users were observed in 170 cases per 1000 home care clients. Congestive heart failure was the most frequently cited reason for frequent ED use; however, it was not a main driver in the adjusted model. Frequent ED use was predicted by younger age (i.e. 60-74 years) (OR = 1.9; 95% CI, 1.7-2.2), a recent ED visit in the last 3 months (OR = 1.5; 95% CI, 1.4-1.7), regularly taking >9 medications (OR = 1.5; 95% CI, 1.3-1.6), and poor self-rated health (OR = 1.4; 95% CI, 1.2-1.5).

CONCLUSION
Despite popular assumptions, the main drivers for frequent ED use among rural older adults in Ontario included a mix of sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, rather than disease diagnoses.


The dynamic response characteristics of a rectangular fluid container are investigated by using finite element method. The fluid is assumed to be linear-elastic, inviscid and compressible. A displacement-based fluid finite element was employed to allow for the effects of the fluid. A typical rectangular fluid container, which is used in recent studies, is considered for the numerical analysis. The North-South component of El Centro Earthquake records is used as input ground acceleration. Rigid and flexible fluid containers solutions are obtained for the chosen sample tank. Hydrodynamic pressures and sloshing motions are determined using Lagrangian fluid finite element. The results obtained from this study are compared with the results obtained by boundary-finite element method (BEM-FEM) and requirements of Eurocode-8. Based on the numerical analysis, some conclusions and discussions on the design considerations for rectangular fluid containers are presented.


Design-build (DB) system has been demonstrated as an effective delivery method and been widely used overseas. However it does not receive the same popularity in the People's Republic of China (PRC). This paper first conducts a literature review on advantages and disadvantages of DB in general; then it gives an overview of the PRC construction industry. There are ample evidences that the DB system will theoretically bring benefits to the PRC construction industry. After a thorough investigation of the current DB market, it can be concluded that the development of the DB system is still at its infancy stage. The barriers to entry have been finally identified, which relate to the legal restraints, negative owner attitude, and high requirement of DB projects. These barriers constitute obstacles to the development of DB system in the PRC. However, with rapid growth of construction industry, new requirements in modern construction projects, and strong promotion from governments, it is believed that the domestic DB market will have great potential in the near future.


The policy of radical devolution of responsibility for educational decision making is criticised. Current Western Australian and Victorian moves towards self‐governing public schools and earlier moves in that direction in the 1970s are briefly reviewed, and a wide agreement on the progressive nature of these changes is noted. That agreement is questioned. The potential of this policy shift to increase in several ways the inequalities between schools in affluent and poor areas is described. The tendency is noted for the policy to be propounded by reference to the values of diversity and freedom of choice rather than to egalitarian values. Devolution of power over schooling is placed in the context of a trend in Australian society since the 1970s towards increasing concentration of privilege and more extreme class stratification. Ideologically the period has been marked by a shift to the right, away from egalitarianism towards the ideology of individual freedom, competition and privatisation. The flight to private schools is presented as an aspect of this general trend in Australian society. It is argued that the trend towards diversity and local control in public schooling should be seen as another aspect of this shift to the right, which has, as its central social function, a sharpening of the differences between the schooling of the rich and the schooling of the poor, and therefore a facilitation of the inheritance of affluence and poverty.


Although past research has shown an association between obesity and herpes simplex virus infection, the relationship between body mass index (BMI) and herpetic stromal keratitis (HSK) recurrence has never been investigated. In this study, we included HSK patients who received oral valacyclovir as prophylactic treatment between January 2016 and January 2021. Recurrence, possible risk factors, and the time to recurrence were recorded during follow-ups. Among the 56 patients included in this study, recurrence was reported in 21 (37.5%) patients. The age at disease onset and mean follow-up time were not significantly different in the recurrence and non-recurrence groups. However, in the Cox regression analysis, BMI ≥ 24 kg/m2 was noted as the variable having significant correlation with recurrence (p = 0.01 in univariate analysis and p = 0.001 in multivariate analysis). In conclusion, overweight and obesity were revealed as risk factors for HSK recurrence in patients receiving long-term antiviral prophylaxis. Further studies are needed to determine the appropriate acyclovir concentrations in the blood or aqueous humour in order to achieve desirable prophylactic effects, especially in the overweight and obese patients.


Background:RET is a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) and forms part of a macromolecular receptor complex containing dimerised RET receptor, two co-receptors and a bound ligand. Signalling networks downstream of RET play an important role in regulating cell survival, differentiation, proliferation, migration and chemotaxis. Activating mutations in RET (e.g. C634W and M918T) are known drivers in medullary thyroid carcinomas (MTC). More recently, oncogenic RET fusions (e.g. CCDC6-RET and KIF5B-RET) have been identified in 1-2% of lung adenocarcinoma patients. We are currently developing novel, selective inhibitors of RET, and at the same time, investigating a number of biomarker approaches for the stratification of RET fusion-positive lung cancer patients who might benefit from such therapy. Methods: We have undertaken collaborative studies using established techniques including immunohistochemistry (IHC) and FISH (DNA break apart and RNA). In addition, we have investigated hybrid capture DNA sequencing of both biopsy material and circulating tumour DNA in the blood. Here we, compare and contrast the benefits of each biomarker assay evaluated and consider how these approaches could be translated for use in Phase I clinical trials at The Christie. Conclusion: Our data supports the successful implementation of predictive biomarkers to identify patients who might benefit from treatment with selective RET inhibitors. Acknowledgements:This work was funded by Cancer Research UK (Grant numbers C480/A1141 and C5759/A17098). Citation Format: Mandy Watson, Helen Small, Phil Chapman, Gemma Hopkins, Habiba Begum, Ian D. Waddell, Garry Ashton, Caron Abbey, Jade Harris, Mahmood Ayub, Sumitra Mohan, Dominic Rothwell, Ged Brady, Caroline Dive, Allan Jordan, Donald Ogilvie. RET inhibition: Development of novel compounds and a personalized medicine strategy in lung adenocarcinoma. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference: Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics; 2015 Nov 5-9; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Ther 2015;14(12 Suppl 2):Abstract nr A176.


The interaction between wind dynamics and the waving of crop canopies is explored. On-site experiments with wheat and alfalfa fields have allowed us to quantify the motion of a large set of plants subject to wind, using an image-correlation technique. The coherent part of the waving motion is extracted by a bi-orthogonal decomposition of the spatio-temporal velocity field of the crop surface. It is shown that the corresponding space and time features cannot be explained using predictions from the mixing-layer analogy of wind above canopies, which is the most common model for perturbations in this environment. We show that the plant bending stiffness plays an important role in the frequency and wavelength selection for the coherent motion of the canopy. A fully coupled model, where the wind fluctuations and the plant dynamics interact through a drag term, is then proposed. This model allows us to demonstrate a lock-in mechanism, similar in principle to what is found in vortex-induced vibration, whereby the frequency of the instability deviates from its expected value when approaching the natural frequency of the oscillating medium. This finding is then compared with data from on-site experiments, and good agreement, in both the frequency and wavelength of the propagating patterns observed on the canopy surface, is found.