In Plasmodium gallinaceum, parasitic in domestic fowls, in addition to the schizogony in red blood corpuscles, schizogony also occurs in monocytes and cells of the reticulo-endothelial system. This schizogony in cells other than erythrocytes may be termed, for convenience, exo-erythrocytic schizogony. Exo-erythrocytic schizonts are characterized by never having malarial pigment (as they live in cells devoid of haemoglobin), by growing to a large size and forming numerous merozoites, up to 50 or 60 or even more. Exo-erythrocytic schizonts are not confined to leucocytes of the blood stream, but can also develop in fixed endothelial cells of organs such as the brain, lung, liver and spleen. The brain is an especially important focus of development and, after sporozoite infection, it is the first organ in which exo-erythrocytic schizonts develop. These schizonts may be found in capillaries of the brain as soon as parasitized erythrocytes are present in the peripheral circulation, but as yet they have not been found before parasites-are present in the peripheral blood. In the brain rows of schizonts may develop and ultimately occlude most of the capillaries in the brain. This blockage of capillaries results in symptoms of general paralysis in the infected birds and death follows in a few days; and it frequently occurs in birds which apparently have been cured of the peripheral infection by treatment with quinine. The exo-erythrocytic stages of P. gallinaceum occur in birds which have been inoculated with blood or with sporozoites. During growth, the body of the schizont breaks up into a number of masses or cytomeres, on the periphery of which the merozoites are developed on regularly arranged rows of digitiform processes. A mass of chromatin migrates to the distal end of each process and is cut off to form a merozoite. The mature schizont consists of a mass of irregular merozoites enclosed in a sac-like membrane which may be the remains of the host cell. The merozoites are composed almost entirely of chromatin and when they are fully developed practically no cytoplasm of the schizont remains.


Six localities of Elodea nuttallii were found in 2020 in the Lower Dnipro River (Kherson Region) within the territory of Nyzhniodniprovskyi National Nature Park. These are the first verified records of this alien aquatic plant (native to North America) in the Steppe Zone of Ukraine. Previously, it has been reported in Ukraine only from the Forest (Kyiv city) and Forest-Steppe (Kyiv, Poltava and Cherkasy administrative regions) zones. Geographic coordinates, depths and substrate are reported for all found localities. Geobotanical data about this species in Ukraine are summarized. It is assumed that Elodea nuttallii as a potentially invasive species in this region may occur not only in the Lower Dnipro River but also in all reservoirs on this river.


The results of research on the use of social contracts in subjects of the Russian Federation are presented in the article. An analysis of dynamics of annual statistical data of the RF Ministry of Labor concerning the provision of economically disadvantaged citizens with social assistance has been carried out. The information was provided by federal authorities of subjects of the Russian Federation during the years 2013-15 (and in case of some indicators in 2016) within the powers to implement the federal plan of statistical work.The analysis was carried out in the context of subjects of the Russian Federation for the scope of provision their citizens with such assistance, the amount of payments, its frequency, the area of residence of assistance receivers, and also the indicators of effectiveness assessment of the social contract within the framework of regional events conduction, provided for by programs of social adaptation. The problems, which the receivers of such assistance face, have been analyzed. The research was carried out in 85 regions on the basis of the comparison method by studying regional differences and similarities.The practical meaning of formulated conclusions is manifested in the possibility of lowering the barrier which prevents receiving such assistance, and proposals on formation of automatic records of social contracts concluded by economically disadvantaged citizens, that can be used by regional authorities of the Russian Federation as recommendations.A methodology of effectiveness assessment of the social contract on the basis of formula calculations, including a number of indices (indices for the calculation of payment amounts under social contracts in the regions: index of economic needs of the family; index of social needs of the family; index of family risks) and the ratio of zoning, which takes into account the economic potential of an area within subjects of the Russian Federation. For detection of actual effectiveness of the social contract at the level of a particular family in terms of dealing with poverty, it has been proposed to make a "post-assessment of the situation of a family/citizen" 1.5-2 years after the contract conclusion.


Cultivation of Strawberries (Fragaria Sp) in substrates Hydroponics can use Liquid Organic Fertilizer (LOF) Super Bionics as a source of nutrients, which need to be investigated the accuracy of the concentration of application, with the aim of getting the best concentration for the growth and production of strawberris. Research was conducted experimentally using completely randomized design (CRD) with 6 treatments and 4 replicates ie liquid organic fertilizer Super Bionic with a concentration of 0 ml / l of water, 1.5 ml / l of water, 2 ml / l of water, 2.5 ml / l of water, 3 ml / l of water and 3.5 ml / l of water. Parameters observaced such plant height (cm), number of leaves (leaf), days to flowering (days), the age of first harvest (days) and the weight of fruit per plant (g). The results showed that the liquid organic fertilizer Super Bionic 3 ml / l of water provide the best results on all parameters observed such plant height, leaf number, date of flowering, the age of first harvest and weight of fruit per plant.


Multi-robot systems are becoming increasingly prevalent, but programmability is a major barrier to their deployment. Present systems force programmers to think in terms of individual agents. Application code becomes entangled with details of coordination and robustness and often does not compose well or translate to other domains. We offer an alternate approach whereby the programmer controls a single virtual spatial computer which fills the environment space. The computations on this spatial computer are actually performed by a large number of locally-interacting individual agents. This abstracts the actual computational hardware behind the spatial computer interface, and allows the programmer to focus on a single model of global computation. We achieve this abstraction with two components: a language that embodies continuous space and time semantics and a runtime library that implements these semantics approximately. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach with multi-agent algorithms in both simulation and on a group of 40 robots


ABSTRACT Teachers' scaffolding behaviors support children's self-regulation skills in the classroom. However, little evidence is available regarding the presence of self-regulation scaffolding behaviors in preschool teachers, and how they vary throughout the year and in different learning experiences. Less is known about these behaviors in Latin American preschool contexts. The main goal of this study was to develop a coding system to examine and compare preschool teachers' self-regulation scaffolding behaviors at the beginning and end of the school year in two learning experiences (i.e. greeting time and math instruction). Participants were 18 Chilean preschool teachers (M age  = 37.17 years; SD = 8.83). Seventy video segments were coded based on teacher behaviors targeting children's self-regulation. The coding system included three scales: Instructional Strategy, Management Organization, and Warmth Responsivity. Research Findings: Findings revealed a greater presence of teachers' self-regulation scaffolding behaviors in the Instructional Strategy scale than in the Management Organization and Warmth Responsivity scales. Also, the presence of teachers' self-regulation scaffolding behaviors in the Instructional Strategy and Warmth Responsivity scales was related to the type of learning experience. Practice or Policy: The description of self-regulation scaffolding behaviors in Chilean preschool teachers contributes to understanding the role of teachers in the preschool context.


None of us are home until all of us are home." This is the motto of the not-for-profit organization Project H.O.M.E. (Housing, Opportunities for Employment, Medical Care, Education). The words, expressing the organization's commitment to solidarity in struggle, are permanently inscribed in a beautiful stone mosaic just inside the golden doors at the entrance of 1515 Fairmount Avenue, Philadelphia, one of Project H.O.M.E.'s 11 residential facilities for formerly homeless men and women and the site of the outreach program and many of the administrative offices. The motto serves as a reminder that the true struggle is to end homelessness and as a clarion call to bring all of us, all of humanity, home. This ethnography explores the process of shared leadership at Project H.O.M.E. We consider how leadership emerges through struggle and results in transformations, individual as well as social, in the context of personal struggles for recovery and family reunification, collective struggles for fair housing and equality, and administrative struggles to stay true to Project H.O.M.E.'s vision and pursue appropriate avenues for organizational growth. The information and analysis in this ethnography is based on a yearlong ( July 2003 to October 2004) participatory study. In keeping with the aims of the Leadership for a Changing World program, the ethnographers, Kathleen Hall and Jaskiran Dhillon, together with documentary photographer Harvey Finkle and Project H.O.M.E.'s Director of Education and Public Policy, Laura Weinbaum, worked with members of the Project H.O.M.E. community to explore how leadership is understood, experienced, and enacted in everyday practice. Our research took an appreciative inquiry stance, in which we, as researchers, participated with members of the Project H.O.M.E. community to explore and learn lessons from the meanings they gave to their leadership work. Therefore, our account weaves their stories together with an analytic thread that illuminates the lessons the stories provide. For more information on Project H.O.M.E., go to www.projecthome.org. For information on the photographs, go to www.harveyfinkle.org. Comments Reprinted from A Publication of the Leadership for a Changing World Program, Research and Documentation Component, March 2006, 24 pages. This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/98 Until All of Us Are Home The Process of Leadership at Project H.O.M.E. A Leadership for a Changing World Collaborative Ethnography


It is shown that generalised harmonic analysis for cage induction motors can be adapted to allow for the presence of inter-bar currents. For a balanced three-phase machine, this leads to a simple modification to the conventional per-phase equivalent circuit. This equivalent circuit is used to explore the effect that inter-bar currents can have on the performance of a typical 7.5 kW 4-pole motor. It is found that, at starting, the torque may be significantly increased in a machine with an uninsulated cage. It is demonstrated that differences in inter-bar resistance from motor to motor may be one of the causes of the variations in locked rotor torque that are observed in some designs of machine. The full-load performance of the machine is considered. It is shown that an uninsulated cage promotes the flow of harmonic rotor currents and that these have the effect of reducing full-load efficiency.


In most of the cases, corticosteroids represent the first line therapy of systemic autoimmune diseases. However, because of the multiple secondary effects occurring in patients treated with corticosteroids, and because their prevalence is positively correlated with the cumulative dose, daily dose and the age of the patient, a number of strategies have been proposed to reduce the corticosteroid dose including therapeutic association with immunosuppressants and/or immunomodulatory agents. Indications of immunosuppressants vary depending on clinical manifestations and pathogenesis of the disease concerned. Sometimes, immunosuppressants can be prescribed as a first line therapy alone or in association with corticosteroids; in other cases, they can be prescribed as a second line therapy in case of failure of corticosteroid therapy or in case of failure to taper the corticosteroid dose due to disease flare. The choice of the best immunosuppressant depends on the disease and is ideally made on a pathophysiology basis. In this review article, we will review therapeutic indications, modalities of administration, mechanisms of action and adverse events of the main immunosuppressants and/or immunomodulatory agents prescribed in systemic autoimmune diseases.


1,25-Dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3), the hormonal form of vitamin D, has anticancer activity in vivo and in vitro. Doxorubicin exerts its cytotoxic effect on tumor cells mainly by two mechanisms: (a) generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS); and (b) inhibition of topoisomerase II. We studied the combined cytotoxic action of 1,25(OH)2D3 and doxorubicin on MCF-7 breast cancer cells. Pretreatement with 1,25(OH)2D3 resulted in enhanced cytotoxicity of doxorubicin. The average enhancing effect after a 72-h pretreatment with 1,25(OH)2D3 (10 nM) followed by a 24-h treatment with 1 microg/ml doxorubicin was 74+/-9% (mean +/- SE). Under these experimental conditions, 1,25(OH)2D3 on its own did not affect cell number or viability. 1,25(OH)2D3 also enhanced the cytotoxic activity of another ROS generating quinone, menadione, but did not affect cytotoxicity induced by the topoisomerase inhibitor etoposide. The antioxidant N-acetylcysteine slightly reduced the cytotoxic activity of doxorubicin but had a marked protective effect against the combined action of 1,25(OH)2D3 and doxorubicin. These results indicate that ROS are involved in the interaction between 1,25(OH)2D3 and doxorubicin. 1,25(OH)2D3 also increased doxorubicin cytotoxicity in primary cultures of rat cardiomyocytes. Treatment of MCF-7 cells with 1,25(OH)2D3 alone markedly reduced the activity, protein, and mRNA levels of the cytoplasmic antioxidant enzyme Cu/Zn superoxide dismutase, which indicated that the hormone inhibits its biosynthesis. This reduction in the antioxidant capacity of the cells could account for the synergistic interaction between 1,25(OH)2D3 and doxorubicin and may also suggest increased efficacy of 1,25(OH)2D3 or its analogues in combination with other ROS-generating anticancer therapeutic modalities.


We use principles from diffraction to estimate the required size for a reflecting telescope to watch an association football match at La Bombonera from the Moon. We determine that a mirror of diameter 1.13 (±0.08) km with focal length 17.00 (±1.15) km at focal ratio f/15 will be needed.


A full conceptualization of the elderly food insecurity experience has been lacking, leading to limitations in the definition and measurement of food insecurity in elders. Based on the qualitative analysis of two in-depth interviews 6 mo apart with each of 53 low income urban elders, using principles of grounded theory, the experience of elderly food insecurity was shown to have four components: quantitative, qualitative, psychological and social. The inability to obtain the right foods for health is a new element specific to elders. Common to each of these components were dimensions of severity, time and compromised food choice. Although money is a major cause of food insecurity, elders sometimes have enough money for food but are not able to access food because of transportation or functional limitations, or are not able to use food (i.e., not able to prepare or eat available food) because of functional impairments and health problems. These findings suggest that augmentation of the U.S. Household Food Security Survey Module (FSSM), a national measure of food insecurity based on research in younger persons, may result in more accurate assessments for elders. We developed 14 new items for possible augmentation and administered them by telephone to these same elders along with the FSSM. Elders were independently classified according to food insecurity status based on their experience from the in-depth interviews, and these definitive criteria were used to evaluate the new and existing items. The results suggest that "couldn't afford right foods for health" and two policy-relevant immediate causes, "couldn't get the food I needed" and possibly "unable to prepare," should be added, although further testing is needed. J. Nutr. 133: 2762–2769,


Calculating timetables that are insensitive to disturbances has drawn
considerable research efforts due to its practical importance on the one hand
and its hard tractability by classical robustness concepts on the other hand.
Many different robustness concepts for timetabling have been suggested in the
literature, some of them very recently. In this paper we compare such concepts
on real-world instances. We also introduce a new approach that is generically
applicable to any robustness problem. Nevertheless it is able to adapt the
special characteristics of the respective problem structure and hence generates
solutions that fit to the needs of the respective problem.


71% of the world's digital mobile communications subscribers use GSM. many incorrectly consider the system as approaching its end, particularly with the advent of 3G, because it is thought to be voice-centric with low performing data capabilities. However, GSM is far from dead, and is in fact being advanced in a manner that finds it on par with 3G technologies. The manifestation of the GSM radio access network, "GSM/EDGE Radio Access Network" (GERAN) is now considered by the International Telecommunications Union as a 3G technology in its own right. It is standardised by the same Organisation as UTRAN (UMTS Radio Access Network), and has been positioned as a complementary component of the overall UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) communications system.


In contrast to its European neighbors, Germany's rental housing market has a long tradition. 54.3 % of all Germans live in rental housing. According to surveys, property acquisitions for rental purposes are on the rise and high purchase prices boost European rental markets. Simultaneously, individuals increasingly value flexibility and tend to minimize terms of commitment, resulting in major changes for the real estate industry. As a consequence, property investors need to consider shortened lease terms and a higher probability of tenants moving out, resulting in longer amortization periods and increased capital expenditure. On the one hand, long leases create stable income flows and require less capital-intensive maintenance strategies, but are confronted with higher legal burdens to increase rents. This is especially relevant to properties where a high margin between market rent and contractual rent is observable. On the other hand, short lease terms enable instantaneous adjustment to equilibrium market rents once the tenant has moved out, but also lead to higher fluctuation and wear of the subject property and directly encompass substantial refurbishment, administration and reletting costs. Therefore, the ability of residential investment properties to generate adequate returns stands or falls with tenant behavior. This obviously creates the need for more and deeper research in this field of study. Thus, the paper at hand aims to contribute to the theory, practice and development trends of residential property leases. The authors analyze a steady panel dataset of 500 residential housing units throughout one of the most overheated metropolitan German areas, namely Munich, from 2007 to 2017. Consequently, the analysis covers periods of boom and bust, making findings extremely robust. Based on a desktop literature review and a Cox proportional hazard model, the authors provide a more in-depth explanation of influence factors for effectively observed lease terms in residential markets. The authors support the hypothesis that main drivers of lease duration are tenant and property attributes, effective rental price increases, geo-referenced location variables and macroeconomic indicators. Due to bounded availability of data, current research in this field is still limited, especially in Germany. Thus, the study at hand should provide deeper insights into the decision making process of tenants and its implications for investors in the German residential market


Since the OECD launched the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2000, education measurements have mainly been concerned with recording and issuing results in terms of school success or failure based on items aimed at measuring academic achievement. A major consequence of this obsession with quantifiable results, which stems from a sort of statistical monoculture, has been a shift of our attention away from the seminal fact that, indeed, educational disparities are directly linked to social inequalities. Besides, the application of accountability criteria within systems of education tends to hide the increasing deregulation of the former. Contrary to its seeming appearance, the school institution lacks clearly drawn goals and measurements. This is why, even certainly helped by rating scales but also far beyond them, we need to rethink education in terms of social justice and turn our attention from equal opportunities towards equal positions. From this analytic framework, a critical reinterpretation of the schooling process is suggested in order to approach it with the perspective of an educational policy of recognition that seeks a reconstruction of citizenship.


Compositional and morphological analyses of basin rim units in Argyre Planitia are con- sistent with local olivine-rich materials that become relatively olivine-poor in the process of being transformed from rocky materials to fi particulate regolith. Where high-thermal- inertia rocky surfaces are observed, the composition is more mafi c than the surrounding fi nes. This relationship between rocks and soils appears to be common on Mars as a similar pattern is observed in other locations, such as Gusev Crater, Isidis Planitia, and Nili Fossae. Despite the lack of local detectable alteration products, these trends may be an indication that most Martian dark regions are not similar in composition to the primary igneous composition from which they are derived. The Martian crust may be signifi cantly more mafi c, and alteration of these surfaces may be more pervasive than has been inferred from the bulk surface mineral- ogy derived from orbital observations.


A microwave plasma torch (MPT) can be used as a simple and low power-consumption ambient ion source and coupled with several kinds of mass spectrometers. When MPT mass spectrometry is applied for the detection of some metal elements, the metallic ions exhibit some novel features that are significantly different from those obtained by the traditional ICP mass spectrometry and may be helpful for the detection of metal elements in water. As a representative metal element of group VA, bismuth is of crucial importance, which is widely applied in modern industry, and has great potential impact on human health. Herein, we presented a novel study on the complex ions of bismuth in water using an MPT ion source coupled with a linear ion trap mass spectrometer (LTQ-MS). These complex ions were produced by the interaction of a plasma flame with wet aerosols first introduced through the central tube of the MPT torch and then into the inlet of the mass spectrometer; we also used another quadrupole mass spectrometer (QMS) for the comparison of different ionic patterns obtained from these two mass spectrometers. Moreover, the feature fragment patterns of these ions have been explained via a multi-step collision-induced dissociation process. Under the optimized conditions and negative working mode of LTQ-MS, the limit of detection (LOD) of bismuth in the LTQ-MS MS2 procedure was 0.028 μg L−1, which reached ultratrace levels. The linear range covers the interval of 0.5–50 μg L−1, and the relative standard deviation (RSD, n = 6) alters between 1.7% and 7.0%. The standard addition recovery rates of five brands of drinking water were between 83.74% and 113.70%. These results demonstrate that the MPT MS is a promising and hopeful tool to detect metallic ions in water, which can also be applied in many other fields such as in environmental controlling, hydrogeology, water quality inspection, and food analysis. In addition, MPT MS could be used as a supplement of ICP-MS for the rapid and on-site analysis of metal ions.


Objective Tandem occlusions of the internal carotid artery (ICA) and a major intracranial artery respond poorly to intravenous thrombolytic therapy, and are usually managed by endovascular means. This study describes experience with stent-assisted endovascular ICA revascularization and stent-based thrombectomy. Methods In patients with tandem ICA–middle cerebral artery (MCA)/distal ICA occlusion, the carotid occlusion was recanalized by primary angioplasty and stent implantation, and the distal occlusion by stent-based thrombectomy. Two variant techniques are described. Results Seven consecutive patients, mean age 64.1 years (range 49–75) and mean admission National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale score of 23, were included. Occlusion sites were tandem proximal ICA and MCA trunk (six patients) and tandem proximal left ICA and ICA terminus (one patient). Complete recanalization with complete perfusion (Thrombolysis in Myocardial Infarction [TIMI] 3, Thrombolysis in Cerebral Infarction [TICI] 3) was achieved in six patients and partial recanalization with partial perfusion (TIMI 2, TICI 2A) in one. Mean time to therapy was 4.9 h (range 3–6.5); mean time to recanalization was 55 min (range 38–65 min). CT performed 1 day after recanalization showed cortical sparing (>90% of the cortex at risk) in seven patients. Five patients (72%) presented with good clinical outcome (modified Rankin Scale (mRS) score 0–2) at 1 month; one patient (patient No 7) reached an mRS score of 3 and one patient died. Conclusions In selected cases of acute ICA occlusion and concomitant major vessel embolic stroke, angioplasty and stenting of the proximal occlusion and stent-based thrombectomy of the intracranial occlusion may be feasible, effective and safe, and provide early neurological improvement. Further experience and prospective studies are warranted.


Purpose: The aims of the study were to evaluate medication adherence and the influencing factors for isotretinoin and contraception (oral, patches, and rings) and to evaluate the concomitant use of contraception and isotretinoin. Methods: Reimbursed prescription data from January 2012 to August 2015 of all patients in Belgium were received from Pharmanet–National Institute for Health and Disability Insurance. Medication adherence was measured according to the medication possession ratio. The influence of gender and age was analyzed using the Mann–Whitney test and the Spearman coefficient correlation. The independence between adherence to contraception and adherence to isotretinoin was analyzed using the Pearson chi-square test of independence. Persistence was defined as the number of days between initiation and presumed end of treatment. The Kaplan–Meier method was used to plot the medication persistence curves, and the log-rank test was used to compare the curves. The concomitant use of contraception and isotretinoin was analyzed using descriptive statistics. Results: The medication possession ratio was $ 0.8 for 46.1% of patients receiving isotretinoin and for 74.0% of women using contraception. For isotretinoin, this percentage decreased as the number of attempts increased (29.8% for the second attempt and 19.8% for more than two attempts). Men seemed more adherent than women, and a weak negative correlation between adherence and age was observed. The adherence data of isotretinoin and contraception were independent. The median persistence for isotretinoin treatment was 139 days (interquartile range 71–209) and was higher for men. Among women between 12 and 21 years old taking isotretinoin, 63.8% received at least one contraceptive prescription. However, 15.7% of women taking isotretinoin adhered to the use of contraception 1 month before, during, and 1 month after treatment. Conclusion: Medication adherence to isotretinoin and contraception and compliance with the isotretinoin safety recommendation could be improved. Health service interventions, using pharmacy refill data, should be delivered to ensure patient safety and strict adherence to contraception when under isotretinoin treatment.


When I read some literary works; poems or novel, etc., I will find the words or phrases which symbolize something. The author of literary works used a symbol to convey a certain meaning. Symbol serves as a shorthand system for some information. In literature, symbol often used to represents a moral, religion belief, myth or value, etc. Because of this reason, the researcher decided to compose research about symbol.
This research has purposes to find out, to analyze and describe the symbols of love that found in William Butler Yeats' selected poems. Besides, this research also composed to analyze and describe how the symbols are related to the four phases of symbol theory by Northrop Frye in William Butler Yeats' selected poems. This research used Descriptive Method. This method enable to analyze the symbols by picturing and describing it based on the facts which already available. The data was taken from a book; 'William Butler Yeats Poems' which contain of all poems by W.B. Yeats.
This research used Qualitative Data Analysis which enables to analyze the data that have been collected. Based on Collaborative Group Analysis of Data by McDrury, there are three steps to analyzing the data. First is recognizing the symbol. The second is categorizing the symbol. The third is identifying the symbol. Besides, the researcher used Frye's theory of symbol which divided symbol into four phases. They are Literal and Descriptive phase, Formal Phase, Mythical phase, and Anagogic phase.
Finally, the researcher found that there are eleven symbols in W.B. Yeats' ten poems. They are angels, vow, soul, dove, white woman, ignorance, eye, joy, warm heart, we were so much at one and broke my heart. The researcher also found that all of symbols were fit in the first phase theory of symbol by Frye. Then, there were only six symbols which fit in the second phase. There were also six symbols which fit in the third phase. Meanwhile, in the last phase there were only two symbols which fit in it.
The researcher recommends the others who have an interest in this topic to discuss about the other thing which found in this research. It is the using of metaphor in these poems. During the processing of this research, the researcher also found the metaphor elements in those poems. It will be an interesting topic to discuss.


Multi-electrode electroretinography (meERG) is a new technique being developed in the Neural Engineering Vision Laboratory at UIC. The meERG is a simultaneous measure of potentials at several locations on the corneal surface in response to a photic stimulus. It is anticipated that analysis of these potentials will reveal spatial information about the health of the retina, and thus may prove useful in early diagnosis of eye diseases, such as glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy.

While the meERG technique is being developed for clinical use, there is a great deal that can be learned in animal studies. In particular, the NEVL lab is working to characterize the sensitivity and specificity of the technique for detecting laser-induced retinal lesions in rats. The main goal of this thesis was to support this effort by improving the design of the stimulus source and the contact lens electrode array, and by doing the initial characterization of the meERG signals recorded from normally-sighted rats. With this in mind, the following aims were addressed.

1.2 Specific Aims

I. To optimize a full-field, spatially-homogenous light-flash stimulus source suitable for use with rats.

II. To improve the design and function of the rat-sized meERG Contact Lens Electrode Array (CLEAr Lens™), with the goals of increasing the yield of functional electrodes on each lens and improving the quality of the recorded signal.

III. To record the meERG signal from normal rats and to characterize this relatively novel signal with regard to test-retest and inter animal variability and to quantify spatial differences in meERG potentials across the rat cornea
Note: CLEAr Lens™ is a trademark of RetMap, Inc., a start-up company founded by NEVL alumni to facilitate development and distribution of meERG technology.

A full-field light flash stimulus source for use in rats was optimized and characterized, and found suitable for the planned experiments (it is currently in routine use). The lens design, as well as the procedure for preparing the lens for recording, were both significantly improved; the lens preparation procedures developed here have been adopted for the human-version of the CLEAr Lens™ as well. The meERG responses were analyzed for spatial differences in amplitudes; the typical standard deviation of amplitudes across the corneal surface was 2-3% of the mean, indicating fairly uniform potnetials for normally-sighted rats. Inter-animal variability between a- and b-wave amplitudes was found to be high, but consistent with conventional ERG results. Regarding test-retest variability, a measure related to the spatial distribution of a-wave amplitudes was found to be significantly different in three of eight animals when comparing
measurements made one week apart; this seems to indicate a degree of procedural variability inherent in this relatively new measurement.


Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are commonly used organisms in the fermentation of food to prevent its spoilage. Lactococcus lactis among the LAB are known to improve the organoleptic properties of the food products such as flavor, texture and aroma. Thus gaining much importance in food industry. L.lactis MG1363 has a relatively simple carbohydrate metabolic pathway that can be rerouted easily, thus used as a model of choice in metabolic engineering. This allows for the isolation of strains producing desired metabolite. Identification and isolation of the strain could be possible by usage of indicator strains responding to metabolites being produced by the desired strain.
Engineering of Lactoccocal metabolism can result in the introduction of heterologous genes, derive energy from glycolysis metabolic pathway, and producvariety of compounds during the fermentation such as diacetyl, ethanol, acetoin, acetaldehyde etc. Diacetyl contributes to the buttery aroma of the dairy products such as butter, acid cream, cottage cheese, yogurt etc. Acetaldehyde contributes to a fruity flavor in yogurt and ethanol is present in alcoholic beverages.
Few promoters that are capable of responding to organic compounds such as diacetyl, acetaldehyde, and ethanol were identified by transcriptomic analysis prior to this research study. In this study such promoters were introduced into the pSEUDO – gfp plasmid and later transformed in Escherichia coli DH5α bacterial cells to obtain multiple copies of the bacterial cells. Such copies were further transfrmed into Lactococcus lactis MG1363 thus allowing the plasmid to be integrated into the chromosomal genome of Lactococcus lactis MG1363. Thereby, constructing indicator cells for sensing the desired compounds.
The indicator cells were there checked for the fluorescence intensity in the presence and absence of the desired compounds. Indicator cells with promoters ButA/B, llmg_1772 were found to show some fluorescence intensity in the presence of 2% acetaldehyde. Promoters llmg_0317, llmg_0941, llmg_1677, ButA/B also showed the presence of fluorescence signal in the presence of 4% ethanol and the promoters llmg_1019 and DhaM that were found to be responsive to diacetyl also showed the presence of fluorescence intensity. However, the results obtained with acetaldehyde is not promising as the bacterial cells showed negligible growth pattern even after 10 hours of incubation


We compare the magnetic field orientation for the young giant molecular cloud Vela C inferred from 500 μm polarization maps made with the BLASTPol balloon-borne polarimeter to the orientation of structures in the integrated line emission maps from Mopra observations. Averaging over the entire cloud we find that elongated structures in integrated line-intensity or zeroth-moment maps, for low-density tracers such as 12CO and 13CO J → 1 – 0, are statistically more likely to align parallel to the magnetic field, while intermediate- or high-density tracers show (on average) a tendency for alignment perpendicular to the magnetic field. This observation agrees with previous studies of the change in relative orientation with column density in Vela C, and supports a model where the magnetic field is strong enough to have influenced the formation of dense gas structures within Vela C. The transition from parallel to no preferred/perpendicular orientation appears to occur between the densities traced by 13CO and by C18O J → 1 – 0. Using RADEX radiative transfer models to estimate the characteristic number density traced by each molecular line, we find that the transition occurs at a molecular hydrogen number density of approximately 103 cm−3. We also see that the Centre Ridge (the highest column density and most active star-forming region within Vela C) appears to have a transition at a lower number density, suggesting that this may depend on the evolutionary state of the cloud.


This article draws from black critical theory, Western esotericism studies, and scholarship in Islamic studies to articulate the Five Percenters as expressing what I call "traumatic mysticism." I first articulate blackness as the esoteric secret of the West. Then, I show how this blackness can produce mystical forms of black life. With these constituents in mind, I see "traumatic mysticism" as "an undifferentiated form of lived experience, characterized by radical relation and identification with others, that entails the perpetual refusal of categorical distinctions." Traumatic mysticism owes its emergence to (the violence of) the Middle Passage, which resulted in what Hortense Spillers calls an "undifferentiated identity," or what I label as a radical form of sociality that cannot maintain categorical distinctions. Examining Five Percenter history, thought, and life, I show that their understanding of Islamic terminology, the meaning of the word "god," and their dissemination of their thought all articulate radical refusals of categorical distinctions—whether these be between transcendence and immanence, individual and collective, or even material (embodiment) and ethereal (divinity). Exhibiting these characteristics leads to a life of irrevocable immanence, manifested through radical democracy and rigorous communal ethics.


A particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based dimensionality reduction approach is proposed to use a simple searching criterion function, called minimum estimated abundance covariance (MEAC), requiring class signatures only. It has low computational cost, and the selected bands are independent of the detector or classifiers used in the following data analysis step. With such an efficient criterion, PSO can find a global optimal solution much more efficiently, compared with other frequently used searching strategies. Its performance is evaluated by support vector machine (SVM)-based classification for urban land cover mapping. In our experiments, SVM classification accuracy using PSO-selected bands is greatly higher than using all of the original bands or dimensionality-reduced data from principal component analysis (PCA) or linear discriminant analysis (LDA). In addition, the improvement on SVM accuracy can bring out even more significant improvement in classifier fusion.


Following military collapse both in 1918 and in 1945 Germany presented two economic phenomena indicative of the destruction of economic life. In the twenties an open inflation occurred. For a relatively short time German money lost its value and purchasing power. This period of a completely open inflation was limited by a currency reform of a particular kind. Instead of cancelling the money in circulation the volume of money was increased by introducing a new stable money, the so-called Rentenmark. At the same time, the old money in circulation had been devaluated at the rate of one billionth of its face value. This controlled monetary experiment as well as the preceding huge inflation have found a place in the history of money. On account of the undoubted success of the devaluation experiment in 1923, the opinion seems to prevail that a devaluation is the best, if not the only way to reform the currency.


Quantum processing architectures that include multiple qubit modalities offer compelling strategies for high-fidelity operations and readout, quantum error correction, and a path for scaling to large system sizes. Such hybrid architectures have been realized for leading platforms, including superconducting circuits and trapped ions. Recently, a new approach for constructing large, coherent quantum processors has emerged based on arrays of individually trapped neutral atoms. However, these demonstrations have been limited to arrays of a single atomic element where the identical nature of the atoms makes crosstalk-free control and non-demolition readout of a large number of atomic qubits challenging. Here we introduce a dual-element atom array with individual control of single rubidium and cesium atoms. We demonstrate their independent placement in arrays with up to 512 trapping sites and observe negligible crosstalk between the two elements. Furthermore, by continuously reloading one atomic element while maintaining an array of the other, we demonstrate a new continuous operation mode for atom arrays without any off-time. Our results enable avenues for ancilla-assisted quantum protocols such as quantum non-demolition measurements and quantum error correction, as well as continuously operating quantum processors and sensors.


In this study, a conceptually simple, yet flexible and extendable strategy to contrast two different color images is introduced. The proposed approach is based on the multivariate Wald-Wolfowitz test, a nonparametric test that assesses the commonality between two different sets of multivariate observations. It provides an aggregate gauge of the match between color images, taking into consideration all the (selected) low-level characteristics, while alleviating correspondence issues. We show that a powerful measure of similarity between two color images can emerge from the statistical comparison of their representations in a properly formed feature space. For the sake of simplicity, the RGB-space is selected as the feature space, while we are experimenting with different ways to represent the images within this space. By altering the feature-extraction implementation, complementary ways to portray the image content appear. The reported results, from the application on a diverse collection of images, clearly demonstrate the effectiveness of our method, its superiority over previous methods, and suggest that even further improvements can be achieved along the same line of research. It is not only the unifying character that makes our strategy appealing, but also the fact that the retrieval performance does not increase continuously with the amount of details in the image representation. The latter sets an upper limit to the computational demands and reminds of performance plateaus reached by novel approaches in information retrieval.


A new test for comparing conditional quantile curves is proposed which is able to detect Pitman alternatives converging to the null hypothesis at the optimal rate. The basic idea of the test is to measure differences between the curves by a process of integrated nonparametric estimates of the quantile curve. We prove weak convergence of this process to a Gaussian process and study the finite sample properties of a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test by means of a simulation study.


Reinforcement learning methods for recommender systems optimize recommendations for long-term user engagement. However, since users are often presented with slates of multiple items---which may have interacting effects on user choice---methods are required to deal with the combinatorics of the RL action space. We develop SlateQ, a decomposition of value-based temporal-difference and Q-learning that renders RL tractable with slates. Under mild assumptions on user choice behavior, we show that the long-term value (LTV) of a slate can be decomposed into a tractable function of its component item-wise LTVs. We demonstrate our methods in simulation, and validate the scalability and effectiveness of decomposed TD-learning on YouTube.


Vibrations in yarn, which appear when the yarn is unwinding from a package, cause many problems and can degrade the efficiency of the textile process and the quality of the end product. These vibrations in yarn are particularly strong in axial unwinding, where the package is stationary and the yarn is being withdrawn in the direction of package axis. It is thus important to find the optimum shape of the package for which the motion of the yarn will be such that vibrations in yarn will be small and as steady as possible. The unwinding will be discussed from a theoretical point of view. We will formulate the equations that describe the motion of yarn during unwinding and to construct the mathematical model which can be used to simulate the entire process of unwinding on a computer.


Calcium sensitivity of myosin cross-bridge activation in striated muscles commonly varies during ontogeny and in response to alterations in muscle usage, but the consequences for whole-organism physiology are not well known. Here we show that the relative abundances of alternatively spliced transcripts of the calcium regulatory protein troponin T (TnT) vary widely in flight muscle of Libellula pulchella dragonflies, and that the mixture of TnT splice variants explains significant portions of the variation in muscle calcium sensitivity, wing-beat frequency, and an index of aerodynamic power output during free flight. Two size-distinguishable morphs differ in their maturational pattern of TnT splicing, yet they show the same relationship between TnT transcript mixture and calcium sensitivity and between calcium sensitivity and aerodynamic power output. This consistency of effect in different developmental and physiological contexts strengthens the hypothesis that TnT isoform variation modulates muscle calcium sensitivity and whole-organism locomotor performance. Modulating muscle power output appears to provide the ecologically important ability to operate at different points along a tradeoff between performance and energetic cost.


Purpose To investigate the efficacy of anterior chamber paracentesis for intravitreal triamcinolone acetonide injection (IVTA). Methods A prospective, randomized clinical trial was conducted on 30 eyes from 30 patients scheduled for IVTA (4 mg/0.1 mL). Eyes were randomly divided into two groups: eyes that had undergone anterior chamber paracentesis (Group 1, 15 eyes) and eyes that did not have anterior chamber paracentesis (Group 2, 15 eyes). Intraocular pressure (IOP) was measured by Goldmann applanation tonometry at a baseline of 2, 15, 30, and 60 minutes at 1 day and 1 week after the injection. The authors analyzed the short-term postoperative changes of the IOP in each group. Results For Group 1, the mean preoperative IOP was 15.33±1.72 mmHg, and the postoperative IOP at 2 and 15 minutes were 7.80±1.47 and 11.73±1.67 mmHg, respectively. For Group 2, there was a significant elevation of IOP (46.73±8.26 mmHg) 2 minutes after the injection, which decreased to the normal range (16.13±2.61 mmHg) by 15 minutes after the injection. There were no significant differences between the two groups in IOP at 15 minutes postsurgery compared with the distinct difference in IOP at 2 minutes post surgery (Student t-test, p=0.01). Conclusions The findings suggest that routine anterior chamber paracentesis is inappropriate due to the brief immediate postoperative IOP elevation with IVTA.


There is no question the world is filled with health monitoring devices that rely on Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measurement and analysis to conclude health state. Most of these devices are marketed for sport or stress monitoring instead of health to bypass some of the restrictions of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA. This paper conducts a comparison between the available devices; this comparison is based on the device capabilities. As a result, a new HRV measurement and analysis product is proposed to address the shortcomings of those devices and refocus the interest on instantaneous, continuous and secure monitoring as opposed to the current focus on sampling rate and resolution. The novelty of the proposed product is in the secure communication of between the device and the analyzing server where it relies on cellular networks (3G) or Wi-Fi for data transmission, it is also meant to meet the FDA regulations presented in the introduction. The importance of this discussion is manifested in the possibilities that could be realized with refocusing the devices and reprioritizing the specifications.


SUMMARY. An infectious bronchitis virus (IBV) with an unusual enteric tropism (CalEnt) was isolated from a California broiler flock exhibiting runting-stunting syndrome. IBV was detected in the small intestine, but not in the respiratory tract or kidney. During virus isolation in embryos, it did not replicate in chorioallantoic membrane (CAM) but could be recovered from intestines. Its S1 protein showed 93% amino acid sequence identity to a California variant isolated in 1999 (Cal99). Intestinal lesions were reproduced following ocular/nasal inoculation of specific-pathogen-free chickens, but respiratory signs and lesions were also present. The virus was detected in both respiratory and intestinal tissues. To determine whether the novel tropism of IBV CalEnt was due to an increased ability of its S1 protein to bind to the intestinal epithelium, we compared the binding of soluble trimeric recombinant S1 proteins derived from CalEnt and Cal99 to chicken tissues. Contrary to expectations, the CalEnt S1 protein did not bind to small intestine and, unlike Cal99 S1, did not bind to the respiratory epithelium or CAM. Using only the CalEnt S1 N-terminal domain or including the S2 ectodomain (lacking membrane and cytoplasmic domains), which have been shown to improve ArkDPI S1 protein binding, did not lead to detectable binding at the standard protein concentration to any tissue tested. Our results indicate no/poor binding of the CalEnt spike protein to both respiratory and intestinal tissues and thus do not support better attachment to intestinal epithelial cells as a reason for CalEnt's extended tropism. These results might reflect shortcomings of the assay, including that it does not detect potential contributions of the S1 C-terminal domain to attachment. We used bioinformatic approaches to explore the possibility that the unique tropism of CalEnt might be a result of functions of the S protein in cell-entry steps subsequent to attachment. These analyses suggest that CalEnt's S2 coding region was acquired through a recombination event and encodes a unique amino acid sequence at the putative recognition site for the protease that activates the S protein for fusion. Thus, S2 activation by tissue-specific proteases might facilitate CalEnt entry into intestinal epithelial cells and compensate for poor binding by its S1 protein.


Background: With increasing incidence of resistance to antibiotics carbapenems are used as the last resort because they are stable even in response to extended spectrum and AmpC beta-lactamases. However, Gram-negative bacilli producing the acquired metallo-beta-lactamases (MBL) are on the rise. Aim: The aim of the following study is to detect phenotypically the presence of extended spectrum beta-lactamase (ESBL), AmpC and MBL in Gram-negative bacteria isolated from clinical specimen. Materials and Methods: Gram-negative isolates from clinical samples were screened and confirmed for the presence of ESBLs by double disk synergy test (DDST), for AmpC by disk approximation assay and for MBL by Modified Hodge Test and imipenem-ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid DDST. Results: Among 251 isolates studied, 138 (54.98%) were ESBL producers, 49 (19.52%) were AmpC producers and 45 (17.93%) were MBL producers. Highest rates of ESBL detection was by Cefoperazone sulbactam (109/138) 78.98%. Out of 92 of the AmpC producing strains 20 (21.73%) were inducible and 72 were stably derepressed (78.26%). Out of 251 strains studied 45 (17.93%) were phenotypically identified as MBL producers, the highest no. being of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Among the methods employed for detection of MBL production, Hodge test (62.22%) proved better than DDST (40%). Conclusions: High level of antibiotic resistance pattern exists in various clinical isolates. ESBL production should be looked for routinely in Gram-negative bacteria other than Escherichia coli and Klebsiella. A high percentage of derepressed AmpC mutants are noteworthy and alarming. We recommend phenotypic identification methods as routine practice in laboratories as genotypic methods are not cost-effective.


The intention of this experiment was to investigate whether anatomical variations of the temporal bone such as low middle fossa dura, anterior position of the sigmoid sinus or small mastoid process, which are often seen at surgery in cholesteatoma patients, are caused by inflammation in early childhood. In 7 pigs, 1.5 ml paraffin liquid were instilled into the left tympanic cavity 2 or 7 days after birth in order to produce inflammation of the middle ear and tubal dysfunction. After six and a half months the length and area of the mastoid process were significantly smaller on the left instilled side than on the right, normal side. In all cases there was remarkable hypocellularity and increased thickness of the cortical bone strongly supporting the environmental theory of pneumatization that inflammation suppresses the pneumatization process and growth of the mastoid process.


Chemotherapeutic drugs such as paclitaxel cause painful peripheral neuropathy in many cancer patients and survivors. Although NMDA receptors (NMDARs) at primary afferent terminals are known to be critically involved in chemotherapy-induced chronic pain, the upstream signaling mechanism that leads to presynaptic NMDAR activation is unclear. Group I metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluRs) play a role in synaptic plasticity and NMDAR regulation. Here we report that the Group I mGluR agonist (S)-3,5-dihydroxyphenylglycine (DHPG) significantly increased the frequency of miniature excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) and the amplitude of monosynaptic EPSCs evoked from the dorsal root. DHPG also reduced the paired-pulse ratio of evoked EPSCs in spinal dorsal horn neurons. These effects were blocked by the selective mGluR5 antagonist 2-methyl-6-(phenylethynyl)-pyridine (MPEP), but not by an mGluR1 antagonist. MPEP normalized the frequency of miniature EPSCs and the amplitude of evoked EPSCs in paclitaxel-treated rats but had no effect in vehicle-treated rats. Furthermore, mGluR5 protein levels in the dorsal root ganglion and spinal cord synaptosomes were significantly higher in paclitaxel- than in vehicle-treated rats. Inhibiting protein kinase C (PKC) or blocking NMDARs abolished DHPG-induced increases in the miniature EPSC frequency of spinal dorsal horn neurons in vehicle- and paclitaxel-treated rats. Moreover, intrathecal administration of MPEP reversed pain hypersensitivity caused by paclitaxel treatment. Our findings suggest that paclitaxel-induced painful neuropathy is associated with increased presynaptic mGluR5 activity at the spinal cord level, which serves as upstream signaling for PKC-mediated tonic activation of NMDARs. mGluR5 is therefore a promising target for reducing chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain.


This paper will discuss a proposed methodology for planning space and flow within the gallery environment, drawing on a case study. Coll3ct was a 2010 exhibition that explored the narratives of collecting and collections, of the collector's connections to the past and to the present. Objects can be considered as companions to our emotional lives: they can provoke to make connections, and the conversations they hold when viewed become the starting point for more discussion.
The theme of 'past' will be relayed in the case study itself, 'present' discusses a cross-disciplinary approach to ways of planning a gallery/exhibit space and 'future' will be discussion of the proposed methodology.
The focus of this case study is a collection of sixties and seventies dresses belonging to an artist's deceased mother. From this collection, the comparison of the dress pattern's marks and the traditional floor plan became the theory behind the methodology for organising the performance of a curated space. The plan has its set boundaries whereas the pattern is only bound before it is cut from its sheet. Less 'solid' than sketching would be the approach of 'draping' the interior elements, as the dressmaker can to adjust 'fit' with the garment. The languages overlap – material qualities, performances, memories, histories, psychological attachments, inhabitation, identity and associations.
The paper proposes that deconstructing the elements of the interior - in the same way a dress pattern is already deconstructed – would bring an alternative disciplinary approach to spatial construction. Karen Franck talks in "Yes, We Wear Buildings" 1 of literally wearing the building 2 as metaphor and so by using one discipline's method to organise another's, this can bring together the two in a curated environment with an emphasis on 'fit'.


A study of allozymes in 30 species from the three genera of snails in the family Partulidae was undertaken to examine the phylogeny of, and evolutionary rates in, the genus Partula from the Society Islands, French Polynesia. Genetic identities (I) between congeneric species are generally high, with 42% of the I values being greater than 0.85, and 24% above 0.90. Levels of allozymic similarity are therefore of little use for inferences about reproductive relationships. Identities between species from the same island are particularly high, and phylogenetic analysis suggests that the radiation of Partula in the Society Islands can be accounted for by a single colonization of each island. In general, the inferred sequence of colonization is consistent with geological information about the origins of these volcanic islands. The phylogeny, and the ages of the islands, suggest an average rate of allozymic divergence (change in Nei's D) of 0.126 per million years. The threefold variation in estimated rates of change within Partula, and the comparison of our results with estimates from other taxa, suggest that the 'molecular clock' in Partula is erratic.


Among all the published notices of drift deposits that I have read, I cannot call to mind any description of ripple-marks as forming features in that formation. Of course if the drift was formed under land-ice we should not expect to see them; but if, as I maintain, a very large part of it has been laid down in water, then, under favourable conditions, they should be found. I was much pleased on examining, in the early part of 1883, a section in the Old-Park-Field sand-hole, at Ketley, near Wellington, Shropshire (to which I had been directed by my friend Dr. Callaway), to notice in a stratified deposit of drift-sand three distinct beds of ripple-marked laminæ, most beautifully displayed in section. The following is a sketch of the deposit (fig. 1). The position of this sand-pit is on the south side of Watling Street. I measured one of the ripple-marks in bed No. 1, and found it was 9 inches from crest to crest, and 1¼ inch high; the fall of the wave indicated that the wind producing it was from the N.W. The figure below (fig. 2), drawn to a scale of inch to the foot, will more fully explain its form. In July 1883 I had the further pleasure of seeing in a cutting in Low-level .Boulder-clay and Sands at Tranmere, Cheshire, in one of the approaches to the Mersey Tunnel, ripple-marks in hard fine loamy brown sand, forming the flank of what must


Myriad proteobacteria use N-acyl homoserine lactone (AHL) molecules as quorum sensing (QS) signals to regulate different physiological functions, including virulence, antibiotic production, and biofilm formation. Many of these proteobacteria possess LuxI/LuxR system as the QS mechanism. Recently, we reported the 3.89 Mb genome of Acinetobacter sp. strain GG2. In this work, the genome of this long chain AHL-producing bacterium was unravelled which led to the molecular characterization of luxI homologue, designated as aciI. This 552 bp gene was cloned and overexpressed in Escherichia coli BL21(DE3). The purified protein was ∼20.5 kDa and is highly similar to several autoinducer proteins of LuxI family among Acinetobacter species. To verify the AHL synthesis activity of this protein, high-resolution liquid chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis revealed the production of 3-oxo-dodecanoyl-homoserine lactone and 3-hydroxy-dodecanoyl-homoserine lactone from induced E. coli harboring the recombinant AciI. Our data show for the first time, the cloning and characterization of the luxI homologue from Acinetobacter sp. strain GG2, and confirmation of its AHLs production. These data are of great significance as the annotated genome of strain GG2 has provided a valuable insight in the study of autoinducer molecules and its roles in QS mechanism of the bacterium.


A formal protocol, controlled metabolic evaluation is essential to the most effective treatment of any patient with renal calculi, regardless of the crystalline composition of the stone. The design of the protocol and of the data sheets should be compatible with ease of diagnosis and selection of corrective therapeutic measures. These data also serve as a reference to monitor response to treatment. Treatment is highly individualized with the objective to reduce all potentially crystallizable ions to basal levels. If this is difficult to accomplish certain ratios of ions are brought to as near normal values as possible.


Proximal interstitial deletions of chromosome 9p13 have been described only in a few patients with developmental delay, moderate intellectual disability, craniofacial dysmorphism, short stature, genital anomalies, and precocious puberty. To corroborate and expand these findings, we report on two novel syndromic male patients with 9p13 deletions suffering from a similar form of tremor and compare them with literature data. Despite genomic variability in deletion sizes, all patients displayed homogeneous dysmorphism and clinical manifestations, including very invalidating tremor. Furthermore, we outlined a region of around 2 Mb shared in common by all patients with nearly 70 genes, among which NPR2 might have a role in the phenotype. These data delineate interstitial 9p13 deletion syndrome with tremor as a major feature.


My entry into administrative work, as has been the case with many writing program and writing center administrators, was the result of serendipity [1]. I had just graduated with my Master's degree in literature, and I had no immediate plans for what to do. I had spent several years working as a writing tutor and teacher while in my graduate program, and, like many, I found the work meaningful and significant. The stars aligned, it seemed, as the writing center director at my institution retired the very semester I graduated with my master's degree, and the department needed someone to step in while they could convince the upper administration they needed to hire a tenure-track faculty member to fill the position long-term.


Modern approaches to the modeling of composites are no longer limited to the use of a single approach for the whole structure or for all the degradation mechanisms. On the contrary, modern advances enable the definition of truly multiscale models in order to describe the degradation. Thus, homogenized models can be rigorously deduced from the underlying micromechanics. In the past few years, LMT-Cachan has made a number of contributions to the three key points of these multiscale approaches: (1) the improvement of the reference model on the fine scale, (2) the definition of a controlled correspondence between the scales, and (3) the definition of the associated homogenized model. Here, the complete approach is formalized as a modeling pyramid. Each mechanism of degradation is described on the more relevant scale within an 'hybrid micromechanical model'. Based on the reference modeling, constitutive laws can be transfered within the unique framework of damage mechanics for being applied within commercial softwares. As an illustration, we focus more specifically on the homogenized law obtained for transverse cracking. The constitutive law and the material parameters issued from the homogenization, which define the model on the higher scale, are reviewed. Their identification is studied in detail. An important key point of the pyramidal approach appears here. Since it allows the interpretation of every quantity on different scales (both at the micromechanical and at the mesomechanical scales), the most relevant scale can be used for the identification of a chosen property. We limit ourselves to a 'classical' identification. We mean by classical identification a procedure based on straight specimens. This process, to a certain extent, uses a parametric simulation of the nonlinear model based on a finite element representation of the test samples. The complete model is then used for the simulation of an industrial sample with hole. That example emphasizes the interest of underlying micromechanial variables for experimental validation.


ABSTRACT Mupirocin susceptibility testing of Staphylococcus aureus has become more important as mupirocin is used more widely to suppress or eliminate S. aureus colonization and prevent subsequent health care- and community-associated infections. The present multicenter study evaluated two susceptibility testing screening methods to detect mupirocin high-level resistance (HLR), broth microdilution (BMD) MICs of ≥512 μg/ml, and a 6-mm zone diameter for a disk diffusion (DD) test with a 200-μg disk. Initial testing indicated that with Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute methods for BMD and DD testing, the optimal conditions for the detection of mupirocin HLR were 24 h of incubation and reading of the DD zone diameters with transmitted light. Using the presence or absence of mupA as the "gold standard" for HLR, the sensitivity and specificity of a single-well 256 μg/ml BMD test were 97 and 99%, respectively, and those for the 200-μg disk test were 98 and 99%, respectively. Testing with two disks, 200 μg and 5 μg, was evaluated for its ability to distinguish HLR isolates (MICs ≥ 512 μg/ml), low-level-resistant (LLR) isolates (MICs = 8 to 256 μg/ml), and susceptible isolates (MICs ≤ 4 μg/ml). Using no zone with both disks as an indication of HLR and no zone with the 5-μg disk plus any zone with the 200-μg disk as LLR, only 3 of the 340 isolates were misclassified, with 3 susceptible isolates being classified as LLR. Use of standardized MIC or disk tests could enable the detection of emerging high- and low-level mupirocin resistance in S. aureus.


We report 19 Leydig cell tumors (LCTs) of the testis with adipose differentiation (n = 12) and/or spindle cell growth (n = 8) in patients 28–70 years of age; three tumors with adipose differentiation showed psammomatous calcifications, two of which also had foci of ossification. In eight tumors fat-like cells apparently derived from lipid accumulation within neoplastic Leydig cells and appeared as focal to prominent clusters in a background of vacuolated, neoplastic Leydig cells. The fat-like cells were usually immunoreactive for Leydig cell markers (inhibin-&agr;, calretinin, and melan-A) but were typically strongly positive for the adipose tissue marker, S-100 protein, supporting a hybrid cell phenotype. Four tumors had fat of stromal derivation. In two of these there were intermixed mature adipocytes, but in two others only lipoblastic cells were present. These four tumors lacked vacuolated, neoplastic Leydig cells, and the fat cells in the single case studied were negative for inhibin-&agr; and melan-A but positive for S-100. Three of the 12 LCTs with adipose differentiation were clinically malignant, and each had several of the established malignant features. Eight tumors with spindle cells occurred in men 34–70 years of age. Two tumors had ill-defined fascicles of spindle cells, and three showed prominent edematous to myxoid areas with spindle-shaped tumor cells. Two additional tumors had a fibroma-like spindled component that blended with islands of more plump, polygonal to spindle-shaped Leydig cells. Finally, one tumor had foci resembling an unclassified sarcoma that merged with conventional LCT; the spindle cell component in this case did not react for Leydig cell markers in contrast to the spindle cells in five of the six other cases in which immunostains were performed. Spindle cell differentiation, by itself, did not appear to have prognostic significance. Of the six patients with available follow-up, two developed metastases, but their tumors had malignant features apart from spindle cells; the remaining four patients were disease free at a mean of 3.6 years. Awareness of these unusual patterns in LCTs may prevent misinterpretation of fat admixed with neoplastic Leydig cells as evidence of extratesticular growth (a criterion for malignant LCT) may help avoid misdiagnosis of a LCT as a testicular "tumor" of the adrenogenital syndrome (which may contain fat) and may prevent misdiagnosis of a LCT with spindle cells as a sarcoma or unclassified sex cord-stromal tumor.


Abstract. DTM is a digital model that visualizes height topography. DTM can be used for various survey mapping applications. DTM can be derived from DSM. Currently DSM is widely available but the availability of DTM is still rare, especially in Indonesia. In this study, DSM was obtained from a combination of DSM X SAR, SRTM, and TanDEM-X with the integration method. This DSM integration made height error correction and height reference field to the EGM 2008. This DSM integration has fulfilled the tolerance of vertical accuracy in 1.96σ (95%). This study aims to convert DSM to DTM and discuss some of the DTM applications. The study area of this study is Rote Islands (north and east side), especially in the Dead Sea Lake Area which includes Lake Oemasapoka to Oesu Island. DSM can be converted into DTM by considering several things, namely the canopy tilt angle to topography, the height of the vegetation approach, and the radius defined around the canopy. One way to get this parameter is to make contours on the vegetation in the DSM. After conversion of DSM to DTM, DTM is obtained at ground level. The DTM that has been produced needs to be done a height difference test and the making of longitudinal profile. This longitudinal profile will visualize the conditions of DSM and DTM so that the vegetation height will appear along the profile. The resulting DTM can be used for several applications such as topographic contours, watersheds, water levels, flow accumulation, slope, slope direction, and others.


Abstract Low student literacy outcomes are of great concern to Governments in the Pacific region and especially the least developed Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) of Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. To further enhance student learning outcomes, the author argues that schools need to become more effective. This paper examines how key elements of school effectiveness have been integrated into national minimum quality service standards (NMQSS) aimed at improving school effectiveness in Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. To encourage sustainability, these standards were incorporated into national school-based management and/or school grants systems in the three countries. The authors suggest that introducing the characteristics of effective schools with systems for school-based management and school grants allow schools to initiate local solutions to improve school effectiveness and achieve desired targets for school outcomes.


All-inorganic cesium lead iodide perovskites (CsPbI3) are promising materials for efficient solar cells. However, they suffer from the formation of an undesired yellow δ-phase under ambient conditions. Herein, we provide a novel strategy to in situ prepare quasi-quantum dot (QQD) CsPbI3 films by using a new ligand, adamantan-1-yl methanammonium (AMDA), with ultralow contents (∼0.25 wt%) in the perovskite films. Strong interaction and charge coupling between the ligands and nanocrystals significantly increase the surface Gibbs energy of CsPbI3 and suppresses the grain sizes to around 30 nm, which effectively protects the black α-phase from the destruction of moisture and heat. By reducing the trap density of states in the QQD CsPbI3 films, the all-inorganic PSCs exhibit a power conversion efficiency of 13.5%. Most importantly, the QQD CsPbI3 films can substantially maintain an α-phase and the QQD-based PSCs retain 90% of their initial efficiency after storage either under ambient conditions for 30 days or 85 °C heating for 336 h. These results indicate that in situ prepared QQD films are a potential strategy to effectively improve the long-term stability of all inorganic perovskite materials.


A new feature extraction method for fabric defect detection is proposed, which is based on one-dimensional projection series of fabric images. By using horizontal projection and vertical projection of the image, the characteristics of periodicity and orientation of fabric texture can be fully utilized. In terms of detection defects, it helps acquire information at most, and the computational complexity can also be greatly decreased with one-dimensional projection series. The proposed new method, named Auto-Regressive spectral analysis (AR), is a kind of modern spectral analysis method which is very suitable for analyzing short data with a high spectral resolution. The Burg algorithm is applied to estimate the AR spectrum. Finally, t-test is applied to verify the effectiveness of AR spectral features. This approach has been applied to various cases of defect detections with satisfactory results.


ABSTRACTIn this work, the Adsorption Method for Sampling (AMESA) is developed to collect long-term samples of polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins and dibenzofurans (PCDD/Fs) from stacks. However, the variation of in duration might affect the analytical results due to the memory effect in the AMESA. This research is one of the very few reports of using AMESA in sinter plants. Eight long-term AMESA (LA) samples were collected, followed by 16 parallel short-term AMESA (SA) and manual (SM) samples. The LA reports good correlations (R = 0.82–0.83) between PCDD/F emissions and the recovery feedstock, which can be further used for emission reduction. However, the breakthrough effects of the highly chlorinated PCDD/Fs is in the range of 6–14% in LA samples, and these are further improved by increasing the glass wool and adsorbent (with higher specific surface area, lower pore size, and higher polarity) packing, and finally reduced to 5.17%. For the short-term sampling, a maximum difference of 170% occurred between SA and SM, if the sampling strategy suddenly changed from LA to SA. The PCDD/F memory effect remained for the first 8 SA samples, with the dominant 1,2,3,4,6,7,8-HpCDD and OCDD. Therefore, five post-washings for the AMESA system took place to successfully reduce the PCDD/F residual mass to > 0.2% of a normal LA. Unfortunately, these residuals were still equal to 51.4% of a normal SA. Therefore, it is not suggested that AMESA replace the current manual sampling method without any modification. According to this study, both the breakthrough and memory effects could be inhibited. Finally, a new inspection system, including both AMESA and short-term samples, is then proposed for improving the PCDD/F control strategy in Taiwan.


Malaria is one of the most important causes of morbidity and mortality in tropical and subtropical countries. The availability, appropriate management, and rational use of medicines are critical to the successful implementation of the malaria control programs. The aim was to assess the availability, use, and utilization of medicines used for preventing and treating malaria in public health facilities in Jimma zone in Southwest Ethiopia. An indicator-based descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted from March 25 to April 30, 2011 at selected public health facilities, providing antimalaria drugs to treat and prevent malaria in Jimma zone. Three data collection techniques were used: document reviews, structured interviews, and physical inventory checks using the World Health Organization Checklist. All data collected were then analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), version 16.0 software. On average, 88% of the core medicines monitored was available in the public health facilities and 90% of the medicines prescribed by the prescriber were dispensed to the patients. On average, stock out period was 38%. The highest and lowest prescribed antimalaria drugs observed are Artemether/lumefantrine 120 mg/20 mg tablet and chloroquine syrup, which were 45% and 5.5%, respectively. The adherence to Standard Treatment Guidelines of Ethiopia (STG) was 85%. There was poor inventory control system and long stock out period, and the majority of prescribers are adhering to national STGs. Implementing good inventory control system, training on drug supply management, and continuous supervision of the public health facilities by zonal health bureau is recommended.


By using first-principles electronic structure calculations, we have studied the magnetic interactions in a proposed BaZn$_2$P$_2$-based diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS). For a typical compound Ba(Zn$_{0.944}$Mn$_{0.056}$)$_2$P$_2$ with only spin doping, due to the superexchange interaction between Mn atoms and the lack of itinerant carriers, the short-range antiferromagnetic coupling dominates. Partially substituting K atoms for Ba atoms, which introduces itinerant hole carriers into the $p$ orbitals of P atoms so as to link distant Mn moments with the spin-polarized hole carriers via the $p$-$d$ hybridization between P and Mn atoms, is very crucial for the appearance of ferromagnetism in the compound. Furthermore, applying hydrostatic pressure first enhances and then decreases the ferromagnetic coupling in (Ba$_{0.75}$K$_{0.25}$)(Zn$_{0.944}$Mn$_{0.056}$)$_2$P$_2$ at a turning point around 15 GPa, which results from the combined effects of the pressure-induced variations of electron delocalization and $p$-$d$ hybridization. Compared with the BaZn$_2$As$_2$-based DMS, the substitution of P for As can modulate the magnetic coupling effectively. Both the results for BaZn$_2$P$_2$-based and BaZn$_2$As$_2$-based DMSs demonstrate that the robust antiferromagnetic (AFM) coupling between the nearest Mn-Mn pairs bridged by anions is harmful to improving the performance of this II-II-V based DMS materials.


The breeding success of many species depends on the synchronisation of the period of maximum demand of offspring with a period of food abundance. The trend towards higher spring temperatures in recent decades has caused such windows to advance [1]. The cue for migrating populations to depart their wintering quarters is often independent of temperature, preventing individuals from arriving in their breeding quarters early enough to react to the warmer climate and advance their breeding [2]. In this work, we propose a population-based dynamical system framework in which the interplay of different seasonal factors both within and between years can be better understood. The breeding and survival stages are modelled as separate annual regimes in a time-dependent switching system. Having developed a novel method for representing seasonal migration problems, we then use a simple switching model to illustrate some possible effects of and responses to climate change. Steady state solutions are used to measure the extent to which the population can sustain itself over long time-scales and repeated breeding events. We show the negative effect that an advance in the food peak, relative to a fixed reproduction window and migration schedule, can have on population size, with a sufficiently severe shift bringing about a total collapse. By advancing both migration and breeding accordingly, the population can compensate for these environmental changes and maintain the population size corresponding to no climate change. Two obstacles to achieving this resynchronisation are considered - a shortage of food early in the breeding season [3] and a constraint on arrival date to the breeding quarters [2]. In both cases, the population reaches a point at which it no longer able to shift its breeding schedule forward. It is shown that manipulating the hatching distribution so that a higher proportion of pairs hatch at the earliest possible date is not sufficient to recover the original steady state size. The model therefore agrees qualitatively with the population declines associated with ecological systems subjected to climate change. Furthermore, it predicts that persistent climate change could result in population collapses. The representation of seasonal breeding in a dynamical systems context is a foundation upon which a new class of time-dependent population models can be developed. The framework outlined is well-suited to deal with both seasonal interactions and the propagation of recruitment failures from one year to the next, enabling us to assess the impact of persistent temporal mismatches brought about by changing climatic conditions. References [1] Gian-Reto Walther, Eric Post, Peter Convey, Annette Menzel, Camille Parmesan, Trevor J. C. Beebee, Jean-Marc Fromentin, Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, and Franz Bairlein. Ecological responses to recent climate change. Nature , 416:389-395, 2002. [2] Christiaan Both and Marcel E. Visser. Adjustment to climate change is constrained by arrival date in a long-distance migrant bird. Nature , 411:296-298, 2001. [3] I.R. Stevenson and D.M. Bryant. Climate change and constraints on breeding. Nature , 406:366-367, 2000.


In this paper we demonstrate a Fairclough-inspired analysis of environmental narrative disclosures of Royal/ Dutch Shell oil spills in Nigeria. Our focus is on the construction of meaning of oil spills as presented in corporate narrative disclosures. As well as serving to illustrate a Fairclough-inspired discourse analysis, the analysis is a critical attempt to explore the mobilisation of externalities such as oil spills into corporate accountability frameworks discourse. Findings of this paper indicate that Shell mobilises externalities into its accountability frameworks, controls the 'official' discourse and attempts to determine the nature of oil spills and, in doing so discursively creates the boundary for oil spills which are accountable and those which are 'external' to the organization.


This work discusses the fabrication of two-dimensional photonic crystal microcavities (PCMs) in a thin GaAs membrane. We have developed a fabrication process for square-lattice, single-hole-defect devices, a class of PCMs that is critically sensitive to fabrication accuracy, demonstrated coupling of InAs quantum dots to the cavity modes, and shown the sensitivity of the emission to the quality of the fabrication process. Reactive ion etching conditions were optimized to produce photonic crystal holes with smooth, straight sidewalls. To achieve uniform hole sizes throughout the device, we developed a method to correct the proximity effect introduced while defining the photonic crystal holes using electron-beam lithography. Resulting cavities have resonances with quality factors as high as 4000, which proves the quality of our fabrication.


Selection acting on males can reduce mutation load of sexual relative to asexual populations, thus mitigating the two-fold cost of sex. This requires that it seeks and destroys the same mutations as selection acting on females, but with higher efficiency, which could happen due to sexual selection-a potent evolutionary force that in most systems predominantly affects males. We used replicate populations of red flour beetles (Tribolium castaneum) to study sex-specific selection against deleterious mutations introduced with ionizing radiation. Additionally, we employed a novel approach to quantify the relative contribution of sexual selection to the overall selection observed in males. The induced mutations were selected against in both sexes, with decreased sexual competitiveness contributing, on average, over 40% of the total decline in male fitness. However, we found no evidence for selection being stronger in males than in females; in fact, we observed a non-significant trend in the opposite direction. These results suggest that selection on males does not reduce mutation load below the level expected under the (hypothetical) scenario of asexual reproduction. Thus, we found no support for the hypothesis that sexual selection contributes to the evolutionary maintenance of sex.


INTRODUCTION
The thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura-haemolytic uraemic syndromes (TTP-HUS) are uncommon disorders that are fatal if untreated. Therapeutic plasma exchange has resulted in excellent remission and survival rates in this patient population.

METHODS
We reviewed our experience of therapeutic plasmapheresis for TTP-HUS syndromes for 11 patients who presented in the last five years. Parameters captured included haemoglobin and platelet counts at presentation as well as the number of plasmapheresis sessions and adjunctive treatment given.

RESULTS
We found a response rate of 82 percent to plasma exchange, of whom 55 percent attained complete remission. Responses were excellent in the five patients who presented with primary or idiopathic TTP (100 percent response) among whom 80 percent had sustained long term responses. Responses were poor and often unsustained (only one out of six survived) in patients who presented with thrombotic microangiopathies secondary to underlying disorders such as bone marrow transplantation and metastatic carcinoma.

CONCLUSION
Plasmapheresis is mandatory and extremely effective for primary TTP. However, it is at most an adjunct for patients who developed it secondary to an underlying disorder until and if the primary disorder can be successfully treated.


In total, 66 loggerhead turtle nests were examined and compared in terms of embryonic mortality during the 2004 and 2005 breeding seasons on Fethiye and Goksu Delta beaches. In all, 5012 eggs were counted, 2751 (54.90%) of which hatched successfully. Of the 2261 unhatched eggs, 68 (1.35%) were classified as unidentified eggs and 2193 (43.75%) were classified as containing dead embryos. Of these dead embryos, a high percentage were in the early stage (n = 1177, 23.48%) and late stage (n = 814, 16.24%,) of development. The lowest percentage of the eggs with dead embryos (n = 202, 4.03%) were in the mid-stage of development. The embryonic mortality rate was higher at Goksu Delta than at Fethiye Beach. Of the examined ecological variables, none accounted for the early stage embryonic mortality. Embryonic mortality in the middle and late stages of development increased with decreasing slope and dry sand depth of the nests; however, embryonic mortality during these stages decreased with declining moisture and wet sand depth of the nests.


A novel algorithm for automatic transcription of piano polyphonic music is proposed. It is based on a processing scheme that incorporates the following subtasks: segmentation of notes in time domain, estimation of frequency components based on the structure of time segments, extraction of pitches of underlying notes, and tracking of notes to obtain the final music score. A combination of multiresolution techniques, such as multiresolution Fourier transform and maximum likelihood frequency estimator, enables the user to successfully cope with the problems of constant time-frequency resolution and frequency masking. The algorithm demonstrates a better performance then results obtained by means of existing commercial software.


Objectives: A critical review of the literature was undertaken with articles assessing neuropsychological deficits in decision making (DM) in schizophrenic patients. Methods: This review included all articles that performed neuropsychological assessments with tests sensitive to cortical areas associated with DM, especially the orbitofrontal cortex dysfunction. Methodological aspects of the selected studies were compared, as well as the correlation between measures in DM tasks with clinical, cognitive and functional characteristics of the samples. Results: Eight articles between 1997 and 2005 were selected. With regard to the instrument used to assess DM, six used the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT), one used the Novel Decision Making Task (NDMT) and one used the Two Choice Prediction Task (TCPT). All the studies compared schizophrenic patients to healthy controls. In four articles using the IGT and the others using either the NDMT or the TCPT, schizophrenic patients showed low performance in DM tasks. Discussion and conclusion: Current studies are inconclusive in assessing DM deficits in schizophrenia. Clinical characteristics such as diagnostic subtype, predominant symptoms, type of medication and psychosocial functioning can account for the results found. Further studies are required to better investigate the nature of DM deficits in schizophrenia and their relevance to clinical presentation and illness course.


Abstract Cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) is widely regarded as an effective treatment for social anxiety disorder (SAD) in Europe and North America. The theoretical orientations underlying CBT models and treatment interventions developed in Western cultures were typically constrained by Western conceptualizations of SAD. This case study reports on the use of CBT for Japanese SAD, demonstrating the successful implementation of cognitive techniques grounded in the Clark & Wells model. The patient was a Japanese female with excessively high standards for workplace social performance. Therapy mainly comprised case formulation, behavioural experiments, and opinion surveying based on the Clark & Wells model. These techniques allowed the patient to reduce the strength of maladaptive cognitions and lower her excessively high standards for social performance. CBT treatment using the Clark & Wells model was effective and suitable for Japanese SAD, at least in the present case. We also discuss the cross-cultural differences of SAD and adaptation of CBT.


The actions of transforming growth factor-β isoforms as potent regulators of growth and differentiation have led to the examination of their presence in the human pancreas. The cellular localization of TGF-β1, TGF-β2, and TGF-β3 was assessed in the normal human pancreas by using immunohistochemical and in situ hybridization techniques. Although cytoplasmic immunoreactivity for TGF-β1, TGF-β2, and TGF-β3 was found in islet cells, acinar cells, and ductal cells, a differential immunostaining pattern for TGF-β isoforms was observed. In the endocrine pancreas, the islet cells demonstrated diffuse cytoplasmic immunostaining for TGF-β1, TGF-β2, and TGF-β3. However, only TGF-β2 and TGF-β3 exhibited an intense pattern of immunostaining in a few endocrine cells. Most of the positive islet cells coexpressed insulin. In contrast, in the exocrine pancreas, a greater number of acinar cells showed immunoreactivity for TGF-β1 than for TGF-β2 and TGF-β3. In the ductal cells, all three TGF-β isoforms showed a similar intensity and pattern of immunostaining and were observed more frequently in the smaller distal ductules than in the larger pancreatic ducts. TGF-β1 and TGF-β3, but not TGF-β2, immunostaining was detected strongly in the smooth muscle cells and weakly in the endothelial cells of the blood vessels, whereas the fibroblasts of the interstitium were completely negative. In situ hybridization revealed that mRNA encoding all three TGF-β isoforms colocalized with their respective proteins in islets, acinar cells, and ductal cells. In contrast, mRNA expression was absent in the smooth muscle cells and endothelium of the vessels. These results suggest that TGF-β isoforms may act by both autocrine and paracrine mechanisms in the pancreas. The differential pattern of expression observed for each TGF-β isoform implies unique roles for these proteins in the regulation of the endocrine and exocrine pancreas.


Advertising is information that aims to persuade. The phenomenon of advertising connects the professional supplier (creator) and the consumer (receiver) under particular market dynamics and within the framework of a specific social and cultural context that reveals the complexity and significance of the act of consumption. However, the regulation of advertising has been mostly focused on the professional supplier's duty to inform, on the one hand, and on the consumer's access to information. In this article, I argue that in order to assess the scope of the impact of the phenomenon of advertising in our society and, in particular, of advertising that conveys gender stereotypes, we must abandon the simplified construal of advertising as information, of the professional supplier as informant, and of the consumer as informed sovereign. Such representations that completely disregard context can hardly help in the tasks of rethinking regulation of current advertising and proposing legal responses that are more sensitive to advertising's persuasive aspect and thus better suited to deal with the problem of stereotyped advertising in our society.


Since its introduction in 1967, the account of property rights formation by Harold Demsetz has pervaded the legal and economic literature. Demsetz theorized that as a once-abundant, commonly-shared resource becomes more valuable and sought-after, users will move to more clearly define property rights in the resource. Despite the high transaction costs of this approach, the costs of organizing and enforcing a rights regime become worthwhile in the face of scarcity. And privatization, in turn, leads to more efficient use of the resource by the individuals holding the property rights, with less externalization of the harmful effects of resource use. Modified accounts provide a more nuanced story, in which "governance" — broadly speaking — emerges to address scarcity concerns. This governance can include traditional regulation that draws clearer property rights in the resource and forces cost internalization as well as innovative, less formal regimes such as monitoring and reporting of resource use, voluntary agreements to internalize certain harms, and other commons management tools. But a conundrum remains: in some cases, scarcity does not generate regulation or innovative governance, and the legal scholarship has called for more empirical testing of the reasons for this anti-Demsetzian response.

Hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, presents a perfect case study for this sort of test. This oil and gas extraction technique, which has recently boomed in the United States, has identifiable, substantial negative externalities, including, for example, air pollution and overwithdrawals of freshwater during droughts. Yet states and industry actors have not consistently responded with regulations or innovative governance strategies to internalize these externalities. In this Article we explore the responses in three states experiencing a fracking boom and theorize the reasons for the diverse responses of these states to greater fracking externalities, including responses that do not track Demsetz. We conclude that traditional political explanations, often pejoratively referred to as "capture" or "rent seeking," political culture, and legal institutions — particularly courts — account for the divergence between what we observe empirically and Demestz's theory.


The ability of fast similarity search at large scale is of great importance to many Information Retrieval (IR) applications. A promising way to accelerate similarity search is semantic hashing which designs compact binary codes for a large number of documents so that semantically similar documents are mapped to similar codes (within a short Hamming distance). Although some recently proposed techniques are able to generate high-quality codes for documents known in advance, obtaining the codes for previously unseen documents remains to be a very challenging problem. In this paper, we emphasise this issue and propose a novel Self-Taught Hashing (STH) approach to semantic hashing: we first find the optimal l-bit binary codes for all documents in the given corpus via unsupervised learning, and then train l classifiers via supervised learning to predict the l-bit code for any query document unseen before. Our experiments on three real-world text datasets show that the proposed approach using binarised Laplacian Eigenmap (LapEig) and linear Support Vector Machine (SVM) outperforms state-of-the-art techniques significantly.


For a typical biologically inspired multi-segmental mechanical system, the system's locomotion behavior is rectified from the segments' rhythmic oscillation. A central pattern generator (CPG)-based controller was developed to achieve the locomotion with a certain sense of natural oscillation. We designed and manufactured a prototype mechanical rectifier (PMR) system which captures the essential mechanism of multi-segmental systems. Experiments were conducted on the PMR system to reveal the effectiveness of the natural oscillation entrainment controller.