Including environmental issues in trade agreements is controversial, although these issues are an integral part of the NAFTA and WTO agreements as well as being the subject of numerous multilateral environmental treaties and agreements. Despite its inclusion, many members are opposed to allowing the environment an extensive role in the WTO. Nonetheless, the Doha Ministerial Declaration recognizes the environment in negotiating the next trade liberalization agreement. Agriculture and agricultural trade, which were integrated with international trade disciplines in the Uruguay Round, have environmental implications, and the inclusion of agriculture in the WTO introduces complex issues that also have environmental consequences.


Future intelligent transport systems (ITS) are envisaged to offer drivers with a safer and comfortable driving experience by using wireless data exchange between vehicles. A number of applications could be realized with the increased vehicle vision and awareness provided by this technology known as Vehicular Ad hoc Network (VANETs). These applications include cooperative awareness, warning notification, safe lane change and intersection crossing, intelligent route selection, traffic management, parking selection, multi-player games and internet browsing. The success of VANETs and its proposed applications depend on secure and reliable message transmission between the vehicles. Every vehicle broadcasts periodic safety messages to the neighborhood traffic to inform about its presence. This safety message contains vehicle's mobility information including its location, speed, direction, heading etc. Based on these safety messages, vehicles develop a local dynamic map (LDM) that provides them a complete description of the surrounding traffic. Using LDM, vehicles could look beyond line of sight and make safe and intelligent driving decisions. An increased level of vehicle safety awareness is the primary goal for road safety applications. An accurate measure of this awareness is critical to evaluate impact of different parameters such as security, vehicle density etc. on vehicle safety and application quality of service. A precise and correct metric for safety awareness of vehicles should take into account the knowledge of vehicle's surrounding and accuracy of received information in CAM and LDM. Existing metrics in the literature utilize quantitative measure of awareness such as packet delivery ratio and do not consider accuracy and fidelity of received information in the LDM. Due to GPS error and outdated information in the LDM, vehicles could have a reduced level of awareness resulting in dissemination of false positives and false negatives that could badly impact road safety applications. In this paper, we propose two novel metrics for evaluating vehicle safety awareness. These metrics start by using our proposed vehicle heading based filtering mechanism to only consider the critical neighbors in the surrounding (i.e., the ones that are moving towards a vehicle and have a chance to collide with it) for calculating awareness. The first metric known as Normalized Error based Safety Awareness Level (SAL) calculates awareness by measuring the number of neighbors a vehicle has successfully discovered in its LDM and a normalized distance error that is calculated based on actual position of each neighbor and its position information that is available in the LDM. By considering the position error in the information contained in the LDM, vehicles accurately measure their awareness levels. To further improve the above safety awareness metric, we propose a weighted Normalized Error based Safety Awareness Level (wSAL) metric that assigns higher weight to error coming from neighbor vehicles that are nearby using a sigmoid function. Since position error of a closer neighbor is more critical in safety applications, vehicle awareness level could be more accurately measured by allocating a higher importance to them. We developed a simulation model using NS-3 network simulator and SUMO traffic simulator to generate realistic road traffic scenario at different vehicle densities. Simulation results verify that the existing metrics provide optimistic results for vehicle awareness and our proposed metrics improve the measure of awareness. This leads to a better performance evaluation of safety applications.


This Article tells the legal story of one of the South's most infamous trials – the Groveland Boys prosecution in central Florida. Called "Florida's Little Scottsboro," the Groveland case garnered international attention in 1949 when four young black men were accused of the gang rape of a white woman in the orange groves north of Orlando. Several days of rioting, Ku Klux Klan activity, three murders, two trials, and three death penalty verdicts followed, in what became the most infamous trial in Florida history. The appeals of the trial reached the United States Supreme Court, with the NAACP's Thurgood Marshall serving as lead defense counsel in the re-trial of the case. The case reads like a Hollywood movie, but with the underpinnings of a classic 20 century southern courtroom drama. This Article looks not only at the history of the Groveland prosecutions, but undertakes a legal analysis of the trial court decisions made by the trial judge. While the historiographical narrative of the Groveland trials is one of racism and a "legal lynching," many of the legal decisions made by the trial court were, in fact, surprisingly consistent with legal precedent of the time. Nevertheless, the tragic outcome of the Groveland case inflicted a permanent scar on the reputation of the Florida criminal justice system.


When economic growth and consequently, social progress, is confronted with drastic changes a modification is needed. Mentality, vision or policy change? The principle of the four freedoms (goods, services, capital, labor force) is compulsory and forms a unit, however, the movement of labor constitutes a true "apple of discord" regarding the problem on democratic movements. The idea of equality of Opportunities for all European citizens, without discrimination, is a principle and rises to the level of fundamental European value. Equal opportunities for all represent a desideratum and one of the substance components of everywhere democracy, next to liberty and respect of the fundamental human rights. "The economic patriotism" is a formula designed to sensitize the European citizen, in order to block globalization, which penalizes both the market and the citizen itself.


Background: The use of electric current during application of etch-and-rinse adhesive systems has been recently introduced to decrease microleakage. This study investigated the effects of an electric field produced by an experimental device for the application of a two-step etch-and-rinse adhesive on moist dentin surface. Methods: Sixty freshly extracted human premolars were used for this study. In order to simulate real conditions, the pulpal pressure was set to 35 cm H2O for all the specimens. The teeth were divided into two groups: in group I, etch-and-rinse system (Single Bond) was applied with electric current while group II, etch-and-rinse system (Single Bond) was applied without electric current. Specimens were prepared for dye penetration test. The data were analyzed using Mann-Whitney U test. Results: The results showed that group I had less microleakage scores compared to group II (P = 0.047). Conclusion: Based on the result of this study, it could be concluded that using electric current for applying adhesive systems had a significant effect on reducing microleakage.


The present study investigated autonomic nervous system (ANS) patterning during experimentally manipulated emotion. Film clips previously shown to induce amusement, anger, contentment, disgust, fear, and sadness, in addition to a neutral control, were presented to 34 college-aged subjects while electrodermal activity, blood pressure and electrocardiogram (ECG) were recorded as was self-reported affect. Mean and mean successive difference of inter-beat interval were derived from the ECG. Pattern classification analysis revealed emotion-specific patterning for all emotion conditions except disgust. Discriminant function analysis was used to describe the location of discrete emotions within a dimensional affective state space, for both self-report and ANS activity. Findings suggest traditional dimensional emotion models accurately describe the state space for self-reported emotion, but may require modification in order to accurately describe the state space for ANS activity during discrete emotions. Proposed modifications are consistent with the adoption of a discrete -dimensional hybrid model as well as current trends in emotion theory.


Experimenters and, to some extent solid-state electronics specialists, will find in this paper a comprehensive review and much original material in a relatively new area of physical magnetoacoustics — acoustic birefringence (circular and linear) in antiferromagnets — where effects quite extraordinary from the viewpoint of nonmagnetic (and even ferromagnetic) crystals are studied. The availability of the theory of these effects, the possibility of controlling them with magnetic (B) and electrical (E) fields, and the understanding of the role of such factors as the crystal and magnetic structure, orientation state, sample size, the direction and magnitude of B and E, etc., all this paves the way and indeed calls for intensive experimental work and holds promise of new and exciting discoveries in solid-state magnetoacoustics.


Undifferentiated pleomorphic sarcoma (UPS), also called malignant fibrous histiocytoma (MFH), belongs to the soft tissue tumors and is more likely in elder patients. UPS currently accounts for approximately 18% of cutaneous soft tissue sarcoma except Kaposi sarcoma. The most common sites are the extremities and head and neck. UPS is rapidly enlarging, and easily invades subcutaneous tissue and muscle without overlying skin changes. UPS tumors, which are confined to subcutaneous tissue, have been reported to be less than 10%. On the other hand, the involvement of the epidermis, occasionally with ulceration, is rare. Here, we describe a case of UPS of the cheek with surface ulceration. An 83-year-old man presented with a 1-year history of a red nodule on his left cheek. The size of the nodule gradually increased. Clinical examination revealed a 55 × 45 mm red, hard mass in the center of his left cheek with a large cratershaped ulcer involving the subcutaneous tissue. The bottom of the ulcer contained necrotic tissue. No cervical lymph nodes were palpable. A biopsy revealed a high-grade, pleomorphic spindle cell neoplasm and frequent abnormal mitotic figures within the dermis. We temporarily diagnosed and suspected a soft tissue sarcoma, but we could not rule out spindle cell squamous cell carcinoma (SCSCC). The patient underwent tumor resection and skin grafting. The tumor had reached the muscle layer of his left cheek with invasion and ulceration of the overlying skin. Histopathological examination of the totally resected tumor revealed a neoplasm of mesenchymal origin, rich in cells with morphology and immunohistochemical characteristics compatible with UPS. Malignant cells were not found in the epidermis. Immunohistochemical analyses were positive for vimentin, α-anti-trypsin, α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), and CD10, and negative for cytokeratins (CAM5.2 and AE1/AE3), lysozyme, epithelial membrane antigen (EMA), CD34, S-100, desmin, and caldesmon. Two months after total resection, the tumor recurred, and the patient was treated with radiation therapy. However, he died 2 months later from multiple lung metastases. We thought that the metastases were from the UPS, because his prostatic carcinoma had not progressed. According to published literatures, the UPS rarely accompanies with surface ulceration. On the other hand, SCC commonly occurs on sun-exposed sites of the head and neck with surface changes including scaling, ulceration, crusting, and the presence of a cutaneous horn. In our case, it was very difficult to distinguish UPS from SCSCC by clinical examination and conventional histopathological staining (e.g. hematoxylin and eosin). Therefore, the immunohistochemistry was required to obtain the final diagnosis.


To avoid the errors of the past, the United States must develop a wide-ranging policy to win the global war on terrorism, while encouraging the evolution of political and economic pluralism in all Central Asian countries. ********** The tragic events of 11 September 2001 propelled Central Asia into the center court of America's strategic power play, and the United States is now expanding the scope of its military presence in the region. Given President George W. Bush's resolve to defeat global terrorism at any cost, it is anyone's guess how far the United States will go. Central Asia is a haven for tyrants and ruthless dictators and a poster child of acute economic underdevelopment and all the pathologies that go with it, including the popularity of religious radicalism. (1) In the context of the American global war on terrorism, this last variable attracts much of the Bush administration's attention. In a bygone era, "defeating communism at any cost" was the catchphrase behind many U.S. foreign policy decisions, including America's involvement in Vietnam; the Bush administration presently demonstrates a similar resolve to defeat terrorism. But is it heading in the direction of making similar mistakes, coddling dictators to serve its agenda? To avoid the errors of the past, the United States must develop a wide-ranging policy to win the global war on terrorism, while encouraging the evolution of political and economic pluralism in all Central Asian countries. If neglected, the region is likely to remain a fertile ground for transnational terrorism as well as political instability and chaos. THE STRATEGIC FRAMEWORK: DEJA VU ALL OVER AGAIN? The current U.S. campaign against global terrorism bears a striking resemblance to its policies of another era: its global campaign against communism. From the 1950s through the 1980s, the United States supported tyrants in the Third World to defeat the perceived communist threat. The presence or absence of democracy was not an issue. As long as a Third-World government was determined to fight communism within its own borders and in contiguous areas, the U.S. government supported it unequivocally. President John F. Kennedy's promise of "paying any price and bearing any burden" is emblematic of the motive that drove U.S. involvement in Vietnam. Even under President Jimmy Carter, a champion of human rights, the United States supported Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, infamous for his violations of human rights in Iran. Defeating global communism was also the chief motivation of the United States in supporting then dictator of Pakistan, Gen. Zia ul-Haq, who in the late 1970s was nurturing what later became known as the jihadi culture of Pakistan and Afghanistan, which generated the Islamic radicalism that the United States is currently fighting. A year and a half after September 11th, the passions unleashed by those nefarious acts remain high. The new battle cry is the global war on terrorism, which George W. Bush labeled the "first war of this century." After dismantling the nexus of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, the battlefields are shifting to the south and northeast of Afghanistan and into Pakistan. The Al Qaeda terrorist network is weakened, but it remains very much alive. Its leaders vow to fight the American "infidels" until death, and the Bush administration is equally determined to counter their threats. There is an imminent need to strip this battle of its emotions, which could entangle the United States in a trap similar to the one in which the nation found itself caught in North Vietnam. The tone of the current debate over the global war on terrorism is eerily similar to the one that surrounded the Vietnam War. The president has made fighting terrorism into what he called a "crusade"; he later retracted the public use of that phrase, but the underlying intent of the battle is unaltered. Bush perceives America's war on terrorism as a fight between good and evil, regularly describing the terrorists as evildoers. …


Hill and Monticino (1998) introduced a constructive method for generating random probability measures with a prescribed mean or distribution on the mean. The method involves sequentially generating an array of barycenters that uniquely defines a probability measure. This work analyzes statistical properties of the measures generated by sequential barycenter array constructions. Specifically, this work addresses how changing the base measures of the construction affects the statististics of measures generated by the SBA construction. A relationship between statistics associated with a finite level version of the SBA construction and the full construction is developed. Monte Carlo statistical experiments are used to simulate the effect changing base measures has on the statistics associated with the finite level construction.


Isotopic data are presented for granitoids and felsic volcanics from the Stuart shelf of South Australia, some of which are spatially associated with the Olympic Dam Cu-U-Au deposit. Relatively unaltered quartz monzodiorite, more extensively altered quartz syenite, and felsic volcanics yield zircon U-Pb ages of 1,590 (super +5) (sub -4) , 1,613 (super +20) (sub -19) , and 1,576 (super +22) (sub -19) m.y., respectively. The zircons from this group of rocks, the Olympic Dam suite, have similar morphologies and similar 206 Pb/ 208 Pb ratios, suggesting an intimate genetic relationship. Their ages are comparable to the Gawler Range Volcanics cropping out approximately 130 km to the southwest in the Gawler orogenic domain.Close to the Olympic Dam deposit, the zircon U-Pb system of Olympic Dam suite quartz syenite was contaminated by barite precipitated from hydrothermal fluids associated with the mineralization. The barite is readily removed by air abrasion, which restores the reversely discordant and spuriously young zircons to more normally discordant positions on the concordia diagram. The abraded zircons then have U-Pb ages similar to uncontaminated Olympic Dam suite zircons. The barite lead must be enriched in 206 Pb which is concluded to be derived from radium extracted from U-bearing rocks and admitted to the Ba crystal lattice site.Deformed and altered basement granitoids on the Stuart shelf have complex zircons with discrete cores and overgrowths which yield complicated U-Pb isotope systematics. The cores are estimated to be about 1,800 m.y. old, and the overgrowths probably less than 1,730 m.y. old. These granitoids are temporally correlated with basement rocks of the Gawler orogenic domain.Comparable apatite U-Pb and biotite Rb-Sr isotope dates from all the granitoids and from thin veins in the Acropolis prospect suggest regional cooling through the respective blocking temperatures (about 350 degrees -400 degrees and 300 degrees C) between 1,602 + or - 7 and about 1,542 m.y. The Acropolis apatite date suggests at least some Stuart shelf mineralization was emplaced at, or before, about 1,602 m.y. A maximum age for the Olympic Dam mineralization is set by the Olympic Dam suite quartz syenite zircon age, 1,613 (super +20) (sub -19) m.y. Our data do not place minimum age limits on the mineralization.


Many academic librarians are interested in pursuing research studies that involve students, faculty, and other library patrons; these projects must be approved by an institutional review board (IRB). This article reviews federal requirements and regulations for human subjects research and explains the IRB application process. The author discusses common types of research projects undertaken by academic librarians that require IRB approval and offers suggestions for successful navigation through the IRB process. Academic librarians should embrace research involving human subjects because the results contribute to the corpus of scholarly knowledge in library and information science as well as in higher education.


Radicalism and extremism are frequently (mis-)used concepts. The meaning of these terms is vague and the boundaries between them and between either of these terms and mainstream political thoughts and practices are unclear. While there are no legal definitions of extremism or radicalism in most countries, there are nevertheless many governmental programs that deal with [Countering] Violent Extremism (CVE) and [De-]Radicalisation since both imply a turn to a specific form of political violence: terrorism. This Research Note presents the outcome of terminological and conceptual analyses of definitions of extremism and radicalism as utilised (mainly, but not exclusively) in Germany. The objective was to develop academic consensus definitions of these terms comparable to the approach developed by Alex P. Schmid for reaching an Academic Consensus Definition of Terrorism.[1]


A Queer Reading of Charles Bukowski's Women and Love is a dog from hellThis thesis aims to examine how the representation of gender is portrayed in relation to sex and power in Charles Bukowski's novel Women and poetry collection Love is a dog from hell.The theoretical frame of the analysis is based on Judith Butler's queer theory regarding the heterosexual matrix and gender performativity. The analysis consists of a textual comparison where a specific selection of poems is analysed parallel to the novel to see how they interact and how they oppose each other, through a queer reading.The analysis is divided in three parts where the first one discusses the construction of masculinity in Charles Bukowski's protagonist Henry Chinaski and how this is presented differently in the two literary genres. The second part reveals how sex is presented in relation to power and how active and passive women are considered as sexually acceptable. The final part of the analysis discusses how women are portrayed in the novel and in the poetry. Further it demonstrates the consequences for women who do not act as expected in relation to their gender roles.In addition to this, the thesis investigates how the poetry functions as a tool to apply depth to the characters in the novel. It also points out how the sexual relationships work as a way of maintaining the masculine superiority over women. The repetitive way in which the protagonist fails to fulfil his sexual performance points towards an image of Chinaski as queer, something that previous scholarship has failed to notice.In conclusion, this essay shows how a queer reading can work as an instrument to read a text that is generally interpreted as heteronormative, macho and misogynistic. The queer reading in the thesis demonstrates a different interpretation of predetermined gender roles in two of Bukowski's literary works.


For the last thirty years, our nation's universities have debated whether to proscribe hate speech on campus. Universities' paramount function is to seek knowledge, and thus they desire free and open inquiry, but universities also wish to ensure that they provide a welcoming environment to historically disadvantaged groups. A detailed study of the policies of the top 150 universities reveals that the majority of universities - rather than resolve these conflicting goals - maintain contradictory policies that both protect and proscribe hate speech. This allows schools to tout different policies to different interest groups, and it leaves students vulnerable to unexpected punishment. I explore possible responses to this pervasive problem. Direct regulation - forcing private universities to allow hate speech - may vindicate the liberal ideal of free speech, but it threatens the liberal ideal of the right to private association. Applying contract law, in contrast, allows private universities to set their own policies, but not to promise community members one type of institution and then deliver another. This enables experimentation across institutions and forces universities to reach a resolution on the question of proscribing hate speech. It would thus move the debate over proscribing hate speech forward.


This study is a contribution to the empirical underpinning of the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), and it aims to identify linguistic correlates to the proficiency levels defined by the CEFR. The study was conducted in a Swedish school setting, focusing on English, French and Italian, and examined the relationship between CEFR levels (A1-C2) assigned by experienced raters to learners' written texts and three measures of syntactic complexity (based on length of t-unit, subclause ratio, and mean length of clause (cf. Norris & Ortega, 2009)). Data were elicited through two written tasks (a short letter and a narrative) completed by pupils of L2 English (N=54) in years four, nine and the final year of upper-secondary school, L3 French (N=38) in year nine and the final year of upper-secondary school, and L4 Italian (N=28) in the final year of upper-secondary school and first year of university. The results showed that, globally, there were weak to medium-strong correlations between assigned CEFR levels and the three measures of syntactic complexity in English, French and Italian. Furthermore, it was found that syntactic complexity was homogeneous across the three languages at CEFR level A, whereas syntactic complexity was different across languages at CEFR level B, especially in the data for English and French. Consequences for the empirical validity of the CEFR framework and the nature of the three measures of complexity are discussed. (Less)


Finite mixture distributions are receiving more and more attention from statisticians in many different fields of research because they are a very flexible class of
models. They are typically used for density estimation or to model population heterogeneity. One can think of a finite mixture distribution as grouping the observations into components from which they are assumed to have arisen. In certain settings these groups have a physical interpretation. The interest in these distributions has been boosted recently because of the ever increasing computer power available to researchers to carry out the computationally intensive tasks required in their analysis.

In order to fit a finite mixture distribution taking a Bayesian approach a posterior distribution has to be evaluated. When the number of components in the model is assumed known this posterior distribution can be sampled from using methods such as Data Augmentation or Gibbs sampling (Tanner and Wong (1987) and Gelfand and Smith (1990)) and the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm (Hastings (1970)). However, the number of components in the model can also be considered an unknown and an object of inference. Richardson and Green (1997) and Stephens (2000a) both describe Bayesian methods to sample across models with different numbers of components. This enables an estimate of the posterior distribution of the number of components to be evaluated. Richardson and Green
(1997) define a reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo (RJMCMC) sampler while Stephens (2000a) uses a Markov birth-death process approach sample from the posterior distribution. In this thesis a Markov chain Monte Carlo method, named the allocation sampler. This sampler differs from the RJMCMC method reported in Richardson and Green (1997) because the state space of the sampler is simplified by the assumption that the components' parameters and weights can be analytically integrated out of the model. This in turn has the advantage that
only minimal changes are required to the sampler for mixtures of components from other parametric families. This thesis illustrates the allocation sampler's
performance on both simulated and real data sets.

Chapter 1 provides a background to finite mixture distributions and gives an overview of some inferential techniques that have already been used to analyse
these distributions.
Chapter 2 sets out the Bayesian model framework that is used throughout this thesis and defines all the required distributional results.
Chapter 3 describes the allocation sampler.
Chapter 4 tests the performance of the allocation sampler using simulated datasets from a collection of 15 different known mixture distributions.
Chapter 5 illustrates the allocation sampler with real datasets from a number of different research fields.
Chapter 6 summarises the research in the thesis and provides areas of possible future research.


The main goal of this work is to determine values of elastic constants of orthotropic, transversely isotropic and cubic materials through indentation tests on thin layers bonded to rigid substrates. Accordingly, we first use the Stroh formalism to provide an analytical solution for generalized plane strain deformations of a linear elastic anisotropic layer bonded to a rigid substrate, and indented by a rigid cylindrical indenter. The mixed boundary-value problem is challenging since the deformed indented surface of the layer contacting the rigid cylinder is unknown a priori, and is to be determined as a part of the solution of the problem. For a rigid parabolic prismatic indenter contacting either an isotropic layer or an orthotropic layer, the computed solution is found to compare well with solutions available in the literature. Parametric studies have been conducted to delimit the length and the thickness of the layer for which the derived relation between the axial load and the indentation depth is valid. We then derive an expression relating the axial load, the indentation depth, and the elastic constants of an orthotropic material. This relation is specialized to a cubic material (e.g., an FCC single crystal). By using results of three virtual (i.e., numerical) indentation tests on the same specimen oriented differently, we compute values of the elastic moduli, and show that they agree well with their expected values. The technique can be extended to other anisotropic materials. We review the literature on relations between deformations at the atomic level and stresses and strains defined at the continuum level. These are then used to compare stress and strain distributions in mechanical tests performed on atomic systems and their equivalent continuum structures. Whereas averaged stresses and strains defined in terms of the overall deformations of the atomic system match well with those derived from the continuum description of the body, their local spatial distributions differ.


BACKGROUND
Adenine phosphoribosyltransferase (APRT) deficiency is a purine metabolism disorder causing kidney stones and chronic kidney disease (CKD). The course of nephrolithiasis and CKD has not been well characterized. The objective of this study was to examine long-term kidney outcomes in patients with APRT deficiency.

STUDY DESIGN
An observational cohort study.

SETTING & PARTICIPANTS
All patients enrolled in the APRT Deficiency Registry of the Rare Kidney Stone Consortium.

OUTCOMES
Kidney stones, acute kidney injury (AKI), stage of CKD, end-stage renal disease, estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR), and changes in eGFR.

MEASUREMENTS
Serum creatinine and eGFR calculated using creatinine-based equations.

RESULTS
Of 53 patients, 30 (57%) were females and median age at diagnosis was 37.0 (range, 0.6-67.9) years. Median duration of follow-up was 10.3 (range, 0.0-31.5) years. At diagnosis, kidney stones had developed in 29 (55%) patients and 20 (38%) had CKD stages 3 to 5, including 11 (21%) patients with stage 5. At latest follow-up, 33 (62%) patients had experienced kidney stones; 18 (34%), AKI; and 22 (42%), CKD stages 3 to 5. Of 14 (26%) patients with stage 5 CKD, 12 had initiated renal replacement therapy. Kidney stones recurred in 18 of 33 (55%) patients. The median eGFR slope was -0.38 (range, -21.99 to 1.42) mL/min/1.73m(2) per year in patients receiving treatment with an xanthine dehydrogenase inhibitor and -5.74 (range, -75.8 to -0.10) mL/min/1.73m(2) per year in those not treated prior to the development of stage 5 CKD (P=0.001).

LIMITATIONS
Use of observational registry data.

CONCLUSIONS
Progressive CKD and AKI episodes are major features of APRT deficiency, whereas nephrolithiasis is the most common presentation. Advanced CKD without a history of kidney stones is more prevalent than previously reported. Our data suggest that timely therapy may retard CKD progression.


This article presents a full-scale fire experiment carried out in a dormitory bedroom in the city of Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. The experiment was recorded by thermal and conventional cameras, and temperatures were measured at 24 different points within the environment, making it possible to observe the dynamics and behavior of the fire in detail. Among the objects in the dormitory were two identical bedside tables, one of which was coated with intumescent paint. Particular attention was paid to the behavior of this piece of furniture, which, despite being in direct contact with the flames for more than 20 minutes, did not completely burn. Similar experiments are rare in Brazil and in Latin America as a whole, especially with the use of furniture and locally built structures. Understanding the dynamics of this fire, which very closely resembles many local cases, is therefore important to generate data on thermal behavior and overall understanding of the phenomenon. Regarding the specially-treated piece of furniture, its performance was found to be satisfactory, suggesting that such a protective process for furniture may help inhibit the spread of similar fires.


Detecting and localizing latency-related problems at router and switch levels is an important task to network operators as latency-critical applications in a data center network become popular. This however requires that measurement instances must be deployed at each and every router/switch in the network. In this paper, we study a partial deployment method called Reference Latency Interpolation across Routers (RLIR) to support network operators' requirements such as incremental deployment and small deployment complexity without losing localization granularity and estimation accuracy significantly.


Copyright © 2019 Phcog.Net. This is an openaccess article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Cite this article : Singh M, Sachan P, Patel ML, Sachan R. Foeto-maternal Outcome in Scarred and Unscarred Rupture Uterus of North Indian Population. Int J Med Public Health. 2019;9(2):46-9. ABSTRACT Background: Uterine rupture is a rare devastating obstetrical complication that endanger the women life. Objective: To compare the risk factors, complications, foetal and maternal outcome in cases of uterine rupture either unscarred or scarred uterus. Material and Methods: Retrospective study was carried out in Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology at tertiary teaching hospital, Records of all pregnant women who were admitted for delivery during a follow up period of January 2015 to June 2016, data were collected from hospitals records and analyzed. A total of 96 patients were identified with rupture uterus and only 92 women records were analyzed because 4 women died before any intervention. On the basis of records these 92 cases of rupture uterus further categorized into two groups, group one consisted of unscarred rupture uterus and group two were comprised of scarred uterus with dehiscence. Results: Rupture uterus was found in 0.74% pregnant women in our study. 52.2% (48) rupture uterus was found in unscarred uterus and 47.8% (44) in scarred uterus. 70.8% (34) rupture was found at term pregnancy in unscarred uterus and 63.6% (28) in scarred uterus. Complete rupture was more common in unscarred uterus 95.8% (46) as compared to scarred uterus 36 (81.8%). Incomplete rupture was found more in scarred uterus 8 (18.1%) in comparison to unscarred uterus 2 (4.1%) (p<0.044). Uterus repair with bilateral tubal ligation was performed more in scarred 25% (11) as compared to unscarred uterus 4 (8.3%) (p<0.047). Total maternal deaths were 9.37% (9) but 4 died un investigated. Perinatal deaths were 91.30% (84). Conclusion: Morbidity is high with unscarred rupture as compared to rupture of scarred uterus, more hysterectomies performed in unscarred rupture due to involvement of both segment of uterus.


The subject of political or state reform - more specifically democratisation - of the Arab state is a complex one. Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, there have been several attempts to change the very nature of the Arab state. It remains least understood despite it being a subject of much scholarly and policy analysis, over the past decade in particular. The allure of the theme is derived from the currency of debates about democratisation and political reforms in the post-Cold War era and the wave of democratic reforms that affected a larger part of the developing world, but seemingly sidelined most of the Arab world. It is a matter that has been taken up by the increasing number of Islamic movements in the Arab world, as part of a drive to bring about representative and accountable governments in a region that is dominated by theocracies and oligarchies. These movements and the democratisation cause are also a product of changing demographic patterns in the Arab world, with the youth becoming a dominant segment of the population in many Arab countries. Fairly educated, but generally socio-economically and politically marginalised, Arab youths have become radicalised and pushed into a mixture of civil movements sharing the vision of reformed political systems in the region. In the process, the Arab governments have appeared out of touch with present post-Cold War realities by flirting with dictatorship, and irrelevant by failing to deliver public services despite hefty gains from oil and other proceeds.


To fill the gap of next-generation user interfaces for mathematics and geometry education Construct3D is presented, a three-dimensional dynamic geometry construction tool that can be used in high school and university education. This system uses Augmented Reality (AR) to provide a natural setting for face-to-face collaboration of teachers and students. The main advantage of using AR is that students actually see three dimensional objects which they until now had to calculate and construct with traditional (mostly pen and paper) methods (Figure 1). By working directly in 3D space, complex spatial problems and spatial relationships may be comprehended better and faster than with traditional methods. This paper summarizes the development of learning objects and content specifically designed for teaching dynamic 3D geometry in Augmented Reality. It concentrates on pedagogical findings while working with teachers and students in more than 500 teaching lessons.


Current and future large redshift surveys, as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (SDSS-IV/eBOSS) or the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), will use emission-line galaxies (ELGs) to probe cosmological models by mapping the large-scale structure of the Universe in the redshift range 0.6 < z < 1.7. With current data, we explore the halo-galaxy connection by measuring three clustering properties of g-selected ELGs as matter tracers in the redshift range 0.6 < z < 1: (i) the redshift-space two-point correlation function using spectroscopic redshifts from the BOSS ELG sample and VIPERS; (ii) the angular two-point correlation function on the footprint of the CFHT-LS; (iii) the galaxy-galaxy lensing signal around the ELGs using the CFHTLenS. We interpret these observations by mapping them on to the latest high-resolution MultiDark Planck N-body simulation, using a novel (Sub) Halo-Abundance Matching technique that accounts for the ELG incompleteness. ELGs at z similar to 0.8 live in haloes of (1 +/- 0.5) x 10(12) h(-1)M(circle dot) and 22.5 +/- 2.5 per cent of them are satellites belonging to a larger halo. The halo occupation distribution of ELGs indicates that we are sampling the galaxies in which stars form in the most efficient way, according to their stellar-to-halo mass ratio.


The aim of the study was to determine the content of macro- and microelements in the blood serum and in the longissimus dorsi muscle (Musculus longissimus dorsi – Mld) of lambs, dependent on the system of maintenance of the lambs with their mothers, the genotype and the year of research. Lambs were reared together with their mothers in two maintenance systems: indoor system in a sheep fold and outdoor system in the open air with unlimited access to pasture. The lambs were of two genotypes: PLS (Polish Lowland sheep Uhruska variety) and BCP (the synthetic prolific meat line sheep). The concentration of elements in the blood serum was estimated in the second and third month of life, as well as in the Mld, after slaughter of the lambs at a weight of 25-28 kg. The results of the study show that the mineral compositions of blood change with the lamb's age and related method of feeding. The system of maintenance had a modifying effect on the calcium, copper and zinc content in the blood serum, especially in the third month of the lambs' life. It was noted that the copper content in the longissimus dorsi muscle in the lambs kept with their mothers in the outdoor system was higher compared to the lambs kept indoors. A similar tendency was observed in the content of mineral elements in the blood serum and in the longissimus dorsi muscle, dependent on the genotype and maintenance system. The concentration of elements (except sodium) in the blood serum in the lambs comprised within the reference values set for adult sheep.


Tuberculosis (TB) remains to be the most prevalent and debilitating pulmonary (PTB) infection in the world today, affecting about one-third of the world's population. TB is an endemic disease in many developing countries, and efforts at eliminating the disease remain futile. While the course of the disease is indolent with years of latency, the reactivation of the disease can pose serious pulmonary and systemic infections that compromise multiple organ functions which lead to respiratory failure or end-organ damage. Despite attempts to control and eradicate the mycobacterium, the prevalence of the disease remains high due to increasing population rate, persistence of poverty and poor health care, treatment failure, increasing multidrug resistance as a consequence of treatment failure and poor compliance, and existence of comorbid conditions that compromise immune response. Limited government resources to screen and monitor disease progression of TB in third world countries hamper the eradication of the disease. In response, we have evaluated the efficiency and effectivity of a Community-Based Directly Observed Treatment, Short-Course (CB-DOTS), which is an equally effective alternative strategy to health center DOTS.


Following implementation of the Uruguay Round agreement, reductions in price support programs, mainly in developed countries, will lead to reductions in food surpluses and stocks. As the developing countries open up their markets to world price signals, they could be hurt by fluctuations in prices, especially in the event of shortfalls and high food prices, unless measures to alleviate instability are undertaken. The Uruguay Round agreement can be an instrument for helping the developing countries to achieve food security by 2020 and to assure access to basic food for all. Steps need to be taken to ensure that developing countries, with assistance from the international community, are able to deal with the adverse effects of high food price instability. The author outlines four major policy actions which should be considered.


We have developed the MC64-ClustalWP2 as a new implementation of the Clustal W algorithm, integrating a novel parallelization strategy and significantly increasing the performance when aligning long sequences in architectures with many cores. It must be stressed that in such a process, the detailed analysis of both the software and hardware features and peculiarities is of paramount importance to reveal key points to exploit and optimize the full potential of parallelism in many-core CPU systems. The new parallelization approach has focused into the most time-consuming stages of this algorithm. In particular, the so-called progressive alignment has drastically improved the performance, due to a fine-grained approach where the forward and backward loops were unrolled and parallelized. Another key approach has been the implementation of the new algorithm in a hybrid-computing system, integrating both an Intel Xeon multi-core CPU and a Tilera Tile64 many-core card. A comparison with other Clustal W implementations reveals the high-performance of the new algorithm and strategy in many-core CPU architectures, in a scenario where the sequences to align are relatively long (more than 10 kb) and, hence, a many-core GPU hardware cannot be used. Thus, the MC64-ClustalWP2 runs multiple alignments more than 18x than the original Clustal W algorithm, and more than 7x than the best x86 parallel implementation to date, being publicly available through a web service. Besides, these developments have been deployed in cost-effective personal computers and should be useful for life-science researchers, including the identification of identities and differences for mutation/polymorphism analyses, biodiversity and evolutionary studies and for the development of molecular markers for paternity testing, germplasm management and protection, to assist breeding, illegal traffic control, fraud prevention and for the protection of the intellectual property (identification/traceability), including the protected designation of origin, among other applications.


Research in digital form is now so abundant, in so many forms, on such a comprehensive array of topics, that it is somewhat surprising to find that while the Internet has done so much to make knowledge accessible, we still face numerous problems if we want to find, evaluate, access, understand and - most importantly - use, much of this information. Too much useful knowledge is locked up in expensive, subscription-only journals; too much data is never made public; too much material is lost through 'link rot', where links are not updated and lead users nowhere. The result is that the great potential of the Internet to provide universal access to information is not yet being realized. This essay considers the benefits and possibilities of an online 'observatory' focusing on digital economy and policy issues in Asia. We draw upon our experience developing an open-access, policy-oriented repository in Australia, (APO) which aims to make relevant research visible, accessible, and usable for policy-makers, journalists, advisors, activists, and advocates. Our work suggests that with some new ways of gathering and accessing information, initiatives such as observatories can improve the current fragmentation of knowledge across the Internet in ways that will benefit researchers, policy makers, public interest advocates, and society as a whole


Purpose
This paper aims to profile the WHATT theme issue "Can the culture of safety and quality in organizations be measured and changed?" with reference to the experiences of the theme editors and writing team.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper uses structured questions to enable the theme editors to reflect on the rationale for the theme issue question, the starting-point, the selection of the writing team and material and the editorial process.

Findings
This paper draws on a specialist team of researchers and practitioners to examine the extent to which the culture of safety and quality in organizations (with particular reference to food management) can be measured and changed. It reflects on research and stakeholder interaction that is helping to shape current and future thinking about food safety culture in hospitality organizations and provides practical ways of reviewing and improving it.

Practical implications
The theme issue outcomes provide lines of enquiry for others to explore and they reinforce the value of WHATT's approach to collaborative working and writing.

Originality/value
This theme issue builds on prior work (reported in earlier theme issues) and profiles a well-researched and practical approach to reviewing, measuring and improving the culture of safety and quality in hotel and catering operations.


Infinite-dimensional Sylvester equations: Basic theory and application to observer design This paper develops a mathematical framework for the infinite-dimensional Sylvester equation both in the differential and the algebraic form. It uses the implemented semigroup concept as the main mathematical tool. This concept may be found in the literature on evolution equations occurring in mathematics and physics and is rather unknown in systems and control theories. But it is just systems and control theory where Sylvester equations widely appear, and for this reason we intend to give a mathematically rigorous introduction to the subject which is tailored to researchers and postgraduate students working on systems and control. This goal motivates the assumptions under which the results are developed. As an important example of applications we study the problem of designing an asymptotic state observer for a linear infinite-dimensional control system with a bounded input operator and an unbounded output operator.


Lawrence R. Klein and Marshall Pomer, eds. The New Russia: Transition Gone Awry. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. 454 pp. $24.95, paper. The New Russia: Transition Gone Awry is a collection of twenty-seven essays by noted Russian and American economists and analysts, including Oleg Bogomolov, Leonid Abalkin, Georgi Arbatov, Marshall Poorer, and Lawrence Klein (winner of the 1980 Nobel Prize in economics). The book is divided into three main parts ("Economic Role of Government," "Economic Crisis," and "Policy Agenda") and contains a foreword by Mikhail Gorbachev. This volume resulted from the activities of the Economic Transition Group (ETG), an international network of economists set up in 1994 on the initiative of Marshall Poorer (Macroeconomic Policy Institute, Santa Cruz, California) and Alexander Nekipelov (Institute of International Economic and Political Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences). The purpose of the ETG was to bring together prominent economists, many of them Nobel Prize winners, to re-examine the early Yeltsin years and develop an alternative economic strategy that would strengthen democratic government but also "minimize harm in human terms." The contributors advocate a balanced approach to reform that avoids both unrealistic free-market ideals and excessive government control. The chapters are clearly written and cover a wide range of topics, including the shortcomings of the competitive-equilibrium model, origins and consequences of "shock therapy," privatization, corrupt banking and "pyramid schemes," poverty and social assistance, real estate markets, agriculture, coal industry, energy efficiency, human capital, government leadership, and trade within the Commonwealth of Independent States. In the first essay, Poorer warns against attributing the failures of Russian economic reform to "bad implementation of good policy." He believes that Russian reformers paid too little attention to the government's role and placed too much faith in the free market (21). The Western-oriented competitive-equilibrium model (the "neoclassical paradigm") was unsuitable for the Russian economy. "The proposition that the market would adjust on its own without an activist government proved fallacious in Russia," Poorer writes (23). Russian citizens were not ready for "shock therapy." The foreign competition and radical price liberalization (beginning in January 1992) stunned industry. This led to a sharp drop in living standards. In their essay on crime and corruption, Svetlana Glinkina, Andrei Grigoriev, and Vakhtang Yakobidze point out that perestroika actually fuelled corruption (234). …


The discrete choice to adopt a financial innovation affects a household's exposure to inflation and transactions costs. We model this adoption decision as being subject to an unobserved cost. Estimating the cost requires a dynamic structural model, to which we apply a conditional choice simulation estimator. A novel feature of our method is that preference parameters are estimated separately, from the Euler equations of a shopping-time model, to aid statistical efficiency. We apply this method to study ATM card adoption in the Bank of Italy's Survey of Household Income and Wealth. There, the implicit adoption cost is too large to be consistent with standard models of rational choice, even when sorted by age, cohort, education or region.


This study explores the membership life cycle in online support groups for people with depression by examining 558 people with various membership durations in 16 online support groups. Results indicated that membership duration was associated with age, self-defined condition, frequency of visits, active posting, the benefits gained from participation, and the level of depression. Related to both behavioral and psychological aspects of participation, these findings serve as a basis for suggesting a membership life cycle model that is exclusive for online support groups.


Since the debut of the World Wide Web, Web users have been facing the following problems:
Extended semantics. When we read or study a digital documents, be it a web-page or not, we often run into contexts in which we have stop to start a search on these context. It causes interruption and costs time.
Reverse hyperlink. When we visit a web page, we might be curious about what other hyperlinks point to the visited page. These links would most likely be of related interests. Can we get the "real time" information about what other pages are pointing to this page?
Version control. Many of us have been frustrated and even annoyed when the hyperlink that we follow gives us a "404 not found" or that the retrieved web-page whose content is entirely different from the one we have bookmarked. Could we also have access to the past versions even if the hyperlink has been removed or the content has been changed?
Composition assistant. Writing is not an easy task. We labor to structure a body of text, sort out ideas, find materials, and digest information. We wish there is an automated service that can associate the context we have produced with other contents (on the Web) and bring these web contents to us for reference.
In this thesis, we provide an unified framework and architecture, named enriched content, to resolve the above problems. We apply the architecture and show how the enriched content can be used in each application. We demonstrate that this method can be a new way of writing add-on functions for various document applications without having to write individual plug-in for each application or to re-write each application. We also briefly discuss possible future development.


This study examines the Twitter rivalry of two groups of the alt-Right and antifascist movement to understand how certain appeals, launched through social media, may promote material violence. Several studies have explored the impact of extreme political rhetoric in motivating hostile responses, such as the one that erupted at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The present study contributes to this literature by examining how Twitter can offer a staging ground for political hostilities to swell, circulate, and sometimes activate the call for confrontation. A textual analysis deconstructs the Twitter accounts of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and Antifa over a six-week-period culminating in the violent Charlottesville rally. A focus on the groups' framing of the opposition and use of persuasive appeals offers insight into the priming nature of political extremism happening on Twitter today.


Christine Nicholls spoke with Kathleen Petyarre in September 2004, when she met Kathleen with her sisters Myrtle and Violet, to talk about new work that was exhibited as part of the 'Body Painting Series', at the Coo-ee Gallery, Sydney, opening on 11 November 2004, in an exhibition entitled 'Arnkerrth: Kathleen Petyarre, Abie Loy'. Christine spoke again with Kathleen in December 2004 (with Penny Hoile of Gallerie Australis, which represents Kathleen) specifically for this special collection of articles. Kathleen was asked about aspects of her work discussed at the symposium 'Mountain Devil Lizard Dreaming' held at the Uni- versity of Tasmania in March 2003, to which she had been invited but which she had been unable to attend.


Zero- to ultralow-field nuclear magnetic resonance is a modality of magnetic resonance experiment which does not require strong superconducting magnets. Contrary to conventional high-field nuclear magnetic resonance, it has the advantage of allowing high resolution detection of nuclear magnetism through metal as well as within heterogeneous media. To achieve high sensitivity, it is common to couple zero-field nuclear magnetic resonance with hyperpolarization techniques. To date, the most common technique is parahydrogen induced polarization, which is only compatible with a small number of compounds. In this article, we establish dissolution dynamic nuclear polarization as a versatile method to enhance signals in zero-field nuclear magnetic resonance experiments on virtually all small molecules with > 1 s relaxation times. We show as first examples J-spectra of hyperpolarized [13C]sodium formate, [1-13C]glycine and [2-13C]sodium acetate. We find signal enhancements of up to 11000 compared with thermal prepolarization in a 2T permanent magnet. To increase the signal in future experiments, we investigate the relaxation effects of the TEMPOL radicals used for the hyperpolarization process at zero- and ultralow-field.


Blocking mTORC1 activity may decrease the unwanted involuntary movements associated with l-DOPA treatment. In a mouse model of Parkinson's disease, new evidence shows that l-DOPA, which is used to treat the symptoms of the disease but also causes dyskinesia, results in a persistent activation of the protein kinase mTOR (mammalian target of rapamycin) in a subset of striatal medium spiny neurons. Moreover, blockade of a specific type of mTOR signaling (mTORC1) prevents the development of dyskinesia, but not the antiakinetic benefits produced by l-DOPA. Thus, mTORC1 may be a viable therapeutic target for dyskinesia caused by l-DOPA treatment in patients with Parkinson's disease.


The authors study a single-server queueing system with bulk arrivals and batch service in accordance to the general quorum discipline: a batch taken for service is not less than
r
 and not greater than
R(≥r). The server takes vacations each time the queue level falls below
r(≥1)
 in accordance with the multiple vacation discipline. The input to the system is assumed to be a compound Poisson process. The analysis of the system is based on the theory of first excess processes developed by the first author. A preliminary analysis of such processes enabled the authors to obtain all major characteristics for the queueing process in an analytically tractable form. Some examples and applications are given.


Radu Ioanid's account of the destruction of Jews and Gypsies under the regime of Ion Antonescu, based upon privileged access to secret East European government archives, is an unprecedented analysis of heretofore purposely hidden materials. He builds an accurate perspective on Romanian policies of racism, anti-Semitism, and Jewish extermination during this extraordinary period in world history. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. With a Foreword by Elie Wiesel. Invaluable...monumental...no comparable work in any language has documented this important history with the thoroughness, skill, and analytical sophistication this book demonstrates. Leo Spitzer, Dartmouth College


Bounding boxes are used in many applications for simplification of point sets or complex shapes. For example, in computer graphics, bounding boxes are used to maintain hierarchical data structures for fast rendering of a scene or for collision detection. Additional applications include those in shape analysis and shape simplification, or in statistics, for storing and performing range-search queries on a large database of samples. A frequently used heuristic for computing a bounding box of a set of points is based on principal component analysis. The principal components of the point set define the axes of the bounding box. Once the axis directions are given, the dimension of the bounding box is easily found by the extreme values of the projection of the points on the corresponding axis. Computing a PCA bounding box of a discrete point set in R depends linearly on the number of points. The popularity of this heuristic, besides its speed, lies in its easy implementation and in the fact that usually PCA bounding boxes are tight-fitting. In this thesis we investigate the quality of the PCA bounding boxes. We give bounds on the worst case ratio of the volume of the PCA bounding box and the volume of the minimum volume bounding box. We present examples of point sets in the plane, where the worst case ratio tends to infinity. In these examples some dense point clusters have a big influence on the directions of the principal components, and the resulting PCA bounding boxes have much larger volumes than the minimal ones. To avoid the influence of such non-uniform distributions of the point sets, we consider PCA bounding boxes for continuous sets, especially for the convex hulls of point sets, obtaining several variants of continuous PCA. For those variants, we give lower bounds in arbitrary dimension, and upper bounds in R and R. To obtain the lower bounds, we exploit a relation between the perfect reflective symmetry and the principal components of point sets. Each of the upper bounds in R and R is obtained from two parameterized bounds. The first bound is general for all bounding boxes, while to obtain the second bound, we exploit some of the properties of PCA, combining them with ideas from discrete geometry and integral calculus. The relation between the perfect reflective symmetry and the principal components of point sets, leads to a straightforward algorithm for computing the planes of symmetry of perfect and approximate reflective symmetric point sets. For the same purpose, we present an algorithm based on geometric hashing.


The objective of this study is to develop a food security index that is consistent with five principles: boundedness, reliability, duplicability, applicability, and predictability. The index developed, called National Food Security Index (NFSI), is easy to interpret and comparable across time and among countries. The NFSI is composed of three components, physical availability, economic affordability, and market accessibility, and can be calculated in terms of calories as well as quantity. The NFSI measures a country's capability of accessing the food it requires on a yearly basis. The index can be used to build early warning systems for individual countries.


In its current form, antitrust law is sometimes said to advance consumer welfare and to disregard economic inequality. In fact, because monopoly and monopsony benefit shareholders at the expense of workers and consumers antitrust law redistributes resources from (generally wealthier) shareholders to (generally less wealthy) workers and consumers. Antitrust enforcement agencies seeking to reduce inequality might adjust their priorities and target markets that are disproportionately important for low-income people. Agriculture and health care would be good places to start; food and medicine compose a larger share of the budget of low-income people than of others, and these goods are essential to basic well-being. Regulators should also give priority to labor markets, especially labor markets in which lower-income people participate, and especially where pay gaps based on race or gender are large. In some cases, it is also appropriate to consider sacrificing economic efficiency for distributional goals by introducing distributional weights into antitrust analysis; doing so can increase social welfare. At the same time, antitrust law's contribution to reducing inequality is subject to substantial diminishing returns.


Background. Factors directing T-cell infiltration into allografts during acute rejection remain poorly defined. Chemokines have been shown to mediate leukocyte recruitment into allografts in animal models of rejection. The goal of this study was to test the presence and levels of chemokine and receptor gene expression in serial endomyocardial biopsy specimens from heart transplant patients and to correlate the levels observed with histopathologic rejection grade. Methods. Three hundred sixteen serial endomyocardial biopsy specimens from 30 heart transplant patients were obtained during the clinically scheduled surveillance heart biopsy program. The follow-up period was 1 year. The expression of interferon (IFN)-&ggr; inducible protein (IP)-10, monokine induced by IFN-&ggr; (Mig), interferon-inducible T-cell alpha chemoattractant (I-TAC), regulated on activation normal T-cell expressed and secreted (RANTES), monocyte chemotactic protein (MCP)-1, interleukin (IL)-8, and the receptors CXCR3 and CCR5 were tested using quantitative, real-time polymerase chain reaction. Biopsy samples were examined histologically to assign rejection grade. Results. Expression of IP-10, Mig, I-TAC, RANTES, CXCR3, and CCR5, but not MCP-1 and IL-8, increased significantly in both grade 2 and grade 3 rejection (P ≤0.0096). These increases returned to normal after treatment with pulse steroid therapy to treat the rejection episode. Conclusion. The expression of IP-10, Mig, I-TAC, RANTES, CXCR3, and CCR5 in cardiac allografts significantly correlates with the presence and grade of acute rejection.


We report the impulsive generation of terahertz (THz) radiation with a field amplitude of more than 1.5 kV/cm at megahertz repetition rates, using an interdigitated photoconducting device. The approach provides an average THz power of 190 microW, corresponding to an optical-to-THz conversion efficiency of 2.5 x 10(-4). Optimum conditions are achieved when the excitation spot size is of the order of the THz wavelength.


An inhibitor of human fibroblast growth factor receptor 4 (FGFR4), with potential antineoplastic activity. Upon administration, FGF401 binds to and inhibits the activity of FGFR4, which leads to an inhibition of tumor cell proliferation in FGFR4-overexpressing cells. FGFR4 is a receptor tyrosine kinase upregulated in certain tumor cells and involved in tumor cell proliferation, differentiation, angiogenesis, and survival.


We estimate trends in intergenerational economic mobility by matching men in the Census to synthetic parents in the prior generation. We find that mobility increased from 1950 to 1980 but has declined sharply since 1980. While our estimator places greater weight on location effects than the standard intergenerational coefficient, the size of the bias appears to be small. Our preferred results suggest that earnings are regressing to the mean more slowly now than at any time since World War II, causing economic differences between families to become more persistent. However, current rates of positional mobility appear historically normal.


A vast literature in fisheries economics focuses on drivers of fishers' behavior with limited attention given to what happens once the fish are landed. This often strongly contrasts with a main policy focus on coastal communities, with fisheries management as an additional instrument in supporting livelihoods. This study shows that the number of Norwegian landing plants has been reduced in recent decades, and that quantity landed, annual plant operation time, and attracting smaller vessels decrease the probability of exit. Interestingly, plants in communities with additional landing locations have lower probabilities of exit, pointing to an industry cluster effect. (JEL Q22)


Oil palm wood (OPW) was treated using six-step integrated treatment process in this study. The method consists of six processing steps, namely, debarking-sawing, steaming and compression, drying, resin inclusion, resin semi-curing heating and hot pressing. The objective of this study was to evaluate the properties of the OPW produced from two different sawing patterns, namely reverse cant sawing and polygon sawing. The OPW was sawn into waned and squared slabs using reverse cant sawing and polygon sawing, respectively. The sawn slabs were then planed to thicknesses of 40, 60 and 80 mm, respectively. Dimensional stability and mechanical properties of the treated OPW were evaluated after the slabs had undergone the six processing steps. Density and weight percent gain of the treated OPW were also determined. From the results obtained, OPW produced from waned samples showed better mechanical properties and dimensional stability in comparison to that of OPW produced from squared samples. In conclusion, reverse cant sawing pattern is a more appropriate sawing technique to obtain better quality OPW.


Synthetic gene drives raise ethical, ecological, and legal questions that are sometimes difficult to grasp. What is clear, however, is that the power to directly alter not just a singular form of life but the genetics of entire populations and species are currently both under-regulated and under-theorized. In place of state regulations, what seems to be emerging is a form of self-regulation by the gene drive scientists themselves. My chapter draws on in-depth interviews with several prominent gene drive scientists to explore their approach toward nature, animals, and the environment. My assumption has been that their approach impacts and regulates the way they work, and this assumption has been confirmed through the more personal stories that each of these scientists has generously shared with me. Although they have not contemplated these issues to the same degree, a few common assumptions about the role of nature and about animal-human relations did emerge from the interviews, most prominently the notion that killing insect populations, modifying their genes, and impacting the planet's ecological systems are justified in order to reduce human suffering and produce novel ecosystems.


Dryland ecosystems are often characterized by patchy vegetation and exposed soil. This structure enhances transport of soil resources and seeds through the landscape (primarily by wind and water, but also by animals), thus emphasizing the importance of connectivity – given its relation to the flow of these materials – as a component of dryland ecosystem function. We argue that, as with the fertile-islands conceptual model before it, the concept of connectivity explains many phenomena observed in drylands. Further, it serves as an organizing principle to understand dryland structure and function at scales from individual plants to entire landscapes. The concept of connectivity also helps to organize thinking about interactions among processes occurring at different scales, such as when processes at one scale are overridden by processes at another. In these cases, we suggest that state change occurs when fine-scale processes fail to adjust to new external conditions through resource use or redistribution at the finer scale. The connectivity framework has practical implications for land management, especially with respect to decision making concerning the scale and location of agricultural production or habitat restoration in the world's drylands.


Affective priming studies have demonstrated that most stimuli are
unintentionally, and in that sense automatically, evaluated. One functional
explanation for this automatic evaluation is that it exists to predispose appropriate
behaviours, allowing them to be executed rapidly and efficiently. Using a lever based
experiment Chen and Bargh (1999) have shown that pleasant evaluations predispose
approach movements and unpleasant evaluations predispose avoid movements.
A key aim of this thesis was to develop an approach/avoid paradigm suitable
for patient testing. Whilst the evaluation stage has been extensively studied in
patients, the behavioural stage has received less attention. Understanding the
approach/avoid mechanism and the brain structures involved is important in
predicting and treating the behavioural problems occurring after brain injury. Thus, I
created an approach/avoid task using a touch-screen, and lateralized the stimuli to
make it suitable for patient testing. This task produced large reliable congruency
effects; following explicit evaluation healthy participants were unintentionally faster
to approach pleasant and avoid unpleasant stimuli than vice versa. Despite several
attempts, no congruency effects were seen following automatic evaluation.
Using healthy participants I determined the time-course of the approach/avoid
predisposition following explicit evaluation. Further, by reversing the meaning of the
response effects in the task I reversed the congruency effect, and showed that the
predisposed behaviours following explicit evaluation are goal based and semantically
determined, rather than being specific inflexible movements.
The performance of a confabulatory right frontal lobectomy patient on the task
suggested that confabulation might be caused by an imbalance in the approach/avoid
system, hypothesized to be lateralized across the frontal lobes. I also showed that unilateral
left-sided amygdala damage slows the evaluation of contra-lesional unpleasant
stimuli but does not impair the subsequent approach/avoid behaviour.
Thus, this thesis consolidates two previously unconnected strands of
psychological research; approach/avoid research and neuropsychological patient
based work.


A case of 16-year-old female with secondary psoas abscess as the complication of the Crohn's disease was analysed. Her pre-hospital, long lasting, non-specific symptoms led to ultrasound (US) and radiologic imaging confirming the diagnosis. The antibiotic treatment was insufficient and worsening of the patient's condition required surgical treatment including descendent colectomy, abscess drainage and negative pressure wound therapy (NPWT). In spite of numerous complications the condition of the child gradually improved and she was discharged from the hospital on the 71st postoperative day. Two years after the colectomy, the occlusion of her colostomy


Climate change driven alterations to patterns of Arctic marine primary production, with increasing phytoplankton- and decreasing ice algal production, have the potential to change the resource utilisation and trophic structure of the benthic communities relying on the algae for food. To predict the benthic responses to dietary changes, we studied the macroinfaunal community compositions, and used the faunal δ13C and δ15N signatures to investigate their main food sources and trophic positions in North Water (NOW) and Lancaster Sound (LS) polynyas in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Macroinfaunal density (10 952 ind. m-2) and biomass (3190 mg C m-2) recorded in NOW were higher than previously found in the Arctic at depths >500m, and significantly higher than in LS (8355 ind. m-2 and 2110 mg C m-2). This was attributed to higher particulate organic matter fluxes to seafloor in NOW. Polychaetes were significant taxa at both sites in terms of density and biomass, and in addition crustacean density in NOW and bivalve density in LS were high. Facultative filter and surface deposit feeders were highly prevalent at both sites, suggesting feeding plasticity is a successful strategy for accessing different food sources. The macrofaunal δ13C signatures reflected the signatures of pelagic particulate organic matter at the sites, and an isotope mixing model confirmed phytoplankton as the main food source for most taxa and feeding guilds. The food web length in LS was longer than in NOW (3.2 vs. 2.8 trophic levels). This was attributed to a larger reliance on reworked organic matter by the benthic community in LS, whereas the high export fluxes at the highly productive NOW resulted in higher rates of selective consumption of fresh algal matter. Despite studies suggesting that loss of ice algae from consumer diets in the Arctic might have a negative impact on the benthos, this study suggests that Arctic macrobenthic communities thrive using phytoplankton as their main food source and should thus be able to cope or even benefit from predicted changes to patterns of primary production.


ABSTRACT:This article explores optimal public policy, in terms of the level of tax enforcement and the supply of public goods, in an economy characterized by a huge informal sector. We define informality as the set of productive activities that do not comply (totally or partially) with government regulations. The government intervenes as a Stackelberg leader and has to decide how to allocate public expenditures, using funds collected through the tax system, between the provision of a public good, which can only be used for formal activities, and enforcement effort, aimed at detecting informal firms that evade taxes. Taking the public policy as given, a representative household, owner of a representative firm, decides how to divide a fixed supply of labor between formal and informal activities. Our results show that the greater the distortions in the tax collection process, the larger is the informal sector. Finally, we derive the properties of the optimal public policy. In particular, we show that the shadow cost of public funds represents the rationale of enforcement spending.


The time series is a collection of observation data that are arranged according to time. The main purpose of setting up a time series is to predict future values. The first step in time series data is graphed. Using graphs can provide general information such as uptrend or downtrend, seasonal patterns, periodic presence, and outliers in time series graphs. After graphing the data, if a good forecast is required, stationary data can be used. Differencing or decomposition methods can be used to make the data stationary. Then, a correlogram can be used to identify the order moving average and autoregressive model. The parameters of the model are examined using T-test. If the parameters are significant and the residue is independence, the predicted values can be evaluated using the mean absolute percentage error.


Vast research efforts have been devoted to providing clinical diagnostic markers of myocardial infarction (MI), leading to over one million abstracts associated with "MI" and "Cardiovascular Diseases" in PubMed. Accumulation of the research results imposed a challenge to integrate and interpret these results. To address this problem and better understand how the left ventricle (LV) remodels post-MI at both the molecular and cellular levels, we propose here an integrative framework that couples computational methods and experimental data. We selected an initial set of MI-related proteins from published human studies and constructed an MI-specific protein-protein-interaction network (MIPIN). Structural and functional analysis of the MIPIN showed that the post-MI LV exhibited increased representation of proteins involved in transcriptional activity, inflammatory response, and extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling. Known plasma or serum expression changes of the MIPIN proteins in patients with MI were acquired by data mining of the PubMed and UniProt knowledgebase, and served as a training set to predict unlabeled MIPIN protein changes post-MI. The predictions were validated with published results in PubMed, suggesting prognosticative capability of the MIPIN. Further, we established the first knowledge map related to the post-MI response, providing a major step towards enhancing our understanding of molecular interactions specific to MI and linking the molecular interaction, cellular responses, and biological processes to quantify LV remodeling.


Title of Document: ESSAYS ON GRADUATION Rong Qian, Doctor of Philosophy, 2011 Directed by: Professor Carmen M. Reinhart and Professor Carlos Vegh Department of Economics This dissertation attempts to address the elusive concept of "graduation", that is the emergence from frequent crisis suffering status. It contains two chapters. The first uses a data set covering over two hundred years of sovereign debt, banking and inflation crises to explore the question of how long does it take a country to "graduate" from the typical pattern of serial crises that most emerging markets experience. We find that for default and inflation crises, twenty years is a significant period, but the distribution of recidivism has extremely fat tails. In the case of banking crises, it is unclear whether countries ever graduate. We also examine the more recent phenomenon of IMF programs, which sometimes result in "near misses" but sometimes end in default even after a program is instituted. The second chapter investigates the impact of countries' institutions on their likelihood of sovereign default from both an empirical and theoretical perspective. By employing a dataset of more than 80 countries, two facts emerge: 1) high institutional quality is associated with a low frequency of sovereign default crisis, and 2) in particular, polarized governments tend to default more often. To explain these facts, we developed a model that establishes a link between institutions, government polarization and sovereign default crises. Countries that lack rules and institutional settings to limit the pressure of powerful groups on a central government's policies default more often than countries that do have good institutions. Given that there are no barriers to limit the influence of powerful groups, a more polarized government defaults more because groups do not coordinate, giving rise to a negative externality. Simulations of the model succeed in matching the cross-country differences in sovereign default frequencies, given their institutional quality and degree of government polarization in the data. ESSAYS ON GRADUATION


Complementary and Alternative Medicines (CAM) are used by an extensive number of patients in the UK and elsewhere. In order to understand this pattern of behavior, it is helpful to examine the characteristics of people who use CAM. This narrative review collates and evaluates the evidence concerning the demographic characteristics and health status factors associated with CAM use in community-based non-clinical populations. A systematic literature search of computerized databases was conducted, and published research papers which present evidence concerning associations between CAM use and demographic and health characteristics are discussed and evaluated. The evidence suggests that people who use CAM tend to be female, of middle age and have more education. In terms of their health, CAM users tend to have more than one medical condition, but might not be more likely than non-users to have specific conditions such as cancer or to rate their own general health as poor. The multivariate studies that have been conducted suggest that both demographic and health characteristics contribute independently to CAM use. In conclusion, demographic characteristics and factors related to an individual's health status are associated with CAM use. Future research is needed to address methodological limitations in existing studies.


This book is the very simple story of the love affair between Miss Helene Hanff of New York and Messrs Marks and Co, sellers of rare and secondhand books, at 84 Charing Cross Road, London'. DAILY TELEGRAPH Told in a series of letters in 84 CHARING CROSS ROAD and then in diary form in the second part THE DUCHESS OF BLOOMSBURY STREET, this true story has touched the hearts of thousands.


As the Supreme Court continues to cut back on and perhaps eliminate Fourth Amendment suppression, the exclusionary rule has entered a new period of crisis. The rule's greatest vulnerability today stems from the consensus that it can be justified only based on policy arguments from deterrence or atextual values like judicial integrity. Instead of pursuing those prevailing theories, the exclusionary rule's defenders should draw on arguments centered on constitutional text and historical change. Under that approach, the exclusionary rule would spring not from the Fourth Amendment itself, but rather from the historically evolving interrelationship between the Fourth Amendment and the Due Process Clauses. By the mid-twentieth century, changes in law and practice had recast the Fourth Amendment as a source of pre-trial "process" analogous to in-trial procedural guarantees such as the Confrontation Clause. And when a criminal conviction is predicated on a violation of the Constitution's criminal procedure requirements, including the Fourth Amendment, the conviction works an ongoing deprivation of liberty without due process. This approach has a number of advantages and implications. It provides a constitutional foundation for the harmless error doctrine, explains why the same exclusionary principles apply to different constitutional rights, clarifies the contested bounds of many exclusionary exceptions, and supplies a manageable framework for analyzing the remedial implications of newly emerging Fourth Amendment rules for digital surveillance technologies.


Cadmium, a highly persistent heavy metal, has been categorized as a probable human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Primary exposure sources include food and tobacco smoke. We carried out a population-based case-control study of 246 women, aged 20-69 years, with breast cancer and 254 age-matched control subjects. We measured cadmium levels in urine samples by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry and conducted interviews by telephone to obtain information on known breast cancer risk factors. Odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for breast cancer by creatinine-adjusted cadmium levels were calculated by multivariable analysis. Statistical tests were two-sided. Women in the highest quartile of creatinine-adjusted cadmium level (> or = 0.58 microg/g) had twice the breast cancer risk of those in the lowest quartile (<0.26 microg/g; OR = 2.29, 95% CI = 1.3 to 4.2) after adjustment for established risk factors, and there was a statistically significant increase in risk with increasing cadmium level (P(trend) = .01). Based on this study, the absolute risk difference is 45 (95% CI = 0 to 77) per 100,000 given an overall breast cancer rate of 124 per 100,000. Whether increased cadmium is a causal factor for breast cancer or reflects the effects of treatment or disease remains to be determined.


Bacteria are known to catalyze degradation of concrete, and have more recently been used to repair micro-cracks in or form protective biofilms on cement mortar. However, the microbial communities in and on concrete under ordinary weathering conditions have not been characterized, in part because of difficulty in extracting DNA from inside concrete specimens. Here, we report a method for extraction of nucleic acids directly from hardened concrete. Using this method and classical cultivation methods, we demonstrate that most bacteria in or on concrete belong to two taxonomic groups, that the bacterial diversity is similar on the concrete surface and in the interior, and that many bacteria in and on concrete are related to microbes found in other dry, saline, or alkaline environments. This method lays the foundation for the creation of bioindicators for concrete and may open new avenues for the fields of non-destructive evaluation and assessment of concrete structures.


Dystrophin is a subsarcolemmal protein critical for the integrity of muscle fibers by linking the actin cytoskeleton to the extracellular matrix via the dystroglycan complex. It is reported that dystroglycans are also localized in the skin, at dermal-epidermal junction. Here we show that epidermal melanocytes express dystrophin at the interface with the basement membrane. The full-length muscle isoform mDp427 was clearly detectable in epidermis and in melanocyte cultures as assessed by RNA and western blot analysis. Dystrophin was absent in Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy (DMD) patients melanocytes, and the ultrastructural analysis revealed mitochondrial alterations, similar to those occurring in myoblasts from the same patients. Interestingly, mitochondrial dysfunction of DMD melanocytes reflected the alterations identified in dystrophin-deficient muscle cells. In fact, mitochondria of melanocytes from DMD patients accumulated tetramethylrhodamine methyl ester but, on the contrary of control donor, mitochondria of DMD patients readily depolarized upon the addition of oligomycin, suggesting either that they are maintaining the membrane potential at the expense of glycolytic ATP, or that they are affected by a latent dysfunction unmasked by inhibition of the ATP synthase.
Melanocyte cultures can be easily obtained by conventional skin biopsies, less invasive procedure than muscular biopsy, so that they may represent an alternative cellular model to myoblast for studying and monitoring dystrophinopathies also in response to pharmacological treatments.


ABSTRACT Azoles are widely used antifungals; however, their efficacy is compromised by fungistatic activity and selection of resistant strains during treatment. Recent studies demonstrated roles for the protein kinase C and calcium signaling pathways in modulating azole activity. Here we explored a role for the signaling pathway mediated by cyclic AMP (cAMP), which is synthesized by the regulated action of adenylate cyclase (encoded by CDC35 in Candida albicans and CYR1 in Saccharomyces cerevisiae) and cyclase-associated protein (encoded by CAP1 and SRV2, respectively). Relative to wild-type strains, C. albicans and S. cerevisiae strains mutated in these genes were hypersusceptible to fluconazole (>4- to >16-fold-decreased 48-h MIC), itraconazole (>8- to >64-fold), or miconazole (16- to >64-fold). Similarly, they were hypersusceptible to terbinafine and fenpropimorph (2- to >16-fold), which, like azoles, inhibit sterol biosynthesis. Addition of cAMP to the medium at least partially reversed the hypersusceptibility of Ca-cdc35 and Sc-cyr1-2 mutants. An inhibitor of mammalian adenylate cyclase, MDL-12330A, was tested in combination with azoles; a synergistic effect was observed against azole-susceptible and -resistant strains of C. albicans and five of six non-C. albicans Candida species. Analysis of cAMP levels after glucose induction in the presence and absence of MDL-12330A confirmed that it acts by inhibiting cAMP synthesis in yeast. RNA analysis suggested that a defect in azole-dependent upregulation of the multidrug transporter gene CDR1 contributes to the hypersusceptibility of the Ca-cdc35 mutant. Our results implicate cAMP signaling in the yeast azole response; compounds similar to MDL-12330A may be useful adjuvants in azole therapy.


Meconium ileus accounts for 9–33% of all neonatal intestinal obstructions, with an incidence of 1:2500 newborns, representing the third most common cause of neonatal small bowel obstruction after atresia and malrotation. This study aimed to compare various surgical procedures used in the treatment of meconium ileus and to assess their efficacy regarding survival and complications. A retrospective study was done to all cases of meconium ileus admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of Basrah hospital of maternity and children and Basrah children specialty hospital during the period of 10 years (2005 to 2015). The medical records of 57 cases of meconium ileus were studied. The comparison included: Mikulicz procedure, Bishop-Koop procedure and resection with primary anastomosis in both simple and complex meconium ileus. The parameters used for comparison were anastomotic leaks, high output diarrhea with dehydration and failure to thrive, sepsis, need for reoperation, wound complications, early adhesions, hospital stay and mortality. The mean age of presentation of neonates with meconium ileus was 3.9 days. Male to female ratio was 0.9: 1. About 10.5% were preterm. About 33.3% of cases were diagnosed as simple meconium ileus. Intestinal Volvulus is the predominant complications encountered (47.4%). Non-operative treatment was effective in 45.5%. The most common procedures done in our center were Mikulicz procedure (61.5%), followed by Bishop-Koop procedure (30.8%), and resection with primary anastomosis (7.7%). There was a significant association between mortality and high output fistula, anastomotic leaks, sepsis, and reoperation. Predominant complications in Mikulicz procedures were high output fistula (50%) and skin excoriation (53.1%), while in Bishop-Koop procedure were sepsis (75%), reoperation (50%), and adhesions (25%). In primary anastomosis, significant complications were anastomotic leak (75%), sepsis (50%), and reoperation (50%). Mortality was highest in primary anastomosis (75%), followed by Bishop-Koop procedure (62.5%), and lowest with Mikulicz procedure (40.6%). The overall mortality of meconium ileus was high 45.6% (42.9% for simple meconium ileus and 52.6% for complex meconium ileus). All neonates treated non-operatively survived, while the survival rate for those treated surgically was 50%. In conclusion, resection with stoma creation is superior to primary anastomosis. Mikulicz procedure is the safest procedure to be done with best survival and less complications. BishopKoop procedure is of value in a situation where the surgeon is afraid from high output diarrhea so proximal stoma is mandatory. Introduction M econium ileus is one of the most common causes of intestinal obstruction in the newborn, accounting for 9–33% of neonatal intestinal obstructions. It is characterized by the lack of excretion of meconium during the first 48 hours of life, associated with clinical and specific radiological findings of intestinal obstruction. It is the intestinal obstructive variant of cystic fibrosis, and it is considered as the earliest clinical manifestation of this genetically recessive lethal disorder. Meconium ileus seems to be more the


Within the last 2 years our consortium has developed, built and tested an atomic force microscope for planetary science applications, in particular for the study of Martian dust and soil. An array of eight cantilevers and tips provides redundancy in case of tip or cantilever failure. Images can be recorded in both static and dynamic operation modes. As we plan to investigate Martian dust, our interest focuses on the behaviour of the instrument when measuring loose particles in the above‐mentioned modes. During scanning, tip contamination with a particle occurs quite frequently, altering the quality of the images. Before changing the cantilever, reverse‐imaging the contaminated tip on a tip calibration sample will be performed in order to increase the scientific throughput. We present the results of our test measurements on respirable α‐quartz. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Cyclooxygenase isozymes (COX-1 and COX-2) are found to be constitutively expressed in brain, with neuronal expression of COX-2 being rapidly induced after numerous insults, including cerebral ischemia. Because overactivation of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors has been implicated in the cell loss associated with ischemia, we characterized the expression of the COX isozymes in murine mixed cortical cell cultures and used isozyme-selective inhibitors to determine their relative contribution to NMDA receptor-stimulated prostaglandin (PG) production and excitotoxic neuronal cell death. Immunocytochemical analysis of mixed cortical cell cultures revealed that COX-2 expression was restricted to neurons, whereas COX-1 was expressed in both neurons and astrocytes. Brief exposure to NMDA (5 min; 100 microM) elicited a time-dependent accumulation of PGs in the culture medium that preceded neuronal cell death and correlated with the induction of COX-2 mRNA. COX-1 expression remained unchanged. Flurbiprofen, a nonselective COX-1/COX-2 inhibitor, blocked NMDA-stimulated PG production and attenuated neuronal death in a concentration-dependent manner. Similar results were obtained with the specific COX-2 inhibitor NS-398 (10-30 microM) but not with the selective COX-1 inhibitor valeryl salicylate (10-300 microM). Inhibition of total constitutive COX activity with aspirin (100 microM, 1.5 h) before NMDA exposure did not prevent subsequent NMDA-mediated neuronal cell death. However, neuronal injury in aspirin-pretreated cultures was attenuated by flurbiprofen administration after NMDA exposure. Finally, the protection afforded by COX-2 inhibition was specific for NMDA because neither flurbiprofen nor NS-398 protected neurons against kainate-mediated neurotoxicity. Together, these results support the conclusion that newly synthesized COX-2 protein contributes to NMDA-induced neuronal injury.


The freshwater consumption within domestic, agricultural, and industrial sectors has significantly increased over the last two decades, resulting in severe shortages particularly in many arid regions. The manufacturing industry consumes between 20-40% of annual freshwater abstracted in various developed countries. The challenges in efficient use of water are exacerbated by lack of transparency in water usage and waste management in majority of existing manufacturing applications, in particular within SMEs. This paper outlines an integrated methodology for systematic modelling of water consumption within manufacturing applications, and describes a simulation tool developed to improve water usage efficiency.