OBJECTIVE--To compare the long term effects of short term intravenous infusions of iloprost with those of oral nifedipine in patients with Raynaud's phenomenon associated with systemic sclerosis. DESIGN--Double blind, placebo controlled, randomised group comparison. SETTING--Dermatology outpatient clinic. PATIENTS--Twenty three patients with Raynaud's phenomenon associated with well documented systemic sclerosis (American Rheumatism Association criteria) and with typical abnormalities in fingernail folds on capillaroscopy. INTERVENTIONS--Twelve patients were randomised to receive intravenous infusions of iloprost starting at 0.5 ng/kg/min and increased by 0.5 ng/kg/min every 15 minutes to a maximum of 2.0 ng/kg/min for eight hours on three consecutive days with a further single infusion at week 8. Placebo capsules were given concurrently. Eleven patients were randomised to receive nifedipine, starting at 30 mg daily and increased to 60 mg daily after four weeks for another 12 weeks. Infusions of placebo were given in the same manner as the infusions of iloprost. One patient from each group withdrew because of social reasons and three patients receiving nifedipine withdrew because of side effects. END POINT--Reduction in number, duration, and severity of attacks of Raynaud's phenomenon, reduction in number of digital lesions, increase in digital blood flow. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS--Measurements were taken at 0, 4, 8, 12, and 16 weeks. Both regimens produced a reduction in the number, duration, and severity of attacks of Raynaud's phenomenon. The mean (SE) number of digital lesions was reduced with iloprost (from 3.5 (1.6) to 0.6 (0.3] and with nifedipine (from 4.3 (0.8) to 1.4 (0.5] after 16 weeks. Hand temperature and digital and microcirculatory blood flow were increased with iloprost but not with nifedipine. CONCLUSION--Both iloprost and nifedipine are beneficial in the treatment of Raynaud's phenomenon. With nifedipine, however, side effects are common. Short term infusions of iloprost provide longlasting relief of symptoms, and side effects occur only during the infusions and are dose dependent.


Many neuropsychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease, anxiety, cerebrovascular impairment, depression, seizures, Parkinson's disease, etc. are predominantly appearing in the current era due to the stress full lifestyle. Treatment of these disorders with prolonged administration of synthetic drugs will lead to severe side effects. In the recent years, scientists have focused the attention of research towards phytochemicals to cure neurological disorders. Nootropic herb refers to the medicinal role of various plants/parts for their neuroprotective properties by the active phytochemicals including alkaloids, steroids, terpenoids, saponins, phenolics, flavonoids, etc. Phytocompounds from medicinal plants play a major part in maintaining the brain's chemical balance by acting upon the function of receptors for the major inhibitory neurotransmitters. Medicinal plants viz. Valeriana officinalis, Nardostachys jatamansi, Withania somnifera, Bacopa monniera, Ginkgo biloba and Panax ginseng have been used widely in a variety of traditional systems of therapy because of their adaptogenic, psychotropic and neuroprotective properties. This review highlights the importance of phytochemicals on neuroprotective function and other related disorders, in particular their mechanism of action and therapeutic potential.


By far the best-selling introduction to statistics for students in the behavioral and social sciences, this text continues to offer straightforward instruction, accuracy, built-in learning aids, and real-world examples. The goal of STATISTICS FOR THE BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES, 8th Edition is to not only teach the methods of statistics, but also to convey the basic principles of objectivity and logic that are essential for science and valuable in everyday life. Authors Frederick Gravetter and Larry Wallnau help students understand statistical procedures through a conceptual context that explains why the procedures were developed and when they should be used. Students have numerous opportunities to practice statistical techniques through Learning Checks, examples, step-by-step Demonstrations, and problems. A strong ancillary package includes PowerLecture, which contains lecture slides, JoinIn Student Response System content, and a computerized test bank; Enhanced WebAssign, a complete and easy-to-use homework management system; WebTutor; an Instructor's Manual/TestBank, plus other online and print resources."


This article focuses on the descriptions of music in Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712) − the oldest existing chronicle of Japan. The author discusses respectively: the circumstances of the creation of Kojiki (activity of Hieda no Are, the compiler from Gagakuryō Japanese Court Music Bureau), the characteristics of early Japanese performing art traditions (kagura ritual dance, chinkon ceremony of recalling the soul), the analysis of ancient folk songs kayō and the symbolism of the oldest musical instruments. The analysis of the selected musical descriptions was carried out in regard to the socio-cultural context as well as the linguistic aspects. Based on the evidence material presented in this article, the author characterized the musical life of ancient Japan. Special attention was also paid to the role of music in shaping the literary work.


In this paper, we present an error concealment technique that estimates the edge directions of lost block. We propose an adaptive block pair selection algorithm to estimate the edge direction of lost block in wavelet domain. For this estimation to be made, a hypothesis-testing problem is applied to the variance of wavelet coefficients. Here, we use an F-distribution. The strong edge has large amounts of variance because of its large coefficients. Therefore, our method decides the edge directions of the lost block from hypothesis-testing problem using the variance of the wavelet coefficients of the neighbouring blocks. The proposed method outperforms the previous methods that only used a predefined set of neighbouring blocks.


Searches for a stochastic gravitational-wave background (SGWB) using terrestrial detectors typically involve cross-correlating data from pairs of detectors. The sensitivity of such cross-correlation analyses depends, among other things, on the separation between the two detectors: the smaller the separation, the better the sensitivity. Hence, a co-located detector pair is more sensitive to a gravitational-wave background than a non-co-located detector pair. However, co-located detectors are also expected to suffer from correlated noise from instrumental and environmental effects that could contaminate the measurement of the background. Hence, methods to identify and mitigate the effects of correlated noise are necessary to achieve the potential increase in sensitivity of co-located detectors. Here we report on the first SGWB analysis using the two LIGO Hanford detectors and address the complications arising from correlated environmental noise. We apply correlated noise identification and mitigation techniques to data taken by the two LIGO Hanford detectors, H1 and H2, during LIGO's fifth science run. At low frequencies, 40 - 460 Hz, we are unable to sufficiently mitigate the correlated noise to a level where we may confidently measure or bound the stochastic gravitational-wave signal. However, at high frequencies, 460-1000 Hz, these techniques are sufficient to set a $95%$ confidence level (C.L.) upper limit on the gravitational-wave energy density of \Omega(f)<7.7 x 10^{-4} (f/ 900 Hz)^3, which improves on the previous upper limit by a factor of $\sim 180$. In doing so, we demonstrate techniques that will be useful for future searches using advanced detectors, where correlated noise (e.g., from global magnetic fields) may affect even widely separated detectors.


A numerical method to solve acoustic scattering in the time domain is presented in the present paper. Equivalent sources are embedded within a scattering surface and their strengths are determined as a function of time by the pressure-gradient boundary condition on a scattering surface. Once the strengths are determined, the equivalent sources are used to predict the scattered pressure. Linear shape functions are used to discretize the strength of the equivalent sources in time, and singular value decomposition is used to find the least-squares solution and to overcome potential numerical instabilities. The predictions are found to be in excellent agreement with the exact solutions for sound from a point monopole source and band-passed broadband sound. The method works well even at the irregular frequencies at which internal resonance modes occur. Finally, the method is used to predict the scattering of sound from a moving source. It is shown that the method has the capability to capture aperiodic characteristics very well.


A new translation of Georges Simenon's atmospheric novel set in the bustling streets of Paris, book nine in the new Penguin Maigret series. Slowly the Czech was becoming animated, but in a muted way, so typical of the man. Maigret now noticed his hands, which were long, surprisingly white and dotted with freckles. They seemed to reach out and take part in the conversation. 'Let's be clear that it's not your professionalism which I question. If you understand nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, it's because from the very start you've been working with facts which had been falsified.' Maigret sets out to prove the innocence of a man condemned to death for a brutal murder. As his audacious plan to uncover the truth unfolds, he encounters rich American expatriates, some truly dangerous characters and their hidden motives. Penguin is publishing the entire series of Maigret novels in new translations. This novel has been published in previous translations as Maigret's War of Nerves and A Battle of Nerves. "Maigret emerges as a master of intuition and imagination, who moves in a world rendered intensely real in Simenon's incomparable prose." (Christopher Hirst, Independent). "Compelling, remorseless, brilliant." (John Gray). "One of the greatest writers of the twentieth century...Simenon was unequalled at making us look inside, though the ability was masked by his brilliance at absorbing us obsessively in his stories." (Guardian).


Access to information is a fundamental value of professional librarianship and library and information science more generally; however, providing such access can be impeded by certain practices of librarianship, as this article describes. We focus on obtaining a better understanding of the extent of censorship practices within information institutions and the effects of restricted access to information on both individuals and communities. This article draws on several theoretical frameworks including regulative and constitutive censorship, information poverty, access as a human right, and the importance of individual autonomy. This research provides a more solid foundation for librarians and other information professionals to apply the value of intellectual freedom to professional practice.


This study was designed to find the locations in Big Quill Lake, Saskatchewan, where the transfer of surficial and aquifer ground-water occurs in the lake bed. Using the findings of a geological survey done between 1966 and 1969, and combining the results of the remote sensing techniques of LANDSAT-1 airborne radio phase detection (EPHASE) and infrared line-scanning, it proved possible to locate nine areas at which inflow of groundwater is assumed to take place. Together these nine locations comprise an area of four square kilometers (1.5 mi2) in a lake that covers 250 square kilometers (100 mi2). In addition it was possible to separate these nine groundwater locations from such dynamic events as spiral currents (a tenth anomaly zone) and peninsula building bottom currents.


It is widely believed that natural image data exhibits low-dimensional structure despite the high dimensionality of conventional pixel representations. This idea underlies a common intuition for the remarkable success of deep learning in computer vision. In this work, we apply dimension estimation tools to popular datasets and investigate the role of low-dimensional structure in deep learning. We find that common natural image datasets indeed have very low intrinsic dimension relative to the high number of pixels in the images. Additionally, we find that low dimensional datasets are easier for neural networks to learn, and models solving these tasks generalize better from training to test data. Along the way, we develop a technique for validating our dimension estimation tools on synthetic data generated by GANs allowing us to actively manipulate the intrinsic dimension by controlling the image generation process. Code for our experiments may be found here https://github.com/ppope/dimensions.


This paper analyzes the intertemporal labor force participation behavior of married women using an annual longitudinal sample from the German Socio-Economic Panel. A predominant characteristic of annual participation behavior is the high degree of persistence in individual participation decisions. We use several model specifications to distinguish among the alternative explanations of this serial persistence: state dependence, individual unobserved heterogeneity, and serial correlation in the transitory error component. Similar to Hyslop (1999), we employ both dynamic �fixed effects� linear probability models as well as several static and dynamic probit models with �random effects� and serially correlated errors. In addition, we apply the estimators proposed by Honor� and Kyriazidou (2000) for dynamic �fixed effects� discrete choice models. We find strong state dependence, and substantial effects for fertility variables. Transitory and permanent non-labor income have in general small effects.


The geographical distribution of the (1981–2005) seismicity in southern California forms a ±150 km broad zone adjacent to the Pacific–North America plate boundary, ranging from depths of ∼1–~30 km, with the bulk of the focal depths in the range of 2–12 km. The distribution of the seismicity that includes both mainshock–aftershock sequences and background events is affected by both static and kinematic geophysical parameters of the crust. The static parameters include heat flow, topography, crustal density, V_(p)/V_(s) ratio, hypocentral fault-distance and crustal thickness from receiver functions. The tectonic loading is represented by kinematic parameters such as the crustal shear strain rate field, and the dilatational strain rate field. In our analysis, we normalize the seismicity relative to the areal density of the range of values of each of the parameters. Most of the seismicity occurs in areas of average heat flow, low to intermediate topography, average Vp/Vs and high late Quaternary fault density, and forms seismogenic zones that extend through the brittle crust. The location of late Quaternary faults, often described as zones of weakness, influences the geographical distribution of seismicity more than any other parameter. Although above or below average crustal properties such as high heat flow, thin crust or very low V_(p)/V_(s) values exist, these properties only influence the spatial distribution of seismicity in a minor way. As an example, the Salton Trough area of low topography, high heat flow, high V_(p)/V_(s), high shear strain rate and thin crust has distributed seismicity within a thin seismogenic zone. Also, somewhat surprisingly, areas of high topography, low heat flow, low V_(p)/V_(s), low shear strain rate and thick crust have low seismicity rates but a thin seismogenic zone. We determine an empirical relationship between heat flow and crustal thickness to show how the ~400 °C temperature isotherm gradually deepens with crustal thickness and forms the base of the seismogenic zone for crustal thicknesses from 22 to 37 km. For crustal thickness ranging from 37 to 43 km, the ~250 °C isotherm forms the base of the seismogenic zone, suggesting that seismic faulting in these regions is confined to the top of the upper crust (12–14 km), and thus does not accommodate plate motion.


Peer-to-peer (p2p) networking technologies have gained popularity as a mechanism for users to share files without the need for centralized servers. A p2p network provides a scalable and fault-tolerant mechanism to locate nodes anywhere on a network without maintaining a large amount of routing state. This allows for a variety of applications beyond simple file sharing. Examples include multicast systems, anonymous communications systems, and web caches. We envisage that an increasingly diverse set of applications will seek to make use of the growing pool of resources available around the edge of the network. here in this paper we brief the security and QOS issues of peer-to-peer networks that followed by current state of the art in handling these QOS and security issues.


This article presents a chronogeographic account of the Antarctic spatialities that are inflected through the image of the RADARSAT map. Focusing on time as a spatializing operation within the visual geography of globalizing and globally available cartographies, the author questions the multiple geographies that must be considered in a geopolitical account of such a mapping. The subject of this topology is the "event" of the NASA RADARSAT map of Antarctica exhibiting the effects of global warming as a scientific and media event on the Web. Specifically the RADARSAT map documents destruction and also renders it innocuous through technologies of distance. This realization of geopolitical imperatives through scientific visualization reveals particular tensions and operations within Antarctic and global visual cultures. As a narrative cartography, it exhibits how geographic information systems operate in a plurality of visual regimes. The author concludes that the politics of visualizing Antarctica is embedded in the histories of its media production and in this reveals how time has a chronogeographic operation.


This paper proposes a large-scale cooperative multiple-input multiple-output (CMIMO) beamforming scheme for uplink (UL) access in broadband cognitive radio wireless sensor networks (CR-WSNs) sharing the same spectrum with a primary network and employing orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing. The CR-WSN is divided into clusters each consisting of cooperative nodes that form a virtual antenna array. Using particle swarm optimization (PSO), each cluster seeks the optimal transmit weight vectors that maximize the UL channel capacity of each cluster, while controlling the interference levels to the primary network. Under the assumption of very large number of sensor nodes at each cluster, semi-analytic expressions for the symbol error rate and the ergodic channel capacity of the CMIMO-based CR-WSN are derived and validated with Monte-Carlo simulation. The PSO-based capacity-aware (PSO-CA) scheme is compared with the one based on the traditional gradient search scheme (GS-CA) and the results show that PSO-CA requires considerably less computational complexity while achieving essentially the same level of performance as the GS-CA.


Stakeholders, (designers, industrial developers, governmental agencies, and private landowners) are increasingly concerned about enhancing storm water quality, reducing run off, and improving the recharge of ground water. They are increasingly turning to sustainable pavement systems to address these issues. The most widely used pervious pavements consist of porous asphalt or concrete over open graded aggregate base and are considered storm water Best Management Practice (BMP). However, without proper information pervious pavements are inapplicable. In choosing pervious pavement options valid measures such as infiltration rate, storm water quality, thermal gain, and water storage capacity are routinely considered, but environmental performance is not. This study discusses the effects of storm water quality on porous pavements and impacts on groundwater quality of infiltrating contaminated storm water. In order to assess these impacts a bespoke field site was constructed on the Auburn university campus which provides parallel assessment of pervious and impervious, regular and experimental paving systems. These pavements tested included conventional concrete and asphalt, porous concrete and porous asphalt, photocatalytic pervious and impervious concrete. In this study, effluents from all the pavements were tested for contaminants such as Oil and grease, PAH, Heavy metals (Pb, Cu, Zn, Cd, Cr and Fe), Sediments, Nutrients, Chloride, and TDS. The results of this experiment suggest pervious pavements can effectively remove selected contaminants from storm water runoff and leachate


This is a compilation of the subversive, important and entertaining writer of Hunter S. Thompson - renowned American writer of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". 'It would not do to be found in the desert under these circumstances: firing wildly into the cactus from a car full of drugs'. "Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone" showcases the evolution of the writer of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Hell's Angels", through his work at the magazine that he helped to put on the map. Jann S. Wenner, Hunter Thompson's editor and friend for nearly thirty-five years, has chosen the pieces, including many never collected before. They show how Thompson's "Rolling Stone" writing, when taken as a whole, forms an extended, allusive autobiography of the writer himself as he pursues his lifelong obsession, the king-hell story of them all: "The Death of the American Dream".


In this paper, we look at identifying temporal differences between different versions of Complex Real-Time Embedded Systems (CRTES) by using timing traces representing response times and execution times of tasks. In particular, we are interested in being able to reason about whether a particular change to CRTES will impact on their temporal performance, which is difficult to answer due to the complicated timing behavior such CRTES have. To be specific, we first propose a sampling mechanism to eliminate dependencies existing in tasks' response time and execution time data in the traces taken from CRTES, which makes any statistical inference in probability theory and statistics realistic. Next, we use a mature statistical method, i.e., the nonparametric two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, to assess the possible temporal differences between different versions of CRTES by using timing traces. Moreover, we introduce a method of reducing the number of samples used in the analysis, while keeping the accuracy of analysis results. This is not trivial, as collecting a large amount of samples in terms of executing real systems is often costly. Our evaluation using simulation models describing an industrial robotic control system with complicated tasks' timing behavior, indicates that the proposed method can successfully identify temporal differences between different versions of CRTES, if there is any. Furthermore, our proposed method outperforms the other statistical methods, e.g., bootstrap and permutation tests, that are often widely used in contexts, in terms of bearing on the accuracy of results when other methods have failed.


(a) Acceptable daily intake (ADI). The ADI for total residues of virginiamycin is 250 micrograms per kilogram of body weight per day. (b) Tolerances—(1) Swine. Tolerances are established for residues of virginiamycin in uncooked edible tissues of 0.4 part per million (ppm) in kidney, skin, and fat, 0.3 ppm in liver, and 0.1 ppm in muscle. (2) Broiler chickens and cattle. A tolerance for residues of virginiamycin is not required.


To date no streamlined user efficient concrete roadway rehabilitation method is in practice in the United States. However, the use precast pavement is being evaluated and successful projects in Georgetown, Texas, El Monte, California, and most recently Charleston, Missouri are paving the way for the use of prestressed precast concrete pavement. The use of prestressed precast concrete pavement for the replacement of damaged roadways gives contractors and designers significant advantage by decreasing construction time, improving pavement performance, and mitigating user cost. The project in Charleston, Missouri, funded by the FHWA and MoDOT, is the focus of this thesis. A total of 101 panels were cast and seven were instrumented to monitor temperature and strain. The objectives set forth were to understand important properties of the materials used, study losses due to creep and shrinkage of precast pavement panels, and develop pre and post-tension loss prediction models and compare them to actual values measured in the pavement. Concurrent works by Cody Dailey and Grant Luckenbill examine early age performance of the precast panels and analyze strains relating to daily thermal gradients, seasonal trends, and traffic.


This comprehensive handbook, written by leading experts in the field, details the groundbreaking research conducted under the breakthrough GALE program--The Global Autonomous Language Exploitation within the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), while placing it in the context of previous research in the fields of natural language and signal processing, artificial intelligence and machine translation.The most fundamental contrast between GALE and its predecessor programs was its holistic integration of previously separate or sequential processes. In earlier language research programs, each of the individual processes was performed separately and sequentially: speech recognition, language recognition, transcription, translation, and content summarization. The GALE program employed a distinctly new approach by executing these processes simultaneously. Speech and language recognition algorithms now aid translation and transcription processes and vice versa. This combination of previously distinct processes has produced significant research and performance breakthroughs and has fundamentally changed the natural language processing and machine translation fields.This comprehensive handbook provides an exhaustive exploration into these latest technologies in natural language, speech and signal processing, and machine translation, providing researchers, practitioners and students with an authoritative reference on the topic.


We compute the super-Hubble evolution of non-Gaussianity of primordial curvature perturbations in two-field inflation models by employing two formalisms: delta N and covariant formalisms. Although two formalisms treat the evolution of fluctuations radically different, we show that the formulas of f_{NL} parameter agree quantitatively with each other within 1 % accuracy. We analytically find that the amplitude of f_{NL} decays no faster than a^{-3} as the inflationary trajectory reaches to the adiabatic limit for generic potentials.


This essay provides an overview of the crime/tort distinction. It first investigates some of the fundamental differences between criminal law and tort law in doctrine and legal structure. It then explores some important similarities and differences in normative perspectives between the two doctrinal fields. This typology should prove analytically useful for examining some of the specific issues at the borderline of crime and torts — such as the proper scope of punitive damage liability and the question whether criminal law as well as tort law should vary legal sanctions simply because of the fortuitous occurrence of harm.


The article, employing an exegetical and comparative method, investigates the nature of Old Testament angelology particularly in the enigmatic form of a 'Divine Council' of Yahweh as presented in the description of Old Testament angelology and the 'mild divine monarchy' in the traditional African understanding of the spirit world. Through exegetical means, the first part of the article stresses the theological significance of the form, motif and the general description of the 'Divine Council' in 2 Kings 22:1-23; Job 1-2 and Psalms 82. The second part of the paper highlights the presence of a 'flexible divine monarchy' in traditional African worldview as underscored in the theological studies of African cosmology in the writings of Idowu, Parrinder, Mbiti and Bediako. From this framework, the study argues that the description of Israel's spiritual realm in the form of 'Divine Council' bears some similarities to the dominant portrayal of the African spirit world, particularly in the 'flexible monarchical' description of the African spirit world. The paper explores this basic hypothesis, but also stresses the differences between the two categories under study. For the study, the obvious difference between the two categories lies in the polytheistic nature of African spirit world and the monotheistic description of Old Testament angelology whereby subsidiary elements (whether gods or angels) are subsumed under the authority of Yahweh. Even though such inclination was strongly entertained in traditional African society, however, during the evolution of African traditional religion, the 'gods' (or intermediaries) did not properly evolve into a wholly monotheistic description. Consequently, these intermediaries neither stayed as refractions of the supreme deity, nor angels of the Supreme God, as with Yahweh in the Old Testament, but instead they became gods in themselves, because these intermediaries requested or required cultic worship, ritual and exigencies that are foreign and inadequate in the description and understanding of the angelic intermediaries of the Old Testament.


In this groundbreaking book, trend forecaster James Wallman reveals the world's growing sense of Stuffocation - and how we can move away from it? "Like The Tipping Point meets Freakonomics - but with a huge idea at its heart".(Sunday Times). We have more stuff than we could ever need - clothes we don't wear, kit we don't use, and toys we don't play with. But having everything we thought we wanted isn't making us happier. It's bad for the planet. It's cluttering up our homes. It's making us feel 'stuffocated' and stressed - and it might even be killing us. In this ground breaking book, trend forecaster James Wallman finds that a rising number of people are turning their backs on all-you-can-get consumption, from the telecoms exec who's sold almost everything he owns, to the well-off family who have moved into a remote mountain cabin. Wallman's solution to our clutter crisis is less extreme, but equally fundamental. We have to transform what we value. We have to focus less on possessions and more on experiences. Rather than a new watch or another pair of shoes, we should invest in shared experiences like holidays and time with friends. With intriguing insights on psychology, economics and culture, Stuffocation is a vital manifesto for change. It has inspired those who have read it to be happier and healthier, and to live more, with less. James Wallman is a journalist, trend forecaster, speaker, and author. He has written for GQ, the New York Times, the FT, and advised clients such as Absolute, BMW, Burberry, and Nike. James wrote the futurology column in T3 magazine and was editor of The Future Laboratory's forecasting publication. He has an MA in Classics from Oxford University and an MA in Journalism from the University of the Arts London. He has lived in France, Greece, and Palo Alto in California and currently lives in London with his wife and children.


I. BACKGROUND INFORMATION
 1. Zoster Immune Globulin
 Zoster immune globulin (ZIG) can prevent clinical chickenpox in exposed, susceptible, normal children.1 In a collaborative study2 in which 15 susceptible children at high risk received ZIG within three days following exposure, there were no deaths and only one child developed progressive varicella. At that time, a mortality of 7% and a rate of progressive varicella of 30% were reported in similar children who failed to receive prophylaxis.3 At the present time, varicella may be even more hazardous for children with leukemia, possibly because of the use of more intensive therapy.
 2. Varicella-Zoster Immune Globulin
 The use of plasma obtained from patients convalescing from zoster to prepare ZIG resulted in a limited supply of this material. The finding that plasma from normal donors with high varicella-zoster (V-Z) antibody could be used to prepare a globulin of similar potency, referred to as varicella-zoster immune globulin (VZIG),4 now assures ample supply. The availability of this material, through the American Red Cross, permits us to recommend it for additional indications. The major deterrent to the use of VZIG is its cost, which in August 1983 was approximately $75 per 125 units (approximately 1.25 mL), the dose for a 10-kg child. The recommended adult dose of 625 units costs about $375.
 3. Morbidity from Varicella in Adults
 Adults suffer greater morbidity from chickenpox than do children. Although less than 2% of reported cases occur in individuals after the second decade, nearly one quarter of all the reported mortality occurs in this group.5
 Of particular concern are pregnant women who develop chickenpox.


This research analyzes changes made by a juvenile court over five years toward the progressive inclusion of victims as "stakeholders" within the implementation and development of restorative justice practices. Beginning in 1999, the Clark County Juvenile Court (CCJC) in Washington State introduced a Victim Offender Mediation (VOM) program. Subsequently, the court altered diversion and probation practices in ways that provided several significant services to victims, and afforded victims increased decision-making capacity. In doing so, the court also amended how offenders fulfilled their diversion or probation requirements at the court, particularly in relation to its use of VOMs. This research follows the initial inclusion of victims as "stakeholders" within the use of VOMs beginning in 1999, and explicates how and where these stakeholder roles were amended over time until 2005, when the court had largely finalized the structure of victim involvement and participation. The ensuing discussion describes the rationale for the court's changes, and the effects of these changes on how victims were able to participate and make decisions in both diversion and probation cases. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of these changes as they involve the role of victims as stakeholders within restorative justice as used in formal justice settings, and in particular the possible limits of such roles when enacted through justice agencies such as juvenile courts.


The rise of "big data" analytics in the private sector poses new challenges for privacy advocates. Unlike previous computational models that exploit personally identifiable information (PII) directly, such as behavioral targeting, big data has exploded the definition of PII to make many more sources of data personally identifiable. By analyzing primarily metadata, such as a set of predictive or aggregated findings without displaying or distributing the originating data, big data approaches often operate outside of current privacy protections (Rubinstein 2013; Tene and Polonetsky 2012), effectively marginalizing regulatory schema. Big data presents substantial privacy concerns – risks of bias or discrimination based on the inappropriate generation of personal data – a risk we call "predictive privacy harm." Predictive analysis and categorization can pose a genuine threat to individuals, especially when it is performed without their knowledge or consent. While not necessarily a harm that falls within the conventional "invasion of privacy" boundaries, such harms still center on an individual's relationship with data about her. Big data approaches need not rely on having a person's PII directly: a combination of techniques from social network analysis, interpreting online behaviors and predictive modeling can create a detailed, intimate picture with a high degree of accuracy. Furthermore, harms can still result when such techniques are done poorly, rendering an inaccurate picture that nonetheless is used to impact on a person's life and livelihood. In considering how to respond to evolving big data practices, we began by examining the existing rights that individuals have to see and review records pertaining to them in areas such as health and credit information. But it is clear that these existing systems are inadequate to meet current big data challenges. Fair Information Privacy Practices and other notice-and-choice regimes fail to protect against predictive privacy risks in part because individuals are rarely aware of how their individual data is being used to their detriment, what determinations are being made about them, and because at various points in big data processes, the relationship between predictive privacy harms and originating PII may be complicated by multiple technical processes and the involvement of third parties. Thus, past privacy regulations and rights are ill equipped to face current and future big data challenges.We propose a new approach to mitigating predictive privacy harms – that of a right to procedural data due process. In the Anglo-American legal tradition, procedural due process prohibits the government from depriving an individual's rights to life, liberty, or property without affording her access to certain basic procedural components of the adjudication process – including the rights to review and contest the evidence at issue, the right to appeal any adverse decision, the right to know the allegations presented and be heard on the issues they raise. Procedural due process also serves as an enforcer of separation of powers, prohibiting those who write laws from also adjudicating them.While some current privacy regimes offer nominal due process-like mechanisms in relation to closely defined types of data, these rarely include all of the necessary components to guarantee fair outcomes and arguably do not apply to many kinds of big data systems (Terry 2012). A more rigorous framework is needed, particularly given the inherent analytical assumptions and methodological biases built into many big data systems (boyd and Crawford 2012). Building on previous thinking about due process for public administrative computer systems (Steinbock 2005; Citron 2010), we argue that individuals who are privately and often secretly "judged" by big data should have similar rights to those judged by the courts with respect to how their personal data has been used in such adjudications. Using procedural due process principles, we analogize a system of regulation that would provide such rights against private big data actors.


Abstract No Abstract Available. Based on a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Orthodontia in the Graduate School at the Chicago Professional Colleges of the University of Illinois, 1950.


The relationship between religion and marketing has become the object of growing interest among scholars in recent years. The convergence between these two sectors, traditionally considered to belong to distinct cultural worlds, has yielded a fruitful debate. The articles collected in this symposium represent an attempt to address some research issues relevant to this debate. This introduction provides the background for analyzing how religion and marketing may intersect, identifies some key concepts and lines of inquiry, and offers a brief summary of the individual articles within this collection.


The article examines the government's growing appetite for collecting personal data. Often justified on the basis of protecting national security, government data mining programs sweep up data collected through hundreds of regulatory and administrative programs, and combine them with huge datasets obtained from industry. The result is an aggregation of personal data - the "digital footprints" of individual lives - never before seen. These data warehouses are then used to determine who can work and participate in Social Security programs, who can board airplanes and enter government buildings, and who is likely to pose a threat in the future, even though they have done nothing wrong to date. The article describes the extraordinary volume and variety of personal data to which the government has routine access, directly and through industry, and examines the absence of any meaningful limits on that access. So-called privacy statutes are often so outdated and inadequate that they fail to limit the government's access to our most personal data, or they have been amended in the post-9/11 world to reduce those limits. And the Fourth Amendment, the primary constitutional guarantee of individual privacy, has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to not apply to routine data collection, accessing data from third parties, or sharing data, even if illegally gathered. The result is not only that individual privacy goes unprotected, but that national security is compromised because it is increasingly based on data mining initiatives that are untested, ill focused, and rely on inaccurate or incomplete data. These shortcomings, and the urgent need for Congress to act to address them, have been widely recognized by numerous public and private commissions, but largely ignored by members of Congress - republicans and democrats alike. The article concludes that there is wide agreement about both the need to restore some limits on the government's use of personal data and the form that those limits should take. The problem is the unwillingness - or inability - of Congress to act.


This research presents a new method, the decoupled overlapping grids method, for the numerical modelling of transient pressure and rate properties of oil wells. The method is implemented in two stages: a global stage solved in the entire domain with a point or line source well approximation, and a local (post-process) stage solved in the near-well region with the well modelled explicitly and boundary data interpolated from the global stage results. We have carried out simulation studies in twoand threedimensions to investigate the accuracy of the method. For homogeneous case studies in 2D, we have demonstrated the convergence rate of the maximum error in the quantities of interest of the global and local stage computations by numerical and theoretical means. We also proposed a guideline for the selection of the relative mesh sizes of the local and global simulations based on error trends. Comparison to other methods in the literature showed better performance of the decoupled overlapping grids method in all cases. We carried out further investigations for heterogeneous case studies in 2D and partially-penetrating wells in 3D which show that the error trends observed for the 2D homogeneous case deteriorate only slightly, and that a high level of accuracy is achieved. Overall the results in this thesis demonstrate the potential of the method of decoupled overlapping grids to accurately model transient wellbore properties for arbitrary well configurations and reservoir heterogeneity, and the gain in computational efficiency achieved from the method. For Kaycee, Blues, Zeros.


This project developed a new approach to apprehend the construction of water scarcity grounded in structurationist theory. It developed a methodology to decipher this intricate web of power relations extending over a variety of scales, to discover the actors active within it without predetermining their existence or the legitimacy of their existence, and, finally to return this knowledge to those active within these interactions. It developed a hydropolitical map of Zambia and South Africa both as a communication tool to exchange with the actors involved in these constellations and as a knowledge construction tool. It harnessed structurationist theory within a qualitative research approach. The first section of this report details the work done on Zambia and the second section (in the second PDF file attached to this output) is devoted to South Africa. This order reflects the chronological order followed in this project. Although both countries were initially supposed to be studied simultaneously, a series of unforeseen events led the research to be started on Zambia in January 2003, months before the start of the project in May 2003, while the research on South Africa only started much later, once the University of Kwazulu Natal came on board of the research team. This allowed the research team dealing with South Africa to learn from the experience acquired in Zambia and produce a refined methodology.


In recent years there has been growing recognition of the role played in American politics by groups such as Common Cause, the Sierra Club, and Zero Population Growth. This book considers their work in terms of their origins and development, resources, patterns of recruitment, decision-making processes, and lobbying tactics.How do public interest groups select the issues on which they work? How do they allocate their resources? How do they choose strategies for influencing the federal government? Professor Berry examines these questions, focusing in particular on the process by which organizations make critical decisions. His findings are based on a survey of eighty-three national organizations with offices in Washington, D.C. He analyzes in detail the operation of two groups in which he worked as a participant.Originally published in 1977.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.


Primary non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of bone (PLB) is a rare entity. Patients generally present with localized bone pain and, less frequently, soft-tissue swelling or a palpable mass. Pathological fracture of the proximal femur and proximal humerus secondary to soft-tissue tumours is well documented in the literature; however, lymphomas presenting primarily at these sites with pathological fracture is unusual. A review of the world literature shows that the incidence of skeletal manifestation from NHL is less than 5%, and in all these cases, bony involvement was reported many years after presentation of the primary cancer. Histopathologically, PLB usually represents diffuse large B-cell lymphoma. We report our experience with two cases of Primary non-Hodgkin's lymphoma of proximal femur and proximal humerus with pathological fracture and their management.


If active vision systems are to be used reliably in practical applications, it is crucial to understand their limits and failure modes. In the work presented here, we derive, theoretically and experimentally, bounds on the performance of an active vision system in a fixation task. In particular, we characterize the tracking limits that are imposed by the finite field of view. Two classes of target motion are examined: sinusoidal motions, representative for targets moving with high turning rates, and constant-velocity motions, exemplary for slowly varying target movements. For each class of motion, we identify a linear model of the fixating system from measurements on a real active vision system and analyze the range of target motions that can be handled with a given field of view. To illustrate the utility of such performance bounds, we sketch how the tracking performance can be maximized by dynamically adapting optical parameters of the system to the characteristics of the target motion. The originality of our work arises from combining the theoretical analysis of a complete active vision system with rigorous performance measurements on the real system. We generate repeatable and controllable target motions with the help of two robot manipulators and measure the real-time performance of the system. The experimental results are used to verify or identify a linear model of the active vision system. A major difference to related work lies in analyzing the limits of the linear models that we develop. Active vision systems have been modeled as linear systems many times before, but the performance limits at which the models break down and the system loses its target have not attracted much attention so far. With our work we hope to demonstrate how the knowledge of such limits can be used to actually extend the performance of an active vision system. Comments University of Pennsylvania Department of Computer and Information Science Technical Report No. MSCIS-97-22. This technical report is available at ScholarlyCommons: http://repository.upenn.edu/cis_reports/203 Extending Linear System Models to Characterize the Performance Bounds of a Fixating Active Vision System MS-CIS-97-22 (GRASP LAB 419) Ulf M. Cahn von Seelen, Ruzena Bajcsy University of Pennsylvania School of Engineering and Applied Science Computer and Information Science Department Philadelphia, PA 19104-6389 Extending Perform Linear System Models to Characterize the .ance Bounds of a Fixating Active Vision System Cahn von Seelen, Ulf M. Bajcsy, Ruzena Sensar, Inc. University of Pennsylvania 121 Whittendale Drive 3401 Walnut Street, Suite 301C Moorestown, N J 08057 USA Philadelphia, PA 19104-6228 USA Tel.: +1-609-222-9090 Tel.: +I-215-898-0370 Fax: +1-609-722-1324 Fax: +1-215-573-2048 email@example.com firstname.lastname@example.com


After the lockout season in 2004, the 2005 collective bargaining agreement (CBA) introduced salary regulations, as well as revenue sharing, to the teams of the National Hockey League (NHL) with the aim to restore financial competitiveness. Given these objectives, the question arises if efficiencies improved under the new CBA. Using team values as the dependent variable, we performed a stochastic frontier analysis. Our paper suggests that efficiencies immediately improved after the agreement, in particular for low performing teams.


This article addresses Indigenous Australian claims to water resources and how they inform and relate to current Australian law and contemporary legal thinking about future possibilities. It adopts a multidisciplinary approach, drawing from historical records, previous ethnographic investigation with Indigenous Australians, current legal scholarship, and social anthropological theory. In doing so, it analyses Indigenous dependencies on water, the history of settler colonial orientations to water bodies, the evolution of settler colonial–Indigenous relations to natural resources, and the development of the Australian legal system's regulation of water. This provides foundations for a discussion of the limitations of settler colonial notions of property and the failure of settler colonial law to understand and incorporate the dynamism of Indigenous relationships to water, particularly the meaning and productive capacity of water flows within Indigenous cosmologies and sociocultural and ecological systems. Calling for a decolonial turn in legal approaches to Indigenous access and water resource determination, the authors explore the ways in which Australian law may need to 'unthink' settler colonial notions of resource ownership as a prerequisite for reformulating future water policy and planning. This reformulation relies on a more extensive legal philosophical engagement with the concept of 'flow', a concept that already exists in both water law and planning, but which has not been adequately theorised and enacted. A more comprehensive legal understanding of flow in the context of Indigenous understandings of, and claims to, water provides more sustainable and equitable legal and analytical foundations for managing future water resources issues. The article creates the space for a more culturally relevant notion of 'Indigenous water rights' and for new ways of honouring the interrelationship between water flows, meaning-making practices, and cultural continuity.


Semantic web technology aims at developing methodologies for representing large amount of knowledge in web accessible form. The semantics of knowledge should be easy to interpret and understand by computer programs, so that sharing and utilizing knowledge across the Web would be possible. Domain specific ontologies form the basis for knowledge representation in the semantic web. Research on automated development of ontologies from texts has become increasingly important because manual construction of ontologies is labor intensive and costly, and, at the same time, large amount of texts for individual domains is already available in electronic form. However, automatic extraction of domain specific ontologies is challenging due to the unstructured nature of texts and inherent semantic ambiguities in natural language. Moreover, the large size of texts to be processed renders full-fledged natural language processing methods infeasible.
In this dissertation, we develop a set of knowledge-based techniques for automatic extraction of ontological components (concepts, taxonomic and non-taxonomic relations) from domain texts. The proposed methods combine information retrieval metrics, lexical knowledge-base (like WordNet), machine learning techniques, heuristics, and statistical approaches to meet the challenge of the task. These methods are domain-independent and automatic approaches.
For extraction of concepts, the proposed WNSCA+{PE, POP} method utilizes the lexical knowledge base WordNet to improve precision and recall over the traditional information retrieval metrics. A WordNet-based approach, the compound term heuristic, and a supervised learning approach are developed for taxonomy extraction. We also developed a weighted word-sense disambiguation method for use with the WordNet-based approach. An unsupervised approach using log-likelihood ratios is proposed for extracting non-taxonomic relations. Further more, a supervised approach is investigated to learn the semantic constraints for identifying relations from prepositional phrases. The proposed methods are validated by experiments with the Electronic Voting and the Tender Offers, Mergers, and Acquisitions domain corpus. Experimental results and comparisons with some existing approaches clearly indicate the superiority of our methods.
In summary, a good combination of information retrieval, lexical knowledge base, statistics and machine learning methods in this study has led to the techniques efficient and effective for extracting ontological components automatically.


This book provides a broad introductory survey of this remarkable field, aiming to establish and clearly differentiate its physical principles, and also to provide a snapshot portrait of many of the most prominent current applications. Primary emphasis is placed on developing an understanding of the fundamental photonic origin behind the mechanism that operates in each type of effect. To this end, the first few chapters introduce and develop core theory, focusing on the physical significance and source of the most salient parameters, and revealing the detailed interplay between the key material and optical properties. Where appropriate, both classical and photonic (quantum mechanical) representations are discussed. The number of equations is purposely kept to a minimum, and only a broad background in optical physics is assumed. With copious examples and illustrations, each of the subsequent chapters then sets out to explain and exhibit the main features and uses of the various distinct types of mechanism that can be involved in optical nanomanipulation, including some of the very latest developments. To complete the scene, we also briefly discuss applications to larger, biological particles. Overall, this book aims to deliver to the non-specialist an amenable introduction to the technically more advanced literature on individual manipulation methods. Full references to the original research papers are given throughout, and an up-to-date bibliography is provided for each chapter, which directs the reader to other selected, more specialised sources.


Two central problems in a fiscal transfer system relate to resolving vertical and horizontal imbalances. In the context of the setting of the 13th Finance Commission, this paper looks at the methodological background of fiscal transfers followed by recent Finance Commissions in India, particularly the Twelfth Finance Commission (TFC). It is noted that in India, there is long - term stability in the share of states after transfers in the combined revenues of the centre and the states. It is argued that this stability depends on linking the share of states in the transfers, particularly tax devolution with the difference in the buoyancies of central and states taxes. In the context of horizontal imbalance, it is argued that some of the recent Finance Commissions have implicitly followed an axiomatic approach to tax devolution and brought in some normative elements in determining grants. In spite of large difference in fiscal capacities, a high degree of equalization has been achieved. It is shown, for example, that in the case of TFC recommended transfers, nearly 88 percent of needed equalization was achieved while devoting 50 percent of transfers to resolving vertical imbalance. A methodology is also developed to determine weights of vertical and equalizing components of transfers through devolution. In the case of the Twelfth Finance Commission, the horizontal component of tax devolution is strengthened by a scheme of equalizing health and education grants.


These essays look at determinants of inflation and policies to control it at different stages of transition. It attempts to determine what factors have shaped the inflationary process, how successful were the policies adopted to control inflation, and what policy conclusions can be drawn from the experience of transitional economies. The first paper analyzes central bank independence in transitional economies, regarded as key for a successful monetary policy making. The results show that the central bank independence started to influence inflation only after the initial transitional shocks. The next two papers analyze monetary transmission mechanisms in less advanced economies, choosing Georgia and Romania as examples. The papers estimate structural models of inflation. The results show that, in the case of Romania, inflation was driven by a monetary expansion. Interactions between real and monetary developments were limited when inflation was high. In Georgia, where the dichotomy between the real and monetary sectors is also evident in the data, the tight control over the exchange rate was crucial for maintaining a low-inflation equilibrium. The third paper focuses on inflation in advanced transitional economies, analyzing transmission mechanisms and assessing the implementation of inflation targeting in the Czech Republic and Poland. The results show that the exchange rate has played a significant role in the transmission mechanism, suggesting that the behavior of this variable should be carefully watched even under an inflation targeting regime. The last paper in the thesis analyzes the credibility of inflation targets, which is the main factor affecting the costs of disinflation under the inflation targeting framework. The paper attempts to identify to what extent inflationary expectations in Poland were guided by announcements of the targets. The results show that the credibility of the targets increased after the introduction of inflation targeting, but dropped quickly after the target was missed.


The electric conductivity, activation energy and morphology of polythiophene synthesized by radiofrequency resistive plasmas are studied in this work. The continuous collisions of particles in the plasma induce the polymerization of thiophene but also break some of the monomer molecules producing complex polymers with thiophene rings and aliphatic hydrocarbon segments. These multidirectional chemical reactions are more marked at longer reaction times in which the morphology of the polymers evolved from smooth surfaces, at low exposure time, to spherical particles with diameter in the 300-1000 nm interval. Between both morphologies, some bubbles are formed on the surface. The intrinsic conductivity of plasma polymers of thiophene synthesized in this way varied in the range of 10-10 to 10-8 S/m; however, the conductivity resulted very sensitive to the water content in the polymers, which produced variations of up to 5 magnitude orders. The activation energy of the intrinsic conductivity was between 0.56 and 1.41 eV, increasing with the reaction time.

Plasma, Polymerization, Polythiophene, Conductivity, Activation Energy


Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is considered a noninvasive and well-tolerated brain stimulation technique with very few adverse side effects. Importantly, tDCS does not directly evoke neuronal firing (as induced by electroconvulsive or transcranial magnetic stimulation), but instead alters the resting membrane potential of pre- and post‑synaptic neurons dependent on the current polarity in the stimulated brain region. Animal studies suggest changes in long-term potentiation occur via glutamate release in response to anodal tDCS, thereby affecting learning and memory. In clinical studies, a current not exceeding 2 mA/cm2 is applied for 20–30 min via sponge electrodes placed above the target brain region. To date, a number of clinical studies have reported some promising effects when treating patients with depression, chronic pain, schizophrenia, dementia, Parkinson's disease and cerebral stroke. However, appropriately designed randomized controlled clinical trials are scarce and reported intervention effect sizes only vary from small to moderate, with little evidence for sustained long-term effects.


Translating patient‐reported outcome measures (PROMs) can alter the meaning of items and undermine the PROM's psychometric properties (quantified as cross‐cultural differential item functioning [DIF]). The aim of this paper was to present the theoretical background for PROM translation, adaptation, and cross‐cultural validation, and assess how PROMs used in sports medicine research have been translated and adapted. We also assessed DIF for the Knee Injury and Osteoarthritis Outcome Score (KOOS) across Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish versions. We conducted a search in PubMed and Scopus to identify the method of translation, adaptation, and validation of PROMs relevant to musculoskeletal research. Additionally, 150 preoperative KOOS questionnaires were obtained from the Scandinavian knee ligament reconstruction registries, and cross‐cultural DIF was evaluated using confirmatory factor analysis and Rasch analysis. There were 392 studies identified, describing the translation of 61 PROMs. Ninety‐four percent were performed with forward‐backward technique. Forty‐nine percent used cognitive interviews to ensure appropriate wording, understandability, and adaptation to the target culture. Only two percent were validated according to modern test theory. No study assessed cross‐cultural DIF. One KOOS subscale showed no cross‐cultural DIF, two had DIF with respect to some (but not all) items, and thus conversion tables could be constructed, and two KOOS subscales could not be pooled. Most PROM translations are of undocumented quality, despite the common conclusion that they are valid and reliable. Scores from three of five KOOS subscales can be pooled across the Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish versions, but two of these must be adjusted for DIF.


Two designer drugs hit same lung cancer target, but only one is effective. Study demonstrates presence or absence of gene mutation a critical factor in treatment choice. Two designer cancer drugs differed dramatically in a laboratory test comparing their ability to shut down a mutant, overactive growth signal in lung cancer cells, reports a team headed by scientists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Although both drugs killed cells containing a normal but overactive EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) molecule, only gefitinib (Iressa) killed lung cancer cells containing a mutated EGFR molecule. The monoclonal antibody drug cetuximab (Erbitux) had little effect on the mutant signal, evidently because it strikes at a different part of the EGFR molecule. Reporting in the Aug. 17 issue of the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, the researchers say that the divergent results add to growing evidence that mutations in the targets of designer drugs critically influence their effectiveness. Erbitux is an effective inhibitor of EGFR signals in colorectal cancer, which involves a normal, not mutant, EGFR molecule. "We now know of several groups of patients who benefit from therapy targeted at EGFR," says Pasi A. Jänne, MD, PhD, of Dana-Farber, and a senior author of the paper. "Those with EGFR mutations will benefit from Iressa or Tarceva (erlotinib), while another group, without EGFR mutations, will benefit from Erbitux." The lead author is Toru Mukohara, MD, and the senior authors are Bruce E. Johnson, MD, and Jänne, all of Dana-Farber. Iressa and Erbitux both are designed to squelch the overexpressed, or overactive, EGFR signal that spurs growth in several types of cancer. In some forms of the disease, including lung cancer of the non-small-cell type, and colorectal cancer, the abnormal signals are generated by a normal EGFR molecule. In a small percentage of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the overactivity stems from a mutant EGFR protein: those patients tend to have a better outlook, and Iressa and Tarceva are particularly effective for them. Mukohara and his colleagues wanted to determine whether Erbitux might be another option for NSCLC patients who carry the EGFR mutation. To test this idea, they treated lung cancer cell lines in the laboratory with Iressa and with Erbitux. They reported that both drugs blocked the excess signals in cells with normal EGFR, but only Iressa was significantly effective in those carrying a mutant EGFR. "It tells us something about the difference in the drugs' ability to cause a regression of the cancer by shutting down the abnormally active growth signal receptor, EGFR," says Jänne. "If you want to choose a way of inhibiting the mutant EGFR receptor, you would pull Iressa and Tarceva off the shelf, not Erbitux." Iressa and Tarceva are known as small-molecule drugs that can be taken orally and block the part of the EGFR molecule that's located within the cell. In NSCLC, patients with the mutation often respond to both drugs, though only Tarceva has helped patients live slightly longer in clinical trials. Erbitux is a monoclonal antibody drug that binds to a portion of the EGFR receptor that extends outside the cell. This difference in action is the apparent explanation for why they performed differently against the mutant EGFR cells. The scientists also looked at cases of four NSCLC patients with EGFR mutations who had been treated with the two drugs. The scientists' predictions were confirmed: all patients had some tumor shrinkage when they received Iressa, but none of the cancers responded to Erbitux. Jänne says that the experiment told the scientists something new about the biology of the EGFR mutation in NSCLC. "The lesson is, to inhibit the mutant receptor, you need to inhibit the domain of the EGFR molecule that lies within the cell, as opposed to the extracellular domain," Jänne says. The study was supported in part by the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute's Lung SPORE grant. The study's other authors are Jeffrey A. Engelman, MD, and Joseph Pearlberg, MD, Dana-Farber; Nasser H. Hanna, MD, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis; Beow Y. Yeap, ScD, Massachusetts General Hospital; Neal Lindeman, MD, Brigham and Women's Hospital; Balazs Halmos, MD, University Hospitals of Cleveland; Zenta Tsuchihashi, PhD, Pharmaceutical Research Institute, Bristol Myers Squibb, Princeton, NJ; Lewis C. Cantley, PhD, Daniel G. Tenen, MD, and Susumu Kobayashi, MD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a principal teaching affiliate of the Harvard Medical School and is among the leading cancer research and care centers in the United States. It is a founding member of the Dana-Farber/Harvard Cancer Center (DF/HCC), designated a comprehensive cancer center by the National Cancer Institute. Media Contact: Bill Schaller, (617) 632-4090


The Twelve are not the only numbered group of Christian workers or leaders in Luke-Acts. There are two others, the Seventy and the Seven. These outsiders have often been overlooked, and their work is usually portrayed simply as extending that of the apostles. On a careful systemic reading, however, the relevant passages in Luke and Acts are open to a different understanding of leadership in the early church, which at the same time raises questions that bear on tensions in the authority and leadership of the church today. As in the other gospels, the Twelve play a prominent role in Luke-Acts. They are chosen by Jesus and demarcated from the unnumbered disciples who followed him, a point made explicit in the third gospel (Luke 6:13; see also Mark 3:14-16).1 The Twelve, also known as "apostles" (apostoloi, a term found most often in Acts; see, for example, 1:2, 2:37, 4:33, and 5:18),2 are the chosen few who remain by Jesus' side during the early days of his Galilean ministry (Luke 8:1; see also Mark 4:10) and who are commissioned by him to emulate that ministry (Luke 9:1; see also Mark 6:7; Matt. 10:1-2, 11:1).3 Indeed, as with the other evangelists, when Luke mentions Judas Iscariot, he is designated simply as "one of the Twelve" (Luke 22:3, 47; see also Mark 14:10, 43; Matt. 26:14, 47; John 6:70-71). Unlike the other gospel writers, however, Luke also makes specific mention of at least two other "numbered" groups, the Seventy in Luke 10 and the Seven in Acts 6.4 This raises a key question: Why does the evangelist mention these two additional sets of disciples, especially since their time on the Lukan stage is fairly brief? If the initial choice of the Twelve from among the masses is, for Luke, a "conscious and calculated" one,5 then what purpose do these "others" (Luke 10:1) serve in his "orderly account?" Furthermore, what is their relationship to the Lukan Twelve with regard to leadership in the nascent church? This article explores the notion that the Seventy and the Seven, far from being peripheral to Luke's narrative, are marked out by the evangelist as persons who fulfill Jesus' commission to preach, heal, and exorcise (Luke 9:1) precisely at those points when the Twelve appear unwilling or unable to do so. A systemic examination of the relational connections between the Twelve and these other numbered sets in Luke-Acts may suggest the necessity for a reconsideration of the roles of all three groups in Luke's account. Following a brief overview of methodological considerations, this article focuses on the events leading to the rise of the Seven in Acts, similarities between passages involving the Seven (Acts 6-8) and the Seventy (Luke 9-10), the role of the Twelve in Luke-Acts as guardians of the community's equilibrium, and the threat posed by the other numbered groups to that equilibrium. Finally, the conclusion explores the possible relevance of a systemic reading of apostolic leadership in Luke-Acts to current struggles involving the Christian community in general and the Episcopal Church in particular. Methodological Considerations It is helpful to explore such terminology as "numbered sets," "relational connections," "systemic examination," and "equilibrium." While the dictum "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" is an ancient one, in more recent years the connectedness of persons and social groupings has formed the basic focus of study for systems theorists. In brief, systems thinking "deals with data in a new way . . . focusing less on the cause-and-effect connections that link bits of information and more on the principles of organizations that give data meaning."6 Even as systems thinking has developed from the interactions of ideas from several diverse fields,7 it has also given rise in recent years to several specialist approaches, including communications theory, conflict theory, and group process theory. Most of these approaches, however, share the key foundational assumptions that all parts of a system are interconnected, that understanding is only possible by viewing the whole, and that a system and its environment have an effect on one another. …


The conditions of nutrition among children in Karnataka, despite steady improvements, raise several concerns over the tendency of the State to abdicate its constitutional responsibility of upholding the right to food. This paper will present findings that demonstrate the unsatisfactory standards of implementation by the State government with respect to food distribution schemes and locate the reasons thereof in a trend wherein the State is deliberately minimising its role in welfare. The slow death of the welfare state formally and substantially is manifested in the increasing role of private entities in food distribution, reluctance to grant minimum wages, convenient short cuts in distributing nutrients and government apathy to the working conditions of workers responsible for food distribution.


The essay above is a part of the book The Enlightenment between East and West. The Case of Poland, which is an attempt to show Polish Enlightenment in European context. It is based on a hypothesis that Enlightenment, which was deeply conscious of its European roots and character and treated Europism as a very important value, has had a decisive influence on the European model of modern culture and civilization. Enlightenment, however, in very different ways and degree formed national cultures in Europe, especially in Central-Europe. In the book special attention is paid to the analysis of Central-European Enlightenment which has always been almost entirely omitted in syntheses of European Enlightenment Culture. The author attempts to appraise the mechanisms of the development and functioning of the Enlightenment and also the achievements in the field of literature. Polish Enlightenment is the focus of the book, as the most characteristic and the richest and the most fully developed one in Central-Europe. Two other Central-European variants: the Hungarian and South-Slavonic form proper perspective for comparison. They are confronted not only with the Central-European model, but also with Western-European Enlightenment presented in the book through the prism of two models: the English and French model and also the German variant. Eastern-European Enlightenment – primarily Russian Enlightenment – also forms an important point of reference. Many pages of the book have been devoted to the analysis of the different national ways to Enlightenment, exposing the coherence between their structures and the specific character of European development, the paths of which forked in the beginning of modern history, at the end of the XV century.


In his thirties, married, and staring down impending fatherhood, Tom Coyne was well familiar with the last refuge of the adult male: the golfing trip. Intent on designing a golf trip to end all others, Coyne looked to Ireland, the place where his father had taught him to love the game years before. As he studied a map of the island and plotted his itinerary, it dawned on Coyne that Ireland was ringed with golf holes. The country began to look like one giant round of golf, so Coyne packed his clubs and set off to play all of it. And since Irish golfers didn't take golf carts, neither would he. He would walk the entire way. "A Course Called Ireland" is the story of a walking-averse golfer who treks his way around an entire country, spending sixteen weeks playing every seaside hole in Ireland and often battling through all four seasons in one Irish afternoon. Coyne plays everything from the top-ranked links in the world to nine-hole courses crowded with livestock. Along the way, he searches out his family's roots, discovers that a once-poor country has been transformed by an economic boom, and finds that the only thing tougher to escape than Irish sand traps are Irish pubs. By turns hilarious and poetic, "A Course Called Ireland" is a magnificent tour of a vibrant land and a paean to the world's greatest game.


Background Symptom burden, medical comorbidities, and functional well-being of patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) initiating direct acting antiviral (DAA) therapy in real-world clinical settings are not known. We characterized these patient-reported outcomes (PROs) among HCV-infected patients and explored associations with sociodemographic, liver disease, and psychiatric/substance abuse variables. Methods and findings PROP UP is a large US multicenter observational study that enrolled 1,600 patients with chronic HCV in 2016–2017. Data collected prior to initiating DAA therapy assessed the following PROs: number of medical comorbidities; neuropsychiatric, somatic, gastrointestinal symptoms (PROMIS surveys); overall symptom burden (Memorial Symptom Assessment Scale); and functional well-being (HCV-PRO). Candidate predictors included liver disease markers and patient-reported sociodemographic, psychiatric, and alcohol/drug use features. Predictive models were explored using a random selection of 700 participants; models were then validated with data from the remaining 900 participants. The cohort was 55% male, 39% non-white, 48% had cirrhosis (12% with advanced cirrhosis); 52% were disabled or unemployed; 63% were on public health insurance or uninsured; and over 40% had markers of psychiatric illness. The median number of medical comorbidities was 4 (range: 0–15), with sleep disorders, chronic pain, diabetes, joint pain and muscle aches being present in 20–50%. Fatigue, sleep disturbance, pain and neuropsychiatric symptoms were present in over 60% and gastrointestinal symptoms in 40–50%. In multivariable validation models, the strongest and most frequent predictors of worse PROs were disability, unemployment, and use of psychiatric medications, while liver markers generally were not. Conclusions This large multi-center cohort study provides a comprehensive and contemporary assessment of the symptom burden and comorbid medical conditions in patients with HCV treated in real world settings. Pain, fatigue, and sleep disturbance were common and often severe. Sociodemographic and psychiatric markers were the most robust predictors of PROs. Future research that includes a rapidly changing population of HCV-infected individuals needs to evaluate how DAA therapy affects PROs and elucidate which symptoms resolve with viral eradication. Trial registration (Clinicaltrial.gov: NCT02601820).


Five metal complexes with Schiff-base ligand, 3-((4-phenylthiazol-2-ylimino) methyl)-2hydroxybenzoic acid were synthesized with metal ions such as Cu(II), Co(II), Ni(II), Cd(II) and Zn(II). The reaction likely proceeds via condensation of 2-amino-4-phenyl thiazole with 3-aldehydosalicylic acid and characterized by elemental analysis and various spectral studies like FT-IR, 1H NMR, ESI mass, and TGA/TDA and molar conductance studies. The spectral results revealed bidentate O-O donor and forms the complexes having square planar geometry. The antibacterial and antifungal activity of the ligand and its metal complexes was found based on the determination of minimum inhibitory concentrations. The brine shrimp biological assay was also carry out to study the In vitro cytotoxicity properties for the ligand and its metal complexes against Artemia salina. Moreover, DNA cleavage experiments revealed that the Cu (II), Co (II) and Zn (II) complexes exhibited remarkable DNA cleavage activities via the generation of hydroxyl radical.


Yeast cells are generally used as a model system of eukaryotes due to their complex genetic structure, rapid growth ability in optimum conditions, easy replication and well-defined genetic system properties. Thus, yeast cells increased the knowledge of the principal pathways in humans. During fermentation, carbohydrates (hexoses and pentoses) degrade into some toxic byproducts such as 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF or HMF) and furfural. HMF influences the ethanol yield, and ethanol productivity; it interferes with microbial growth and is considered as a potent inhibitor of bioethanol production. In this study, yeast single cell behavior under HMF application was monitored by using a continuous flow single phase microfluidic platform. Microfluidic device in operation is fabricated by hot embossing and thermocompression techniques from cyclo-olefin polymer (COP). COP is biocompatible, transparent and rigid material and it is suitable for observing fluorescence of cells considering its low auto-fluorescence characteristic. The response of yeast cells was recorded through Red Fluorescent Protein (RFP) tagged Nop56 gene product, which is an essential evolutionary-conserved nucleolar protein, and also a member of the box C/D snoRNP complexes. With the application of HMF, yeast cell proliferation continued but HMF slowed down the cell growth, and after HMF treatment the cell proliferation stopped. By the addition of fresh nutrient medium, the yeast cells recovered after 6 hours of HMF exposure. Thus, HMF application suppresses normal functioning of cell cycle but it does not cause cells to die. The monitoring of Nop56 expression phases of the individual cells shed light on the protein and ribosome synthesis cycles along with their link to growth. Further computational study revealed that the mechanisms underlying the inhibitory or inductive effects of HMF on growth are enriched in functional categories of protein degradation, protein processing, DNA repair and multidrug resistance. The present microfluidic device can successfully be used for studying the effects of inhibitory agents on growth by single cell tracking, thus capturing cell to cell variations. By metabolic engineering techniques, engineered strains can be developed, and the metabolic network of the microorganism can thus be manipulated such that chemical overproduction of target metabolite is achieved along with the maximum growth/biomass yield. Keywords—COP, HMF, ribosome biogenesis, thermoplastic microbioreactor, yeast. Elif Gencturk, Ekin Yurdakul, and Kutlu O. Ulgen are with the Department of Chemical Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, CO 34342 Turkey (email: email@example.com, email@example.com, email@example.com). Ahmet Y. Celik and Senol Mutlu are with the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bogazici University, Istanbul, CO 34342 Turkey (email: firstname.lastname@example.com, email@example.com).


Primary oil recovery remains less than 10% in tight oil reservoirs, even after expensive multistage horizontal well hydraulic fracturing stimulation. Substantial experiments and pilot tests have been performed to investigate CO2-EOR potential in tight reservoirs; however, some results conflict with each other. The objective of this paper is to diagnose how these conflicting results occurred and to identify a way to narrow the gap between experimental results and field performance through a comprehensive literature review and data analysis.
 Peer-reviewed journal papers, technical reports, and SPE publications were collected, and three key steps were taken to reach our goal. First, rock and fluid properties of tight reservoirs in North America and China were compared, and their potential effect on tight oil production was analyzed. Afterward, based on published experimental studies and simulation works, the CO2-EOR mechanisms were discussed, including molecular diffusion, CO2-oil interaction considering nanopore confinement, and CO2-fluid-rock minerals interaction. Subsequently, pilot projects were examined to understand the gap between laboratory works and field tests, and the challenges faced in China's tight oil exploitation were rigorously analyzed.
 Compared with Bakken and Eagle Ford formation, China's tight oil reservoirs feature higher mud content and oil viscosity while they have a lower brittleness index and formation pressure, leading to confined stimulated reservoir volume and further limited CO2-oil contact. The effect of CO2 molecular diffusion was relatively exaggerated in experimental results, which could be attributed to the dual restrictions of exposure time and oil-CO2 area in field scale. Numerical modeling showed that the improved phase properties in nanopores led to enhanced oil recovery. The development of nano-scale chips withholding high pressure/temperature may advance the experimental study on nano-confinement's effect. Oil recovery can be further enhanced through wettability alteration due to CO2 adsorption on nanopores and reaction with rock minerals. CO2 huff-n-puff operations were more commonly applied in North America than China, and the huff time is in the order of 10 days, but the soaking time is less. Conformance control was essential during CO2 flooding in order to delay gas breakthrough and promote CO2-oil interaction. There is less than 5% of tight oil reserve surrounded by CO2 reservoirs in China, limiting the application of CO2-EOR technologies. An economic incentive from the government is necessary to consider the application of CO2 from power plants, refineries, etc.
 This work provides an explanation of conflicting results from different research methods and pilot tests, and helps researchers and oil operators understand where and when the CO2-EOR can be best applied in unconventional reservoirs. New directions for future work on CO2-EOR in tight formations are also recommended.


Regulators dedicate much attention to a financial institution's option to default, i.e. the option that distressed financial institutions have to transfer losses to their creditors. It is generally recognized that the existence of this option provides intermediaries with a powerful incentive to keep firm capital close to the minimal requirement. We argue, however, that undercapitalization harms profitable growth opportunities, i.e. the institution's franchise value. Indeed, the capitalization of a financial institution will be ultimately driven by the net impact of capital levels on the default option and the franchise value. By considering the impact of the default option, our work complements and extends, within a simple Black-Scholes framework, the model used by Froot and Stein (1998) in the context of banks and by Froot (2007) in the context of insurance.


Are Sveriges Riksbank's inflation (CPI and KPIX) interval forecasts calibrated in the sense that the intervals cover realised inflation with the stated ex ante coverage probabilities 50, 75 and 90 percent? In total 150 interval forecast 1999:Q2-2005:Q2 are assessed for CPI and KPIX. The main result is that the forecast uncertainty is understated, but there are substantial differences between individual forecast origins and inflation measures.


Optical and electrical properties of electrochemically lithium ion intercalated thin films of x-ray amorphous tungsten oxide made by magnetron sputtering on glass substrates coated with a thin layer of conductive tin doped indium oxide, have been studied. The composition and the density of the films were characterized by the ion beam analysis methods Rutherford Backscattering Spectroscopy and Elastic Recoil Detection Analysis. The optical properties, transmittance and reflectance were investigated by spectophotometry in the wavelength range 300-2500 nm. The absorption coefficients were calculated at different lithium intercalation levels. It was found that the absorption coefficient in an as-deposited blue film has a similar asymmetric shape as for films intercalated to a Li/W ratio of ~0.03. It was possible to electrochemically bleach this film to transparency. Stoichiometric films show optical irreversibility between the bleached and the colored state in the first cycle. A polaron absorption model has been compared to the absorption coefficient for films of different intercalation levels. An increase in the Fermi level and in the polaron band width, and a nearly constant activation energy was found as the Li/W value increased. The radius of the polaron wavefunction for different lithium intercalation levels and film compositions has been estimated from electrical measurements. The total absorption coefficient has been compared to the site-saturation model. The model is good for films intercalated in the optically reversible region. A modified site-saturation model that could be applied also in the optically irreversible region and involves electron transitions between W6+, W5+ and W4+ sites, has also been compared to experimental values. It was found that the total absorption, optical density and the coloration efficiency is higher for the WO2.63 film than in the less oxygen deficient films and that this film is optically more durable in an electrochemically cyclic lifetime device test.


In this paper, mode I stress intensity factors (SIFs) are calculated numerically by finite element software ANSYS, for a single semi-elliptical circumferential crack on a thick cylinder. The examined cracks were located either on the external or internal surface of the cylinder and subjected to two different types of loadings, tension and internal pressure, applied separately. To present results in a more comprehensive form, dimensionless analysis is used, and a wide variation limit of parameters that define the crack geometry is considered. The ratio of crack depth to crack length ranging between 0.4 to 1.2, the ratio of crack depth to cylinder wall thickness vary between 0.2, 0.5 and 0.8, and the ratio of the cylinder wall thickness to the cylinder internal radius 0.25. Based on the obtained results, distributions of SIFs found to be symmetric along the crack front. The location where the maximum SIFs on the crack front attained is strongly affected by the change of aspect ratio, and external cracks generally exhibit a higher SIFs than those of internal cracks. It is also found a significant effect for the relative depth of the crack on SIFs value, which could accelerate the fracture process.


NuMA is a 236 kDa nuclear protein that is required for the organization of the mitotic spindle. To determine how NuMA redistributes in the cell during mitosis, we have examined the behavior of NuMA in a mammalian mitotic extract under conditions conducive to the reassembly of interphase nuclei. NuMA is a soluble protein in mitotic extracts prepared from synchronized cultured cells, but forms insoluble structures when the extract becomes non-mitotic (as judged by the inactivation of cdc2/cyclin B kinase and the disappearance of mpm-2-reactive antigens). These NuMA-containing structures are irregularly shaped particles of 1-2 microm in diameter and their assembly is specific because other nuclear components such as the lamins remain soluble in the extract under these conditions. NuMA is dephosphorylated during this assembly process, and the assembly of these NuMA-containing structures is catalyzed by protein dephosphorylation because protein kinase inhibitors enhance their formation and protein phosphatase inhibitors block their formation. Finally, immunodepletion demonstrates that NuMA is an essential structural component of these insoluble particles, and electron microscopy shows that the particles are composed of a complex interconnected network of foci. These results demonstrate that phosphorylation regulates the solubility of NuMA in a mammalian mitotic extract, and the spontaneous assembly of NuMA into extensive structures upon dephosphorylation supports the conclusion that NuMA serves a structural function.


Background: Preliminary investigation at Pediatric ward of Indira Gandhi Medical College revealed admission of a cluster
of typhoid cases who were residents of one particular street in a nearby locality.
Objectives: This study was undertaken to estimate the magnitude of the outbreak, identify the source of infection, and,
thereby, institute control measures.
Materials and Methods: An investigation team including 10 MBBS students carried out a sanitary survey, house-to-house
survey, data collection using epidemiological case sheets, and spot mapping. Typhoid diagnosis was confirmed as per
the IDSP guidelines, i.e., either a blood culture growth positive for Salmonella typhi or a fourfold rise in antibody titer. An
age- and gender-matched case–control study was conducted to find the association of occurrence of typhoid with various
possible sources of infection. Water samples were collected from the affected households and public taps for investigation.
Results: Rapid survey of all the 6 streets of Thilaspet covered 1106 people living in 283 households. All nine confirmed
cases were residents of one particular street. The attack rate calculated was 3.4% in this street. A significant association of
occurrence of typhoid was found only with consumption of raw drinking water (OR = 12.6, P = 0.01). Water samples only from
the affected street tested positive for the presence of coliforms. The sanitary survey documented water pipeline breakage at
the junction of this street. Further spread of disease was stopped by advocating drinking of boiled water and repair of pipeline.
Conclusion: Strengthening of disease surveillance for early identification of localized outbreaks and instituting control
measures can effectively control disease spread.


We have conducted laboratory experiments with analog crystalline silicon carbide (SiC) grains using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). The 3C polytype of SiC was used—the type commonly produced in the envelopes of asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars. We rapidly heated small (∼50 nm) synthetic SiC crystals under vacuum to ∼1300 K and bombarded them with 150 keV Xe ions. TEM imaging and EELS spectroscopic mapping show that such heating and bombardment leaches silicon from the SiC surface, creating layered graphitic sheets. Surface defects in the crystals were found to distort the six-membered rings characteristic of graphite, creating hemispherical structures with diameters matching that of C60. Such nonplanar features require the formation of five-membered rings. We also identified a circumstellar grain, preserved inside the Murchison meteorite, that contains the remnant of an SiC core almost fully encased by graphite, contradicting long-standing thermodynamic predictions of material condensation. Our combined laboratory data suggest that C60 can undergo facile formation from shock heating and ion bombardment of circumstellar SiC grains. Such heating/bombardment could occur in the protoplanetary nebula phase, accounting for the observation of C60 in these objects, in planetary nebulae (PNs) and other interstellar sources receiving PN ejecta. The synthesis of C60 in astronomical sources poses challenges, as the assembly of 60 pure carbon atoms in an H-rich environment is difficult. The formation of C60 from the surface decomposition of SiC grains is a viable mechanism that could readily occur in the heterogeneous, hydrogen-dominated gas of evolved circumstellar shells.


ABSTRACT mothur aims to be a comprehensive software package that allows users to use a single piece of software to analyze community sequence data. It builds upon previous tools to provide a flexible and powerful software package for analyzing sequencing data. As a case study, we used mothur to trim, screen, and align sequences; calculate distances; assign sequences to operational taxonomic units; and describe the α and β diversity of eight marine samples previously characterized by pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene fragments. This analysis of more than 222,000 sequences was completed in less than 2 h with a laptop computer.


In 1997, the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center ("the Center") created a managed care plan ("the Plan") for its uninsured patients who were county residents. The Plan's features include pooling the resources of existing county safety-net providers, enrolling patients with primary care providers at easily accessible neighborhood-based clinics, and investing in social support services, case management, and 24-hour telephone triage. After two years of the Plan's operation, the utilization of ambulatory care services by Plan enrollees, the number of discharges per 1,000 enrollees from the Center-affiliated University Hospital, and the number of hospital days per 1,000 enrollees had all dropped significantly (p <.001 for all). For the 13,114 enrollees in the Plan, University Hospital saved an estimated $1,904,872 per year in costs. The replacement of unpaid hospital days with paying patients is estimated to have yielded over $695,000 in additional revenues per year. The authors conclude that managing the care of uninsured patients in an academic health center can reduce ambulatory care and inpatient utilization and reduce the cost of care. To achieve these favorable outcomes requires the organization of services to meet the unique needs of the uninsured and underserved population.


Properly adjusting the transmission power of the wireless sensor nodes has shown to be an effective approach to reduce energy consumption and to improve the network reliability. I In this paper, an adaptive Node Degree adjustment based Power Control method for wireless sensor networks (NDPC) is proposed to dynamically adjust the transmission power of the nodes. In NDPC, each node is embedded with a fuzzy neural controller which is used to adjust the target node degree so as to control the communication range properly. The fuzzy neural controller consists of two Fuzzy Inference Systems (FIS). One adopts closed-loop feedback mechanism to adjust the target node degree according to the residual energy. The other adjusts the communication range by a self-learning neural network to control the transmission power based on the target node degree. Consequently, the actual energy consumption of the node is reduced while keeping the desired node degree. Several simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of NDPC, and the results show that NDPC can reduce the actual energy consumption as well as extend the network lifetime.