ABSTRACT Acidithiobacillus ferrivorans SS3 is a psychrotolerant acidophile capable of growth in the range of 5° to 30°C (optimum, ≈25°C). It gains energy from the oxidation of ferrous iron and inorganic sulfur compounds and obtains organic carbon from carbon dioxide. Here, we present the draft genome sequence of A. ferrivorans SS3 that will permit investigation of genes involved in growth in acidic environments at low temperatures.


ABSTRACT The Rb-Sr system of phillipsites from an indurated volcano-sedimentary mass sampled in the Southern Pacific Ocean became closed long after the deposition of the host rock: Middle Miocene (14.7 ± 3.3 Ma) and Middle Eocene, respectively. This isotopic age of about 15 Ma probably represents the end of an induration phenomenon which stopped the chemical exchanges between the zeolites and their environment. These minerals inherited Sr primarily from volcanic material, as demonstrated by their initial 87Sr/86Sr ratio at 0.70441 ± 0.00036 (2) which plots within the values of the known 87Sr/86Sr ratios of the nearby basalts. The leaching technique with diluted acid was checked by recalculation of the Rb and Sr contents of the leachates and residues according to their percentage in the untreated sample and comparison with their amounts in the corresponding untreated sample. Any discrepancy is, in most cases, smaller than 3.5 percent for both Rb and Sr amounts. This technique may, therefore, be used to obtain a correct amount of the distribution of these elements among the soluble and insoluble fractions. The examination of the leachates also showed that the volcano-sedimentary material forming the cores of nodules from the water-sediment interface experienced a more complex history than the underlying analogous volcano sedimentary level.


Except the physiological effects the magnetic field of industrial frequency produces biological effects as well, at values much lower, as resulting from some laboratory analyses combined with epidemiological studies. An alternative survey was initiated by the Russian scientists who discovered the subtle field accompanying the electromagnetic fields as being responsible for the biological negative effects. The Ancu Dinca filters, based on organic macromolecules derived from plants, neutralize the negative effects of the magnetic fields by reducing the subtle fields.


A high-fat diet causes liver disease by suppressing IRE1α-regulated microRNA biogenesis. Fat, microRNAs, and liver disease Obesity and high-fat diets are linked to fatty liver disease and repression of the cell stress protein IRE1α. By analyzing livers from mice fed a high-fat diet and from patients with hepatic steatosis, Wang et al. found that diet- or obesity-induced IRE1α functional deficiency in the liver enabled the biogenesis of select microRNAs that consequently decreased the abundance of lipid metabolism enzymes, leading to lipid accumulation in the liver. These findings reveal additional targets to explore for treating various diet-associated liver diseases. Obesity or a high-fat diet represses the endoribonuclease activity of inositol-requiring enzyme 1α (IRE1α), a transducer of the unfolded protein response (UPR) in cells under endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress. An impaired UPR is associated with hepatic steatosis and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), which is caused by lipid accumulation in the liver. We found that IRE1α was critical to maintaining lipid homeostasis in the liver by repressing the biogenesis of microRNAs (miRNAs) that regulate lipid mobilization. In mice fed normal chow, the endoribonuclease function of IRE1α processed a subset of precursor miRNAs in the liver, including those of the miR-200 and miR-34 families, such that IRE1α promoted their degradation through the process of regulated IRE1-dependent decay (RIDD). A high-fat diet in mice or hepatic steatosis in patients was associated with the S-nitrosylation of IRE1α and inactivation of its endoribonuclease activity. This resulted in an increased abundance of these miRNA families in the liver and, consequently, a decreased abundance of their targets, which included peroxisome proliferator–activated receptor α (PPARα) and the deacetylase sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), regulators of fatty acid oxidation and triglyceride lipolysis. IRE1α deficiency exacerbated hepatic steatosis in mice. The abundance of the miR-200 and miR-34 families was also increased in cultured, lipid-overloaded hepatocytes and in the livers of patients with hepatic steatosis. Our findings reveal a mechanism by which IRE1α maintains lipid homeostasis through its regulation of miRNAs, a regulatory pathway distinct from the canonical IRE1α-UPR pathway under acute ER stress.


With the ever-increasing demands on multimedia applications, cloud computing, due to its economical but powerful resources, is becoming a natural platform to process, store, and share multimedia contents. However, the employment of cloud computing also brings new security and privacy issues as few public cloud servers can be fully trusted by users. In this paper, we focus on how to securely share video contents to a certain group of people during a particular time period in cloud-based multimedia systems, and propose a cryptographic approach, a provably secure time-domain attribute-based access control (TAAC) scheme, to secure the cloud-based video content sharing. Specifically, we first propose a provably secure time-domain attribute-based encryption scheme by embedding the time into both the ciphertexts and the keys, such that only users who hold sufficient attributes in a specific time slot can decrypt the video contents. We also propose an efficient attribute updating method to achieve the dynamic change of users' attributes, including granting new attributes, revoking previous attributes, and regranting previously revoked attributes. We further discuss on how to control those video contents that can be commonly accessed in multiple time slots and how to make special queries on video contents generated in previous time slots. The security analysis and performance evaluation show that TAAC is provably secure in generic group model and efficient in practice.


In this paper, I selectively discuss recent empirical work on the consequences of global labor mobility. I examine how international migration affects the incomes of individuals in sending and receiving countries and of migrants themselves. Were a social planner to choose the migration policies that would maximize global welfare, she would need to know, among other values, the elasticities of wages, prices, taxes, and government transfers with respect to national labor supplies as well as how these parameters vary across countries. My goal is to evaluate the progress of the literature in terms of providing these inputs.


The universe that science reveals to us can seem far outside the comfort zone of the human mind. Subjects near and far open up dizzying vistas, from the infinitesimal to the colossal. Humanity, the unlikely product of uncountable coincidences on unimaginable scales, inhabits a tumultuous universe that extends from our immediate environs to the most distant galaxies and beyond. But when the mind balks at the vertiginous complexity of the universe, science unveils the elegance amid the chaos.

 In this book, Thomas R. Scott ventures into the known and the unknown to explain our universe and the laws that govern it. The Universe as It Really Is begins with physics and the building blocks of the universe—time, gravity, light, and elementary particles—and chemistry's ability to explain the interactions among them. Scott, with the assistance of James Lawrence Powell, next tours the earth and atmospheric sciences to explain the forces that shape our planet and then takes off for the stars to describe our place in the cosmos. He provides vivid introductions to our collective scientific inheritance, narrating discoveries such as the shape of the atom and the nature of the nucleus or how we use GPS to measure time and what that has to do with relativity. A clear demonstration of the power of scientific reasoning to bring the incomprehensible within our grasp, The Universe as It Really Is gives an engrossing account of just how much we do understand about the world around us.


Over the past few years, researchers have been exploring possibilities for how embedded sensors can free children from traditional interaction strategies with keyboards and mice. In this paper, we consider sensingbased interactions from a child's perspective. That is, how children decide to handle sensor data and affect state changes in their environment. We will present this in the context of our research on physical interactive storytelling environments for children. The system architecture will be presented as well as an empirical study of the technology's use with 18 children, ages 5-6. We will discuss the challenges and opportunities for kindergarten children to become designers of their own sensing-based interactions. ________________________________________________________________________


In the United States, the exercise of police authority—and the public's trust that police authority is used properly—is a recurring concern. Contemporary prescriptions for police reform hold that the public would trust the police more and feel a greater obligation to comply and cooperate if police-citizen interactions were marked by higher levels of procedural justice by police. In this book, Robert E. Worden and Sarah J. McLean argue that the procedural justice model of reform is a mirage. From a distance, procedural justice seems to offer relief from strained police-community relations. But a closer look at police organizations and police-citizen interactions shows that the relief offered by such reform is, in fact, illusory. A procedural justice model of policing is likely to be only loosely coupled with police practice, despite the best intentions, and improvements in procedural justice on the part of police are unlikely to result in corresponding improvements in citizens' perceptions of procedural justice. "Rigorous and thoughtful, this book's careful methodology and provocative conclusions on procedural justice illuminate key challenges for political leaders, policy makers, and practitioners who strive to improve police-community relations in America. A must-read for police researchers!" STEVEN MASTROFSKI, George Mason University "This timely book challenges widespread assumptions about procedural justice. It provides a potent reminder that much remains to be learned about how people form perceptions of the police, and how police agencies can influence these perceptions." EDWARD R. MAGUIRE, Arizona State University "Since Ferguson, the nation has been searching for solutions to the legitimacy crisis that has engulfed policing. Procedural justice was the number one reform put forward by President Obama's commission. This book digs into this proposal and provides the best evidence to date on how it actually affects police behavior and public acceptance of being policed." WESLEY G. SKOGAN, Northwestern University ROBERT E. WORDEN is Director of the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety and Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University at Albany, SUNY. SARAH J. McLEAN is Associate Director and Director of Research and Technical Assistance at the John F. Finn Institute for Public Safety.


Background: Quercetin (QR) and thymoquinone (TQ) are herbal remedies that are currently extensively used by the general population to prevent and treat various chronic conditions. Therefore, investigating the potential of pharmacokinetic interactions caused by the concomitant use of these herbal remedies and conventional medicine is warranted to ensure patient safety. Purpose of the Study: This study was conducted to determine the inhibitory effect of QR and TQ, two commonly used remedies, on the activities of selected cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes that play an important role in drug metabolism and/or toxicology. Materials and Methods: The in vitro studies were conducted using fluorescence-based high throughput assays using human c-DNA baculovirus expressed CYP enzymes. For measuring CYP2E1 activity, a validated High-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) assay was utilized to measure the formation of 6-hydroxychlorzoxazone. Results: The obtained half-maximum inhibitory concentration values with known positive control inhibitors of this study were comparable to the published values indicating accurate experimental techniques. Although QR did not show any significant effect on CYP1A2 and CYP2E1, it exhibited a strong inhibitory effect against CYP2D6 and a moderate effect against CYP2C19 and CYP3A4. On the other hand, TQ demonstrated a strong and a moderate inhibitory effect against CYP3A4 and CYP2C19, respectively. Conclusions: The findings of this study may indicate that consumption of QR or TQ, in the form of food or dietary supplements, with drugs that are metabolized by CYP2C19, CYP2D6, or CYP3A4 may cause significant herb-drug interactions. Abbreviations used: ABT: Aminobenztriazole, BZF: 7,8 Benzoflavone, CYP: Cytochrome P450, GB: Gingko Biloba, IC50: Half-maximum inhibitory concentration, KTZ: Ketoconazole, QND: Quinidine, QR: Quercetin, TCP: Tranylcypromine, TQ: Thymoquinone.


Can Transformer perform 2D object- and region-level recognition from a pure sequence-to-sequence perspective with minimal knowledge about the 2D spatial structure? To answer this question, we present You Only Look at One Sequence (YOLOS), a series of object detection models based on the vanilla Vision Transformer with the fewest possible modifications, region priors, as well as inductive biases of the target task. We find that YOLOS pre-trained on the mid-sized ImageNet-1k dataset only can already achieve quite competitive performance on the challenging COCO object detection benchmark, e.g., YOLOS-Base directly adopted from BERT-Base architecture can obtain 42.0 box AP on COCO val. We also discuss the impacts as well as limitations of current pre-train schemes and model scaling strategies for Transformer in vision through YOLOS. Code and pre-trained models are available at https://github.com/hustvl/YOLOS.


This article identifies two responses to social challenge by charismatic Pentecostal churches in Nigeria. I argue that churches taking a centripetal position are either socially passive or they collude with corrupt leaders and groups who undermine efforts toward political, social and human improvement; yet, in their engagement with society they offer spiritual solutions to myriad social and political problems. Conversely, churches taking a centrifugal approach try to confront political and social problems, but these churches are relatively few and located primarily in Lagos, although they are growing in influence. I conclude that charismatic Pentecostalism in Nigeria currently is shifting from strictly spiritual solutions to sociopolitical problems to an emphasis on meeting social needs in practical ways.


Unlike Zhu Suchen's 朱素臣 (1621?–after 1701) other extant chuanqi plays that survive only in manuscripts, Qinlou yue 秦樓月 (The Moon Shining upon the Qin Tower) was printed in a deluxe woodblock edition during the Kangxi period. This carefully executed imprint features an array of paratextual elements: preface; illustrations with matching poems by prominent seventeenth-century literati figures; a poetry collection by Chen Susu 陳素素, aYangzhou courtesan cast as the heroine of the play; and an appendix with women writers' poems commenting on Susu's poetry and portrait. Such a design points to an editorial choice to stage both a male-centered literati reading community and a cohort of women writers from the Jiangnan area who gather to celebrate women's literary talent on the book page. By examining how these two bodies of readers reach a sense of solidarity in distinctive ways, this article aims at a better understanding of the xinxi 新戲 (new plays) of Suzhou as an important regional phenomenon of cultural production. Qinlou yue in the book's physical form makes use of the realms of both commercial and private printing to appeal to Ming loyalist sentiments widespread among the southern elite, and to embrace a new sense of womanhood epitomized by women writers and readers who had achieved iconic status in the Jiangnan region.


The requirement to evaluate a gain over the whole signal space is one of the restrictions in the well-known small gain theorem. Using the concepts of local gain and strict causality a local form of small gain theorem is proposed, which can be used to analyze input magnitude dependent stability problems of feedback nonlinear systems, such as a Volterra system. An uncertainty model for truncation error and kernel mismatch is derived to address the robustness issue of approximating a nonlinear system by a finite Volterra series in the context of closed-loop control. The local small gain theorem is then used to analyze the feedback properties of the uncertain Volterra system and a sufficient condition for robust stability is obtained.


Overweight and obese
individuals are at increased risk for many diseases and health conditions,
including but not limited to the following: hypertension; osteoarthritis;
dyslipidemia; type 2 diabetes; coronary heart
disease and stroke. Consequently, individuals who are obese are more
likely to use health services and are more likely
to use costly health services than non-obese individuals. Between 1987
and 2001, growth in obesity related health expenditures accounted for 27
percent of the growth in inflation-adjusted per capita health care spending.
Researchers, popular press and the television news media have paid considerable
attention to the effect that farm subsidies have on dietary habits and obesity.
Prominent researchers in the field have
concluded that US farm subsidies have had a negligible impact on obesity. However, even small increases in obesity rates are associated with higher health care
expenditures. The primary intent of this study is to break down the linkages
from farm subsidy to health expenditure and shed light on the unintended implications
of the farm subsidy program. We find that agricultural subsidies have the
potential to influence health care expenditures.


This paper presents an updated cost-benefit analysis of the High/Scope Perry preschool Program, using data on individuals aged 40. Children were randomly assigned to a treatment or control group. Program costs are compared against treatment impacts on educational resources, earnings, criminal activity, and welfare receipt. Net present values are calculated for participants, the general public, and society. The treatment group obtains significantly higher earnings. For the general public, higher tax revenues, lower criminal justice system expenditures, and lower welfare payments easily outweigh program costs; they repay $12.90 for every $1 invested. However, program gains come mainly from reduced crime by males.


The extent of epithelial cellular material (ECM) occurring in venous blood samples after diagnostic core needle biopsy (CNB) was studied in 23 patients with CNB diagnosed prostate cancer without provable metastases and 15 patients without cancer. The data show a significant increase of ECM in the peripheral blood sampled 20 seconds or 30 minutes after the last of 10 CNB procedures compared to the number of ECM detectable in the blood samples taken before the performance of CNB. The data indicate that diagnostic CNB of prostate cancer causes an extensive tissue trauma with a potential risk of cancer cell dissemination.


A Picture of Disappearing Ice Global warming is accelerating the loss of ice sheet mass by melting, sublimation, and erosion of their margins. In order to provide a better context for understanding contemporary losses, a longer record of the recent past is needed. Kjær et al. (p. 569) extend the record of thinning along the northwest margin of the Greenland Ice Sheet back to the mid-1980s, by using archived aerial photographs in conjunction with a digital elevation model and comparing their results to more recent data. Northwestern Greenland has experienced two dynamic ice loss events in the past three decades. Local ice loss appears to be caused by a combination of predictable surface processes that operate over decadal time scales and ones that involve the rapid movement of ice over periods of 3 to 5 years that exhibit strong regional differences. Archived photographs extending back to the mid-1980s help show the role of dynamic thinning in ice mass loss from Greenland. Global warming is predicted to have a profound impact on the Greenland Ice Sheet and its contribution to global sea-level rise. Recent mass loss in the northwest of Greenland has been substantial. Using aerial photographs, we produced digital elevation models and extended the time record of recent observed marginal dynamic thinning back to the mid-1980s. We reveal two independent dynamic ice loss events on the northwestern Greenland Ice Sheet margin: from 1985 to 1993 and 2005 to 2010, which were separated by limited mass changes. Our results suggest that the ice mass changes in this sector were primarily caused by short-lived dynamic ice loss events rather than changes in the surface mass balance. This finding challenges predictions about the future response of the Greenland Ice Sheet to increasing global temperatures.


Extracted from text ... Lorraine Osman
Pharmacy Practice
So what do we do about it? Ban it? But it's useful.
Make it prescription only? But it's safe and effective if
taken correctly.
Trust our health professionals to control sales? That's
exactly what our Medicines Regulatory Authority has
done. Some products fall into Schedule 2, and others into
Schedule 6. Schedule 6 products are supplied only in an
extremely controlled environment and under specific
circumstances.
Schedule 2 products are sold only in pharmacies, and may
only be sold by pharmacists, pharmacist interns and
pharmacist's assistants working under personal supervision
of a pharmacist. The intention ..


This paper presents a reflexive account of recently completed qualitative research into mentoring relationships between 'disaffected' 16-19 year olds and university students. Despite the current popularity of mentoring for socially excluded youth, research has been dominated by quantitative psychological studies and evaluation projects, with little attempt to explore the meanings that participants bring to the processes of mentoring. It has also tended to disembed mentoring from its social, economic and political contexts. Addressing these gaps created challenges for the researcher, particularly in analysing the data and representing the findings. Interviewing teenagers with emotional and learning difficulties generated sometimes limited data. The more articulate and constructed views of the mentors often threatened to marginalise the mentees' experiences as the data was transformed. These experiences are considered in relation to issues of cultural capital. Using unconventional data analysis techniques led to a new theoretical understanding of mentoring as a process of producing specific forms of cultural capital ('employability') in both mentors and mentees. It also reveals how researchers need to be conscious of their own power to construct or reject respondents' cultural resources as cultural capital. The paper concludes that the use of inappropriate research methods reinforces this power and limits the quality of research.


The thesis discusses and evaluates a model of video information retrieval that
incorporates a variation of Relevance Feedback and facilitates object-based
interaction and ranking. Video and image retrieval systems suffer from poor retrieval
performance compared to text-based information retrieval systems and this is mainly
due to the poor discrimination power of visual features that provide the search index.
Relevance Feedback is an iterative approach where the user provides the system with relevant and non-relevant judgements of the results and the system re-ranks the results based on the user judgements. Relevance feedback for video retrieval can help overcome the poor discrimination power of the features with the user essentially pointing the system in the right direction based on their judgements. The ostensive relevance feedback approach discussed in this work weights user judgements based on the o r d e r in which they are made with newer judgements weighted higher than older judgements.

The main aim of the thesis is to explore the benefit of ostensive relevance feedback for video retrieval with a secondary aim of exploring the effectiveness of object retrieval. A user experiment has been developed in which three video retrieval system variants are evaluated on a corpus of video content. The first system applies standard relevance feedback weighting while the second and third apply ostensive relevance feedback with variations in the decay weight. In order to evaluate effective object retrieval, animated video content provides the corpus content for the evaluation experiment as animated content offers the highest performance for object detection and extraction.


In many animals, rhythmic motor activity is governed by neural limit cycle oscillations under the control of sensory feedback. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, the wingbeat rhythm is generated myogenically by stretch-activated muscles and hence independently from direct neural input. In this study, we explored if generation and cycle-by-cycle control of Drosophila's wingbeat are functionally separated, or if the steering muscles instead couple into the myogenic rhythm as a weak forcing of a limit cycle oscillator. We behaviourally tested tethered flying flies for characteristic properties of limit cycle oscillators. To this end, we mechanically stimulated the fly's 'gyroscopic' organs, the halteres, and determined the phase relationship between the wing motion and stimulus. The flies synchronized with the stimulus for specific ranges of stimulus amplitude and frequency, revealing the characteristic Arnol'd tongues of a forced limit cycle oscillator. Rapid periodic modulation of the wingbeat frequency prior to locking demonstrates the involvement of the fast steering muscles in the observed control of the wingbeat frequency. We propose that the mechanical forcing of a myogenic limit cycle oscillator permits flies to avoid the comparatively slow control based on a neural central pattern generator.


Thin films of Ga-In oxide (150 nm) have been deposited on glass substrate at room temperature by radio-frequency (rf) magnetron sputtering with two targets of Ga2O3 and metallic In, on which rf-powers of 150 W and 6080 W were added respectively. In the oxide films prepared by this method, the difference in the transmittance, Δ T, between the as-deposited state and the annealed state (400°C × 10 min) was more than 70% in the wavelength region of 350600 nm and at the wavelength of 320 nm, the value of ΔT of 42% was obtained. It was found from XRD spectra that (1) the In (101) peak was found in the as-deposited state (colored state) and (2) the In2O3 (222) peak was formed in the annealed state (transparent state). It was recognized from XPS measurement that the phase transition between the as-deposited state and the annealed state well corresponded to the transition of In (colored state) →In2O3 (transparent state). The ability to record on these oxide films without protection layer, using THG of Nd : YAG laser (δ=355 nm, 3 ns) was confirmed. These results will be useful for highly sensitive optical recording films with high density in the ultraviolet-blue wavelenght region.


Twenty three species of the family Phytoseiidae are known from La Reunion Island, France, of which 14 are newly recorded (10 Amblyseiinae, 2 Phytoseiinae and 2 Typhlodrominae). The subfamily Typhlodrominae is mentioned for the first time from the island. Additional host plants and locality records are also given for 5 species of Amblyseiinae already recorded, as well as for the newly recorded species. Brief descriptions of all the species are given.


Energy conservation is an important step to overcome the energy crisis and prevent environmental pollution. Casting industry is a major consumer of energy among all the industries. The distribution of electrical energy consumed in all the departments of the foundry is presented. Nearly 70% of the energy is consumed especially in the melting department alone. Production of casting involves number of process variables. Even though lot of efforts has been taken to prevent defects, it occurs in the casting due to variables present in the process. This paper focuses the energy saving by improving the casting yield and by reducing the rejections. Furthermore, an analysis is made on power consumption for melting in the induction furnace to produce defective castings and improvement in the casting yield. The energy consumed to produce defective castings in all other departments is also presented. This analysis reveals that without any further investment in the foundry, it is possible to save 3248.15 kWh of energy by reducing the rejections as well as by improving the casting yield. The redesign of the feeding system and the reduced major rejection shrinkage in the body casting improved the casting yield from 56% to 72% and also the effective yield from 12.89% to 66.80%.


Following the most tumultuous decade in copyright history, Professor John Tehranian's recent book – Infringement Nation: Copyright 2.0 and You – promises a broad-ranging account of the complexities of copyright infringement in the Internet Age. There can be little doubt that copyright infringement has exploded since Napster ushered in Web 2.0 a little more than a decade ago. On the positive side of the ledger, millions of ordinary netizens create, distribute, and share countless new and original user-generated works on a daily basis. There is also little doubt, however, that a massive volume of clearly infringing user-uploaded professional content courses through the Internet. This essay critically analyzes Professor Tehranian's selective account of the "infringement nation.�? While jammed with historical tidbits, intriguing anecdotes, and illustrations of over-enforcement by copyright owners, Infringement Nation barely mentions the effects of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted works on composers, recording artists, film producers, screenwriters, novelists, or journalists. What little Infringement Nation has to say about Internet piracy centers on the risk of crushing liability that copyright law imposes on file-sharers. This distorted infringement "census�? leads to misdirected policy recommendations. After exposing the limitations of Infringement Nation's lens, this essay fills in important missing regions from the census – the professional content industries that have been struggling to deal with rampant unauthorized distribution of their works. With this fuller picture of the infringement landscape in mind, the essay closes by exploring the challenge of channeling consumers back into the content marketplace.


Crash involvement by 16- and 17-year-old drivers has decreased substantially over the past 15 years. This is largely due to the widespread adoption of Graduated Driver Licensing (GDL) programs and to the Great Recession, which substantially reduced driving by young teenagers. However, with one exception—New Jersey—GDL systems apply only to new drivers younger than 18, and crash reductions have been smaller among older teenage drivers. A recent study estimated that one third of new young drivers do not obtain a license to drive unsupervised until age 18 or later. Historically, studies of novice drivers in the United States have focused on drivers ages 17 and younger; many have only studied 16- year-olds. Individuals who do not begin driving until age 18 or older have rarely been studied in the U.S. The purpose of this study was to examine the crash involvement of newly licensed young drivers up through age 20 in two states—California and North Carolina—for their first three years of unsupervised driving, to determine how crash rates of these novices are related to the age at which they began driving. This was done before and after each state's GDL system was introduced.


Most soil-structure interaction (SSI) studies use fairly simple rheological soil models that assume the soil-foundation system remains elastic. The goal of this study is to use these simplified models and systems to analyse almost exhaustively the impact of using these models on designing structures to account for SSI. To achieve this objective, an equivalent linear soil-structure model was examined in a comprehensive Monte Carlo simulation. This paper presents a study of 2.04 million simulations, over superstructures with periods ranging between 0.1 and 3.5 seconds, and over reasonable variations of soil, structure, and earthquake parameters. The overall finding shows in any case, there is over 70% of probability in which structural response is reduced due to SSI effects.


We present a technique for simplifying a triangulated surface. Simplifying consists of approximating the surface with another surface of lower triangle count. Our algorithm can preserve the volume of a solid to within machine accuracy; it favors the creation of near-equilateral triangles. We develop novel methods for reporting and representing a bound to the approximation error between a simplified surface and the original, and respecting a variable tolerance across the surface. A different positive error value is reported at each vertex. By linearly blending the error values in between vertices, we define a volume of space, called the error volume, as the union of balls of linearly varying radii. The error volume is built dynamically as the simplification progresses, on top of preexisting error volumes that it contains. We also build a tolerance volume to forbid simplification errors exceeding a local tolerance. The information necessary to compute error values is local to the star of a vertex; accordingly, the complexity of the algorithm is either linear or in O(n log n) in the original number of surface edges, depending on the variant. We extend the mechanisms of error and tolerance volumes to preserve during simplification scalar and vector attributes associated with surface vertices. Assuming a linear variation across triangles, error and tolerance volumes are defined in the same fashion as for positional error. For normals, a corrective term is applied to the error measured at the vertices to compensate for nonlinearities.


This paper presents an innovative methodology to improve machining of nitrile rubber. The research comprises of turning of nitrile rubber under ambient (dry) and low- temperature (dry ice) condition against HSS cutting tool. Individual machining force data for all the tests were documented with the help of a Kistler dynamometer. The low temperatures freeze the material previous to machining so that it cannot alter or adhere to the cutting edge, thus resulting in low wear on the edge and improved machining. To achieve a stable condition for the rubber machining, a mandrel was designed to hold the rubber workpiece.  It was observed that 36.19% reduction in cutting force, 6.08% decrease in radial force and 23.3% drop in feed force were obtained when cutting was made at low-temperature machining as compared to dry cutting with cutting speed increased from 162.58 m/min to 226.19 m/min, with 1 mm depth of cut and tool feed of 0.5 mm/rev. This concludes that a remarkable decrease in cutting force value can be obtained by adopting low-temperature cooling. Thus, this new approach concludes that dry ice machining of nitrile rubber should be amended in a directive to acquire better machining results.


Few fat studies scholars have attempted to identify how obesity stigma and fatphobia play a prominent role in rape culture, and how responses to instances of sexual violence differentiate for fat women. Fat women are caught between a dichotomy of being completely undesirable, or a comical object to be fetishized. The result of this dichotomy is that these women are told to be flattered, or even grateful, for any kind of sexual attention they receive, even if that attention is not consensual. The implications of this devastating social issue become even greater when we consider the reality of rape culture. Instances of sexual violence against fat women are not isolated cases, they are representative of an over-arching fatphobic oppression that is engrained into our contemporary society. When fat women are sexually assaulted, there is a common response that they should be thankful for any kind of sexual act they receive, as they are undesirable and thus no one should be sexually interested in them (with the exception of a 'bizarre' fetish). This is problematic not only for completely denying fat women sexual agency, but also for implying that rape is somehow a form of "sexual attention". These dangerous misconceptions are fueled by a fatphobic rhetoric and inflicts an objectification of fat bodies, by implying they aren't important enough for the violation of them to even be considered an offense. Recent scholarship in the emerging field of fat studies has yet to identify the systemic issues that lie within the sexual assault of fat women and the responses to these incidents of assault. From a feminist perspective, it is possible to identify the necessity of this type of academic work. Attention to the body, body politics, and control of the body is an important focal point for feminist progression. The following paper aims to map fat women's experiences in instances of sexual assault. Focusing on the synthesis of sexism and fatphobia as two different social issues, fat bodies will be considered from an assault narrative. Gendered fat oppression will be considered as a framework for systemic sexual violence that affects women. As well, the fetishization of fat bodies will be criticized as a means for furthering the objectification and stigmatization of fat women. The male practice of "hogging", a practice in which men prey on women they deem fat or unattractive to satisfy sexual desires or compete with their peers, will be exposed and analyzed as a key example of this type of fetishization. Beyond the stranger rape narrative, instances of sexual violence perpetrated by the intimate partners of fat women will be explored and identified as a substantial part of the systemic issue of sexual violence. The construction of the dangerous ideologies that surround the embodiment of fat women will be dissected from a feminist perspective while confronting the fat stigma that has created these ideologies.


Abstract Community arts projects have long been used in community development. Nevertheless, despite many liberatory tales that have emerged, scholars caution that well-meaning organizations and artists may inadvertently become complicit in efforts that distract from fundamental inequities, instrumentalizing creative expression as a means to transform potentially dissident youth into productive and cooperative 'citizens'. This article examines how social circus – using circus arts with equity-seeking communities – has been affecting personal and community development among youth with marginalized lifestyles in Quebec, Canada. Employing a 'critical mixed methods' design, we analysed the impacts of the social circus methodology and partnership model deployed on transformation at the personal and community level. Our analysis suggests that transformation in this context is grounded in principles of using embodied play to re-forge habits and fortify an identity within community and societal acceptance through recognizing individual and collective creative contributions. The disciplinary dimension of the programme, however, equally suggests an imprinting of values of 'productivity' by putting marginality 'to work'. In the social circus programmes studied, tensions between the goal of better coping within the existing socioeconomic system and building skills to transform inequitable dynamics within dominant social and cultural processes, are navigated by carving out a space in society that offers alternative ways of seeing and engaging.


Graft- and plate-related complications are not uncommon problems associated with anterior cervical fusion surgery. Although the reasons for such complications are protean, one potential set of etiologies centers on plate design. Dynamic cervical plates, which allow for better load sharing while providing overall resistance to motion, address perceived biomechanical deficiencies of rigid cervical plates. However, despite the theoretic advantages of dynamic plating over rigid plate fixation, there are concerns that settling associated with dynamic plates could lead to segmental kyphosis or foraminal narrowing and that excessive motion may lead to inferior fusion rates. The surgeon using these implants should be familiar with differences among the various types of dynamic plates and should perform the plating procedure appropriately to accommodate the expected settling.


In Cassette Culture, Peter Manuel tells how a new mass medium--the portable cassette player--caused a major upheaval in popular culture in the world's second-largest country. The advent of cassette technology in the 1980s transformed India's popular music industry from the virtual monopoly of a single multinational LP manufacturer to a free-for-all among hundreds of local cassette producers. The result was a revolution in the quantity, quality, and variety of Indian popular music and its patterns of dissemination and consumption. Manuel shows that the cassette revolution, however, has brought new contradictions and problems to Indian culture. While inexpensive cassettes revitalized local subcultures and community values throughout the subcontinent, they were also a vehicle for regional and political factionalism, new forms of commercial vulgarity, and, disturbingly, the most provocative sorts of hate-mongering and religious chauvinism. Cassette Culture is the first scholarly account of Indian popular music and the first case study of a technological revolution now occurring throughout the world. It will be an essential resource for anyone interested in modern India, communications theory, world popular music, or contemporary global culture.


Introduction: In the UK, the economic cost of absenteeism, loss in productivity and the demand on health care services is considerable. A substantial amount of time off work certified by a doctor is due to common mental disorders. There is a need for rapid and effective interventions at step 2 of the care system.
Objective: The impact of a single-session of a brief intervention, called Havening, in addressing depression, anxiety and impaired functioning in the workplace are presented. The aim of this study was to explore the efficacy of a single-session of Havening in improving self-reported impaired occupational functioning.
Methods: Twenty-seven participants completed the Patient Health Questionnaire depression module (PHQ-9), Generalised Anxiety Disorder Assessment (GAD-7) and the Work and Social Adjustment Scale (WSAS) before, 1-week and 2-months after the Havening intervention.
Results: The single-session of the Havening intervention had a positive impact on probable depression (PHQ-9), probable anxiety (GAD-7) and work and social adjustment (WSAS) scores over time. The scores on all three measures improved over time. A significant effect for time was observed PHQ-9 (χ2(2) =30.79 , p<0.001), the GAD-7 (χ2(2) = 38.18, p<0.001) and the WSAS (χ2(2) = 22.62, p<0.001).
Conclusion: The single-session of Havening proved efficacious in reducing self-reported symptoms on the PHQ-9, GAD-7 and the WSAS in a sample of participants who reported being occupationally impaired.


Component substitution (CS) and multi-resolution analysis (MRA) are the two basic categories in the extended general image fusion (EGIF) framework for fusing panchromatic (Pan) and multispectral (MS) images. Despite of the method diversity, there are some unaddressed questions and contradictory conclusions about fusion. For example, is the spatial enhancement of CS methods better than MRA methods? Is spatial enhancement and spectral preservation competitive? How to achieve spectral consistency defined by Wald et al. in 1997? In their definition any synthetic image should be as identical as possible to the original image once degraded to its original resolution. To answer these questions, this research first finds out that all the CS and MRA methods can be derived from the Bayesian fusion method by adjusting a weight parameter to balance contributions from the spatial injection and spectral preservation models. The spectral preservation model assumes a Gaussian distribution of the desired high-resolution MS images, with the up-sampled low-resolution MS images comprising the mean value. The spatial injection model assumes a linear correlation between Pan and MS images. Thus the spatial enhancement depends on the weight parameter but is irrelevant of which category (i.e., MRA or CS) the method belongs to. This paper then adds a spectral consistency model in the Bayesian fusion framework to guarantee Wald's spectral consistency with regard to arbitrary sensor point spread function. Although the spectral preservation in the EGIF methods is competitive to spatial enhancement, the Wald's spectral consistency property is complementary with spatial enhancement. We conducted experiments on satellite images acquired by the QuickBird and WorldView-2 satellites to confirm our analysis, and found that the performance of the traditional EGIF methods improved significantly after adding the spectral consistency model.


Student academic success and positive satisfaction in first year health sciences programs is shaped by their transition experience. An introduction to core knowledge, study skills, and engagement with staff and students has historically been overlooked, but this has been newly recognised as a contributor to first year success, especially with mass higher education of students from diverse backgrounds. The University of South Australia 'Preparing for Health Sciences' workshop was designed to assist the student transition into health science programs. The workshop improved confidence and enthusiasm in starting university (56% pre- and 95% post-workshop), and 97% considered the workshop effective overall. Introduction to biological principles was widely considered to be beneficial (87%). The attrition rate after the first semester in 2014 was 7.6%, which is appreciably lower than the standard 12% in science-based courses. These findings demonstrate that an introductory workshop does greatly assist in the transition of students into their health science programs.


Tyk2 belongs to the Janus kinase (JAK) family of receptor associated tyrosine kinases, characterized by a large N-terminal region, a kinase-like domain and a tyrosine kinase domain. It was previously shown that Tyk2 contributes to interferon-a (IFN-a) signaling not only catalytically, but also as an essential intracellular component of the receptor complex, being required for high affinity binding of IFN-a. For this function the tyrosine kinase domain was found to be dispensable. Here, it is shown that mutant cells lacking Tyk2 have significantly reduced IFN-a receptor 1 (IFNAR1) protein level, whereas the mRNA level is unaltered. Expression of the N-terminal region of Tyk2 in these cells reconstituted wild-type IFNAR1 level, but did not restore the binding activity of the receptor. Studies of mutant Tyk2 forms deleted at the N terminus indicated that the integrity of the N-terminal region is required to sustain IFNAR1. These studies also showed that the N-terminal region does not directly modulate the basal autophosphorylation activity of Tyk2, but it is required for efficient in vitro IFNAR1 phosphorylation and for rendering the enzyme activatable by IFN-a. Overall, these results indicate that distinct Tyk2 domains provide different functions to the receptor complex: the N-terminal region sustains IFNAR1 level, whereas the kinase-like domain provides a function toward high affinity


Emulsion-templated (polyHIPE) scaffolds for bone tissue engineering were produced by photopolymerisation of a mixture of trimethylolpropane tris(3-mercaptopropionate) and dipentaerythritol penta-/hexa-acrylate in the presence of hydroxyapatite (HA) or strontium-modified hydroxyapatite (SrHA) nanoparticles. Porous and permeable polyHIPE materials were produced regardless of the type or incorporation level of the bioceramic, although higher loadings resulted in a larger average pore diameter. Inclusion of HA and SrHA into the scaffolds was confirmed by EDX-SEM, FTIR and XPS and quantified by thermogravimetry. Addition of HA to polyHIPE scaffolds significantly enhanced compressive strength (148-216 kPa) without affecting compressive modulus (2.34-2.58 MPa). The resulting materials were evaluated in vitro as scaffolds for the 3D culture of MG63 osteoblastic cells vs. a commercial 3D cell culture scaffold (Alvetex®). Cells were able to migrate throughout all scaffolds, achieving a high density by the end of the culture period (21 days). The presence of HA and in particular SrHA gave greatly enhanced cell proliferation, as determined by staining of histological sections and total protein assay (Bradford). Furthermore, Von Kossa and Alizarin Red staining demonstrated significant mineralisation from inclusion of bioceramics, even at the earliest time point (day 7). Production of alkaline phosphatase (ALP), an early osteogenic marker, was used to investigate the influence of HA and SrHA on cell function. ALP levels were significantly reduced on HA- and SrHA-modified scaffolds by day 7, which agrees with the observed early onset of mineralisation in the presence of the bioceramics. The presented data support our conclusions that HA and SrHA enhance osteoblastic cell proliferation on polyHIPE scaffolds and promote early mineralisation.


The "Cosmological Constant Problem" (CCP) is widely considered a crisis in contemporary theoretical physics. Unfortunately, the search for its resolution is hampered by open disagreement about what is, strictly, the problem. This disagreement stems from the observation that the CCP is not a problem within any of our current theories, and nearly all of the details of those future theories for which the CCP could be made a problem are up for grabs. Given this state of affairs, I discuss how one ought to make sense of the role of the CCP in physics and generalize some lessons from it.


Visual communications are defined and illustrated in their contemporary operations management setting. They manifest four distinct advantages: assimilation, exposure, evoking and unifying. In Japan, they are related to underlying inherent values and ensure employee involvement. The Japanese experience itself, with its consequent relative success in the field of visual communications, is both investigated and analysed as to type, functions and associated purposes. Visual communications are perceived as galvanising into company plans. Their potential and transferability to Western corporate cultures are explored with a view to their power to deliver information through the hierarchical organisational structure. The underlying thrust is towards achieving continuous improvement in communication, the impact of which would provide a better quality of work life for the employee and improve performance.


Group-oriented services and wireless communication networks are among the emerging technologies of the last few years. Group key management, which is an important building bloc in securing group communication, has received a particularattention in both academic and industry research communities. This is due to the economical relevance of group-based applications, such as video on demand, videoconferencing, collaborative work. The key management concerns the distribution and updates of the key material each time a member joins or leaves the group. The dynamic aspect of group applications due to free membership joins and leaves in addition to members' mobility makes difficult the design of efficient and scalable key management protocols. Indeed, to secure group communication in mobile environment, the protocol must deal not only with dynamic group membership but also with dynamic member location. Thus, the challenges in designing secure and scalable key management protocols are: the dynamic updates of the key caused by frequent joins and leaves, the large size of the group and the mobility of group members. Many academic researches have addressed the first and the third challenges. However the mobility challenge has not been widely addressed. In this paper, we present our solution for group key management with a mobility support. Our protocol focuses on the above three challenges. It is highly scalable to dynamic groups and treats the nodes' mobility with a null re-keying cost and keeps perfect backward and forward secrecies. Our simulation studies show that our protocol makes better performance compared to other protocols while reducing the overall overhead and the number of re-keying messages and has no security failures.


The advance of modern satellites (e.g. Quickbird, Ikonos) made possible to extract the "instantaneous" shoreline with a very good accuracy (1 to 3 pixels i.e. less than 2 m). The horizontal instantaneous shoreline shift, due to fluctuation of the sea surface elevation, is significant for beaches comprising fine sand and should always be taken into account when dealing with shorelines extracted from aerial or satellite images. In this paper a) we describe the methodology used to study this problem, b) we find the maximum error which is introduced when we assume that the instantaneous shoreline - extracted from satellite images - is identical to the MHWL shoreline, c) we give two empirical equations which can be used as a "rule of thumb" to calculate the maximum fluctuation of the horizontal position of the instantaneous shoreline, d) we suggest that by knowing the exact time that the image is taken, the mean grain size of the beach material and the sea surface fluctuation in the area under investigation, it is possible to correct the instantaneous shoreline to produce the MHWL shoreline.


Afferent loop syndrome (ALS) is a debilitating complication of recurrent gastric cancer. Surgical intervention is usually not feasible in the face of poor general performance, presence of advanced peritoneal carcinomatosis and limited survival of the patients. Non-surgical approaches include internal drainage by stenting at the stenotic or anastomotic site and external drainage via the percutaneous routes. Percutaneous transhepatic duodenal drainage (PTDD) has been shown to provide effective palliation for ALS, but long-term catheterization is usually inevitable. We hereby present two cases of recurrent gastric cancer whose ALS was successfully treated with PTDD followed by weekly 24-h infusion of high-dose 5-fluorouracil and leucovorin (HDFL). PTDD rapidly ameliorated the incapacitating symptoms of ALS, and the effective, low-toxicity chemotherapy subsequently led to tumor regression, restoration of bowel patency and removal of the drainage tube. At present, both patients have remained ALS-free and drainage-free for 16 and 17 months, respectively. Our results indicate that this non-surgical approach with PTDD followed by weekly HDFL could serve as a safe and effective treatment for ALS in recurrent gastric cancer complicated by peritoneal carcinomatosis.


This comprehensive study of Anglicisms in the context of accelerated neological activity in Contemporary Metropolitan French not only provides detailed documentation and description of a fascinating topic, but opens up new vistas on issues of general linguistic interest: the effects of technology on language, the analyticity-syntheticity controversy, the lexical contribution to language vitality, the study of compound word formation, the interplay between cultural and linguistic affectivity. By investigating the dynamics of borrowing within the larger framework of general neological productivity and by bringing to bear cognitive and pragmatic considerations, a much-needed fresh approach to the entire question of Anglicisms takes shape.
All pertinent phenomena regarding Anglicisms in French — a topic which continues to command the attention of language commentators and defenders in France and elsewhere — are explored: integral borrowings, semantic calques, structural calques, the generation of pseudo-Anglicisms and hybrids, graphological and phonological phenomena. In each case, the phenomenon is investigated in the proper context of its interaction with other pertinent neological, phonological and sociocultural developments. These include general changes in French compound word formation, modified derivational dynamics, the microsystem of pseudo-Classical morphology, historic phonological instabilities, the pressure for more synthetic types of lexical production in relation to the needs of technology and society.
Rather than adhering rigidly to any single theoretical model, there is an attempt to set up a dialog between differing models in order to arrive at a multidimensional view of the phenomena investigated.


ABSTRACT The present study explored whether the successful detection of a jailhouse informant's ulterior motives, inconsistencies in testimony, and knowledge of privileged crime details would influence verdict decisions. Undergraduate participants (N = 381, 218 females) listened to a trial transcript in which a jailhouse informant's testimony was manipulated such that (1) the ulterior motive to provide false testimony was made salient or not, (2) an inconsistency was pointed out between the informant's testimony and a prior statement or not, and (3) an alternative explanation for how the informant learned the privileged crime details was suggested or not. Results showed both inconsistency and alternative explanation reduced conviction rates, though this was mediated by motive attributions. Participants appeared to interpret evidence differently depending on their motive attribution of the jailhouse informant. Participants who attributed the informant's behaviors to situational factors (i.e. reduced sentence) were more likely to vote not guilty and were more persuaded by the inconsistency and alternative explanation than participants who made dispositional attributions (i.e. he felt bad for the family, it's the right thing to do).


Dr. Stuart Quan from the Division of Sleep Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA moderated the topic "The Diagnosis and Management of Obstructive Sleep Apnea" with Drs. Vishesh Kapur from the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, and Phyllis Zee from Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL. The discussion focused primarily on: The clinical symptoms of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) including daytime consequences; OSA diagnosis and prevalence; the use of polysomnography versus ambulatory monitoring for OSA diagnosis; screening tools; long term side effects with continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP); the use of oral appliances; weight loss and sleep apnea; pharmacologic options; and surgical options. Med Roundtable Gen Med Ed. 2014;1(3):194–201.


In this research, we introduce digital technology to museum environment by providing spherical image contents. This research built two systems. First, we introduce binocular-type system providing visitors with information about exhibits such as historical backgrounds and surrounding environment when used, and then projection device that creates full-image space by scanning. According to evaluation experiment in a museum, the systems received positive opinion for introduction to the museum.


Background Hospital environment represents a congenial situation where microorganisms and susceptible patients are indoors together. Thus, the objective of this study is to provide fundamental data related to the microbial quality of indoor air of Jimma University Specialized Hospital wards, to estimate the health hazard and to create standards for indoor air quality control. Methods The microbial quality of indoor air of seven wards of Jimma University Specialized Hospital was determined. Passive air sampling technique, using open Petri-dishes containing different culture media, was employed to collect sample twice daily. Results The concentrations of bacteria and fungi aerosols in the indoor environment of the wards ranged between 2123 – 9733 CFU/m3. The statistical analysis showed that the concentrations of bacteria that were measured in all studied wards were significantly different from each other (p-value=0.017), whereas the concentrations of fungi that were measured in all sampled wards were not significantly different from each other (p-value=0.850). Moreover, the concentrations of bacteria that were measured at different sampling time (morning and afternoon) were significantly different (p-value =0.001). conclusion All wards that were included in the study were heavily contaminated with bacteria and fungi. Thus, immediate interventions are needed to control those environmental factors which favor the growth and multiplication of microbes, and it is vital to control visitors and students in and out the wards. Moreover, it is advisable that strict measures be put in place to check the increasing microbial load in the hospital environment.


Introduction There is a world of difference between the terms 'empirical' and 'empiricism'. The term 'empirical' refers to a battery of very useful research methods. The term 'empiricism' refers to a restrictive methodological doctrine which claims that researchers may only use empirical methods. The purpose of this paper is not to disparage empirical research methods, but to warn readers that the empiricist doctrine impoverishes any discipline where it is deeply entrenched (Gower, 1997, p10), and to suggest some avenues of counteraction. The subsequent sections explain why the empiricist doctrine impoverishes research. The first section shows that researchers need knowledge of various kinds of research processes and knowledge products, and that this knowledge is distributed over three academic disciplines: Philosophy of Science, History of Science and Research Methodology. The next three sections examine the origin and current status of the empiricist doctrine in the Philosophy of Science, and the debilitating effect of empiricism on research process and product knowledge in the History of Science and in Research Methodology. The last section calls for counter-action in the form of meta-research aimed at identifying non-empirical research processes and knowledge products that could be mentioned in those three disciplines especially in Research Methodology. As the argument in those sections is lengthy, no space is left over for detailed analysis of the impact of the empiricist doctrine on the Information Systems discipline, nor on any of the other disciplines under the umbrella of Informing Science. Readers are invited to judge by themselves, from their personal experience, whether those disciplines are dominated by the empiricist doctrine, and whether that doctrine has impoverished them. Methodological Knowledge Research is a process of producing new knowledge. So it is a productive process similar to the productive processes of manufacturing cars, computers, software, etc. Some useful insights emerge by analysing the other productive processes and then comparing them with the research process. All productive processes require productive knowledge. For example: * in order to produce cars, people need knowledge of car production; * in order to produce computers, they need knowledge of computer production; * in order to produce software, they need knowledge of software production. Productive knowledge consists of process knowledge as well as product knowledge (see Mende, 2000 for more detail). When manufacturers establish a new factory, they have to decide what the factory is to produce, and how the factory will produce it. So they need to know what kinds of manufactured products are needed, and what kinds of processes can be used to produce them. For example, when Henry Ford decided to produce motor cars, he had to know that people need cars, and that cars can be produced on a production line. Similarly, when researchers embark on a research project, they have to decide what knowledge product to produce and how to produce it. So they too need to know what kinds of knowledge products are required and what kinds of research processes can be used (Kantorovich, 1993, p11; Singleton, Straits & Straits, 1993, p18). For example, when Ohm embarked on his famous research project to find the empirical law of electric current variation with voltage, he had to be aware that people need empirical laws, and that empirical laws can be produced by means of inductive research processes. Similarly, when Darwin embarked on his famous research project on the theory of evolution, he had to be aware that people need theories, and that theories can be established by means of deductive research processes. Therefore, by analogy with manufacturing management, researchers need knowledge of different types of research processes and knowledge products. …


The successful synthesis of two-dimensional (2D) boron sheets typically relies on the utilization of a silver surface, which acts as a gated substrate compensating for the electron-deficiency of boron. However, how the structures of one-dimensional (1D) boron are affected by the gating effect remains unclear. By means of an unbiased global minimum structure search and density functional theory (DFT) computations, we discovered the coexistence of 2D boron sheets and 1D ribbons triggered by electrostatic gating. Specifically, at a low excess charge density level (<0.1 e per atom), 2D boron sheets dominate the low energy configurations. As the charge density increases (>0.3 e per atom), more 1D boron ribbons emerge, while the number of 2D layers is reduced. Additionally, a number of low-lying 1D boron ribbons were discovered, among which a flat borophene-like ribbon (FBR) was predicted to be stable and possess high mechanical strength. Moreover, the electride Ca2N was identified as an ideal substrate for the fabrication of the FBR because of its ability to supply a strong electrostatic field. This work bridges the gap between 2D and 1D boron structures, reveals the polymorphism of 1D boron ribbons under the electrostatic gating effect, and in general provides broad implications for future synthesis and applications of low-dimensional boron materials.


Leukocyte trafficking to sites of inflammation follows a defined temporal pattern, and evidence suggests that initial neutrophil transendothelial migration modifies endothelial cell phenotype. We tested the hypothesis that preconditioning of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) by neutrophils would also modify the subsequent transendothelial migration of T lymphocytes across cytokine-stimulated HUVEC in an in vitro flow assay. Using fluorescence microscopy, preconditioning of HUVEC by neutrophils was observed to significantly reduce the extent of subsequent stromal cell–derived factor-1α (SDF-1α [CXCL12])-mediated T lymphocyte transendothelial migration, without reducing accumulation. In contrast, recruitment of a second wave of neutrophils was unaltered. Conditioned medium harvested after transendothelial migration of neutrophils or supernatants from stimulated neutrophils mediated a similar blocking effect, which was negated using a specific neutrophil elastase inhibitor. Furthermore, T lymphocyte transendothelial migration was inhibited by treatment of HUVEC with purified neutrophil elastase, which selectively cleaved the amino terminus of HUVEC-bound SDF-1α, which is required for its chemotactic activity. The reduction in T lymphocyte transendothelial migration was not observed using a different chemokine, ELC (CCL19), and was not reversed by replenishment of SDF-1α, indicating endothelial retention of the inactivated chemokine. In summary, transmigrating neutrophils secrete localized elastase that is protected from plasma inhibitors, and thereby modulate trafficking of other leukocyte subsets by altering the endothelial-associated chemotactic activities.


The epic plains and arid deserts of Central Asia have witnessed some of the greatest migrations, as well as many of the most transformative developments, in the history of civilization. Christoph Baumer's ambitious four-volume treatment of the region charts the 3000-year drama of Scythians and Sarmatians; Soviets and transcontinental Silk Roads; trade routes and the transmission of ideas across the steppes; and the breathless and brutal conquests of Alexander the Great and Chinghiz Khan. Masterfully interweaving the stories of individuals and peoples, the author's engaging prose is richly augmented throughout by colour photographs taken on his own travels. For all the complexity of the history, Dr Baumer, a noted authority on Central Asia, never loses sight of the sweeping grandeur of its overall setting. Volume 1 focuses on the geography of the area now occupied by present-day Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, northern Afghanistan, western and central Mongolia and parts of southern Russia and northern China. Discussing the changing climates of the Palaeolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic and Bronze Ages, the author explores subjects as diverse as glacial retreat; the invention of the wheel; the legendary Cimmerians and Amazons; Hellenism and Zoroastrianism; and the Oxus Treasure. Future volumes will explore the later historical periods of the region.


In Totela, infinitive-based 'narrative' morphology alternates with forms inflected for tense and aspect. While narrative morphology can depict sequential events, inflected forms are used with both non-sequential and sequential event predicates. When inflected forms appear, especially in contexts where narrative morphology might also be appropriate, they play important roles in signaling narrative structure. The three most common categories of inflected verbs in narratives indicate 'completion', 'non-completion', and 'dissociation'. Dissociative marking appears at the beginning and ending of a narrative and frames it by shifting the cognitive domain to a world, separate from the world of telling, where listener belief is suspended to include narrative events. Inside that world, Completives and Non-completives provide structure to the narrative and direct listener responses.


Background Liver is the primary metabolizing site of body and is prone to damage by exogenous as well as endogenous intoxicants. Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons such as 7, 12- dimethylbenz(α)anthracene (DMBA) is an exogenous hepatotoxin, which is well known for modulating phase I, II and anti-oxidative enzymes of liver. Plants contain plethora of polyphenolic compounds which can reverse the damaging effect of various xenobiotics. The present study investigated protective role of the ethyl acetate fraction of Acacia catechu Willd. (EAF) against DMBA induced alteration in hepatic metabolizing and anti-oxidative enzymes in rats. Methodology and Principal Findings The rats were subjected to hepatic damage by treating with DMBA for 7 weeks on alternative days and treatment schedule was terminated at the end of 14 weeks. The rats were euthanized at the end of protocol and livers were homogenized. The liver homogenates were used to analyse phase I (NADPH-cytochrome P450 reducatse, NADH-cytochrome b5 reductase, cytochrome P420, cytochrome b5), phase II (glutathione-S-transferase, DT diaphorase and γ-Glutamyl transpeptidase) and antioxidative enzymes (catalase, superoxide dismutase, ascorbate peroxidase, glutathione reductase, guiacol peroxidase and lactate dehydrogenase). Furthermore, other oxidative stress parameters (thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, lipid hydroperoxides and conjugated dienes and reduced glutathione) and liver marker enzymes (serum glutamic oxaloacetic transaminase, serum glutamic pyruvic transaminase and alkaline phosphatase) were also studied. The DMBA induced significant changes in activity of hepatic enzymes that was reversed by treatment with three dose levels of EAF. Conclusion It is concluded that EAF affords hepato-protection against DMBA in rats through modulation of phase I, II and anti-oxidative enzymes.


The world's forests are a major source of material and fuel, a vast reservoir of biodiversity and they also provide valuable ecological services such as hydrological cycling and carbon sequestration. They play an important role in carbon accounting schemes under the Kyoto Protocol and the UN Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD). As such, the impacts of global deforestation are of critical social, ecological and political significance. The primary causes of deforestation are well understood and will likely be exacerbated as new demands for forest products develop. Innovative governance arrangements, such as third party certification schemes and co-management, have increasingly sought a role in alleviating deforestation alongside governmental forest policy-making. Continued decreases in deforestation rates will depend on changes in how forests are valued and managed through multi-level governance arrangements.

Key Concepts:

Energy production account for more than 50% of all wood uses.

There is concern that woodfuel use is one of the drivers of deforestation, but it is often difficult with available statistics to understand just how important this driver is.

Deforestation is mainly caused by economic forces, governance failures and politico-ethical failures.

Given the rapid global loss of biodiversity, mainly due to deforestation in tropical areas, primary and selectively logged forests are of critical importance in tropical forest conservation.

Forest carbon sequestration is explicitly allowed in the Kyoto Protocol as a tool to meet emission reduction targets.

Without stricter governance oversight, carbon emissions mitigation initiatives such as the UN Programme on REDD can enable the usurpation of land and resource rights from indigenous communities in developing countries.

Decreasing the rate of deforestation requires the participation not just of governments but of local communities, indigenous peoples and citizens for decision-making and monitoring in forest policy and management.

Keywords:

deforestation;
biodiversity;
forests;
biofuels;
forest governance, carbon accounting


Oxidative DNA damage is caused by free radicals eroding the cell membrane and directly attacking DNA molecules in the cell. This DNA damage plays an important role in the development of cancer. Antioxidants remove free radical intermediates, thereby preventing cell membrane erosion and subsequent DNA damage. Tea leaves are rich in antioxidants, and studies conducted on green tea have reported numerous health benefits; however, those studies left out other types of tea. We evaluated the ability of various tea extracts to protect prostate cells from hydrogen peroxide induced oxidative damage. Cells were treated with black, oolong, green, and white tea extracts and then exposed to hydrogen peroxide for two days, followed by a quantification of viable cells using an MTS assay. Because treatment with white tea extract yielded the greatest cell viability, we hypothesized that an abundant antioxidant in white tea, epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), might also protect cells from oxidative stress. We found that, indeed, pre-treatment of prostate cells with 50 mg/mL EGCG led to a significant increase in cell viability when compared to the control group (fold change of 2.90), based on MTS assay absorbance. These data suggest that antioxidants in white tea extract, including EGCG, protect prostate cells from oxidative stress in culture, which is suggestive of the health benefits of white tea.


Summary Anisakidosis is a zoonotic infection caused by ingestion of raw or undercooked marine fish including Atherina. In some parts of Egypt, the prevalence of anisakid larvae in marine Atherina still, largely, undetermined. Moreover, the currently used procedures are insufficient to avoid human infection. The aim of this study was to identify the prevalence of anisakid larvae in marine Atherina and to test the effect of several treatment procedures on the viability of anisakid larvae. The infection rate of marine Atherina with anisakid larvae was 23.12 %. Anisakid larvae protein revealed molecular weights ranged from 11.5 - 118.5 Kilo Dalton (KDa.). Moreover, freezing at -20 °C for 21 hours (hrs.) as well as vinegar (5 %) treatment for 3 days were the most effective ways to inactivate the larvae. This study states the zoonotic risk of consuming raw or undercooked marine Atherina and highlights the importance of freezing and vinegar treatment in preventing human infection.


Stora Karlso is a small island close to Gotland in the Baltic Sea of which the Hymenopteran fauna has not been extensively studied before. In August 2014, a team of eight persons carried out an inventory of Hymenoptera, mainly the parasitoid wasps and sawflies, on the island. Sampling was done with Malaise traps for a period of 22 days, complemented with vegetation sweeping, branch shaking and opportunistic handpicking during a five day sojourn. As a result, about 200 species of parasitoid wasps and 14 sawflies are reported for Stora Karlso for the first time. Eleven species are reported as new to Sweden: The sawfly Athalia cornubiae Benson, 1931, the gasteruptiid Gasteruption opacum (Tournier, 1877), the diapriid Spilomicrus rufitarsis (Kieffer, 1911), the eulophid Entedonomphale bulgarica Boyadzhiev & Triapitsyn, 2007, the braconids Bracon rozneri Papp, 1998 and Gnamptodon decoris (Forster, 1862), and the ichneumonids Bathythrix maculata (Hellen, 1957), Heterischnus filiformis (Gravenhorst, 1829), Lissonota picticoxis Schmiedeknecht, 1900,Mesochorus tipularius Gravenhorst, 1829, Ophion brevicornis Morley, 1915, and Plectochorus iwatensis (Uchida, 1928). Also the gasteruptiid Gasteruption opacum (Tournier,1877) is reported new to Sweden based on a record from inventory by NJ in 2013. This demonstrates how the knowledge of Swedish biodiversity can be substantially augmented by a short and intensive collecting expedition. We strongly recommend that other places in the country be subjected to similar efforts. (Less)


In this paper, we tackle the problem of mapping multiple 3D rigid structures and estimating their motions from perspective views through a car-mounted camera. The proposed method complements conventional localization and mapping algorithms (such as Visual Odometry and SLAM) to estimate motions of other moving objects in addition to the vehicle's motion. We present a theoretical framework for robust estimation of multiple motions and structures from perspective images. The method is based on the factorization of the projective trajectory matrix without explicit estimation of projective depth values. We exploit the epipolar geometry of calibrated cameras to generate several hypotheses for motion segments. Once the hypotheses are obtained, they are evaluated in an iterative scheme by alternating between estimation of 3D structures and estimation of multiple motions. The proposed framework does not require any knowledge about the number of motions and is robust to noisy image measurements. The method is evaluated on street-level sequences from a car-mounted camera. A benchmark dataset is also used to compare the results with previous works, although most of the related works use synthetic scenes simulating desktop environments.


Background: Adverse drug reactions (ADRs) are one of the major reasons of morbidity and mortality all over the world. The knowledge of ADRs is essential for healthcare professionals as they are in contact with the patients and can effectively detect the ADRs. Purpose of the study: To evaluate the knowledge, attitude, and practice of pharmacovigilance in healthcare professionals and medical students in Majmaah, KSA. Methods: This was a crosssectional questionnaire-based study. The health care professionals of Al-Majmaah, i.e., doctors, nurses, pharmacists including the medical students were included in the study. Results: Total 148 participants were included in the study, 89% of these were male and 11% were females. Overall the knowledge and awareness regarding pharmacovigilance and ADRs was low ranging from 27% to 64.2%. There was a consensus among the healthcare professionals including the medical students that reporting of the ADRs is necessary and it should be taught in detail to them denoting a positive attitude. Overall reporting rate for ADRs was only 35.1% even though the percentage of professionals who encountered the ADRs was 52.7%. Conclusion: Findings of this study point us towards an important aspect of medicinal safety that is lack of knowledge about the adverse drug reactions and their reporting in doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and medical students. The lack of knowledge also reflects on their practice of not reporting the ADRs adequately.


Features of left ventricle (LV) remodeling of patients with renal arterial hypertension with chronic renocardiac syndrome were studied. The study involved 107 patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). Highest frequency of ventricular myocardium remodeling in patients with chronic renal failure are concentric hypertrophy and eccentric hypertrophy of LV observed in 76.6% of patients and there by the beginning of the development of renal failure. Concentric hypertrophy with the most common in patients with CKD III-IV, and eccentric hypertrophy frequency increases with the progression of CKD. At a certain stage in the development of chronic renal failure hypertrophy of LV has adaptive value by increasing the wall thickness of LV. Increased of LV myocardial mass in renal hypertensive patients with renocardiac syndrome most achieved in the initial stage of CKD, and then progressively decreases with the growth of the severity of CKD. Similar changes occur with Interventricular septum thickness, although the thickness of the back wall continues to grow. This demonstrates the progression of left ventricular myocardial muscle changes as strengthening LV dilation and increased frequency of eccentric hypertrophy of myocardium.


Opals with an unusual purple bodycolor and strong play-of-color have recently appeared in the market. Reportedly from a new deposit in Mexico, they have a vivid bodycolor unlike that of any natural play-of-color opal seen in the trade so far. This alone was enough to raise suspicion, and gemological and spectroscopic evidence indicates that the purple coloration is artificial. A comparison of this purple opal with numerous samples from Ethiopia's Wollo Province strongly suggests that it is actually dyed hydrophane opal from those deposits. Several previously undocumented characteristics of Wollo opals are described, including zeolite mineral inclusions.


Globally, climate change and extreme weather events are occurring more frequently, impacting water resources and farming systems. Therefore, spatio-temporal analysis of long-term rainfall is much needed to understand the variability of rainfall occurrence. The present study attempts to analyse spatio-temporal rainfall change scenarios in the 20th century (1901–2000) over Bundelkhand, one of the drought hit regions of India. Analysis shows that major rainfall contributed from three months, i.e. July, August and September. However, decreasing rainfall trend during monsoon season and increasing trend during pre-monsoon and post-monsoon season indicates the scenario of shifting rainfall from normal occurrence. This result is supported by decreasing Seasonality Index (1.94–1.1). The northern part of the region witnessed positive annual and monsoon rainfall trend but the southern part observed negative trend. Pettitt9s test indicates 1983 is the most probable change year with 0.95 probability, after which annual and monsoon rainfall was found decreasing. Wavelet analysis revealed that extreme rainfall occurrence was observed with a periodicity of 2–16 years. However, Bundelkhand rainfall pattern depicts declining rainfall trends, heading towards a further drier phase with more irregular rainfall in the coming era. The study will serve as future reference in similar regions in the world to determine vital weather patterns which may impact farming systems.


Find the right person to help supercharge your career. Whether you're eyeing a specific leadership role, hoping to advance your skills, or simply looking to broaden your professional network, you need to find someone who can help. Wait for a senior manager to come looking for you--and you'll probably be waiting forever. Instead, you need to find the mentoring that will help you achieve your goals. Managed correctly, mentoring is a powerful and efficient tool for moving up. The HBR Guide to Getting the Mentoring You Need will help you get it right. You'll learn how to: * Find new ways to stand out in your organization * Set clear and realistic development goals * Identify and build relationships with influential sponsors * Give back and bring value to mentors and senior advisers * Evaluate your progress in reaching your professional goals


During the biological aging of the Fino sherry, the formation of aroma compounds takes place as a result of the oxidative metabolism of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae flor yeasts, which form a film on the surface of the wine. Yeasts consume some compounds such as ethanol, glycerol, organic acids (acetic, lactic, citric and succinic), and amino acids, including proline. At the same time, yeasts produce other compounds, namely higher alcohols (isobutanol and isoamilic), acetaldehyde and acetoin. We have compared differences in aroma production according to parameters involved in winemaking such as enological techniques applied, selected yeast strains used, and length of the aging process. Fermentation of must enriched in solids and other components resulted in fino sherry with a lower volatile acidity and a higher concentration of acetaldehyde, isoamilic alcohols, and glycerol than decanted must. Furthermore, while ethanol consumption was higher in "sobretablas", other compounds, such as acetic acid or glycerol, were steadily consumed throughout the aging period. As far as the strains are concerned, S. cerevisiae (beticus) and S. cerevisiae (cheresiensis) were better at reducing the volatile acidity than S. cerevisiae ( montuliensis) , which consumed more ethanol and produced more acetaldehyde (mainly responsible for the typical flavor of sherries). These results make it possible to select the final organoleptic characteristics of the wine by means of applying the appropriate enological processes and/or selected strain.


We describe and analyze an all-optical method to measure both the magnitude and the phase of each (complex) element of the χ(3) tensor that determines degenerate four-wave mixing in a thin isotropic film on a thick substrate. We use the method to characterize the χ(3) tensor of a 10-µm C60 film (on a CaF2 substrate) for 110-fs pulses at 768 nm. Using a fused-quartz plate as the nonlinear standard, we find the two independent Maker–Terhune elements of χ(3) to have magnitudes |c1221(-ω, ω, ω, -ω)|=(0.44±0.03)×10-12 esu and |c1122(-ω, ω, ω, -ω)|=(0.50±0.03)×10-12 esu and phase angles ϕ1221 and ϕ1122, whose magnitudes are 145°±17° and 139°±10°.


In this paper, a generic method is proposed to reduce speckle in multi-temporal stacks of SAR images. The method is based on the computation of a "super-image", with a large number of looks, by temporal averaging. Then, ratio images are formed by dividing each image of the multi-temporal stack by the "super-image". In the absence of changes of the radiometry, the temporal fluctuations of the intensity at a given spatial location are due to the speckle phenomenon. In areas affected by temporal changes, fluctuations cannot be ascribed to speckle only but also to radiometric changes. The overall effect of the division by the "super-image" is the spatial stationarity improvement: ratio images are much more homogeneous than the original images. Therefore, filtering these ratio images with a speckle-reduction method is more effective, in terms of speckle suppression, than filtering the original multitemporal stack. After denoising of the ratio image, the despeckled multi-temporal stack is obtained by multiplication with the "super-image". Results are presented and analyzed both on synthetic and real SAR data and show the interest of the proposed approach.


Earthquakes in Britain are usually minor with respect to damage. However, the Folkestone earthquake ( ML 4.3, Mw 4.0), which occurred on the southeastern coast of England (Figure 1) on 28 April 2007 at 07:18 UTC (08:18 BST) caused significant damage. One person was injured by falling masonry, and the Shepway District Council invoked emergency procedures to deal with the effects of the earthquake. This is the first time that emergency procedures have been invoked for a British earthquake. Approximately 60,000 homes lost power for 85 minutes due to tripping of two high-voltage transformers.

The epicenter of the earthquake, latitude 51.102°N and longitude 1.169°E (Ottemoller et al. forthcoming), locates very close to Folkestone (Figures 1A–C). Ottemoller et al. (forthcoming) determine a depth of around 6 ± 3 km from United Kingdom (UK) and European short-period and broadband data. The focal mechanism, shown in Figure 1C, indicates normal faulting with a significant component of strike-slip on either a north-northwest to south-southeast trending or east-northeast to west-southwest trending plane (Ottemoller et al. forthcoming). The earthquake was followed by nine after-shocks ( ML 1.0–1.8), which occurred up to 5 May 2007. None of these were felt.

A compendium of observations from the Folkestone earthquake is presented here. This includes analysis of the first "strong-motion" record from a British earthquake, a description of the damage, an investigation of how the distribution of damage may relate to the distribution of unconsolidated deposits, and the results of the macroseismic survey for the earthquake. Assignment of maximum intensity, and its spatial extent, provoked a lively debate among the authors, which is also documented here.

There is a distinct east-west divide in terms of the distribution of seismicity in the UK. Most activity is concentrated in western Scotland, northwestern England, Wales, the Midlands and Cornwall (Figure 1A …


Hyperparameter optimization can be formulated as a bilevel optimization problem, where the optimal parameters on the training set depend on the hyperparameters. We aim to adapt regularization hyperparameters for neural networks by fitting compact approximations to the best-response function, which maps hyperparameters to optimal weights and biases. We show how to construct scalable best-response approximations for neural networks by modeling the best-response as a single network whose hidden units are gated conditionally on the regularizer. We justify this approximation by showing the exact best-response for a shallow linear network with L2-regularized Jacobian can be represented by a similar gating mechanism. We fit this model using a gradient-based hyperparameter optimization algorithm which alternates between approximating the best-response around the current hyperparameters and optimizing the hyperparameters using the approximate best-response function. Unlike other gradient-based approaches, we do not require differentiating the training loss with respect to the hyperparameters, allowing us to tune discrete hyperparameters, data augmentation hyperparameters, and dropout probabilities. Because the hyperparameters are adapted online, our approach discovers hyperparameter schedules that can outperform fixed hyperparameter values. Empirically, our approach outperforms competing hyperparameter optimization methods on large-scale deep learning problems. We call our networks, which update their own hyperparameters online during training, SelfTuning Networks (STNs).


Presents a very-large-scale-integration (VLSI)-oriented high-speed multiplier design method based on carry-propagation-free addition trees and a circuit technique, so-called multiple-valued current-mode (MVCM) circuits. The carry-propagation-free addition method uses a redundant digit set such as /spl lcub/0,1,2,3/spl rcub/ and /spl lcub/0,1,2,3,4/spl rcub/. The number representations using such redundant digit sets are called redundant positive-digit number representations. The carry-propagation-free addition is written by three steps, and the adder can be designed directly and efficiently from the algorithm using MVCM circuits. The designed multiplier internally using the MVCM parallel adder with the digit set /spl lcub/0,1,2,3/spl rcub/ in radix 2 has attractive features on speed, regularity of the structure, and reduced complexities of active elements and interconnections. A prototype CMOS integrated circuit of the MVCM parallel adder has been implemented, and its stable operation has been confirmed. Other possible schemes of multipliers with redundant digit sets using MVCM technology are discussed. >


Objective To determine the efficacy of a probiotic drink containing Lactobacillus for the prevention of any diarrhoea associated with antibiotic use and that caused by Clostridium difficile. Design Randomised double blind placebo controlled study. Participants 135 hospital patients (mean age 74) taking antibiotics. Exclusions included diarrhoea on admission, bowel pathology that could result in diarrhoea, antibiotic use in the previous four weeks, severe illness, immunosuppression, bowel surgery, artificial heart valves, and history of rheumatic heart disease or infective endocarditis. Intervention Consumption of a 100 g (97 ml) drink containing Lactobacillus casei, L bulgaricus, and Streptococcus thermophilus twice a day during a course of antibiotics and for one week after the course finished. The placebo group received a longlife sterile milkshake. Main outcome measures Primary outcome: occurrence of antibiotic associated diarrhoea. Secondary outcome: presence of C difficile toxin and diarrhoea. Results 7/57 (12%) of the probiotic group developed diarrhoea associated with antibiotic use compared with 19/56 (34%) in the placebo group (P=0.007). Logistic regression to control for other factors gave an odds ratio 0.25 (95% confidence interval 0.07 to 0.85) for use of the probiotic, with low albumin and sodium also increasing the risk of diarrhoea. The absolute risk reduction was 21.6% (6.6% to 36.6%), and the number needed to treat was 5 (3 to 15). No one in the probiotic group and 9/53 (17%) in the placebo group had diarrhoea caused by C difficile (P=0.001). The absolute risk reduction was 17% (7% to 27%), and the number needed to treat was 6 (4 to 14). Conclusion Consumption of a probiotic drink containing L casei, L bulgaricus, and S thermophilus can reduce the incidence of antibiotic associated diarrhoea and C difficile associated diarrhoea. This has the potential to decrease morbidity, healthcare costs, and mortality if used routinely in patients aged over 50. Trial registration National Research Register N0016106821.


Introduction: A straight bridge has always been the aesthetic ideal. Simple hump removal, the classical and most commonly applied method, can have aesthetic and functional consequences. However, great resistance to augmentation procedures persists because most patients request reduction and the benefits of improving nasal balance are counterintuitive. An augmented nose can look smaller, a particular benefit in patients with thick, inelastic skin or a large lower nose. On the other hand, decreased size perception after raising of the radix and tip is very common but has not been measured to date. Methods: This study created graphic and real interventions to achieve a straight bridge through radix and tip raising and analyzed how patients and independent observers perceive these changes. A sample of 42 sequential rhinoplasty patients was analyzed, including nine cases of primary surgery and dorsal convexity. Results: There was a 6.5% mean augmentation after graphic computing intervention but a perception of size reduction (p = 0.004). There was a 1% mean augmentation after rhinoplasty and an overall size reduction perception. Conclusion: Correction of the nasal dorsum, making a straight bridge through slightly increasing radix and tip, creates the perception of a decreased nose size. ■ ABSTRACT


Natural antibodies are used widely for various applications such as in biomedical analysis, protein separation, and targeted-drug delivery, but they suffer from high cost and low stability. In this study, we developed a facile approach for the construction of antibody-like binding sites in a porous silica solid for efficient separation of bovine serum albumin (BSA) based on large-pore silica particles (LPSPs). This was accomplished by grafting two types of organosilane monomers, 3-aminopropyltriethoxylsilane (APTES) and octyltrimethoxysilane (OTMS), to provide hydrogen bonds or hydrophobic interactions with BSA through molecular imprinting technology. The resulting molecularly imprinted, large-pore silica particles (MI-LPSPs) were characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), thermogravimetric analysis (TG), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and N2 sorption analysis. Results showed that the as-synthesized MI-LPSPs exhibited a spherical morphology, favorable stability and large pore structure. The kinetic adsorption experiments showed that the MI-LPSPs could reach equilibrium within one hour and were described well by the pseudo second-order model, indicating that chemical adsorption might be the rate-limiting step. Meanwhile, the MI-LPSPs had a large binding capacity up to 162.82 mg g-1 and high selectivity for the recognition of BSA. Moreover, such a high binding capacity and selectivity was retained after six runs, indicating a good stability and reusability of MI-LPSPs. Thus, it is expected that a simple synthetic methodology in the present study provides a promising pathway to prepare novel imprinted materials for efficient purification and separation of target proteins.