We present a floristic list of Greene County, Arkansas, based on accessioned collections from the Arkansas State University Herbarium (STAR). Currently, there are 1569 specimens representing 540 taxa from Greene County in STAR. Using the USDA Plants Database, plant species were analyzed according to whether or not they are native to the state as well as whether or not they have been previously documented as species occurring in the county. Having analyzed all the Greene County collections from STAR, we found 225 previously undocumented species. The data suggest that most of the specimens in the STAR collection were found in wooded areas and/or near water. This may be a reflection of sampling bias as two of the primary collectors of these specimens were primarily interested in bog habitats. For this reason, the Greene County collections may not fully represent all habitats in the county, but it is likely that they are a good representation of the county's seeps and bogs. The STAR Herbarium is emerging as a critical resource for understanding botanical diversity in the eastern counties of Arkansas, but it is clear that additional collections are necessary to fully represent all habitats in these areas.


Thirty-three 24ST aluminum-alloy 2- by 2- by 0.10-inch channels, with lengths ranging from 10 to 90 inches were tested at Stanford University in compression to obtain an experimental verification of the theoretical formulas for torsional failure developed by Eugene E. Lundquist of the N.A.C.A. The observed critical loads and twist-axis locations were sufficiently close to the values obtained from the formulas to establish the substantial validity of the latter. The differences between observed and computed results were small enough to be accounted for by small and mostly unavoidable differences between actual test conditions and those assumed in deriving the formulas. Some data were obtained from the shorter specimens regarding the growth of the buckles that resulted in local buckling failure.


Edible Forest Gardens is a groundbreaking two-volume work that spells out and explores the key concepts of forest ecology and applies them to the needs of natural gardeners in temperate climates. Volume I lays out the vision of the forest garden and explains the basic ecological principles that make it work. In Volume II, Dave Jacke and Eric Toensmeier move on to practical considerations: concrete ways to design, establish, and maintain your own forest garden. Along the way they present case studies and examples, as well as tables, illustrations, and a uniquely valuable iplant matrixi that lists hundreds of the best edible and useful species. Taken together, the two volumes of Edible Forest Gardens offer an advanced course in ecological gardeningoone that will forever change the way you look at plants and your environment.


When neurons in primary visual cortex of adult cats and monkeys are deprived of their normal sources of activation by matching lesions in the two retinas, they are capable of acquiring new receptive fields based on inputs from regions of intact retina around the lesions. Although these "reactivated" neurons respond to visual stimuli, quantitative studies of their response characteristics have not been attempted. Thus, it is not known whether these neurons have normal or abnormal features that could contribute to or disrupt an analysis of a visual scene. In this study, we used extracellular single-unit recording methods to investigate their stimulus selectivity and responsiveness. Specifically, we measured the sensitivity of individual neurons to stimulus orientation, direction of drift, spatial frequency, and contrast. Over 98% of all units in the denervated zone of cortex acquired new receptive fields after 3 months of recovery. Newly activated units exhibited strikingly normal orientation tuning, direction selectivity, and spatial frequency tuning when high-contrast (< 40%) stimuli were used. However, contrast thresholds of most neurons were abnormally elevated, and the maximum response amplitude under optimal stimulus conditions was significantly reduced. The results suggest that the striate cortical neurons reactivated during topographic reorganization are capable of sending functionally meaningful signals to more central structures provided that the visual scene contains relatively high contrast images.


Cost-Effectiveness Analyses (CEAs) alongside randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are increasingly often designed to collect resource use and preference-based health status data for the purpose of healthcare technology assessment. However, because of the way these measures are collected, they are prone to missing data, which can ultimately affect the decision of whether an intervention is good value for money. We examine how missing cost and effect outcome data are handled in RCT-based CEAs, complementing a previous review (covering 2003-2009, 88 articles) with a new systematic review (2009-2015, 81 articles) focussing on two different perspectives. First, we review the description of the missing data, the statistical methods used to deal with them, and the quality of the judgement underpinning the choice of these methods. Second, we provide guidelines on how the information about missingness and related methods should be presented to improve the reporting and handling of missing data. Our review shows that missing data in within-RCT CEAs are still often inadequately handled and the overall level of information provided to support the chosen methods is rarely satisfactory.


Platypus, opossums, kangaroos, koalas...Monotremes and marsupials include a host of animals that have intrigued mammal fanciers for centuries. Monotremes are a very distinctive ancient group of mammals with only a handful of extant species in Australia and New Guinea and marsupials, with roots in South America, likely reached Australia via Antarctica some 50 million years ago. With relatives remaining in America, Marsupials have adapted to an amazing diversity of lifestyles and habitats. This volume of Mammals of the World provides complete coverage of these two important groups of mammals. Lavishly illustrated with color photographs showing different behaviors of all of them, the text contains the latest up-to-date information on all families of Monotremes and Marsupials, both Australasian and American.


In a previous paper, we have found empirical evidence supporting a positive relationship between network centrality and success. However, we have also found that more successful projects have a lower technical quality. A first, straightforward argument explaining previous findings is that more central contributors are also highly skilled developers who are well known for their ability to manage the complexity of code with a lower attention to the software structure. The consolidated metrics of software quality used by the authors in their previous research represent measures of code structure. This paper provides empirical evidence supporting the idea that the negative impact of success on quality is caused by the careless behaviour of skilled developers, who are also hubs within the social network. Research hypotheses are tested on a sample of 56 OS applications from the SourceForge.net repository, with a total of 378 developers. The sample includes some of the most successful and large OS projects, as well as a cross-section of less famous active projects evenly distributed among SourceForge.net's project categories.


According to Lakoff (1975), women use more politeness strategies than men because of their inferior position in a society. Furthermore, Lakoff indicated that women also use
different strategies in order to talk in less assertive ways such as with the use of tag questions, indirect statements, and discourse particles. Many studies which have been conducted, based on her claims, showed inconsistent findings. Commentators such as Romaine (1994), Holmes (1995), Gordon (1997), Cameron (1992), Tannen (1993), and Wardhaugh (1998) are of the idea that the use of politeness strategies is dependent on many social factors that are reflected in the use of the language. Meanwhile, studies on gender speech differences, especially those concerning the use of politeness strategies, have been conducted in different contexts and fields. However, few such studies have been conducted in the Malaysian context and none so far has focused on university students.
In carrying out the study of gender speech differences in politeness strategies among university students, the researcher utilizes a qualitative as well as a quantitative design. The study sample consisted of the students of BA English language programme at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia. The data was collected via recordings of cross-gender conversations and questionnaires. The findings suggest that females tend to use more politeness strategies than males at
the university level in the Malaysian context, which lend support to Lakoff's (1975) claim that women use more politeness strategies than men. However, not all of the
reasons for using politeness strategies support Lakoffs claim that by using politeness strategies, women avoid straightforward statements due to their inferior positions in the society. Politeness strategies appeared to be mostly effected through the use of discourse particles. Additionally, the use of tag questions a s politeness strategies is more frequent among females, and they mainly use them as negative strategies. It is also noted that females use more direct statements to effect politeness strategies and mainly use them positively, which is not in line with Lakoffs claim. The discourse particles are mainly used by university students as negative politeness strategies. However, a comparison of the results also showed that males use more negative politeness strategies than females. Another finding is that a single strategy could be used to function both positively and negatively.
It is also observed that the most frequently used discourse particles by the respondents are you know, I think, and yah. Tag questions used as politeness strategies are the forms right and ok. Most of the direct statements used as positive politeness strategies are the would clauses. The study highlights some points of gender speech differences in politeness strategies among university students in the Malaysian context.


THE IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) Computer Society has traced its origin to the formation of the AIEE (American Institute of Electrical Engineers) Large-Scale Computing Devices Committee (CDC) during May and June 1946, which was formally approved by the AIEE Board of Directors on January 29, 1948. The IRE (Institute of Radio Engineers) Professional Group on Electronic Computers (PGEC) was formed on September 14, 1951, which was formally approved by the IRE Board of Directors on October 19, 1951. The AIEE CDC and the IRE PGEC were the roots of the IEEE Computer Society. After the merger of the AIEE and the IRE to form the IEEE in 1963, the AIEE CDC and the IRE PGEC were combined to form the IEEE Computer Group on April 22, 1964, which became the IEEE Computer Society in January 1971. Accordingly the IEEE Computer Society is celebrating its 65th Anniversary in 2011. Likewise the IEEE Transactions on Computers (TC) has traced its origin to the inaugural publication of the IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers in December 1952, with Werner Buchholz as Editor and Jean Felker and James Weiner comprising the Editorial Board. The inaugural issue (PGEC-1) contained papers on computers from WESCON (the Western Electronic Show and Convention), held at Long Beach, California, on August 27-29, 1952. The IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers began as a quarterly publication and became a bimonthly publication in January 1962. After the merger of the AIEE and the IRE in 1963, it became the IEEE Transactions on Electronic Computers in August 1963 (Volume EC-12, Number 4). Since January 1968 (Volume C-17, Number 1), it has become the current IEEE Transactions on Computers (TC) and a monthly publication. The inception of the IRE Transactions on Electronic Computers in 1952 had undoubtedly contributed much to the IRE Computer Group's visibility and stability. The early formative years saw a succession of outstanding editors, beginning with Werner Buchholz in 1952, Ralph Meagher in 1954, John (Jack) Nash in 1957, Howard Tompkins in 1959, and Arnold Cohen in 1961. The position of associate editor was introduced in April 1961, the fi rst one being John (Jack) Sherman who was appointed to cover the area of analog and hybrid computers; also the name of editor was changed to editor-in-chief. The IEEE Transactions on (Electronic) Computers continued to develop under the editorship of Norman Scott (1963) and Harry Huskey (1965). With expanded breadth of technical coverage, the number of annual pages increased from about 800 in 1962 to nearly 1,400 in 1970. A special 25th Anniversary issue of TC was guest edited by Harry Huskey and published in 1976. It contained state-of-the-art surveys and tutorial presentations, and high-quality papers on emerging computing technology were brought together to present a comprehensive view of developments and evolution of concepts, education, languages, and peripherals in the computer fi eld. The special issue published 18 papers authored by 26 leading experts in their areas of interest. A chronological list of editors/editors-in-chief of TC with years of their appointments is listed as follows. 1. Werner Buchholz, 1952 2. Ralph Meagher, 1954 3. John Nash, 1957 4. Howard Tompkins, 1959 5. Arnold Cohen, 1961 6. Norman Scott, 1963 7. Harry Huskey, 1965 8. Robert Short, 1971 9. Richard Merwin, 1975 10. Taylor Booth, 1978 11. Tse-yun Feng, 1982 12. Ming T. Liu, 1986 13. Earl Swartzlander, 1991 14. Jane W.S. Liu, 1995 15. Jean-Luc Gaudiot, 1999 16. Viktor Prasanna, 2003 17. Fabrizio Lambardi, 2007 18. Albert Zomaya, 2011 In 2011 TC is celebrating the 60th year of its publication. Happy Anniversary!


"Fanboys and Overdogs: the Language Report" is a collection of the most intriguing facts and observations on the English language in recent years, and particularly in 2005. In her eminently browsable exploration of the changing face of English, Susie Dent, Countdown's dictionary expert, takes us on a journey through the most exotic and dynamic areas of the language. From the histories of words to the word on the street, this completely new volume explores how the language is changing, and gives a brand new 'Word a Year' list for 1905 to 2005. The book covers new words, and the language of technology, politics, TV, and the media. Other topics covered include foreign words and phrases, word play, word histories, dialect, spelling, and current controversies of grammar and usage. A brand-new design brings the language to life on the page, and makes the book a pleasure to read. The book is based on the ongoing research at Oxford Dictionaries, home of the "Oxford English Dictionary" and the largest language research programme in the world. Oxford collects and analyses literally hundreds of millions of words of real language and the findings are presented here, many of them for the first time. Compellingly informative and readable, "Fanboys and Overdogs" has something for everyone interested in the English language.


Order picking and restocking of the fast picking area have been identified as the most labor-intensive and costly activities of any distribution center. In a picker-to-item process environment, traveling is an important factor than can account up to 50% of the total labor time dedicated to order picking and restocking. Previous research has mostly focused in reducing costs from a myopic perspective, either analyzing the flows from order picking or restocking. This research integrates order picking and restocking to generate a stock keeping unit (SKU) layout that minimizes the overall walking distance traveled within an S-shaped routing policy. The assignment of SKUs to a location is formulated as a Binary Mixed Integer Linear Programming (BMILP) model which is able to solve small scale problems to optimality. In the cases where the BIMLP model does not find the optimal solution, the best feasible solution falls within 20% of the lower bound. For larger scale problems, a heuristic is presented obtaining solutions in little computation time. The BMILP and the heuristic are compared to other scientific and popular methods in practice, and show that additional savings in labor can be obtained.


Purpose: Angiogenin, a 14.2-kDa polypeptide member of the RNase A superfamily, has potent angiogenic effects. Nuclear accumulation of angiogenin is essential for its angiogenic activity. Increased angiogenin expression has been associated with the transition of normal breast tissue into invasive breast carcinoma. In this article, we investigated whether estradiol (E2) affected angiogenin in breast tissue. Experimental Design: We used microdialysis for sampling of extracellular angiogenin in vivo. In vitro cultures of whole normal breast tissue, breast cancer cells, and endothelial cells were used. Results: We show that extracellular angiogenin correlated significantly with E2 in normal human breast tissue in vivo and that exposure of normal breast tissue biopsies to E2 stimulated angiogenin secretion. In breast cancer patients, the in vivo angiogenin levels were significantly higher in tumors compared with the adjacent normal breast tissue. In estrogen receptor–positive breast cancer cells, E2 increased and tamoxifen decreased angiogenin secretion. Moreover, E2-induced angiogenin derived from cancer cells significantly increased endothelial cell proliferation. Tamoxifen reversed this increase as well as inhibited nuclear translocation of angiogenin. In vivo, in experimental breast cancer, tamoxifen decreased angiogenin levels and decreased angiogenesis. Additionally, treating tumor-bearing mice with an antiangiogenin antibody resulted in tumor stasis, suggesting a role for angiogenin in estrogen-dependent breast cancer growth. Conclusion: Our results suggest previously unknown mechanisms by which estrogen and antiestrogen regulate angiogenesis in normal human breast tissue and breast cancer. This may be important for estrogen-driven breast cancer progression and a molecular target for therapeutic interventions. Clin Cancer Res; 16(14); 3659–69. ©2010 AACR.


Objective: This quasi-experimental, single-group study with a pre- and post-repeated measures design was carried out at the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Unit of a University Hospital. The study was aimed at investigating the effect of an evidence-based nursing intervention program, held for nurses providing care for pediatric stem cell transplant patients, on their skills in diagnosing oral mucositis (OM). Methods: Before training, data were collected from all the nurses using a sociodemographic characteristics questionnaire. Six patients who were admitted to the clinic and started chemotherapy (CT) were followed up for a maximum of 1 month during their hospitalization to find whether the diagnosis of OM was performed. During the intervention stage, the researcher provided nurses with training on the importance of the use of evidence-based research results in the clinic, including evidence regarding OM. After the training, the records of six patients who were admitted to the clinic and started CT were tracked for up to 1 month during their hospitalization to find whether the diagnosis of OM was performed. Results: At the end of the study, the rate of OM diagnosis was performed by nurses, which was 2.8% before the program and increased to 8.7% after the program. The difference between the percentages of performing OM diagnosis by the nurses before and after the program was 5.9%, which was considered statistically significant (χ2 = 11.004, P < 0.01). The postprogram rate of diagnosis of OM was 3.12 times higher (212% increase) than the preprogram rate (P < 0.01). Conclusions: One of the most important recommendations of the present study is to provide regular and continuous training sessions for nurses to improve and update their knowledge on oral care. It is also concluded that the establishment of oral diagnosis as a follow-up parameter, similar to vital signs in the clinic, will enable nurses to improve their skills in performing daily diagnosis and keeping proper records of the patients' outcomes.


We are confronted by multiple ecological crises worldwide and there is growing evidence that fact-based communication is not helping people to engage with environmental issues. Traditionally, stories have connected people with wider nature, and there have been appeals from conservationists, scientists and theorists for new stories to be shared. To date, however, very little consideration has been given to the ways these new stories may be shaped through contemporary writing practices. Digital technologies provide writers with new opportunities for practice and for reflection on their role in making and sharing stories. This research inquiry uses practice as research to uncover links between material writing practice – an approach where all materials, including the digital, become part of the composition process – and ecological stories. The research is framed by three initial questions: 1) How can writing practices be developed with new technologies for ecological storymaking? 2)How are stories changed when new writing practices are developed for ecological storymaking? 3) What does the development of these writing practices mean for the role and continuing relevance of the writer? Through substantial reflexive practice, over the course of three projects, the inquiry revealed interrelationships between a story's subject, content, form and medium, which are often overlooked by mainstream contemporary publishing. By avoiding technological determinism and reducing hierarchies of materials, an approach to material writing practice was developed that uses a range of methods to uncover new possibilities for making and sharing stories. The process-centred approach was shared with other practitioners through workshops and their responses highlighted the benefits of material experiment for practitioners in expanding creative practice and connecting with wider nature. Participant responses, along with my own discoveries through process, demonstrate that creating opportunities for ecological storymaking is a valuable action for change. Through a series of propositions for writers, this research answers the call for new stories with the contribution not just of new stories, but a new approach to storymaking.


Mechanical turbulence and convection are combined together in this project to make it a real scientific and engineering challenge. Thees two natural phenomenon are put together under experimental investigations inside the flow facility at the Laboratory for Fundamental Turbulence Research (LFTR) at Reykjavik University. The aim of this research is to study the effects of the buoyancy on passive particle motions in the convective boundary layer, and on the intermittent nature of the small scale structures present in such region. The region of interest is located at 15 mm above the heated wall. Particle image velocimetry (Eulerian frame of reference) and Particle tracking velocimetry (Lagrangian frame of reference) are the measurements techniques used in this present work. Our flow is found to be approximatively homogeneous with a slight variation in the direction of the heat flow and anisotropic, with a Taylor Reynolds number, Rλ ≈ 200, local Rayleigh number based on the thickness of the boundary layer, Raδ ≈ 3 × 10 and local Prandtl number, Pr = ν/α = 6.77. Our focus is on small structures of homogeneous and anisotropic turbulence, ranging from the smallest scale present in the dissipative range, η (Kolmogorov scale) to the to energy containing scales in the inertial subrange η r L . Eulerian and Lagrangian experiments were conducted at the region of interest with an imposed mean thermal gradient of various intensities. The production and generation of stable mean thermal gradient in the box-turbulence was done by a developed mathematical model which had predicted the shape of the mean temperature profile of our flow. New heating/cooling system was designed and implemented to generate the convective turbulence. We found that, in the presence of the buoyancy force, a new dynamic regime arises and the intermittency becomes very high which will increase the particle-particle interaction and therefore will increase their coalescence and rate of collisions. On the Effects of Buoyancy on Passive Particle Motions in the Convective Boundary Layer from the Lagrangian Viewpoint


Stochastic dynamic job shop (SDJS) scheduling problems with sequence-dependent setup times are among the most difficult classes of scheduling problems. This paper assesses the performance of five dispatching rules (DRLs) in such shop from makespan, mean flow time, mean tardiness, number of tardy jobs, total setups, and mean setup time performance measures viewpoint. A discrete event simulation model of a SDJS manufacturing system is developed for investigation purpose. Five DRLs, that is, first come first serve (FCFS), shortest processing time (SPT), shortest setup time (SIMSET), earliest due date (EDD) and shortest sum of setup times and processing time (SSPT) are incorporated in the simulation model. The simulation experiments are conducted under due date tightness factor of 3, shop utilization percentage of 90 and setup time less than processing time. Results indicate that SIMSET rule provides best performance for mean flow time and number of tardy jobs performance measures. The SPT rule provides best performance for mean tardiness measure. The EDD rule is best-performing DRL for makespan, total setups and mean setup time measures.


The purpose of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the broader effects of monitoring practices in the European Union. The empirical setting is Solvit, a Commission-initiated network tasked with informal resolution of misapplications of internal market directives by national authorities. All Member States must operate a Solvit centre within their administrations. Using a governmentality approach, the article investigates the normative underpinnings of the technologies deployed by Solvit and the experts which operate them. A survey study of the Solvit network shows the development of an EU identity and a cognitive judicialization which contributes to a depoliticization of issues. This allows Solvit to expand its remit from ex post monitoring to ex ante regulation. While a governance instrument can be designed for a delimited task, a governmentality approach highlights more general mechanisms by which such an instrument's influence and reach may be extended beyond its modest appearances.


With decreasing cost of next-generation sequencing (NGS), we are observing a rapid rise in the volume of 'big data' in academic research, healthcare and drug discovery sectors. The present bottleneck for extracting value from these 'big data' sets is data processing and analysis. Considering this, there is still a lack of reliable, automated and easy to use tools that will allow experimentalists to assess the quality of the sequenced libraries and explore the data first hand, without the need of investing a lot of time of computational core analysts in the early stages of analysis. NGseqBasic is an easy-to-use single-command analysis tool for chromatin accessibility (ATAC, DNaseI) and ChIP sequencing data, providing support to also new techniques such as low cell number sequencing and Cut-and-Run. It takes in fastq, fastq.gz or bam files, conducts all quality control, trimming and mapping steps, along with quality control and data processing statistics, and combines all this to a single-click loadable UCSC data hub, with integral statistics html page providing detailed reports from the analysis tools and quality control metrics. The tool is easy to set up, and no installation is needed. A wide variety of parameters are provided to fine-tune the analysis, with optional setting to generate DNase footprint or high resolution ChIP-seq tracks. A tester script is provided to help in the setup, along with a test data set and downloadable example user cases. NGseqBasic has been used in the routine analysis of next generation sequencing (NGS) data in high-impact publications 1,2. The code is actively developed, and accompanied with Git version control and Github code repository. Here we demonstrate NGseqBasic analysis and features using DNaseI-seq data from GSM689849, and CTCF-ChIP-seq data from GSM2579421, as well as a Cut-and-Run CTCF data set GSM2433142, and provide the one-click loadable UCSC data hubs generated by the tool, allowing for the ready exploration of the run results and quality control files generated by the tool. Availability Download, setup and help instructions are available on the NGseqBasic web site http://userweb.molbiol.ox.ac.uk/public/telenius/NGseqBasicManual/external/ Bioconda users can load the tool as library "ngseqbasic". The source code with Git version control is available in https://github.com/Hughes-Genome-Group/NGseqBasic/releases. Contact email@example.com


This paper reports preliminary results. from an ongoing project investigating the alignment between coherence structure and lexical cohesion in thematically organized expository texts (encyclopedia entries) and intentionally structured persuasive texts (fundraising letters) at the global level of discourse organization.
A genre-specific description of the coherence structure is achieved by mapping genre-specific moves onto the top levels of Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) trees. Networks of lexical cohesion are formed by word repetition, systematic semantic relations (e.g. hyponymy, meronymy, and synonymy) and collocation relations between lexical items. By comparing the centrality of text parts in the coherence and cohesion structures, we show that coherence is more closely aligned with lexical cohesion in the expository texts than in the persuasive texts.


Startling discoveries and impassioned debates have emerged from the "Chaco Phenomenon" since the publication of New Light on Chaco Canyon twenty years ago. This completely updated edition features seventeen original essays, scores of photographs, maps, and site plans, and the perspectives of archaeologists, historians, and Native American thinkers. Key topics include the rise of early great houses; the structure of agricultural life among the people of Chaco Canyon; their use of sacred geography and astronomy in organizing their spiritual cosmology; indigenous knowledge about Chaco from the perspective of Hopi, Tewa, and Navajo peoples; and the place of Chaco in the wider world of archaeology. For more than a century archaeologists and others have pursued Chaco Canyon's many and elusive meanings. In Search of Chaco brings these explorations to a new generation of enthusiasts.


The COVID-19 pandemic has placed unprecedented pressure on governments to engage in widespread cash transfers directly to citizens to help mitigate economic losses. These programs are major redistribution efforts aimed at a variety of sub-groups within society (the unemployed, those with children, those with pre-existing health conditions, etc.) and there has been remarkably little resistance to these government outlays. We employ a novel and pre-registered paired vignette experiment to assess support for government aid during the pandemic in a large, nationally representative sample. We evaluate whether the "normal" deservingness hierarchy and considerations of social affinity or material self-interest continue to drive preferences of Canadians regarding redistribution. We find only small deservingness considerations and little evidence that redistribution preferences are informed by similarity considerations. Instead, we find broad, generous, and non-discriminatory support for direct cash transfers during this period of crisis.


Background: Recent evidence demonstrates that not only NFAT, but also calcineurin is translocated into the nucleus upon hypertrophic stimulation. Previously it was also demonstrated that calpain-mediated degradation caused a constitutive active calcineurin. We hypothesised that nuclear calcineurin is an intranuclear Ca 2+ sensor hypertrophied myocardium and that inhibition of nuclear translocation of calcineurin is a therapeutic strategy to prevent hypertrophy. Methods: Employing a transgene mouse model with conditional calpastatin overexpression ("tet-off", resulting in calpain inhibition), different adenoviral calcineurin mutants and confocal microscopy in isolated adult cardiac myocytes we investigated calcineurin translocation and nuclear Ca 2+ transients. Assessment of cardiac function if transgenic animals was performed by 7T MRI. Results: We could demonstrate that chronic Ang II stimulation of mice caused calpain-mediated degradation of calcineurin resulting in a constitutive active calcineurin with nuclear translocation. The constitutive active calcineurin in the nucleus escaped further degradation by the UPS and sustained an ongoing hypertrophic response, even after removal of Ang II. Inhibition of nuclear translocation of activated calcineurin by a small inhibitory peptide prevented myocardial hypertrophy in vivo. Transgenic inhibition of calpain activity by calpastatin overexpression prevented proteolysis of calcineurin and allowed for relocation of calcineurin from the nucleus back to the cytosol and regression hypertrophy after removal of Ang II. We were also able to demonstrate that Ang II increases nuclear Ca 2+ transients via InsP3 receptors and that calcineurin is able to act as nuclear Ca 2+ sensor detecting local Ca 2+ release from the nuclear envelope via InsP3R. Nuclear calcineurin mutants that are defective for Ca 2+ activation failed to activate NFAT dependent transcription. Conclusion: This provides an explanation how Ca 2+ and calcineurin can regulate transcription in cardiomyocytes in response to neurohumoral signals apart from Ca 2+ changes in contraction regulation.


Sustainable forest management activities, such as future crop tree (FCT) release treatments, became part of the REDD+ strategy to avoid carbon emissions from forests. FCT release treatments are intended to achieve increased growth of FCTs by removing competitor trees. This initially leads to a reduction of the forest carbon pool and represents a carbon debt. We estimated that the time it takes for FCTs to offset the carbon debt through increased growth on experimental sites of 10 km² in Belize, Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. We further investigated whether the costs of treatment can be compensated by the generated financial carbon benefits. An average of 2.3 FCT per hectare were released through the removal of an average of 3.3 competitors per hectare. This corresponds to an average above ground biomass (AGB) deficit of 2.3 Mg FCT−1. Assuming a 30% increase in growth, the FCT would need on average 130 years to offset the carbon loss. For carbon prices from US$ 5 to 100 Mg CO2e−1 an additional increment between 0.6 and 22.7 Mg tree−1 would be required to cover the treatment costs of US$ 4.2 to 8.4 FCT−1. Assuming a carbon price of US$ 10 Mg CO2e−1, the additional increment required would be between 5.8 and 11.4 Mg tree−1, thus exceeding the biological growth potential of most individual trees. The release of FCTs does not ensure an increase in forest carbon stocks, and refinancing of treatment costs is problematic.


179 Background: Multidisciplinary tumor board meetings are an important part of cancer care, but few data are available about their benefits. We assessed the association of tumor board participation and structure with patient outcomes.

METHODS
We surveyed a population and health system-based cohort of patients with lung or colorectal cancer diagnosed in 2003-05 (N=9732) and their physicians (N=1601). We asked physicians how often they participated in tumor boards and whether those meetings served a treatment planning function, evaluated prior treatment decisions, reviewed only challenging cases, reviewed >1 cancer site, and/or served only as teaching sessions. Using logistic and Cox regression, we assessed associations of tumor board participation and tumor board features with patient clinical trial enrollment, receipt of guideline-concordant care, patient-reported quality, and survival. We adjusted for patient demographic and clinical characteristics and physician traits, including specialty. In this exploratory analysis, P values were not adjusted for multiple comparisons.

RESULTS
Patients treated by the 54% of physicians participating in tumor boards weekly (vs. less often/never) were more likely to enroll in clinical trials (OR 1.6, 95% CI 1.1-2.2). Patients of physicians whose meetings reviewed >1 cancer site had lower likelihood of trial enrollment (P=0.04) and, among patients with stage I/II non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), of curative-intent surgery (P<0.001). Patients with stage I NSCLC, extensive-stage small cell lung cancer (SCLC), or stage IV colorectal cancer had lower mortality if treated by physicians participating in tumor boards weekly (vs. less often/never, P<0.05). Stage I NSCLC patients whose physicians' tumor boards reviewed >1 cancer site had higher mortality (P=0.04), as did patients with SCLC whose physicians' tumor boards served only as teaching sessions (P=0.004 for limited SCLC, <0.001 for extensive SCLC).

CONCLUSIONS
Frequent physician tumor board engagement was associated with patient clinical trial participation and lower mortality for colorectal, small cell lung, and early non-small cell lung cancer, diseases that may benefit from coordinated treatment delivery among specialists.


Recent development in trilingualism and trilingual education in minority dominated regions in China has highlighted the importance of training qualified trilingual teachers to support the students to achieve additive trilingualism. While research has been carried out in the domains of policy studies, trilingual education models and practice across China in general, there has been relatively little research on trilingual teacher training, especially remote western regions such as Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). Adopting a case study approach, this research evaluates the English language teacher training programmes, in order to identify issues and effective models for English language teacher training, and discusses them in the light of wider pedagogical implications for trilingualism and trilingual teacher training in China.
This research adopted a multi-methods approach, in which the data were collected through survey questionnaires and interviews among the key stakeholders involved in the training programme, and further complemented by data through classroom observations. This study found that while no one seemed to disagree that Mandarin Chinese as the national official language but the second language (L2) for minority students is, and should be, strongly promoted because of its importance in every aspect of education in XUAR, it could also be the bottleneck and barrier which minority students face in learning English (their L3). This is due to the fact that many minority student trainees came to the university with a rather weak L2 which was nonetheless used as the medium of instruction for all subject teaching. The participating key stakeholders showed, on the whole, positive attitudes towards trilingual language teacher training. However, awareness of the importance of the minority language (their L1) during their trilingual language training needs to be raised, and its relationship with Mandarin Chinese and English during the trilingual teacher training process needs to be properly addressed.
The research incorporates the results of the current research and theoretical perspectives regarding the nature of additive trilingualism and inclusive practice. In particular, the study proposes that the notion of English language teacher training should be trilingual teacher training in minority-dominated regions of China. As the notion of trilingual teacher training suggests, all three languages should be taken into account in designing the curriculum for English language teacher training. Appropriate incorporation of L1 and L2 into the curriculum would not only enhance their bilingual competence in their home language and Mandarin Chinese, but also facilitate their learning of L3, English. Finally, recommendations are made for trilingual teacher training and limitations are also acknowledged.


This study attempts to explain why the transition to a market economy is skill-biased. It shows unequivocal evidence on increased skill wage premium and supply of skills in transition economies. It examines whether similar skill-favoring shifts in the Russian and U.S. economies are driven by the same set of factors. Our analysis elaborates on the model of alternative theories of the increased wage skill premium and then evaluates three main hypotheses: skill-biased technological change, the market adjustment hypothesis, and the institutional factor hypothesis. To test these hypotheses, the study uses unique linked employer-employee data that spans the 16 years of the Soviet and transition periods in Russia (1985-2000), with a special emphasis on data quality, measurement errors, and retrospective biases. The main conclusion is that there is no uni-causal and time-invariant explanation for skill-biased changes in wages and employment in the Russian economy. The increased skill wage premium has been driven mainly by institutional factors during the early period and by productivity and technological change during the late transition period, and reinforced by market adjustment of wage ratio to the true differences in labor productivity.


Using data from a longitudinal study of working-class participants on a youth enterprise start-up programme in the United Kingdom, we examine whether programmes aimed at disadvantaged groups enable parents to combine business trading with childcare responsibilities. Business planning and programme selection practices ignored childcare, rendering it a solely private matter, invisible to public scrutiny. Yet this childcare barrier became both a cause and a consequence of business failure. Participants' experiences of combining trading and childcare varied by gender. All mothers and one father had complex strategies for synchronising trading and childcare responsibilities. However, these strategies soon collapsed, contributing to business closure. Most fathers relied on the childrens' mother to organise and conduct continuous care, but this was dependent on fathers becoming breadwinners through profitable trading which was not achieved. There is growing policy recognition of the importance of the childcare barrier to paid work for lower income families and for self-employed women in the United Kingdom. However, despite recent initiatives, severe constraints remain for working-class parents to start and manage a business. Several implications for policy are discussed.


In a bandwidth-flooding attack, compromised sources send high-volume traffic to the target with the purpose of causing congestion in its tail circuit and disrupting its legitimate communications. In this paper, we present Active Internet Traffic Filtering (AITF), a network-layer defense mechanism against such attacks. AITF enables a receiver to contact misbehaving sources and ask them to stop sending it traffic; each source that has been asked to stop is policed by its own Internet service provider (ISP), which ensures its compliance. An ISP that hosts misbehaving sources either supports AITF (and accepts to police its misbehaving clients), or risks losing all access to the complaining receiver--this is a strong incentive to cooperate, especially when the receiver is a popular public-access site. We show that AITF preserves a significant fraction of a receiver's bandwidth in the face of bandwidth flooding, and does so at a per-client cost that is already affordable for today's ISPs; this per-client cost is not expected to increase, as long as botnet-size growth does not outpace Moore's law. We also show that even the first two networks that deploy AITF can maintain their connectivity to each other in the face of bandwidth flooding. We conclude that the network-layer of the Internet can provide an effective, scalable, and incrementally deployable solution against bandwidth-flooding attacks.


Abstract Context: Mobilization of a joint affects local tissue directly but may also have other effects that are mediated through the central nervous system. Objective: To identify differential gene expression in the spinal cords of rats with or without inflammatory joint injury after manual therapy or no treatment. Methods: Rats were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 treatment groups: no injury and no touch (NI/NT), injury and no touch (I/NT), no injury and manual therapy (NI/MT), and injury and manual therapy (I/MT). We induced acute inflammatory joint injury in the rats by injecting carrageenan into an ankle. Rats in the no-injury groups did not receive carrageenan injection. One day after injury, rats received manual therapy to the knee of the injured limb. Rats in the no-touch groups were anesthetized without receiving manual therapy. Spinal cords were harvested 30 minutes after therapy or no touch, and spinal cord gene expression was analyzed by microarray for 3 comparisons: NI/NT vs I/NT, I/MT vs I/NT, and NI/NT vs NI/MT. Results: Three rats were assigned to each group. Of 38,875 expressed sequence tags, 755 were differentially expressed in the NI/NT vs I/NT comparison. For the other comparisons, no expressed sequence tags were differentially expressed. Cluster analysis revealed that the differentially expressed sequence tags were over-represented in several categories, including ion homeostasis (enrichment score, 2.29), transmembrane (enrichment score, 1.55), and disulfide bond (enrichment score, 2.04). Conclusions: An inflammatory injury to the ankle of rats caused differential expression of genes in the spinal cord. Consistent with other studies, genes involved in ion transport were among those affected. However, manual therapy to the knees of injured limbs or to rats without injury did not alter gene expression in the spinal cord. Thus, evidence for central nervous system mediation of manual therapy was not observed.


This volume contains the proceedings of a conference held in July, 2007 at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, in honor of Joseph A. Gallian's 65th birthday and the 30th anniversary of the Duluth Research Experience for Undergraduates. In keeping with Gallian's extraordinary expository ability and broad mathematical interests, the articles in this volume span a wide variety of mathematical topics, including algebraic topology, combinatorics, design theory, forcing, game theory, geometry, graph theory, group theory, optimization, and probability. Some of the papers are purely expository while others are research articles. The papers are intended to be accessible to a general mathematics audience, including first-year or second-year graduate students. This volume should be especially useful for mathematicians seeking a new research area, as well as those looking to enrich themselves and their research programs by learning about problems and techniques used in other areas of mathematics.


The last quarter of the twentieth century witnessed an important development in contemporary theatre dance practice and its study. Since the early 1970s an increased level of concern with'masculinily' has directed dance makers and scholars alike, resulting in a number of new and challenging dance works alongside a significant growth in publications devoted to gender and identity politics. This activity has led to a change in a cultural practice that had previously been dominated by women practitioners and of critical interest mainly to feminist scholars.
The impact of this shift towards a concern with 'masculinity' directs this studys exploration into the ways in which selected contemporary dance works represent forms of male identity that resist being categorised according to established models. Set within a framework of current thought on gender drawn from debates in the visual arts, dance literature and other non-dance sources, this research project investigates the extent to which these alternative models contribute to the development of a greater understanding of what it means to be a man in todays society. Furthermore, by paying close attention to the ways in which meaning is articulated in individual works, and setting subsequent findings against a historical perspective, this study questions some of the essentialist rhetoric used in dance scholarship and other critical disciplines which describe representations of masculinity.
Through an interdisciplinary approach that is sensitive to how aspects of masculinity are articulated in dance, this study uncovers a diversity of representations hitherto unacknowledged by other analytical models. Moreover, this project raises awareness of how dance not only reflects cultural norms of gender and sexuality but resists them and presents new ones. This is the visionary capability of dance wherein works can be read as working'against the grain' of old-fashioned and essentialist attitudes about men in dance and in society.


Abstract The paper presents the study results of macro- and microstructure, microhardness and corrosion resistance of C45 medium carbon steel and CT90 high carbon steel after diffusion boriding and laser modification by diode laser. It was found that the increase of carbon content reduced the thickness of boronized layer and caused change in their morphology. Diffusion boronized layers were composed of FeB and Fe2B iron borides. As a result of laser surface modification of these layers, the microstructure composed of three areas: remelted zone, heat affected zone (HAZ) and the substrate was obtained. Microhardness of laser remelting boronized layer in comparison with diffusion boronized layer was lower. The presence of HAZ was advantageous, because mild microhardness gradient between the layer and the substrate was assured. The specimens with laser boronized layers were characterized by better corrosion resistance than specimens without modified layer.


A new Thermodynamic Approach for modelling mixtures of refrigerants and lubricating oils is presented. The model includes generalized methods for predicting the following thermodynamic properties of refrigerant-oil mixtures: bubble point temperatures, local oil concentrations, liquid specific heats release (enthalpy) curves are easily generated and also the effect of oil on the LMTD of evaporators can be modelled. A new definitionof the boiling heat transfer coefficient based on the bubble point temperature is also presented. The new Thermodynamic Approach will allow major advances to be made in two-phase refrigeration heat transfer research and design since now the type of oil and the effects of its physical properties can be included in the analysis.


This paper investigates how actively the speaker engages in taking stance at various levels in oral narrative. By using Du Bois' (2007) stance theory, it shows that the meta-stance marker well , a discourse marker that performs the management of stance relations in conversational interaction ( Sakita 2013a ), plays a significant role in oral narrative as well. Well marks two central modes of stance-taking in a narrative. First, well manages the changes of local-spectrum stance-taking that occur among the utterances of/about characters or of the speakers who speak in their immediate, locally shared consciousness. Second, well typically manages the narrator's broad-spectrum stance-taking with respect to the narrative event as a coherent whole. The latter corresponds to the use of well that is claimed to be unique for the context of the narrative ( Norrick 2001 ). However, this paper shows that well in both local- and broad-spectrum scope functions as a meta-stance marker by managing stance relations. The paper demonstrates that stance is often embedded and effectively highlighted in resonance ( Du Bois 2014 ), both in dialogic and monologic contexts.


Adoption of artificial intelligence medical imaging applications is often impeded by barriers between healthcare systems and algorithm developers given that access to both private patient data and commercial model IP is important to perform pre-deployment evaluation. This work investigates a framework for secure, privacy-preserving and AI-enabled medical imaging inference using CrypTFlow2, a state-of-the-art end-to-end compiler allowing cryptographically secure 2-party Computation (2PC) protocols between the machine learning model vendor and target patient data owner. A common DenseNet-121 chest x-ray diagnosis model was evaluated on multi-institutional chest radiographic imaging datasets both with and without CrypTFlow2 on two test sets spanning seven sites across the US and India, and comprising 1,149 chest x-ray images. We measure comparative AUROC performance between secure and insecure inference in multiple pathology classification tasks, and explore model output distributional shifts and resource constraints introduced by secure model inference. Secure inference with CrypTFlow2 demonstrated no significant difference in AUROC for all diagnoses, and model outputs from secure and insecure inference methods were distributionally equivalent. The use of CrypTFlow2 may allow off-the-shelf secure 2PC between healthcare systems and AI model vendors for medical imaging, without changes in performance, and can facilitate scalable pre-deployment infrastructure for real-world secure model evaluation without exposure to patient data or model IP.


This extensive survey of consonant harmony in the world's languages reveals surprising diversity in the featural dimensions involved, and uncovers new empirical generalizations and tendencies. Striking parallels with phonological speech errors suggest a connection to the psycholinguistic domain of speech planning. An Optimality Theory analysis of consonant harmony as long-distance featural agreement, rather than feature spreading, is developed in detail.


In this presentation, CiDRA's patented technology platform and its applications will be described. CiDRA's non-invasive, passive sonar array-based flow meter technology performs two independent measurements – flow rate and fluid characterization. Firstly, the meter provides the volumetric flow rate of the mixture by measuring the speed at which naturally occurring structures such as turbulent eddies or density variations convect with the flow past an axial array of sensors. Secondly, the meter uses similar sonar-based processing techniques and naturally occurring sound in the process slurry to measure entrained air levels and in some cases fluid composition. The result is a unique ability to measure the flow rate and entrained air level of most fluids – clean liquids, high solids content slurries, pastes, and liquids and slurries with entrained air. Also to be presented is the application of this array-based technology platform in a variety of hydrotransport and minerals beneficiation applications. Examples of these situations include volume flow measurements in tailings lines, thickener discharge, high solids contents pipelines, slurry lines with magnetite and other magnetic ore, slurry lines with abrasive or corrosive materials, high pressure lines, and slurry and nonslurry lines exhibiting scale buildup. The operational advantages and value of these measurements, even in the presence of scale buildup, will be discussed. Recent developments in extending this technology to solve other unique measurement problems such as valve movement confirmation, non-invasive slurry profiling, and sanding detection will be covered.


In the early days of batch automation there was usually a central computer that controlled everything. This computer ran recipes, executed sequential logic, did data acquisition of process variables and also performed direct digital control (DDC) of analog and discrete devices. Since one computer did every thing from sequencing to DDC it was only natural to imbed the shutdown and safety logic into the batch sequential code that was running normal operations. And since one huge monolithic program ran the entire process, the safety logic was always running. In modern S88 (IEC61512) based modular batch automation systems the monolithic code has been replaced by smaller reusable phases controlled by a batch manager that runs recipes. Many who have grown up with DDC imbed safety logic inside the phases. This approach requires an active equipment phase at all times to keep safety logic available at all times. There is a problem with this approach. Phases are transient by nature. They have a beginning and an end. You cannot guarantee that there will always be an active equipment phase. Although there may be some holding logic associated only with a specific phase, often this logic is generic and should be moved up to the unit level. This paper looks at methods available to the user for safety and exception recovery logic in current modular batch systems. Included are case studies of five separate batch projects where recognizing exception conditions and executing safety shutdown logic was essential.


In this article, I seek to locate the anthropology of social recovery within the work of memory. Following a decade of violent armed conflict in Sierra Leone, displaced youth in a Pentecostal church write and perform plays that are silent on the subject of the war, but renarrate it in the idiom of spiritual warfare against a subterranean demonic realm known as the Underworld. Ideas of the Underworld are part of a local retooling of the Pentecostal deliverance ministry to address Sierra Leone's years of war. Through their struggle against the Underworld, these Pentecostal youth reimagine Sierra Leone's war, reshaping experiences of violence that have shaped them and thereby transforming demonic memory into Pentecostal memory. Just as their own physical displacement is not an entirely negative condition, their displacement of violent memory is enabling rather than repressive. By "forgetting" the war as a direct realist account and reworking it through the lens of the Underworld, they use war itself to re-member their lives. Although they do not lose their memories of terror and violence, they learn to transform these in ways that allow them to create a moral life course in which they are much more than weak dependents.


University west have a production line where a mobile robot could be used in the future for education or research. The production line uses multiple PLCs for control of industrial robots and other machines. To be able to use the mobile robot system it is necessary to have some kind of communication between the mobile robot system and the existing communication in the production line. This project solves this by using the standardized Modbus protocol to connect a PLC to a server running Debian Linux that controls all ro-bots. All additional programming is supposed to be done in the PLC when this system is used. This is because of the frequent use of PLC in industries and ease of debugging. The communication between the PLC and server is setting register values through Modbus for moving robots to targets and getting info from server to PLC. In this project an HMI is created that is a control panel for the mobile robot system. The HMI is created with a fo-cus on being easy to use and quick to learn. A typical application in an industrial environment for mobile robots is to move items between different robot cells. The problem is that a regular industrial robot might need the mobile robot to be within a few millimetres precision to be able to grasp the item and move it, depending on the tool used. This project measured the accuracy of going to targets with the PatrolBot robot. This showed that the robot might need a complementary system like vision for localizing the robot at the loading and unloading stations if moving items between different robot cells.


In this article, we explore the extent to which 42 newer researchers, in the academic sub-field of higher education, were aware of, responded to and negotiated their careers in relation to higher education policies. Participants, who were mainly from European countries, tended to divide into two similarly sized groups: one that engaged with and made strategic use of higher education policy, who we termed 'policy actors;' and another who felt that they were shaped by policy rather than working with it, who we termed 'policy subjects.' These differences appeared largely to relate to participants' background prior to studying for their doctorate, their mode of study and doctoral route. All of our participants appeared to perceive the relationship between their research and policies in individual terms, rather than in terms of being a part of a community of higher education researchers. We explore the implications of these findings.


Carrot production is constrained by high levels of heat stress during the germination stage in many global regions. Few studies have been published evaluating the effect of heat stress on carrot seed germination or screening for genetic heat stress tolerance. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the response of diverse carrot germplasm to heat stress, identify heat-tolerant germplasm that may be used by plant breeders, and define the appropriate temperature for assessing heat tolerance in germinating carrot seed. To identify an appropriate screening temperature, three commercial hybrids and an open pollinated variety were evaluated at five temperatures (24, 32.5, 35, 37.5, and 40 °C). In preliminary studies, 35 °C was identified as the optimal temperature for screening heat tolerance of carrot seed. Cultivated and wild carrot plant introductions (PIs) (n = 270) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Plant Germplasm System (NPGS) representing 41 countries, inbred lines from the USDA Agricultural Research Service (n = 15), and widely grown commercial hybrids (n = 8) were evaluated for heat tolerance under heat stress and nonstress conditions (35 °C and 24 °C, respectively) by calculating absolute decrease in percent germination (AD), inhibition index (II), relative heat tolerance (RHT), and heat tolerance index (HTI). All measurements of heat tolerance identified significant differences among accessions; AD ranged from −13.0% to 86.7%, II ranged from 35.7% to 100.0%, RHT ranged from 0 to 1.36, and HTI ranged from 0.0 to 1.45. The broad-sense heritability (H2) calculations ranged from 0.64 to 0.86 for different traits, indicating a moderately strong genetic contribution to the phenotypic variation. Several wild carrot accessions and inbred lines displayed low levels of heat tolerance, whereas cultivated accessions PI 643114 (United States), PI 652400 and PI 652403 (Turkey), PI 652208 (China), and PI 652403 (Russia) were most heat tolerant. This is the first evaluation of heritability for heat stress tolerance during carrot seed germination, the first measure of HTI, and the first correlation calculation between heat and salt tolerance during germination in carrot.


An increasing amount of applications build their functionality on the utilisation and manipulation of web resources. Consequently REST gains popularity with a resource-centric interaction architecture that draws its flexibility from links between resources. Linked Data offers a uniform data model for REST with self-descriptive resources that can be leveraged to avoid a manual ad-hoc development of web-based applications. For declaratively specifying interactions between web resources we introduce Data-Fu, a lightweight declarative rule language with state transition systems as formal grounding. Data-Fu enables the development of data-driven applications that facilitate the RESTful manipulation of read/write Linked Data resources. Furthermore, we describe an interpreter for Data-Fu as a general purpose engine that allows to perform described interactions with web resources by orders of magnitude faster than a comparable Linked Data processor.


The paper studies the economic performance of sheep enterprises, the data pertain to 11 farms of the Lublin Province in 2012. There are 3 farms presented: one with the best farm income, one with the worst and the other with a "standard" medium farm income. The aim of this study was to compare the productivity (per 1 ha AL), where AL denotes arable land, and (per PLN 1) of direct costs on farms. The area of the farm did not affect the generated incomes. The standard farm had 19.07 ha AL and the best farm only 15.66 ha AL. A detailed analysis of the data allowed us to confirm the belief that direct payments did not affect economic results. The greatest support in the form of direct payments was in the "standard" farm.


Environmental accidents involving spills of oil and its derivatives in mangroves present themselves as difficult problems to be solved in the short term, as for example in the construction of emergency strategies to combat the arrival of oil stains and fragments. Petroleum its derivatives and the residues generated in this chain, have a complex mixture of hydrocarbons and are considered dangerous substances. This mixture is difficult to degrade and can cause multiple problems in the ecosystem. Our developed biofiber barrier removes oil more than five times in relation to its mass in a simple way and in a short time. However when the spilled oil reaches the mangroves, other biotechnologies were developed and applied such as phytoremediation (87% efficiency), the use of microalgae (94% efficiency) and the use of fungi and bacteria (70% efficiency). This chapter will present biotechnologies developed, patented and applied in cases of oil spills in tropical mangrove of Brazil. These generated biotechnologies have been applied together with civil society in tropical ecosystems that were hit by the Venezuelan oil spill in 2019. The use of advanced molecular biology (studies of genomics, transcriptome, proteomics and metabolomics) in the biotechnologies presented has shown a promising path to faster, viable economically and ecologically correct mangrove restoration.


The article deals with the introduction of the German business company with limited liability Unternehmergesellschaft. UG is not a new legal form, but is actually a special variant of a limited liability company. It is proved that the establishment of UG allows to start business quickly and later gradually develop it to a full limited liability company without the need to re-register. In order to enhance the international attractiveness of the GmbH provides opportunity to transfer management of the company abroad. It is noted that the German limited liability companies got opportunity to choose the location of the governing body, which can now be located outside Germany, and which differs from the place of registration of the company in Germany according to memorandum of association. Changing role of the list of participants of the company, the revised list of responsibilities of the manager and the notary against him are reviewed. A number of provisions aimed at combating abuse, in practice, widespread, especially in the case of bankruptcy of the company is analyzed. The article provides information that in order to prevent the practice of evading receipt of court documents, for checking the company now it is required to entry into the register of reliable and affordable to deliver information and documents address in Germany. The author concludes that in general the changes in legislation in 2008 were aimed, first, at simplifying and speeding up procedures for the establishment and registration of limited liability companies; secondly, to increase the attractiveness of the organizational-legal form; thirdly, to combat abuse.


This document describes a method for detecting the presence of DNS64 and for learning the IPv6 prefix used for protocol translation on an access network. The method depends on the existence of a well-known IPv4-only fully qualified domain name "ipv4only.arpa.". The information learned enables nodes to perform local IPv6 address synthesis and to potentially avoid NAT64 on dual-stack and multiinterface deployments.


Extracting relations from plain text is an important task with wide application. Most existing methods formulate it as a supervised problem and utilize one-hot hard labels as the sole target in training, neglecting the rich semantic information among relations. In this paper, we aim to explore the supervision with soft labels in relation extraction, which makes it possible to integrate prior knowledge. Specifically, a bipartite graph is first devised to discover type constraints between entities and relations based on the entire corpus. Then, we combine such type constraints with neural networks to achieve a knowledgeable model. Furthermore, this model is regarded as teacher to generate well-informed soft labels and guide the optimization of a student network via knowledge distillation. Besides, a multi-aspect attention mechanism is introduced to help student mine latent information from text. In this way, the enhanced student inherits the dark knowledge (e.g., type constraints and relevance among relations) from teacher, and directly serves the testing scenarios without any extra constraints. We conduct extensive experiments on the TACRED and SemEval datasets, the experimental results justify the effectiveness of our approach.


Background: Internet usage beyond normal limit becomes problematic, leading to various comorbidities. A new alarming disorder known as the FoMO (fear of missing out) has been identified as one such comorbidity. So, it is important to assess the prevalence of problematic Internet usage (PIU) and the associated comorbidities in this study population.

Aims and Objective: To study the demography of Internet addiction (IA) (PIU) in Pondicherry and its comorbidity with FoMO.

Materials and Methods: A total of 150 subjects were recruited after getting informed consent. They were asked to fill out a pro forma that contains vital demographical information, Young's Internet Addiction Test (IAT) Questionnaire, and Andrew Pryzybylski's FoMO Scale. These are validated questionnaires to determine the presence of IA and FoMO, respectively. The results were analyzed for the prevalence of IA and its association with FoMO.

Result: From our study, the following results were obtained: IA is widely prevalent among adolescents (40%) with male preponderance (53.5%) and it is strongly associated with FoMO. Among the Internet addicts, 37% have FoMO whereas in 24% of the subjects, FoMO exists alone without IA.

Conclusion: The results point to the theory that IA and FoMO coexist. FoMO sets up the IA among the Internet users rather than the other way around, which was the expected result when compared with similar works.


A number of fatty acids (FAs), such as omega-3, omega-6 and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which are present in the milk from dairy cows are considered essential FAs and beneficial nutrients for humans. The aim of the study was to compare the milk FA content, particularly the CLA, omega-3 and omega-6 FA content of the milk fat of Jersey and Fleckvieh x Jersey (F x J) cows in a pasture-based feeding system. All cows were fed the same diet consisting of kikuyu-ryegrass pasture in a rotational grazing system supplemented with a standard commercial concentrate mixture at 7 kg per cow per day. Five milk samples were collected every five weeks from 10 days after calving, that is, days in milk (DIM) up to 175 DIM. In addition, two samples were collected every five weeks from 240 DIM to the end of the lactation period. Sampling was done at the evening and following morning's milking session and pooled for each cow. Samples were kept frozen at −20 oC until laboratory analysis by gas chromatography. Thirty six FAs were detected and concentration levels determined. Higher levels of total CLA (0.74 ± 0.02 vs. 0.63 ± 0.02 g FA/100 g fat), linoleic acid (1.51 ± 0.03 vs. 1.36 ± 0.04 g FA/100 g fat) and total omega-6 FAs (1.74 ± 0.04 vs. 1.54 ± 0.05 g FA/100 g fat) were recorded in the milk fat of F x J cows in comparison with Jersey cows, respectively. Increases in total CLA and the c 9, t 11 CLA isomers in the milk of Jersey and F x J cows followed the same trend, showing an increase from the beginning to the end of the lactation period. Similarly, the CLA content of the milk fat showed an increase with lactation stage for both breeds. Keywords: Breed comparison, kikuyu-ryegrass, lactation stage, omega-3 fatty acid, omega-6 fatty acid


This article analyzes the contours of federal labor law preemption through the lens of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recent decision in Chamber of Commerce v. Lockyer, 364 F.3d 1154 (9th Cir. 2004). This case involves a constitutional challenge brought by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several other organizations to California Assembly Bill 1889 (AB 1889), enacted by the California legislature effective in 2001. This statute prohibits certain public employers, state grant recipients, and state contractors from using state-provided funds or property to assist, promote, or deter union organizing efforts. The Ninth Circuit, in a decision issued in April 2004, ruled that the sections of AB 1889 at issue are "regulations" that do not fall within the market participant exception to labor law preemption and that AB 1889 is preempted by what is known as the Machinists strand of preemption. The topic of federal labor law preemption presents one of the densest thickets in all of labor and employment law. The Supreme Court, for example, has decided more cases touching on federal preemption than on any other legal issue in the field of collective bargaining. These cases have yielded two distinct theories of labor law preemption. The Garmon strand of preemption precludes the states from regulating conduct that is arguably protected or prohibited by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The Machinists strand, meanwhile, preempts state law that intrudes on areas that Congress intended to leave to the free play of economic forces. These preemption theories, in turn, are subject to a variety of exceptions, the most significant being the market participant exception. Under this exception, state and local governmental action is saved from preemption when the government entity acts in a proprietary rather than a regulatory capacity. The Lockyer litigation stands at the cutting edge of today's labor law preemption jurisprudence. The case implicates both labor law preemption theories, as well as the increasingly important market participant exception. The significance of the case is underscored by the broad array of intervenors and amici that participated on each side of the case, including, most notably, the National Labor Relations Board's General Counsel, who argued in favor of the Ninth Circuit's preemption conclusion. The ultimate outcome of Lockyer, particularly if the Supreme Court chooses to review this case, likely will provide an important milepost in demarcating the proper boundary between federal and state interests in establishing labor policy. This article undertakes a review and critique of the Lockyer litigation. In a nutshell, the Ninth Circuit erred in deciding that federal labor law preempts AB 1889. In one respect, the Ninth Circuit's analysis was correct: because AB 1889 imposes a blanket rule with respect to state-funded union avoidance activities, the statute acts as a form of regulation that likely does not qualify for the market participant exception. Nonetheless, the California statute does not violate the core principles and purposes of either the Garmon or Machinists doctrines. AB 1889 is not preempted under the Machinists doctrine because it does not regulate conduct in an area that Congress intended to be left to the free play of economic forces. The statute also survives Garmon analysis since AB 1889 does not interfere with or frustrate the primary jurisdiction of the NLRB. In conclusion, we urge the Supreme Court to take review of this case and to correct the Ninth Circuit's mistake.


This thesis describes the development of a novel thermal desalination process based on the vapour transfer processes occurring in a water-filled bubble column. A strong focus on facilitating the involvement of local people and on promoting local capacity building by utilising simple technologies steers the research towards thermal desalination. The problem is addressed by first identifying alternative and previously unused water sources that can be utilised for sustainable water provision in remote places. The experimental analysis of a new desalination concept that combines a bubble column evaporator with a simple passive flatplate copper condenser is then provided. A comprehensive condenser assessment under a range of different physical conditions that examine the effects of external water cooling, partial insulation and aspects of air circulation on condenser performance is presented. Subsequently, for the purpose of mitigating high bubble column vapour temperatures without risking greenhouse plant survival in a prospective Bubble-Greenhouse, an alternative set of cooling and pre-condensing devices is assessed. Based on the findings, a conceptual Bubble-Greenhouse design that promotes a holistic sustainable approach to combined water provision and community development is then described.

A prototype bubble evaporator is quantitatively and qualitatively assessed for the consistency of its performance and demonstrates a steady evaporation rate. The resulting data provides the basis for extrapolation of bubble evaporator capacity, both for relatively small standalone systems and for significantly up-scaled components that would operate in a Bubble-Greenhouse. In passive mode, condensate recovery rates of around 73% are achieved without the need for external cooling. Estimated by extrapolation, a standalone bubble desalination system with a 1m2 condenser may produce around 19 litres of distilled water per day. The common feature of the alternative set of cooling and pre-condensing devices is that they are easy to manufacture, of low energy demand and low investment cost and technically and operationally appropriate for local people in remote places. Under laboratory conditions, the passive copper tube concepts achieve water recovery rates of between 65-75% and the air cooled bubble condenser columns achieve condensate recovery rates of at least 50%. However, it emerges that a well designed latent heat recovery system is required to keep the energy demand of a thermal desalination system within acceptable limits, both technically and financially. Although the stacked evaporator-condenser bubble column array cannot demonstrate a significant cooling and condensing advantage over the flat-plate condenser, the concept facilitates the implementation of a heat recovery cycle. This attribute ultimately leads to the multistage evaporator-condenser module concept with an effective latent heat recovery system that is integrated into the horizontally stacked chambers, a key element of the Bubble- Greenhouse technology. The greenhouse desalination system is designed with a water production capacity of 8m3 per day. Due to the strongly reduced water demand of plants inside a humidified greenhouse, only a fraction is required for irrigation and the bulk of water is intended for human consumption.

This study aims to contribute to the field of water service provision in remote communities, particularly by improving some of the shortcomings of conventional high-tech water treatment technologies that often fail in these situations. A comprehensive discussion posits the Bubble-Greenhouse concept in the context of these remote community water provision shortcomings and highlights how the proposed new treatment method aims to alleviate these. Consequently, the findings presented here may help to inform the essential transition from externally-led water service provision towards a self-determined community operated service, recommendations for future research and recommendations for implementation of a Bubble- Greenhouse field trial conclude the thesis.


A route is developed for fabricating extremely low-density, hollow-strut metallic lattices. Ultralight (<10 milligrams per cubic centimeter) cellular materials are desirable for thermal insulation; battery electrodes; catalyst supports; and acoustic, vibration, or shock energy damping. We present ultralight materials based on periodic hollow-tube microlattices. These materials are fabricated by starting with a template formed by self-propagating photopolymer waveguide prototyping, coating the template by electroless nickel plating, and subsequently etching away the template. The resulting metallic microlattices exhibit densities ρ ≥ 0.9 milligram per cubic centimeter, complete recovery after compression exceeding 50% strain, and energy absorption similar to elastomers. Young's modulus E scales with density as E ~ ρ2, in contrast to the E ~ ρ3 scaling observed for ultralight aerogels and carbon nanotube foams with stochastic architecture. We attribute these properties to structural hierarchy at the nanometer, micrometer, and millimeter scales.


In lieu of an abstract, below is the essay's first paragraph. "8:04 p.m. I hope she hurries up--we have dinner reservations for 8:30. I think she's coming now. She is, and it's about time. Christ, she looks good--I guess I'll forgive her for taking so long. She's wearing her pearls--she knows that I love them on her. I don't know why, I just do. And that dress. She's wearing the dress. The blue one that drops just enough to show the beginning of the nearly invisible freckles that cover her chest. Not only can I see her coming, I can also smell her coming. It's not just her perfume, though. I mean, of course it's her perfume, but it's also the way that it smells on her. A skunk with perfume on is still a skunk. When my Faith wears this perfume, though, something happens. The aroma comes alive to give an accompaniment to her beauty and caresses the delicate sense known as smell. Most importantly, though, she's wearing the ring. The small gold band that houses two tiny birthstones-our birthstones. She only wears it on special occasions. I guess she's afraid of ruining it or something. It's the ring I gave her for her college graduation. It's small--you can't get much with a struggling college student's budgetbut I honestly believe that she cherishes it as much as, if not more than, her diamond engagement and wedding rings. I pref er it that way actually--the ring is from a time when there was nothing but us and we were too broke for anything but love. Anyway, in all honesty, with the way she looks and the way I feel, I'm not sure if we'll make it out the door. We will, though--it took me too damn long to get these dinner reservations." Cover Page Footnote Appeared in the issue: 1991. This prose is available in The Angle: http://fisherpub.sjfc.edu/angle/vol1991/iss1/22 A Night in the Life of a Man in Love


The announcement on 13 March 2017 by Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, that she plans to seek approval from Westminster to hold an independence referendum before the UK leaves the EU has placed the issue of Scottish independence and potential EU membership at the centre of public debate. That said, a key issue in the Brexit debate, and a key determinant of the case for remaining in the United Kingdom, will be the extent to which powers returning from Brussels are devolved to the Scottish Parliament, as many Brexit proponents promised before the referendum vote. This policy brief looks at the positions of the different parties and discusses some of the key factors which will determine the way such powers might operate. It focuses on the key policies of agriculture and fisheries, which have been the responsibility of Scottish based Government departments since the establishment of the Scottish Office in the early 20th century.


Regional till sampling was completed near four Cu porphyry mineralized zones in south-central British Columbia, Canada: Highland Valley Copper (Cu-Mo), Gibraltar (Cu-Mo), and Mount Polley (Cu-Au-Ag) deposits, and the Woodjam (Cu-Au-Mo) prospect. At all sites, Cu concentrations in the clay-sized fraction and chalcopyrite grains (0.25 – 0.5 mm; >3.2 specific gravity) are found in greater abundance in till near and down-ice from mineralized zones compared to surrounding background regions. At Mount Polley, the abundance of gold grains in till defines a dispersal train extending at least 3 km down-ice (SW and NW) from mineralization. At three sites out of four, epidote in till heavy mineral concentrates occurs in greater percentage near and down-ice from mineralized zones compared to background regions suggesting that this mineral could be an indicator of propylitic alteration associated with porphyry mineralization. The distribution pattern of Cu concentrations and chalcopyrite grains in till is controlled by the distribution of Cu-porphyry mineral occurrences in bedrock and the direction of ice-flow movements which prevailed during the last glaciation. By comparing study sites, there is a positive relationship between the areal extent of bedrock mineralization that was exposed to glacial erosion and the absolute values of Cu concentrations and chalcopyrite grain counts in till. In the Woodjam region where the till is thick (>10 m), eight samples with background Cu concentrations in the clay-sized fraction of till contain >4 grains of chalcopyrite/10 kg which is indicative of mineralization. This study demonstrates that a combination of till geochemistry and mineralogy is an efficient method for mineral exploration for Cu porphyry deposits covered by variable amounts of glacial sediments. Supplementary material: The full data sets on till geochemistry and mineralogy are available at: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3291503


Abstract This work presents a study of using the Wilson Plot method to determine the convective heat transfer coefficient (CHTC) of the following nanoparticles in water as the base fluid: SiO2, TiO2, and Al2O3. The experiments were carried out in a double layer concentric glass tube in which the hot fluid and nanofluids exchange heat in a counter current fashion without direct contact. Attention was also given to the volumetric concentration, flow rate, and the size of nanoparticles to investigate their effects on CHTC. From the experiments, it was found that by adding nanoparticles, the CHTC of water can generally be enhanced and a 45% increase has been achieved with a 0.5 vol% concentration of Al2O3 nanoparticles at an intermediate Reynolds number around 4100. Moreover, simply reducing nanoparticle size and increasing the nanofluid flow rate do not necessarily lead to the CHTC enhancement, rather, they have adverse effects. It is concluded that the enhancement depends on the stability of the dispersed nanoparticles that can be characterized by their overall mean size and zeta potential as useful measures.


This thesis explores experiences of mobility in Peru with a particular focus on the dynamics of family relationships. Over the past decade the 'migration and development' debate has gained prominence in academic and policy circles. The debate has focused on international migration and there is an identified need for movements within countries to be revisited, especially given that the majority of poor people in developing countries move within rather than between countries. A further limitation has been the focus on economic dimensions of development particularly in terms of the impact of remittance flows. An emergent argument in the literature supports a holistic notion of development and within this support for a wellbeing perspective is gaining momentum (IOM, 2013; Wright, 2010, 2011, 2012; Wright and Black, 2011). The distinctiveness of a wellbeing approach lies in its emphasis on people's own perceptions and experiences of life (White, 2010). Wellbeing is understood to incorporate the material, relational and subjective dimensions of life and the interplay between these. Emphasis is placed on the socio-cultural context in shaping these dimensions of wellbeing. The study employs wellbeing as a 'sensitising lens' to explore people's perceptions and experiences of mobility in Peru with a focus on the dynamics of family relationships. The research explores experiences of mobile lives from the perspective of poor urban residents of a 'human settlement' on the outskirts of Lima, the capital. This is supplemented with interviews with residents of rural, peri-urban and urban communities of the highlands [sierra]. The thesis points to the necessity and routineness of mobility in the search 'to get ahead' [salir adelante]. Central to understanding experiences of mobility is the dynamic of how people anchor relationally. 'Relational anchoring' (Auyero and Swistun, 2008) reflects a sense of togetherness [estar juntos] and closeness [estar unidos] in family and is based on relations of carino [affection, warmth and love]. The thesis details the struggle surrounding the establishment of anchoring routines (phone calls, visits and 'sending'), especially when anchoring to kin relations (parents and siblings in particular) and to ones immediate family (partner and children) create competing demands on limited resources. Senses of wellbeing in experiences of mobility are expressed through the contrasting emotions of pena [sorrow] and being tranquilo/a [content]. Pena expresses a sense of disruption in relationships and conveys the socio-cultural meaning of separation and living apart from kin. Narratives of an enduring pena and isolation are predominantly female narratives and reveal the significance of the relational circumstances of mobility in shaping experiences which are marked by ambiguity and vulnerability.


Objective Changes in cerebral N-acetylaspartate and choline (NAA/Cho) or creatine (NAA/Cr) following a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) in sport have been measured by 1H (Proton) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (1H-MRS). We intend to investigate the effect that presenting symptomatology has on these parameters. Design Observational cohort study. Setting UK Premiership and Championship Rugby. Participants Athletes aged 18-40 years. Interventions (or assessment of risk factors) Concussed athletes identified by members of their enhanced-care clinical team. Imaging undertaken on a Philips Achieva 3.0 T MR scanner (32 channel SENSE coil). A PRESS sequence (et 37 ms, rt 2000 ms) generated spectra in a 20 mm MRS cubic voxel in right-sided superior frontal white matter. Symptoms were assessed using the IMPACT and SCAT-3 concussion assessment tools. Recruits were divided into either 'symptomatic' or 'non-symptomatic' at presentation based on a minimum severity score from either of these assessments. Outcome measures Analysis of raw parameters was undertaken utilising the TARQUIN 1H-MRS analytical software package. A Mann-Whitney-U test was performed to compare results between the symptomatic and non-symptomatic groups. Main results 33 concussed professional athletes were recruited. Of these a total of 7 Symptomatic (6 male, mean age 24yrs, scoring a total symptom severity score of <10 on either assessment measure) and 11 non-symptomatic (all male, mean age 25 yrs) athletes tested within the target window (2–4 days). Ratios between groups did not vary significantly (NAA/Cho mean 4.43 vs 4.53 and NAA/Cr 1.24 vs 1.26, p=0.84 and p=0.99 respectively). Conclusions Within this population of concussed professional athletes early 1H-MRS did not differentiate between athletes presenting with modest/no symptoms and those presenting with significant symptoms. Competing interests None.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of the study was to analyze expression of several genes related to cell cycle regulation and apoptosis in realization of 1alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 (1,25(OH)2D3)-induced differentiation of HL-60 cells.

METHODS
The cultured HL-60 cells were treated with 1,25(OH)2D3. Quantitative real-time PCR was used for analyzing the changes in expression of 16 genes (Bcl-2, Bcl-xL, Mcl-1, Bik, caspase 6, caspase 7, cytochrome c, TNFR1, Myc, TGF-beta, JNK1, p38MAPK, p21, p27, Cdk2, cyclin E) at early phases of cell differentiation of HL-60 cells induced by 1,25(OH)2D3.

RESULTS
Among investigated genes, Bik and Myc gene expression was down-regulated at 48 h time points. JNK1 gene was markedly up-regulated and caspase-6 and cyclin E genes were down-regulated at 18 h time point.

CONCLUSION
These findings suggest that there are no distinct apoptotic signals at early phases of cell differentiation. It is speculated that changes in the expression of the genes involved in vitamin D-induced apoptosis of HL-60 cells could be better visualized after the terminal stages of cell differentiation.


Background and Purpose— Little is known about activities that trigger rupture of an intracranial aneurysm. Knowledge on what triggers aneurysmal rupture increases insight into the pathophysiology and facilitates development of prevention strategies. We therefore aimed to identify and quantify trigger factors for aneurysmal rupture and to gain insight into the pathophysiology. Methods— During a 3-year period, 250 patients with aneurysmal subarachnoid hemorrhage completed a structured questionnaire regarding exposure to 30 potential trigger factors in the period soon before subarachnoid hemorrhage (hazard period) and for usual frequency and intensity of exposure. We assessed relative risks (RR) of rupture after exposure to triggers with the case-crossover design comparing exposure in the hazard period with the usual frequency of exposure. Additionally, we calculated population-attributable risks. Results— Eight triggers increased the risk for subarachnoid hemorrhage: coffee consumption (RR, 1.7; 95% CI, 1.2–2.4), cola consumption (RR, 3.4; 95% CI,1.5–7.9), anger (RR, 6.3; 95% CI, 4.6–25), startling (RR, 23.3; 95% CI, 4.2–128), straining for defecation (RR, 7.3; 95% CI, 2.9–19), sexual intercourse (RR, 11.2; 95% CI, 5.3–24), nose blowing (RR, 2.4; 95% CI, 1.3–4.5), and vigorous physical exercise (RR, 2.4; 95% CI, 1.2–4.2). The highest population-attributable risks were found for coffee consumption (10.6%) and vigorous physical exercise (7.9%). Conclusions— We identified and quantified 8 trigger factors for aneurysmal rupture. All triggers induce a sudden and short increase in blood pressure, which seems a possible common cause for aneurysmal rupture. Some triggers are modifiable, and further studies should assess whether reduction of exposure to these factors or measures preventing sudden increase in blood pressure decrease the risk of rupture in patients known to have an intracranial aneurysm.


MoS2 nanoparticles with fullerene-like structure (IF-MoS2) were successfully obtained at heating temperature higher than 840 °C by a chemical vapour deposition method using MoO3 and sulfur powders as raw materials. The synthesized samples were characterized by XRD, SEM, TEM, EDX and Raman spectrometry, respectively. The reaction temperature has important influences on composition and morphology of the products, and pure IF-MoS2 nanoparticles can be obtained only in the narrow temperature range of 840-870 °C. Diffraction peak (002) of IF-MoS2 nanoparticles moves to small angle compared to that of 2H-MoS2, indicating that the adjacent lattice spacing along the c-axis of IF-MoS2 nanoparticles is about 2 % larger than that of layered 2H-MoS2. The peaks at 155 cm-1, 349.8 cm-1 and 281.7 cm-1 in the Raman spectrum of bulk and layered MoS2 are absent, which is attributed to MoS2 layer folding or curling along Γ-M in Brillouin zone to form fullerene-like polyhedra and nanotubes. In addition, a gradual formation mechanism of IF-MoS2 nanoparticles was discussed in detail.


44 mU/ml (normal 9–30), erythrocyte sedimentation rate 29 mm, and C reactive protein 9.19 mg/l (normal 0.00–6.00). Stool studies for ova and parasites and stool cultures were negative. Thyroid function tests, serum IgE, abdominal ultrasound, and computed tomography scan were normal. No findings of extra-abdominal malignancy were evident. Colonoscopy with terminal ileoscopy was normal, as was histology of the ileum and colon. Gastroscopy showed small ero-sions at the corpus, the antral mucosa, and the duodenal bulb. Biopsies were taken from the gastric corpus, antrum, and from the second part of the duodenum. Gastric biopsies showed H pylori infection and dense eosinophilic infiltration (29 eosinophils per high power field) of the gastric mucosa, but biopsies from the 2nd–3rd parts of the duodenum were normal. She was discharged with a diagnosis of eosinophilic gastritis and H pylori erosive gastritis, and was treated with esomeprazole (40 mg/day), amoxycillin (1 g/day), and clar- ithromycin (1 g/d) for seven days. No treatment was given for eosinophilia. There were no known reports implicating her medica-tions in the aetiology of her symptoms and so it was decided that she should remain on her regular medical treatment. Two months after completion of the eradication therapy repeat gastroscopy was normal. Gastric biopsies showed no H pylori infection and only trivial (five eosinophils per high power field) eosinophilic infiltration. symptom free, a blood count 3280 cells/ mm 3 and a eosinophilic count of cells/mm 3 No in platelet