8 wild type strains of Bifidobacterium pseudocatenulatum and 4 commercial strains
(B. pseudocatenulatum JCM 1200, B. infantis ATCC 15698, B. breve ATCC 26720
and B. longum BB536) were screened for inulinase activity on modified PY-0 and
PY-I agar. Wild type B. pseudocatenulatum F117 and reference B.
pseudocatenulatum JCM 1200 were determined to have the highest inulinase
activity. This activity was apparently higher on PY-0 agar in comparison to PY-I
agar. In batch cultivation, growth of B. pseudocatenulatum F 1 17 was enhanced in
PY-0 medium (0.38 h-' and 2.64 x lo8 cfulrnL), compared to PY-G (0.48 h-' and
5.45 x lo8 cfulrnL) and PY-I medium (0.20 h" and 1.70 x lo8 cfulmL) from the
respective, initial specific growth rate and maximum growth. Acetic, lactic and
formic acid production was also found to be relatively higher in PY-0 medium
(38.60 mM; 37.48 mM; 7.37 mM) compared to PY-G medium (11.95 mM; 22.77
mM; 5.91 mM) or PY-I medium (12.34 mM; 19.73 mM; 0 mM). In therapeutic study, the antagonistic effect against E. coli V157 by B. pseudocatenulatum F117
was contributed by pH lowering of the growth medium. This effect was especially
intensified at pH below 5.0. Antagonistic effect found in PY-0 medium was greater
compared to that of PY-G medium. The kinetics of antagonistic effect could be
divided into two apparent phases. It was the condition before (first phase) and after
(second phase) B. pseudocatenulatum F117 to achieve the maximum growth (lo9
cfu/mL), with relatively intense antagonistic effect at second phase. Organic acid
was highly produced at second phase (PY-G medium: 45.5728.99 mM; PY-0
medium: 61.542 1 1.92 mM) rather than first phase (PY-G medium: 25.59k3.16; PY-
0 medium: 30.46k7.21 rnM) implicative of the importance of probiotic
concentration for effective antagonism. Oligohctose was found to be able to
stimulate the growth of B. pseudocatenulatum F117 and consequently shorten the
time for the maximum growth to achieve, from 18 hr in PY-G medium to 12 hr in
PY-0 medium. Besides, lactic acid production was initiated 6 hr earlier in PY-0
medium than to PY-G medium, which could be an added inhibitory advantage. With
low bifidobacteria dose (10' cfu/mL), the antagonistic effect displayed was quite
identical to a higher dose (lo8 cWmL) employed. B. pseudocatenulatum F1l7 was
found to obtain the maximum growth in 18 hr for the both trial doses in either
growth medium. In prophylactic study, PY-0 medium could not be observed to
further enhance the antagonistic effect in PY-G medium. E. coli V157 (1 o8 cfu/mL)
was unable to sustain and multiply to a higher population but decreased in numbers
in either growth mediums. Finally, a higher oligofructose concentration (1.0 %) was
shown to dramatically improve the antagonistic effect as compared to the lower concentration (0.5 %) used, in both therapeutic and prophylactic study. This effect
was again due to an even higher amount of organic acids produced.


Autopoiesis is a concept initially developed, forty years ago, by Humberto Maturana and Francisco Valera, to explain the behavior of biological systems and has enjoyed great popularity among international scientific community. The concept has been extended to the areas of the social sciences, including economics, law, political and other domains. The paper investigate the application of the autopoiesis social systems theory on the economic systems in a critical approach. The study delimits the theoretical framework of autopoietic systems and presents a critical review of the autopoietic social systems theory, based on the recent researches. We find that communication and organization are critical for the autopoietic systems and we consider that the main criteria that allow for the economies of the Baltic States to be considered as autopoietic systems can be available for any economy. We consider that the contribution of this paper will enable to start a debate about autopoietic theory aplications in economic discipline and to serve as an introduction for future discoveries and better understanding of economy.


This paper seeks to give a more precise grounding to the question of relevance in Athenian forensic argument with a specific focus on the speeches delivered by Aeschines and Demosthenes in the case On the Crown. I argue that in Athenian litigation relevance can be determined quite precisely by the specific terms of the accusation, and that the litigants are well aware of this standard and take care to make their arguments relevant or to justify them if they may appear to be "outside the issue." Because all the issues specified in the accusation are legally relevant, the distinction commonly drawn between legal and political arguments has no place in a discussion of relevance. The effect of this rule of relevance, I argue, is not to promote fairness but to increase the advantage enjoyed by the plaintiff. I conclude with a few observations on the Athenian view of law which, I suggest, was considerably broader than ours.


This study was designed to evaluate the use of chicken intestine as a protein
source for red tilapia juveniles (Oreochromis sp.). This study comprises two
experiments. In experiment I, the effect of feeding two types of food each
respectively containing boiled chicken intestine and raw chicken intestine on the
growth of red tilapia juvenile, Oreochromis sp., were studied. The results showed
that the food containing boiled chicken intestine give better growth for the fish
compared to the one containing raw chicken intestine when used in a 100%
substitution for fish meal.
Based on the results of experiment I, the boiled chicken intestine was selected
for experiment II and was incorporated into isonitrogenous (40% protein) and
isocaloric (450 kcal GEI100g) diets to replace 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%
substitution levels of the fish meal protein in the control diet. The test diets were
fed to triplicate groups of red tilapia juveniles, twice a day, for 70 days. The
results showed that increase in the proportion of boiled chicken intestine in the
diets resulted in growth retardation.
Percent total length gain was highest for fish that were fed with the control diet,
followed by those fed with the diet that substituted 50% of the fish meal with
boiled chicken intestine. Percent body weight gain, similarly, was highest for fish
fed with the control diet, followed again by fish that were fed with the diet that
substituted 50% of the fish meal with boiled chicken intestine.
The results showed that red tilapia juveniles fed with the control diet gave the
best growth compared with fish that were fed others diets. Nevertheless, boiled
chicken intestine could still be used as a main protein source to replace up to
50% of fish meal. Beyond and above the 50% substitution of fish meal with
boiled chicken intestine clearly, resulted in stunting growth.


A theoretical study of the HXYH (X, Y = O, S and Se) monomers and dimers has been carried out by means of MP2 computational methods. For the monomers, isomerization (H2X=Y//HXYH) and rotational transition state barriers have been calculated. Additionally, the molecular electrostatic potential of the isolated monomers has also been analysed. Due to the chiral nature of these compounds, homo and heterochiral dimers have been explored. The number of minima found for the dimers range between 13 and 22. The electron density of the complexes has been characterized with the Atoms in Molecules (AIM) methodology finding a large variety of interactions. The DFT-SAPT method has been used to analyse the components of the interaction energies. Concerning chalcogen–chalcogen interactions, although the most stable minima are formed through hydrogen bonds (especially if OH groups are present in the molecules) as the size of the atoms involved in the interaction increase, the chalcogen–chalcogen contacts become more important.


Flow field in shallow waters, which is characterized by its complex mixing process and inherent dynamic nature, is interesting mainly due to its practical importance (e. g. in free flushing operation and sedimentation in large reservoirs). 3D numerical models make it possible to track two-dimensional large turbulence coherent structures, which are the dominant phenomenon in shallow reservoirs flow field. In the present study a fully three-dimensional numerical model SSIIM that employs the Finite Volume Approach (FVM) was utilized to reproduce the 3D flow field. Various shallow reservoir geometries with fixed and deformed equilibrium bed were considered. The measurements by Large-Scale Particle Image Velocimetry techniques (LSPIV) and Ultrasonic Doppler Velocity Profiler (UVP) over the flow depth were used for model validation. Outcomes revealed reasonable agreement between the simulated and measured flow velocity field even when an asymmetric flow pattern exists in the reservoir.


Objective To assess the effectiveness of a two year exercise programme of progressive balance retraining in reducing injurious falls among women aged 75-85 at increased risk of falls and injuries and living in the community. Design Pragmatic multicentre, two arm, parallel group, randomised controlled trial. Setting 20 study sites in 16 medium to large cities throughout France. Participants 706 women aged 75-85, living in their own home, and with diminished balance and gait capacities, randomly allocated to the experimental intervention group (exercise programme, n=352) or the control group (no intervention, n=354). Intervention Weekly supervised group sessions of progressive balance training offered in community based premises for two years, supplemented by individually prescribed home exercises. Outcome measures A geriatrician blinded to group assignment classified falls into one of three categories (no consequence, moderate, severe) based on physical damage and medical care. The primary outcome was the rate of injurious falls (moderate and severe). The two groups were compared for rates of injurious falls with a "shared frailty" model. Other outcomes included the rates of all falls, physical functional capacities (balance and motor function test results), fear of falling (FES-I), physical activity level, and perceived health related quality of life (SF-36). Analysis was by intention to treat. Results There were 305 injurious falls in the intervention group and 397 in the control group (hazard ratio 0.81, 95% confidence interval 0.67 to 0.99). The difference in severe injuries (68 in intervention group v 87 in control group) was of the same order of magnitude (0.83, 0.60 to 1.16). At two years, women in the intervention group performed significantly better on all physical tests and had significantly better perception of their overall physical function than women in the control group. Among women who started the intervention (n=294), the median number of group sessions attended was 53 (interquartile range 16-71). Five injurious falls related to the intervention were recorded. Conclusion A two year progressive balance retraining programme combining weekly group and individual sessions was effective in reducing injurious falls and in improving measured and perceived physical function in women aged 75-85 at risk of falling. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT00545350).


In this Article, I examine how the international women's rights movement has reinforced the image of the woman as a victim subject, primarily through its focus on violence against women (VAW). I use the example of India to examine how this subject has been replicated in the post-colonial context, and the more general implications this kind of move has on women's rights. My main argument is that the focus on the victim subject in the VAW campaign reinforces gender and cultural essentialism in the international women's human rights arena. It also buttresses claims of some "feminist" positions in India that do not produce an emancipatory politics for women. This focus fails to take advantage of the liberating potential of important feminist insights. These insights have challenged the public/private distinction along which human rights has operated, and traditional understandings of power as emanating exclusively from a sovereign state.In the first Part of this Article, I examine how the victim subject has become the dominant focus of the international women's human rights movement. I examine this move specifically within the context of VAW campaigns and then look at the broader implications it has for women's rights. I argue that the victim subject has reinforced gender essentialism and cultural essentialism. These have been further displaced onto a Third World and "First World" divide. I discuss how this displacement resurrects the "native subject" and justifies imperialist interventions. In the second Part of the Article, I show how the victim subject has been central to feminist legal politics in India and how this focus, in turn, is a symptom of post-coloniality. The victim subject has invited a protectionist response from the state. The focus on the victim subject at a time when the Hindu Right dominates electoral politics in India has reinforced this protectionist response. In the final Part of this Article, I argue in favor of transcending the victim subject and disrupting the cultural and gender essentialism that have come to characterize feminist legal politics. I then discuss the political and emancipatory value of focusing on the peripheral subject and identifying her locations of resistance when addressing women's human rights. Finally, I discuss the importance of engaging with non-state actors and with new sites of power in order to address a broader array of rights and a broader range of arenas that implicate women's human rights.


Extracted from text ... ASK PERSONAL FINANCE
Investing on the JSE Securities
Exchange: A cheaper way?
By MONIQUE VANEK
Question:
I would like to invest directly onto
the JSE Securities Exchange,
rather than through unit trusts,
but the price of some of the decent
shares make it too expensive to
buy round lots and at the same
time ensure that my portfolio is
sufficiently diversified. Is there a
cheaper way of investing in quality
shares without having to resort
to the unit trust route? I want to
manage my own portfolio.
Personal Finance responds:
For those who have never bought
shares, or are considering ..


Using proof loads and safety factors developed according to recently accepted AASHTO procedures, it is demonstrated that a closed timber structure can safely carry 3 tons (2721.6 kg) and thus be reopened. A literature survey was conducted to provide information that was synthesized into a strategy for proof loading closed timber bridges. The resulting strategy applies the concept of structural shakedown to the rating of timber bridges. Load tests and material tests were conducted.


Multi-metallic Ir-based systems offer significant opportunities for enhanced oxygen evolution electrocatalysis by modifying electronic and geometric properties of the active catalyst. Herein, a systematic investigation of bimetallic Ir-based thin films was performed to identify activity and stability trends across material systems for the oxygen evolution reaction (OER) in acidic media. Electron beam evaporation was used to co-deposit metallic films of Ir, IrSn2, IrCr, IrTi, and IrNi. The electrocatalytic activity of the electrochemically oxidized alloys was found to increase in the order of IrTi < IrSn2 < Ir ~ IrNi < IrCr, with the IrCr system demonstrating two times the catalytic activity of Ir at 1.65 V vs. RHE. Density functional theory calculations suggest that this enhancement is due to Cr active sites that have improved oxygen binding energetics compared to pure Ir-oxide. This work identifies Ir-Cr as a promising new catalyst system that facilitates reduced precious metal loadings for acid-based OER catalysis.


This descriptive study concerns the development of boys' secondary school
libraries in Saudi Arabia into centres for learning in the light of school library media
centres in developed countries. Saudi Arabia recognises the importance of developing
the learning environment and adopting modern concepts of learning. Teaching the
`Library and Research' instruction, the Schools' Net Project and the Learning
Resource Centres Project are evidence of concern with facilitating learning through
resource-based school libraries.
In order to obtain information about the current situation of school libraries,
questionnaires were distributed to schools and to administrative area managers. The
overall response rate was 41.6 and 69.2% respectively. The survey results showed that
school libraries generally are poor and school librarians neither skilled nor trained.
School libraries generally have poor collections, an absence of full-time qualified
librarians, a lack of IT, inadequate educational activities and insufficient funding.
They therefore cannot be expected to play a significant role in the educational process.
In contrast, the majority of school librarians, school managers and administrative area
managers reported encouraging attitudes towards modern concepts of learning and
school library media centres.
Recommendations for development focus on three areas: the learning environment;
the physical infrastructure of the school library and its resources; and the status and
position of school librarians. The necessity of changing the traditional learning
approach into a student-centred approach is stressed. To support such an approach,
information skills should be introduced and IT should be considered an important
method of accessing information. The role of the school library in the learning
process also needs to be recognised and school librarians should be seen as an
important part of the educational team. They should have appropriate qualifications in
Library and Information Science and be able to access in-service training. Finally,
school librarians should be involved in formal collaboration with teachers to develop
an effective learning environment.


In previous work, we have found significant differences in the accuracy with which people make initial spatial judgments in different types of head-mounted, display-based immersive virtual environments (IVEs; Phillips, Interrante, Kaeding, Ries, & Anderson, 2010). In particular, we have found that people tend to less severely underestimate egocentric distances in a virtual environment that is a photorealistic replica of a real place that they have recently visited than when the virtual environment is either a photorealistic replica of an unfamiliar place, or a nonphotorealistically (NPR) portrayed version of a familiar space. We have also noted significant differences in the effect of environment type on distance perception accuracy between individual participants. In this paper, we report the results of two experiments that seek further insight into these phenomena, focusing on factors related to depth of presence in the virtual environment. In our reported first experiment, we immersed users (between-subjects) in one of the three different types of IVEs and asked them to perform a series of well-defined tasks along a delimited path, first in a control version of the environment, and then in a stressful variant in which the floor around the marked path was cut away to reveal a 20-ft drop. We assessed participants' sense of presence during each trial using a diverse set of measures, including: questionnaires, recordings of heart rate and galvanic skin response, and gait metrics derived from tracking data. We computed the differences in each of these measures between the stressful and nonstressful versions of each environment, and then compared the changes due to stress between the different virtual environment conditions. Pooling the data over all participants in each group, we found significant physiological indications of stress after the appearance of the pit in all three environments, but we did not find significant differences in the magnitude of the stress response between the different virtual environment locales. We also did not find any significant difference in the level of subjective presence reported in each environment. However, we did find significant differences in gait: participants in the photorealistic replica room showed a significantly greater reduction in stride speed and stride length between the control and pit version of the room than did participants in either the photorealistically rendered nonreplica environment or the NPR replica environment conditions. Our second experiment, conducted with a new set of participants, sought to more directly investigate potential correlations between distance estimation accuracy and personality, stress response, and reported sense of presence, comparatively across different immersive virtual environment conditions. We used pretest questionnaires to assess a variety of personality measures, and then randomly immersed participants (between-subjects) in either the photorealistic replica or photorealistic non-replica environment and assessed the accuracy of their egocentric distance judgments in that IVE, followed by control trials in a neutral, real-world location. We then had participants go through the same set of tasks as in our first experiment while we collected physiological measures of their stress level and tracked their gait, and we compared the changes in these measures between the neutral and pit-enhanced versions of the environment. Finally, we had people fill out a brief presence questionnaire.Analyzing all of these data, we found that participants made significantly greater distance estimation errors in the unfamiliar room environment than in the replica room environment, but no other differences between the two environments were significant. We found significant positive correlation between several of the personality measures, but we did not find any notable significant correlations between personality and presence, or between either personality or presence and gait changes or distance estimation accuracy. These results suggest to us that the relationship between personality, presence, and performance in IVEs is complicated and not easily captured by existing measures.


This study focuses on the design, development and validation of two coating systems for corrosion protection of hot dip galvanized steel substrates. The coatings consist of epoxy-based resin reinforced with core-shell microcapsules, either cerium oxide or cuprous oxide core and a polymeric shell doped with cerium ions. The effect of the modification of the epoxy resin with a liquid rubber polymer has also been studied. Corrosion studies via electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) revealed that the coatings have enhanced barrier properties. Moreover, EIS studies on coatings with artificial scribes, demonstrated an autonomous response to damage and a self-healing effect. Heat-induced material re-flow has also been observed after exposure to temperature higher than the Tg of the system, which offered an additional self-healing mechanism, partially inhibiting the underlying corrosion processes when the liquid rubber is present in the system.


We present the results of our search for optical counterparts to high-mass X-ray transient sources discovered by various X-ray missions. We obtained CCD images of the X-ray fields through BVR and Hα filters to identify early-type stars in the R - Hα versus B - V colour-colour diagram. We also obtained medium-resolution spectroscopy of the candidates in order to confirm the presence of Hα emission and perform spectral classification. We report on the discovery of the optical counterparts to two X-ray sources: XTE J1858+034 and IGR J01363+6610, and the follow-up observations of another two, newly identified by our group: SAX J2103.5+4545 and GRO J2058+42. For another source, IGR J00370+6122, we present the first detailed optical spectral analysis. The optical photometry and spectroscopy reveal B-type companions in all five sources; GRO J2058+42, SAX J2103.5+4545 and IGR J01363+6610 are positively identified with Be/X-ray binaries, IGR J00370+6122 with a supergiant X-ray binary, while the nature of the XTE J1858+034 is uncertain. We also study the relationship between the optical and X-ray emission during quiescent states.


We present a method for reducing intensity fluctuations that typically occur when a spatial light modulator is updated between consecutive computer generated holograms. The method is applicable to most iterative hologram generating algorithms and minimizes the average phase difference between consecutive holograms. Applications with high stability requirements, such as optical force measurement with holographic optical tweezers, should benefit from this improvement.


In this article we explore the uncertainties of living in the aftermath of cancer treatment within the context of the Norwegian welfare state. Serious illnesses confront people with the uncertainty of life itself. We suggest that managing this form of existential uncertainty is inherently a social process and their considerations of whether or not to share worries are part of the everyday management of social relationships. We refer to this process of managing uncertainty and the social processes intrinsic to it as an act of 'balancing'. We draw on data from repeated interviews with eight former cancer patients in a Northern Norwegian city carried between January 2014 and January 2015. Through our inquiry into who was involved in the participants' interpretation of bodily sensations, health and care seeking, we found that the participants were keeping most of their uncertainties to themselves. Their main argument was that they did not want to make others worry unnecessarily. On the other hand, participants talked about the need and expectation that relevant others had to be informed and involved and the participants also described needing an outlet through being able to share worries. These needs and concerns were balanced within a wish to maintain 'normal everyday life' as far as possible.


Background: Atherosclerosis and its complications remains the major cause of death and premature disability. Atherogenesis involves elements of inflammation, a process that now provides a unifying theme in the pathogenesis of the disease. Anti-platelet drugs are currently used in the treatment of atherosclerosis and its complications. Our study evaluated the influence of dipyridamole on acute and sub-acute models of inflammation in male Wistar rats. Methods: Male Wistar rats (150-200g) were divided into three groups i.e. control, Aspirin and dipyridamole (n=6 animals in each group). The effect of dipyridamole, administered orally, on inflammation was studied using acute (carrageenan induced rat paw edema) and sub-acute (cotton pellet granuloma and histopathological examination of grass piths) models. Experiment was conducted according to the Committee for the Purpose of Control and Supervision on Experiments on Animals (CPCSEA) guidelines. Analysis was done using one way ANOVA followed by Post Hoc Test of Dunnets. P<0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: Dipyridamole showed significant inhibition of rat paw edema in acute model (P<0.01) and granuloma dry weight, in sub acute model of inflammation when compared to control (P<0.01). Histopathological examination of grass pith revealed markedly reduced fibroblasts, granulation tissue, fibrous tissue and collagen in dipyridamole group when compared to control. Conclusion: Dipyridamole exhibited a significant anti inflammatory activity in acute and sub-acute models of inflammation.


This volume is a collection of articles discussing the most recent advances on various topics in partial differential equations. Many important issues regarding evolution problems, their asymptotic behavior and their qualitative properties are addressed. The quality and completeness of the articles will make this book a source of inspiration and references in the future.


Introduction Caring for stroke survivors creates high levels of care burden among family caregivers. Previous initiatives at alleviating the care burden have been unsuccessful. The proposed study aims to evaluate the effect of a tailored multidimensional intervention on the care burden among family caregivers of stroke survivors. Based on the perceived needs of family caregivers, this intervention takes into account scientific recommendations to combine three different approaches: skill-building, psychoeducation and peer support. Methods and analysis Using a prospective, randomised, open-label, parallel-group design, 110 family caregivers will be enrolled from Dakahlia Governorate, Egypt between December 2019 and May 2020, and randomly assigned to either the intervention group or the control group. The tailored multidimensional intervention will be administered for 6 months, including three home visits, six home-based telephone calls and one peer support session. The primary outcome is the care burden as measured using the Zarit Burden Interview. Secondary outcomes include changes in the family caregivers' perceived needs (Family Needs Questionnaire-Revised), coping strategies (Brief-Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced) and quality of life (WHO Quality of Life-BREF). Outcomes evaluation will be conducted at baseline (T0), month 3 (T1) and month 6 (T2). Independent t-test will be performed to compare the mean values of study variables between the two groups at both T1 and T2. After adjusting for confounding variables, analysis of covariance will be used to assess the effect of the intervention. In addition, repeated measures analysis of variance will be conducted to assess changes in effect over time. Ethics and dissemination This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Nursing, Mansoura University, Mansoura, Egypt (P.0195). The results will be published in a scientific peer-reviewed journal, and findings will be disseminated at the local and international levels. Trial registration number NCT04211662.


The flow inside cavities between corotating compressor disks of aero-engines is driven by buoyancy, with Grashof numbers exceeding 1013. This phenomenon creates a conjugate problem: the Nusselt numbers depend on the radial temperature distribution of the disks, and the disk temperatures depend on the Nusselt numbers. Furthermore, Coriolis forces in the rotating fluid generate cyclonic and anticyclonic circulations inside the cavity. Such flows are three-dimensional, unsteady, and unstable, and it is a challenge to compute and measure the heat transfer from the disks to the axial throughflow in the compressor. In this paper, Nusselt numbers are experimentally determined from measurements of steady-state temperatures on the surfaces of both disks in a rotating cavity of the Bath compressor-cavity rig. The data are collected over a range of engine-representative parameters and are the first results from a new experimental facility specifically designed to investigate buoyancy-induced flow. The radial distributions of disk temperature were collected under carefully controlled thermal boundary conditions appropriate for analysis using a Bayesian model combined with the equations for a circular fin. The Owen-Tang buoyancy model has been used to compare predicted radial distributions of disk temperatures and Nusselt numbers with some of the experimentally determined values, taking account of radiation between the interior surfaces of the cavity. The experiments show that the average Nusselt numbers on the disk increase as the buoyancy forces increase. At high rotational speeds, the temperature rise in the core, created by compressibility effects in the air, attenuates the heat transfer, and there is a critical rotational Reynolds number for which the Nusselt number is a maximum. In the cavity, there is an inner region dominated by forced convection and an outer region dominated by buoyancy-induced flow. The inner region is a mixing region, in which entrained cold throughflow encounters hot flow from the Ekman layers on the disks. Consequently, the Nusselt numbers on the downstream disk in the inner region tend to be higher than those on the upstream disk.


Introduction Today's business environment is characterized by fast, dramatic, and unexpected changes. Therefore, managers not only have to be high performers in the traditional sense, but also fast and adaptive learners (Karaevli & Hall, 2006). Several new competencies are needed to cope in this new environment because business managers work under different circumstances and environments. Prior research indicates that an individual's adaptability and learning commitments enable business managers to manage and overcome many unexpected difficulties in a business environment. Perpetual changes in the workplace and daily business activities bring a need for using organizational knowledge sharing practices and an increase in demand for continuance learning. Since a manager's typical work requires adaptive responses to new environmental conditions, it has been asserted that only knowledge sharing and continuous learning behavior can lead to effective responses. A review of knowledge sharing literature reveals two knowledge sharing implications: individual learning commitments and individual adaptability. These are expected to improve individual competencies and then lead to individual job satisfaction. Individuals' competencies usually provide capital gains for both individuals and organizations. Because individuals have heterogeneous amounts of knowledge, skills, and capabilities that vary across organizations, it is important they are guided and coordinated effectively to improve organizational performance. Three approaches are used to enhance employees' knowledge sharing within organizations: * a technology-based approach in which the technology is considered the facilitator of knowledge sharing practices within an organization; * an incentive-based approach in which the monetary and non-monetary rewards promote knowledge sharing practices; * and an organizational-based approach in which structure, processes, and management style simplify the application of knowledge sharing practices (Hsu, 2006). Although the first and the second approach have received scrutinized testing, the implications of the third approach have been largely untested. This study investigates the third approach from the Jordanian manufacturing managers' perspectives. Although knowledge sharing has been considered an important goal in almost all types of organizations, it is still represents a concern for many employees. Usually, organizations mitigate these concerns by offering various incentives and rewards. In fact, effective organizational knowledge sharing practices prepare employees to share and accept new ideas and learn new ways of thinking, which leverages their knowledge and capabilities. Nurturing a learning culture within organizational boundaries encourages employees to continually learn from each other (Becerra-Fernandez, Gonzalez, & Sabherwal, 2004). Also, employees will adapt their information needs according to new changes in the business environment. Employees' commitment to learning and willingness to learn new knowledge and skills not only improve an organization's competitive advantage but also foster ongoing success (Tsai, Yen, Huang, & Huang, 2007). Organizations seeking performance gains should consider dedicating a significant amount of effort toward fostering employees' learning and sharing behaviors. In spite of the growing interest in organizational knowledge sharing practices, its challenges, antecedents, and performance implications, there is still a dearth of empirical studies that investigate organizational knowledge sharing practices implications such as individuals learning commitments, individuals' adaptability, and individuals' job satisfaction. Therefore, it appears that investigating this issue in more detail is worthwhile. Thus, this research investigates the relationships between three important and yet neglected organizational knowledge sharing practices implications: employees' learning commitments, employees' adaptability, and employees' job satisfaction. …


A simultaneous interrogation technique of a hybrid fiber Bragg grating (FBG) and long-period grating (LPG) sensor pair is proposed and demonstrated using a monolithically integrated echelle diffractive grating (EDG). The operation principle that is based on the monotonic temperature dependence of the EDG transmission wavelengths is presented. Initial results show that a 1-pm resolution and 24-nm interrogation range are achieved by using the proposed interrogation technique, which can effectively be implemented to interrogate hybrid FBG/LPG-based sensor pairs for the discrimination of refractive index (RI)/temperature in RI measurement. The specially designed EDG-based interrogator has the added features of low cost and compact size.


This paper proposes a new cepstrum estimation procedure that is capable of producing smoother and improved cepstrum estimates without the use of any parametric modeling. This procedure consists of two main steps: In the first step, it applies a so-called grid transformation to the empirical cepstral coefficients, while in the second step it nonparametrically smooths the transformed coefficients with local linear regression. The Stein's unbiased risk estimation (SURE) approach is adopted to select both the extent of the grid transformation and the amount of smoothing. It is shown that the use of this SURE selection method for the current problem is asymptotically optimal in a well-defined sense. Lastly, the good practical performance of the new cepstrum estimation procedure is demonstrated via numerical experiments.


We report on phase sensitive surface states of CdS quantum dots (QDs), where it is noticed that a simple phase change from dispersion to solid has shown significant influence on the emission spectrum. As the solvent evaporates from the dispersion, apparently yellow dispersion transforms into a white light emitter because of the conformal changes in the polymer that surrounds the QDs. In turn, these changes catalyze the emission from three specific wavelengths in the blue region of the spectrum, shifting the surface defects closer to the conduction band of CdS. In the phase change from dispersion to solid, flexible and dangling polymer chains are transformed into rigid moieties that can be treated as a modified chemical environment. Furthermore, to ascertain the origin of the new emission lines, we have studied a dipole interaction-based passivation mechanism between QDs and the polymer. The proposed mechanism may be valuable for designing future QD-based fluorophores and explains the sensitivity of the su...


Polycrystalline samples of YBa2Cu3O7−δ (Y-123) added with x mol% of BaZrO3 (BZO) nanoparticles (x = 0.0, 2.0, 5.0, and 7.0) were synthesized using co-precipitation (COP) and solid-state (SS) method. X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns showed the formation of Y-123 and Y-211 as the major and minor phases, respectively. The samples prepared using COP method showed higher weight percentage of Y-123 phase (≤98%) compared to the SS samples (≤93%). A peak corresponding to BZO was also found in the samples added with BZO nanoparticles. The increasing intensity of the BZO peak as the BZO amount increased showed the increasing amount of the unreacted nanoparticles in the samples. Refinement of unit cell lattice parameters indicated that all the samples have an orthorhombic crystal structure and there is no orthorhombic-tetragonal phase transformation. As observed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), all the samples showed randomly distributed grains with irregular shape. The average grain size for the pure sample prepared using COP method is smaller (0.30 µm) compared with that of the pure SS sample (1.24 µm). Addition of 7.0 mol% BZO led to an increase of average grain size to 0.50 μm and 2.71 μm for the COP and SS samples, respectively, indicating grain growth. AC susceptibility (ACS) measurement showed a decrease in the onset critical temperature, Tc-onset with BZO addition. Comparatively, Tc-onset for the COP samples is higher than that of the SS samples. The value of Josephson's current, Io increased up to 2.0 mol% BZO addition, above which the Io decreased more drastically for the SS samples. The value of Io is 53.95 μA and 32.08 μA for the 2.0 mol% BZO added SS and COP samples, respectively. The decrease of Io is attributed to the distribution of BZO particles at the grain boundaries as also reflected in the drastic decrease of phase lock-in temperature, Tcj. As a result of smaller average grain size, the presence of more grain boundaries containing insulating BZO particles led to lower Io in the COP samples.


The mineralocorticoid hormone aldosterone controls sodium reabsorption and BP largely by regulating the cell-surface expression and function of the epithelial sodium channel (ENaC) in target kidney tubules. Part of the stimulatory effect of aldosterone on ENaC is mediated by the induction of serum- and glucocorticoid-regulated kinase 1 (Sgk1), a kinase that interferes with the ubiquitylation of ENaC by ubiquitin-protein ligase Nedd4-2. In vivo early aldosterone-regulated mRNA now has been identified in microselected mouse distal nephron by microarray. From 22 mRNA that displayed a two-fold or more change, 13 were downregulated and nine were upregulated. Besides Sgk1, the induced mRNA include Grem2 (protein related to DAN and cerebrus [PRDC]), activating transcription factor 3, cAMP responsive element modulator, and the ubiquitin-specific protease Usp2-45. The induction of this last enzyme isoform was verified in mouse distal nephron tubule at the protein level. With the use of Hek293 cells, Xenopus oocytes, and mpkCCD(c14) cells as expression systems, it was shown that Usp2-45 deubiquitylates ENaC and stimulates ENaC-mediated sodium transport, an effect that is not additive to that of Sgk1. A deubiquitylating enzyme that targets ENaC in vitro and thus may play a role in sodium transport regulation was identified within a series of new in vivo early aldosterone-regulated gene products.


The increasing demand for rice in Ghana has been a major concern to the government and other stakeholders. Recent concerns by the coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) to double rice production within ten years in Sub-Saharan countries have triggered the to implement strategies to boost rice production in the government. To fulfill this requirement, there is a need to monitor and forecast trends of rice production in the country. This study employs the Box-Jenkins approach to model milled rice production using time series data from 1960 to 2010. The analysis revealed that ARIMA (2, 1, 0) was the best model for forecasting milled rice production. Although, a ten years forecast with the model shows an increasing trend in production, the forecast value at 2015 (283.16 thousand metric tons) was not good enough to compare with the current production of Nigeria (2700 thousand metric tons), the leading producer of rice of rice in West Africa.


We provide a clarification of scaling issues in simulation models, distinguishing between sample size determination, discovery of emergent properties involving a qualitative change in the behaviour of the system at an aggregate level, and 'true' scaling, the dependence of the quantitative behaviour of the system at any given level of aggregation, to its size. Scaling issues arise because we want to understand what happens when we run one billion agents, without actually having to run one billion agents. We discuss how we can use the Buckingham Pi theorem, a key tool in dimensional analysis, to provide guidance on the nature and structure of scaling relationships in agent-based models.


Background Lung cancer (LC) is one of the leading lethal cancers worldwide, with an estimated 18.4% of all cancer deaths being attributed to the disease. Despite developments in cancer diagnosis and treatment over the previous thirty years, LC has seen little to no improvement in the overall five year survival rate after initial diagnosis. Methods In this paper, we extended a recent study which profiled the metabolites in sputum from patients with lung cancer and age-matched volunteers smoking controls using flow infusion electrospray ion mass spectrometry. We selected key metabolites for distinguishing between different classes of lung cancer, and employed artificial neural networks and leave-one-out cross-validation to evaluate the predictive power of the identified biomarkers. Results The neural network model showed excellent performance in clas sification between lung cancer and control groups with the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.99. The sensitivity and specificity of for detecting cancer from controls were 96% and 94% respectively. Furthermore, we have identified six putative metabolites that were able todiscriminate between sputum samples derived from patients suffering small cell lung cancer (SCLC) and non-small cell lung cancer. These metabolites achieved excellent cross validation performance with a sensitivity of 80% and specificity of 100% for predicting SCLC. Conclusions These results indicate that sputum metabolic profiling may have potential for screening of lung cancer and lung cancer recurrence, and may greatly improve effectiveness of clinical intervention.


The way we say the words we say helps us convey our intended meanings. Indeed, the tone of voice we use, the facial expressions and bodily gestures we adopt while we are talking, often add entirely new layers of meaning to those words. How the natural non-verbal properties of utterances interact with linguistic ones is a question that is often largely ignored. This book redresses the balance, providing a unique examination of non-verbal behaviours from a pragmatic perspective. It charts a point of contact between pragmatics, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, ethology and psychology, and provides the analytical basis to answer some important questions: How are non-verbal behaviours interpreted? What do they convey? How can they be best accommodated within a theory of utterance interpretation?


The objectives of Food4Me work package 5 included a baseline assessment of the ethical and legal aspects of personalised nutrition at the start of the project in 2011, as well as a final assessment at the end of the project (2015), taking into account results achieved in other work packages. The initial assessment made a number of ethical issues visible, most of them relating to the consumer of personalised nutrition service. The results depicted in this publication indicate that many of the questions raised in relation to these issues remain unsolved, and in some cases they seem to be neglected in relation to the services offered by internet companies.


This paper expands upon a multi-degree-of-freedom, Van der Pol oscillator used to model buffet and Nonsynchronous Vibrations (NSV) in turbines. Two degrees-of-freedom are used, a fluid tracking variable incorporating a Van der Pol oscillator and a classic spring, mass, damper mounted cylinder variable; thus, this model is one of fluid-structure interaction. This model has been previously shown to exhibit the two main aspects of NSV. The first is the lock-in or entrainment phenomenon of the fluid shedding frequency jumping onto the natural frequency of the oscillator, while the second is a stable limit cycle oscillation (LCO) once the transient solution disappears. Improvements are made to the previous model to better understand this aeroelastic phenomenon. First, an error minimizing technique through a system identification method is used to tune the coefficients in the Reduced Order Model (ROM) to improve the accuracy in comparison to experimental data. Secondly, a cubic stiffness term is added to the fluid equation; this term is often seen in the Duffing Oscillator equation, which allows this ROM to capture the experimental behavior more accurately, seen in previous literature. The finalized model captures the experimental cylinder data found in literature much better than the previous model. These improvements also open the door for future models, such as that of a pitching airfoil or a turbomachinery blade, to create a preliminary design tool for studying NSV in turbomachinery.


Hyperemia, which occurs immediately after coronary reperfusion, injures the myocardium. Mild coronary stenosis may mitigate this hyperemia and thus may augment myocardial salvage. To test this hypothesis, left anterior descending coronary arteries of dogs were occluded for 3 h. Then, reperfusion was permitted without residual stenosis (group A, n = 17) or with 75% stenosis (group B, n = 10). Regional myocardial blood flow (RMBF) was determined using colored microspheres. Dogs were sacrificed 1 week later to measure myocardial creatine kinase activity (CK) and for staining with triphenyl tetrazolium chloride (TTC). The RMBF measured 5 min after reperfusion increased significantly (inner layer, 171 +/- 16; outer layer, 165 +/- 11% of control) in group A. This hyperemia disappeared in group B (inner, 106 +/- 8; outer, 117 +/- 10% of control). However, the myocardial CK was more preserved (group A: inner, 31 +/- 4; outer, 44 +/- 4%; and group B: inner, 21 +/- 6; outer, 29 +/- 5%), and the infarct size was smaller in group A than in group B (group A: inner, 44 +/- 6; outer, 33 +/- 5; and group B: inner, 53 +/- 10; outer, 58 +/- 7% of the area at risk). We concluded that a residual stenosis of 75% at reperfusion abolishes the hyperemia but does not improve myocardial salvage.


Today's warfighters operate in a highly dynamic and uncertain world, and face many competing demands. Asymmetric warfare and the new focus on small, agile forces has altered the framework by which time critical information is digested and acted upon by decision makers. Finding and integrating decision-relevant information is increasingly difficult in data-dense environments. In this new information environment, agile data algorithms, machine learning software, and threat alert mechanisms must be developed to automatically create alerts and drive quick response. Yet these advanced technologies must be balanced with awareness of the underlying context to accurately interpret machine-processed indicators and warnings and recommendations. One promising approach to this challenge brings together information retrieval strategies from text, video, and imagery. In this paper, we describe a technology demonstration that represents two years of tri-service research seeking to meld text and video for enhanced content awareness. The demonstration used multisource data to find an intelligence solution to a problem using a common dataset. Three technology highlights from this effort include 1) Incorporation of external sources of context into imagery normalcy modeling and anomaly detection capabilities, 2) Automated discovery and monitoring of targeted users from social media text, regardless of language, and 3) The concurrent use of text and imagery to characterize behaviour using the concept of kinematic and text motifs to detect novel and anomalous patterns. Our demonstration provided a technology baseline for exploiting heterogeneous data sources to deliver timely and accurate synopses of data that contribute to a dynamic and comprehensive worldview.


Abstract Traditional police tactics such as rapid response and reactive enforcement continue to dominate the police response against human trafficking despite knowledge about the challenges and potential harm of using these tactics. Through the case of illicit massage businesses (IMBs), this study examines why police continue to rely on strategies that have received little empirical support. In-depth interviews with police, prosecutors, and other practitioners indicate that citizen concerns about human trafficking trigger police responses such as reactive investigations, sting operations, and shutdowns of IMBs. While law enforcement officials recognize the limited effectiveness and potential harm of the current response, adapting how police respond to IMBs is challenged by perceptual and institutional barriers. With these findings, the study contributes to the research and theory on traditional policing and informs targeted and victim-centered anti-trafficking efforts.


Abstract Dinosaurs provide excellent opportunities to examine the impact of sampling biases on the palaeodiversity of terrestrial organisms. The stratigraphical and geographical ranges of 847 dinosaurian species are analysed for palaeodiversity patterns and compared to several sampling metrics. The observed diversity of dinosaurs, Theropoda, Sauropodomorpha and Ornithischia, are positively correlated with sampling at global and regional scales. Sampling metrics for the same region correlate with each other, suggesting that different metrics often capture the same signal. Regional sampling metrics perform well as explanations for regional diversity patterns, but correlations with global diversity are weaker. Residual diversity estimates indicate that sauropodomorphs diversified during the Late Triassic, but major increases in the diversity of theropods and ornithischians did not occur until the Early Jurassic. Diversity increased during the Jurassic, but many groups underwent extinction during the Late Jurassic or at the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary. Although a recovery occurred during the Cretaceous, only sauropodomorphs display a long-term upward trend. The Campanian–Maastrichtian diversity 'peak' is largely a sampling artefact. There is little evidence for a gradualistic decrease in diversity prior to the end-Cretaceous mass extinction (except for ornithischians), and when such decreases do occur they are small relative to those experienced earlier in dinosaur evolution. Supplementary material: The full data set and details of analyses are available at www.geolsoc.org.uk/SUP18487 The same materials (in the form of an Excel workbook) are also available from the first author on request.


Abstract This paper is devoted to the study of proximal distances defined over symmetric cones, which include the non-negative orthant, the second-order cone and the cone of positive semi-definite symmetric matrices. Specifically, our first aim is to provide two ways to build them. For this, we consider two classes of real-valued functions satisfying some assumptions. Then, we show that its corresponding spectrally defined function defines a proximal distance. In addition, we present several examples and some properties of this distance. Taking into account these properties, we analyse the convergence of proximal-type algorithms for solving convex symmetric cone programming (SCP) problems, and we study the asymptotic behaviour of primal central paths associated with a proximal distance. Finally, for linear SCP problems, we provide a relationship between the proximal sequence and the primal central path.


Background: Exposure to higher levels of melatonin may be associated with lower breast cancer risk, but epidemiologic evidence has been limited. We examined the relationship in a case–control study nested within the Diagnostisch Onderzoek Mammacarcinoom (DOM) study and conducted a meta-analysis of prospective studies. Methods: Concentrations of 6-sulfatoxymelatonin (aMT6s) in prediagnostic first morning urine voids were measured in 274 postmenopausal women diagnosed with breast cancer and 274 matched controls from the DOM study. Conditional logistic regression models were used to estimate multivariable adjusted ORs of breast cancer for thirds of aMT6s. Meta-analysis of this and previous prospective studies of urinary melatonin with breast cancer risk estimated the inverse-variance weighted averages of study-specific log RRs of breast cancer for the highest versus lowest levels of aMT6s. Results: In the DOM study, the ORs of breast cancer for the middle and highest versus lowest thirds of aMT6s were 0.70 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.45–1.09] and 0.72 (95% CI, 0.44–1.19), respectively. In the meta-analysis of the DOM study with six previous studies (2,296 cases), RR of breast cancer for the highest versus lowest levels of aMT6s was 0.87 (95% CI, 0.76–1.01). Conclusions: Results from the DOM study, together with the published prospective data, do not support a strong association of melatonin with breast cancer risk. Impact: This study adds to the relatively scarce prospective data on melatonin in relation to breast cancer risk. The totality of the prospective evidence does not clearly show an association between melatonin and breast cancer risk, but further data are needed to be able to exclude a modest association.


BACKGROUND
In order to determine the presence or absence of a certain disease, multiple diagnostic tests may be necessary. Performance of these tests can be sequentially evaluated.

AIMS
The aim of the study is to determine the contribution of the test in each step, in reducing diagnostic uncertainty when multiple tests are sequentially used for the diagnosis.

STUDY DESIGN
Diagnostic accuracy study.

METHODS
Radiographs of seventy-three patients of the Department of Dento-Maxillofacial Radiology of Hacettepe University Faculty of Dentistry were assessed. Panoramic (PAN), full mouth intraoral (FM), and bitewing (BW) radiographs were used for the diagnosis of proximal caries in the maxillary and mandibular molar regions. Diagnostic performance of radiography was sequentially evaluated by using the reduction in diagnostic uncertainty.

RESULTS
FM provided maximum diagnostic information for ruling in potential in the maxillary and mandibular molar regions in the first step. FM provided more diagnostic information than BW radiographs for ruling in the mandibular region in the second step. In the mandibular region, BW radiographs provided more diagnostic information than FM for ruling out in the first step.

CONCLUSION
The presented method in this study provides the clinicians with a solution for the decision of the sequential selection of diagnostic tests for the correct diagnosis of the presence or absence of a certain disease.


This article introduces the special issue from SoLAR's 2016 Learning Analytics and Knowledge conference. The field of learning analytics (LA) draws heavily on theory and practice from a range of diverse academic disciplines. In so doing, LA research embodies a rich integration of methodologies and practices, assumptions and theory to bring new insights into the learning process. Reflecting this rich diversity, the theme of LAK 2016 highlights the multidisciplinary nature of the field and embraces the convergence of these disciplines to provide theoretical and practical insights to challenge current thinking in the field.  This overview introduces six articles, each of which expands on an invited talk or paper from the conference, with the added goal of offering a small taste of the rich experience that comes from  active participation in the conference.


"Is today's fast-paced media culture creating a toxic environment for our children's brains?" In this landmark, bestselling assessment tracing the roots of America's escalating crisis in education, Jane M. Healy, Ph.D., examines how television, video games, and other components of popular culture compromise our children's ability to concentrate and to absorb and analyze information. Drawing on neuropsychological research and an analysis of current educational practices, Healy presents in clear, understandable language: -- How growing brains are "physically" shaped by experience -- Why television programs -- even supposedly educational shows like "Sesame Street" -- develop "habits of mind" that place children at a disadvantage in school -- Why increasing numbers of children are diagnosed with attention deficit disorder -- How parents and teachers can make a critical difference by making children good learners from the day they are born


What we have here, says Merton, against the backdrop of financial crisis, a distinguished group of academics and practitioners discusses the contribution of financial management and innovation to corporate growth and value, along with the pitfalls and unintended consequences of such innovation. The main focus of most panelists is the importance of a capital structure and risk management approach that complement the strategy and operations of the business. Instructive examples are provided by Judy Lewent, former CFO and head of strategic planning at Merck, and Lakshmi Shyam-Sunder, director of finance and risk management at the International Finance Corporation. But if these represent successful applications of finance theory, what about the large number of cases where the use of derivatives and other innovations has led to high leverage and apparent risk management failures? Part of the current trouble, as pointed out by Andrew Lo, can be attributed to the failure of risk managers and their models to account for highly improbable events - the so-called fat tails of the distribution. But, as Robert Merton suggests in closing, there is a more comprehensive explanation for today's problems: the tendency of market participants to respond to potentially risk-reducing financial innovation by increasing their risk-taking in other areas.


Inflammatory fibroid polyps (IFP) are an extremely rare entity that arise within the submucosa of the gastrointestinal tract, and represent less than 0.1% of all gastric polyps. They are most commonly localized to the gastric antrum, small intestines and recto-sigmoid colon. IFPs are most commonly found incidentally upon endoscopic evaluation in the absence of symptoms. Presenting symptoms depend on the location of the tumor, although polyps located in the stomach most commonly present with epigastric pain and early satiety. Classic histologic features include perivascular onion skinning of spindle cells with an abundance of eosinophilic infiltration. The prompt diagnosis and management of IFP is essential due to its underlying risk for intussusception, outlet obstruction and acute hemorrhage. In addition, recent evidence has shown that IFP is driven by an activating mutation in the platelet derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFRA) gene, suggesting a neoplastic etiology. Herein, we discuss a case of a 65-year-old woman with an inflammatory fibroid polyp of the gastric antrum who initially presented with early hypovolemic shock and melena. Diagnosis was made by endoscopic visualization, biopsy and immunohistochemical analysis.


Pancreatic cancer (PC) remains one of the most lethal and poorly understood human malignancies. Most PC patients present with inoperable disease, or develop metastases after surgery, and conventional therapies are usually ineffective in treating this disease. It is evident that novel therapies remain to be developed. Transforming Growth Factor β (TGF-β) is a family of dimeric olypeptide growth factors that initiate cell signaling by dimerizing the TGF-β type I (TβRI) and type II (TβRII) serine/threonine kinase receptors, which, in turn, propagate the signal by activating downstream Smad-dependent and Smad-independent pathways. TGF-β signaling plays a key role in the tumor progression and metastasis of many different types of tumor cells. The overexpression of TGF-β has been reported in most tumor types. In human PC, increased levels of TGF-β have been significantly associated with venous invasion, advanced tumor stages, progressive disease, shorter patient survival duration, and liver metastases. The effect of TGF-β is not limited to the tumor cells themselves in vivo. It has been recently highlighted its paracrine mechanism in the interactions between various cell populations in the tumor microenvironment. Hence its pleiotropic role in PC biology, the TGF-β Smad- dependent and independent pathways represent a critical area for the development of novel strategies for the treatment of PC patients. We initially hypothesized that targeting the Smad- dependent pathways by inhibiting TRI/II kinase activity with the novel inhibitor LY2109761 would suppress PC growth and metastatic processes. The effect of LY2109761 was evaluated on soft-agar growth, migration, invasion using a fibroblast coculture model, and anoikis by annexin V flow cytometric analysis. The efficacy of LY2109761 on tumor growth, survival and reduction of spontaneous metastasis was evaluated in an orthotopic murine model of metastatic PC expressing both luciferase and green fluorescence proteins (L3.6pl/GLT). To determine whether PC cells or the cells in the liver microenvironment were involved in LY2109761-mediated reduction of liver metastasis, we used a model of experimental liver metastasis. LY2109761 significantly inhibited the L3.6pl/GLT soft-agar growth; suppressed both basal and TGF-induced cell migration and invasion, and induced anoikis. In vivo, LY2109761 in combination with gemcitabine (GEM) significantly reduced the tumor burden, prolonged the survival, and reduced spontaneous abdominal metastases. Results from the experimental liver metastasis models indicate an important role for targeting TRI/II kinase activity on tumor and liver microenvironment cells in suppressing liver metastasis. Resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs poses one of the greatest challenges in PC research. The Smad-independent effector TGF-- Activated Kinase- 1 (TAK-1) is a MAP3K essential for the activation of NFB and AP1 transcription factors. cIAP2 is a NFB and AP1 target gene that regulates apoptosis by direct inhibition of caspases. We hypothesized that TAK1 is responsible for PC chemoresistance by regulating NFB- and AP-1- mediated transcription of cIAP2. The expression of TAK-1 in PC cell lines was studied by Western blot. TAK-1 expression was silenced by shRNA in AsPC-1, Panc-1, and Panc-28 cell lines. NFB and AP-1 activation was analyzed by EMSA. Apoptosis was quantified using cleavage of caspase-3 and PARP1 and DNA fragmentation. MTT assays were used to assess the in vitro chemopotentiation of GEM, oxaliplatin (OX), and SN-38. TAK-1 kinase activity was targeted using an orally available small molecule selective inhibitor (Ki in enzymatic assay: TAK1 = 13 nM; p38 > 20 μM; IKK > 20 μM) provided by Eli Lilly Research Labs. In vivo activity of the TAK-1 inhibitor alone and in combination with GEM was evaluated in an orthotopic nude mouse model with luciferase-expressing AsPC-1 PC cells. TAK-1 protein was overexpressed in all PC cell lines studied but not in normal pancreatic ductal epithelial cells. shRNA knockdown of TAK-1 completely suppressed both NFB and AP1 DNA binding activities. As a result, cIAP2 expression was completely suppressed, inducing a proapoptotic phenotype as demonstrated by higher levels of cleaved caspase-3 and PARP-1 and by DNA fragmentation. shRNA silencing of TAK-1 in AsPC-1, Panc-1, and Panc-28 cell lines resulted in significantly higher in vitro sensitivity to GEM, OX, and SN-38, compared to the respective control cell lines. In vitro, the TAK1 inhibitor alone demonstrated potent cytotoxic activity (IC50 5-39 nM) and suppressed NFB DNA binding activity in all three PC cell lines studied. In combination, the TAK1 inhibitor strongly potentiated the cytotoxic activities of GEM, OX, or SN-38 in all three PC cell lines. In nude mice, oral administration of the TAK-1 inhibitor plus GEM significantly reduced tumor burden and prolonged mice survival. In our study we demonstrated that targeting the Smad- dependent pathways by inhibiting TRI/II kinase activity on PC cells or the cells of the liver microenvironment represents a novel therapeutic approach to prevent PC metastasis. Our study is the first to demonstrate that the genetic silencing or inhibition of the Smad-independent effector TAK1 is a valid approach to revert in vivo the intrinsic chemoresistance of PC. Specifically designed clinical trials need to be conducted to evaluate the therapeutic effect of LY2109761 as a neoadjuvant treatment in patients with resectable PC. The TAK-1 inhibitor used in this study is an exciting drug that warrants further development for the treatment of advanced PC.


International conservation organisations have invested considerable resources in fostering biodiversity conservation programs in the humid tropics, the most biologically diverse areas on earth. Recent approaches to conservation have centered on integrated conservation and development projects and participatory resource management programs, co-managed between governments and local communities. But these programs have had only mixed success and often suffer from insufficient quantity or quality of participation by local communities. We pose that participatory resource management is more likely to succeed when community members, 1) gain a global perspective on how their social, economic and environmental conditions compare with peer communities in other similar areas of the world, and thus better understand issues of relative scarcity and the benefits of sustainable resource management, and 2) engage as decision-makers at every stage of the conservation process up to reflective program evaluation. This paper examines the role of South-South exchanges as a tool to achieve these intermediate goals that ultimately foster more effective and participatory conservation and support sustainable local livelihoods. The data are extracted from the initiatives of the authors in two different environments- marine and coastal communities in Central America and the Caribbean, and lowland rainforest communities in the western Amazon of South America. We conclude that the exchanges are effective ways to build stakeholder comprehension about, and meaningful engagement in, resource management. South-South exchanges may also help build multi-local coalitions from various remote areas that together support biodiversity conservation at regional and global scales.


The Juan Fernandez Islands in the southeastern Pacific are an atypical linear volcanic chain that exhibits a considerable range in He/He ratios (8 to 18 RA, where RA is the He/He ratio of air), but limited ranges of Sr/Sr and Nd/Nd. Here we report new trace element abundance data and Sr-Nd-Pb isotope data for mafic lavas previously analyzed for their He/He and He contents from the two main islands of Robinson Crusoe and Alexander Selkirk. Lavas from these islands have been previously grouped based on geochemical and petrological classification into Group I and III basalts, and Group II basanites. In general, samples have overlapping Sr-Nd-Pb isotope compositions that suggest a common, albeit slightly heterogeneous mantle source. In detail, the Group I and III tholeiitic and alkalic basalts have nearly identical incompatible trace element patterns, whereas the Group II basanites show elevated incompatible trace element abundances. Major and incompatible trace element modeling indicates that Group III basalts (He/He = 7.8–9.5 RA) from younger Alexander Selkirk Island were produced by the highest degree of partial melting (> 10%) of a common mantle source, followed by Group I basalts (13.6–18.0 RA) and Group II basanites (11.2–12.5 RA) from older Robinson Crusoe Island. The Pb/Pb of Group I basalts and Group II basanites are slightly more radiogenic and limited in range (19.163 to 19.292) compared with those of Group III (18.939 to 19.221). The Group I and II lavas from Robinson Crusoe are consistent with an origin from the so-called focus zone (FOZO) mantle component, whereas the Alexander Selkirk basalts additionally contain contributions from a less-enriched or relatively depleted mantle component. Juan Fernandez lavas reveal limited ranges of Sr-Nd-Pb isotopes but variable He/He as their parental magmas originated mainly from the FOZO component with high He/He (> 9 RA) and variably polluted with a depleted component with lower He/He (ca. 8 RA). Contributions from high-He/He mantle sources to ocean island basalts can therefore vary both spatially and temporally, over meter to kilometer lengths and hundred to millionyear time scales, and may not be strongly correlated to radiogenic lithophile isotope systematics.


non-diabetic officers from the Buffalo Cardio-Metabolic Occupational Police Stress study, following a 12-hour fast. HRV was performed according to methods published by the Task Force of the European Society of Cardiology and the North American Society of Pacing Electrophysiology for measurement and analysis of HRV. Mean values of high (HF) and low frequency (LF) HRV were compared across tertiles of leptin and adiponectin using ANOVA and ANCOVA; trends were assessed using linear regression models. Results Leptin, but not adiponectin, was significantly and inversely associated with HF and LF HRV. BMI and percent body fat (also waist circumference and abdominal height) significantly modified the association between leptin and LF (but not HF) HRV. Among officers with BMI <25 kg/m, the association between leptin and HRV was not significant. However, among officers with BMI ≥25 kg/m, the association between leptin and HRV was inversely related, after adjustment for age, gender, and race/ethnicity; p-values for trend (HF HRV, p = 0.019 and LF HRV, p < 0.0001). Similarly, among officers with percent body fat ≥25.5%, leptin and LF HRV showed significant, inverse associations (adjusted p for trend = 0.001). Conclusions Our results show that leptin levels were inversely and significantly associated with HRV among all officers, and particularly among officers with higher levels of adiposity. These results suggest that increased leptin levels may be associated with CVD-related health problems.


We present the Sequential Aggregation and Rematerialization (SAR) scheme for distributed full-batch training of Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) on large graphs. Large-scale training of GNNs has recently been dominated by sampling-based methods and methods based on non-learnable message passing. SAR on the other hand is a distributed technique that can train any GNN type directly on an entire large graph. The key innovation in SAR is the distributed sequential rematerialization scheme which sequentially re-constructs then frees pieces of the prohibitively large GNN computational graph during the backward pass. This results in excellent memory scaling behavior where the memory consumption per worker goes down linearly with the number of workers, even for densely connected graphs. Using SAR, we report the largest applications of full-batch GNN training to-date, and demonstrate large memory savings as the number of workers increases. We also present a general technique based on kernel fusion and attention-matrix rematerialization to optimize both the runtime and memory efficiency of attention-based models. We show that, coupled with SAR, our optimized attention kernels lead to significant speedups and memory savings in attention-based GNNs.We made the SAR GNN training library publicy available: \url{https://github.com/IntelLabs/SAR}.


This thesis focuses on unit load warehouses having multiple pickup and deposit (P&D) locations on the warehouse dock(s) — i.e., a P&D region. Our aim is to design a cross aisle structure that will reduce the cost of operating a unit load warehouse. We concentrate on the labor cost of material handling, or more specifically, on the travel cost associated with unit load putaway and retrieval. We define two "candidate shapes." Namely, the Flying-V shape and Lambda shape. We state a nonlinear optimization problem to find an improved cross aisle configuration by minimizing the expected cost of a single pickup and retrieval task. We separately carry out optimization for each candidate shape and choose the more economical
one. Our results are a sort of worst case analysis for the designs we consider and the benefits from our solutions range typically from 3% to 6.5%.

The second part of this thesis is concerned with applications of the same design principles
to floor storage. A less rigorous, but effective approach is developed. We devise a number of aisle and lane designs and apply them to a realistic setting.


In light of international discussions on a possible opt-in of the agricultural sector to the current European emission trading system for greenhouse gases, the objective of this article is to present a feasible implementation strategy for a market of emission permits in European agriculture and to simulate its economic effects within the regionalised agricultural sector model CAPRI. With this purpose, we compare the effects of a 15% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from European agriculture with and without a trading scheme. Our findings suggest that if significant emission abatement is to be achieved in the agricultural sector, efficiency gains from expanding the current emission trading scheme to this sector can be appreciable. An additional finding of this paper is that under the current protective measures in the CAP and in the absence of a successful WTO reform round, emission reduction does not result in a net income loss for the agricultural sector due to the 'quota effect' caused by the isolation of European agricultural markets from world markets.


This title offers analysis essential for understanding the process of education in the Gulf. It contributes to the debate surrounding education in the Middle East and the wider developing world. It provides a crucial study of the possible future educational and developmental challenges in the Gulf. The UAE has long prioritised education within its development plans, with the aim of creating a diverse and competitive economy based on improvements in the efficiency and quality of educational output. This book examines the various challenges of educational advancement on which success over the coming decades depends. Such challenges include diversifying the student population, schools and curricula; improving the quality of the school environment; overcoming the limitations of traditional methods of education; creating effective approaches to development, evaluation and assessment; improving educational guidance for students; and, achieving greater family involvement in the educational process in an attempt to promote high levels of educational attainment, self-confidence and a sense of citizenship. By analyzing the present state and future challenges to education in the UAE, this book is essential for all those interested in the development of education in the Gulf, and the wider Middle East.


I analysed tag resight and at-sea location data collected for juvenile (> 1 - 3 year-old)
southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) from Macquarie Island to establish these
particular objectives:
1. Identifying regions where the seals disperse to and/or migrate between.
2. Establishing a spatial scale for plotting and correlating geolocations with ocean
features and zones.
3. Recording the important foraging areas essential to the survival of these seals.
4. Quantifying the degree to which the seals share their marine habitat with
differing age groups and sexes of elephant seals, and with commercial fisheries.
Permanently marking seals provides information relating to haulout locality and
timing, migration duration and age related dispersal. Southern elephant seals
marked at Macquarie Island disperse to distant locations where they are sometimes
seen during their moult and, for juveniles, a mid-year haulout period (July-August).
Most (87%) of the seals resighted were within 1 OOO km of Macquarie Island, and
most, commonly at Campbell Island (700 km to the north-east). The sex and age
classes most likely to disperse there were males less than two years old. Male
elephant seals of all ages were resighted significantly more often than females, the
ratio being 2:1 (P > 0.05). Migration duration tended to increase with the seal's age
but migration distance was underestimated from resight observations when
compared with known telemetry records. Emigration from the Macquarie Island
population appears limited. From the resight effort at Campbell Island during 1995
the maximum proportion of the juvenile population from Macquarie Island to
haulout at Campbell Island was in the order of0.0053.
I tested the location estimation performance of geolocation time-depth recorders
(GLTDR) against a stationary site and free-ranging elephant seal locations
established by satellite and global positioning system (GPS) telemetry. I found
significant variation in latitude, but not longitude estimation, between individual
GLTDRs within the same deployment period. This indicates a high level of
confidence in longitude estimation if corrections for latitude are being made using
remotely sensed data (e.g., sea-surface temperature) and/or seal behaviors such as
dive depth and haulout. There was variability in location accuracy depending on season and latitude as previous studies have found. At-sea GLTDR derived location
estimates improved at higher latitudes where day length changes are greatest, seal
travel rates decrease and locations are clumped in presumed foraging areas or
haulout sites. Geolocation estimates improved as a consequence of deployment
period, longer stationary periods produced better estimates with greater confidence.
There was also considerable variation in daily location estimates of location during
non-equinox periods at a stationary site. These were related to some measured
weather conditions.
At-sea geolocations should be analysed using a scale of no less than± 2.5° (5°
grid square) at sub-Antarctic latitudes, and at least ± 2° (4° grid square) at higher
latitudes during non-equinox periods if a high level of confidence (95%) in position
estimation is required. For lesser degrees of confidence (68%), the scale can be
decreased to± 1.5° (3° grid square) at sub"'.'Antarctic latitudes and probably at higher
latitudes also, given that the accuracy of geolocation increases with increased
latitude. I conclude that geolocation is a very useful method for tracking the pelagic
movements of most land breeding marine birds, reptiles and mammals that make
long (ea. 1 OOO km) migrations to foraging grounds. The locations can be correlated
to meso-scale ocean features and similarly scaled commercial fishing areas.
Twenty-two juvenile southern elephant seals aged 7 to 14 months were tracked as
they departed Macquarie Island during 1993 and 1995. Migratory behavior and
areas of concentrated activity, presumed to be pelagic foraging grounds, were
established from location data gathered by attached geolocation time-depth
recorders. The seals ranged widely from the island preferentially migrating to the
south-east of Macquarie Island. Survivorship of seals that had been handled and
fitted with GLTDRs was similar to free-ranging seals of the same age that had no
instruments attached. Thus, the methodology used for this study appears to have no
detrimental effect on survival and this gives confidence in the results of this study.
Although not statistically tested, the foraging activity of seals appeared to be
associated with meso-scale oceanographic frontal systems and near bathymetric
features, especially waters near the Antarctic Polar Front (APF), the Southern
boundary of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current (SACC), the Marginal Ice-edge
Zone (MIZ), and the Campbell Plateau. Seals commonly foraged in waters greater than 3 OOO m deep where the sea-surface temperatures were between 1.0 and 4.0° C
unless they foraged over the Campbell Plateau where the sea-surface temperatures
were about 8° C and the depth less than 2 OOOm.
The foraging areas for juvenile seals overlap those of adult female seals but the
overlap is minimal in time and space because of the differing haulout behavior and
diving ability of the age classes. Adult male seals forage too far to the south to
overlap with juvenile seals of either sex but there appears to be an ontogeny of
differential foraging migrations with male seals from Macquarie Island similar to
that for northern elephant seals.
Southern elephant seals from Macquarie Island forage within managed fishery
areas and in the high seas, an area of unregulated fishing. The Convention on the
Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR) areas 58.4.1 and
especially 88.1 were important foraging areas for juvenile elephant seals from
Macquarie Island. Currently the overlap between fisheries and elephant seals from
Macquarie Island appears minimal, but there is a lack of knowledge of the diet of
southern elephant seals while at sea and in particular as they forage at the Antarctic
continental margin.


Most studies have considered the concept of knowledge according to a cognitivist notion, that is, knowledge is associated with a set of viewpoints from the individual who handles it. This paper sheds light on the cognitive range and how it affects obtaining customer needs or knowledge conversion. The outcome of a questionnaire used with a large Japanese System-Integration (SI) firm shows that the cognitive range is related to the level of knowledge conversion but not to the impact of supporting factors. In contrast, in terms of obtaining customer needs, the cognitive range is related to the impact of supporting factors but not to the level of obtaining customer needs. Moreover, some factors consistently show positive relationships to obtaining customer needs and knowledge conversion under any conditions, meaning that they are necessary conditions for attaining knowledge creation and customer satisfaction.


Because of its essential role in coupling climate and tectonics, denudation is a key parameter when constraining the history of Earth's surface. This is particularly true at the Pliocene-Pleistocene transition, and the potential impact of the onset of Quaternary glaciations remains strongly debated. In the present study, we measured in situ cosmogenic 10Be within continuous late Cenozoic sedimentary sections that had already been dated using magnetostratigraphy. The new data were obtained from four sedimentary basins in the northern and southern Tianshan range (Central Asia). We first thoroughly discuss how in situ cosmogenic 10Be concentrations can be corrected for radioactive decay and for the contribution of postdepositional cosmogenic accumulation to derive the paleo–denudation rates. Our analysis shows that, in the four sedimentary records, the potential bias remains low enough to consider the derived denudation rates reliable. The four records, although likely influenced by local particularities due to lithological heterogeneity and local tectonics, display similar trends of continuously increasing denudation between ca. 9 Ma and the present. These rates have remained relatively high but steady since 4 Ma, ∼1.5 m.y. before the onset of the Quaternary glacial cycles. Though the rejuvenation of the Tianshan range since 11 Ma may explain most of the progressive increase (×5) in denudation, our data suggest that the Quaternary glaciations had only a limited impact on denudation in the Tianshan. Our data, however, indicate an increase in the spatial and high-frequency variability (<1 m.y.) of the denudation rates between 3 and 1 Ma. This may correspond to a transient readjustment of the landscape in response to the onset of Quaternary glacial cycles.


The present study explores the factors that determine doctors' perceptions of the usefulness of online professional services and the latter's influence on their purchase intention. The study's conceptualization is based on the Technology Acceptance Model and the incorporation of professionals' individual differences as well as the nature of the online service. On this basis, a theoretical framework is developed and empirically tested using data collected from 100 physicians through personal interviewing. During the interviews each of the physicians was asked to provide information on the study's variables for two different types of innovative online services commercial or educational. The results indicate that perceived usefulness is positively related to four major variables: perceived ease of use, social influences, individual differences as described by the physician's level of education, work status and self-efficacy and the nature of the service. Finally, in agreement with former studies, the relationship between perceived usefulness and physicians' purchase intention was also found positive and significant. Based on the study's results, important implications for managers and suggestions for further academic research are presented.


Due to the increasing number of natural or man-made disasters, the application of operations research methods in evacuation planning has seen a rising interest in the research community. From the beginning, evacuation planning has been highly focused on car-based evacuation. Recently, also the evacuation of transit depended evacuees with the help of buses has been considered. In this case study, we apply two such models and solution algorithms to evacuate a core part of the metropolitan capital city Kathmandu of Nepal as a hypothetical endangered region, where a large part of population is transit dependent. We discuss the computational results for evacuation time under a broad range of possible scenarios, and derive planning suggestions for practitioners.


The author attempts to track Canadian labour productivity over the past four decades using a multivariate dynamic factor model that, in addition to the labour productivity series, includes aggregate compensation and consumption information. Productivity is assumed to switch between two regimes (the high-growth state and the low-growth state) with different trend growth rates according to a first-order Markov process. The author finds that labour productivity in Canada fell from the high-growth to the low-growth state towards the end of the 1970s, and that it has not yet reverted to the high-growth state. In particular, the model primarily attributes the resurgence of labour productivity growth in the late nineties to transitory effects.


Drawing on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I track the subjective well-being of individuals as they enter and exit unemployment. Job loss is a salient trigger event that sets off large changes in well-being. The factors expected to improve the lot of the unemployed have limited efficacy: (1) changes in family income are not significantly correlated with well-being; (2) unemployment insurance eligibility seems to partly mitigate the effect of job loss, but is a poor substitute for work; and (3) even reemployment recovers only about two thirds of the initial harm of job loss, indicating a potential long-term scar effect of unemployment. This highlights the deep and intractable hardship caused by unemployment in America.


The nonlinear evolution of unstable C-type shocks in weakly ionized plasmas is studied by means of time-dependent, magnetohydrodynamic simulations. This study is limited to shocks in magnetically dominated plasmas (in which the Alfvén speed in the neutrals greatly exceeds the sound speed), and microphysical processes such as ionization and recombination are not followed. Both the two-dimensional simulations of initially planar perpendicular and oblique C-type shocks and the fully three-dimensional simulation of a perpendicular shock are presented. For the cases studied here, the instability results in the formation of dense sheets of gas elongated in the direction of shock propagation and oriented perpendicular to the magnetic field. The formation of a weak J-type front is associated with the growth of the instability from an equilibrium shock structure. After saturation, the magnetic field structure consists of arches that bow outward in the direction of shock propagation and are anchored by the enhanced ion-neutral drag in the dense sheets. Analogous to the magnetic buoyancy (Parker) instability, saturation occurs when the magnetic tension in the distorted field lines is balanced by drag in the sheets. For the magnetically dominated shocks studied here, the distortions in the magnetic field that produce saturation are very small. Nonetheless, the enhancements of the ion and neutral densities in the sheets are very large, between 2 and 3 orders of magnitude compared with the preshock values. At these high densities, recombination processes may be important. The sheets evolve slowly in time, so that shocks propagating in a homogeneous medium may leave behind a network of intersecting filaments and sheets of dense gas elongated in the direction of shock propagation and perpendicular to the mean field. The temperature structure and emission properties of unstable C-type shocks in the nonlinear regime are presented in a companion paper.


Abstract Management of harmonic voltage levels can impose significant economic impacts for both electricity suppliers and customers. For the case where harmonic voltage levels are high, economic costs include damage to equipment and associated loss of production due to high voltage harmonic levels as well as the costs associated with mitigation of harmonic currents, for example, harmonic filters. In the alternate scenario, ie. the case where harmonic voltage levels are acceptable, considerable expense may be incurred mitigating harmonic currents unnecessarily due to lack of knowledge of harmonic levels and/or network capabilities. As such, there is considerable potential for industry to make large economic gains if harmonic voltage levels can be better understood. Using data collected as part of an ongoing long-term power quality monitoring project, this paper details the characteristics of voltage harmonic behaviour on Australia electricity distribution networks.


Natural diatom frustules composing nanometer size silica particles were heat-treated at temperatures between 600 and 1200℃ for 2 h and used as filler/reinforcing agent (15 wt%) in an epoxy resin. The opal structure of as-received natural diatom frustules was transformed into cristobalite after the heat-treatment above 900℃. The epoxy resin test samples reinforced with heat-treated and as-received frustules and neat epoxy test samples were compression tested at the quasi-static strain rate of 7 × 10−3 s−1. The results showed that the inclusion of the frustules heat-treated at 1000℃ increased the compressive yield strength of the resin by 50%, while the addition of the diatom frustules heat-treated above and below 1000℃ and the as-received frustules increased the strength by ∼25% and 16%, respectively. The heat treatment above 1000℃ decreased the surface area of the frustules from 8.23 m2 g−1 to 3.46 m2 g−1. The cristobalite grains of the frustules heat-treated at 1000℃ was smaller than 100 nm, while the grain size increased to ∼500 nm at 1200℃. The increased compressive stresses of the resin at the specific heat treatment temperature (1000℃) were ascribed to nano size crystalline cristobalite grains. The relatively lower compressive stresses of the epoxy resin filled with frustules heat-treated above 1000℃ were attributed to the micro-cracking of the frustules that might be resulted from higher density of the cristobalite than that of the opal and accompanying reduction of the surface area and the surface pore sizes that might impair the resin-frustule interlocking and intrusion.


Increased life expectancy, due to the rise in life quality and the decline in mortality rates, is leading to a society in which the population aged 60 and over is growing more rapidly than the entire population. Although various models and model organisms have been employed to investigate the mechanism of aging, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are useful candidates to study human aging and age‐related human diseases. This work discusses how iPSCs can be used as an alternative to the model organisms such as yeast, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila melanogaster, or the mouse. The main focus is the reprogramming technology of somatic cells which is thought to provide an important perspective for rejuvenation strategies. The effects and relationships between aging and cell reprogramming are discussed, and studies related to aging and cell reprogramming are critically reviewed. We believe that for future studies, different parameters and detailed quantitative experiments should be performed in order to clearly understand the effect of aging on human cell reprogramming with respect to programming efficiency and differentiation capacity. This way, new insights will be provided to prevent or even reverse the aging process. WIREs Dev Biol 2018, 7:e308. doi: 10.1002/wdev.308


Forty years have passed since the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. In spite of this there have been major scandals relating to the acquisition of recently-surfaced antiquities by public museums and private individuals. The Italian government has obtained the return of over 100 antiquities from North American collections and these have been displayed in a series of high profile exhibitions. Greece and Egypt have made successful claims on other material. Some dealers appear to be willing to handle material that surfaced along similar routes in spite of this increased awareness of the problem of looting, North American museums have now adjusted their acquisition policies to align them with the 1970 Convention.


A type of excitatory synaptic transmission which is novel for the vertebrate brain has been found in the ner neuron (M-cell) by means of the passive spread of their action currents across the synaptic membrane. After stimulating the ipsilateral eighth cranial nerve, an excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP) appears in the M-cell with a latency which is very brief ( about 0.1 msec) and which proba; bly represents a negligible synaptic delay. This response is attributed to the club endings: there were steep gradients of potential along the lateral dendrite of the M-cell during activity and the early EPSP was maximal in the distal part of the dendrite where the club endings predominate. Potential changes in the M-cell spread (passively) backwards into certain eighth-nerve fibers (probably club endings) indicating the presence of special low-resistance connections between them and the M-cell.


In Europe, standardization activities in healthcare informatics officially started in the 90s. The papers featured in this publication were presented at a conference which presented the current standing of important activities connected with healthcare informatics/telematics standards and to explore the ways of ensuring international coordination and cooperation worldwide. The publications shows interest from communities from Europe, United States, Australia and Japan. This guarantees the elaboration of high quality implementable healthcare informatics standards, which play an important role in the achievement of better healthcare to the benefit of the patient.