We consider the influence of a smooth three-dimensional (3-D) indentation on the instability of an incompressible boundary layer by linear and nonlinear analyses. The numerical work was complemented by an experimental study to investigate indentations of approximately $11\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{99}$ and $22\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{99}$ width at depths of 45 %, 52 % and 60 % of $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{99}$ , where $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{99}$ indicates 99% boundary layer thickness. For these indentations a separation bubble confined within the indentation arises. Upstream of the indentation, spanwise-uniform Tollmien–Schlichting (TS) waves are assumed to exist, with the objective to investigate how the 3-D surface indentation modifies the 2-D TS disturbance. Numerical corroboration against experimental data reveals good quantitative agreement. Comparing the structure of the 3-D separation bubble to that created by a purely 2-D indentation, there are a number of topological changes particularly in the case of the widest indentation; more rapid amplification and modification of the upstream TS waves along the symmetry plane of the indentation is observed. For the shortest indentations, beyond a certain depth there are then no distinct topological changes of the separation bubbles and hence on flow instability. The destabilising mechanism is found to be due to the confined separation bubble and is attributed to the inflectional instability of the separated shear layer. Finally for the widest width indentation investigated ( $22\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FF}_{99}$ ), results of the linear analysis are compared with direct numerical simulations. A comparison with the traditional criteria of using $N$ -factors to assess instability of properly 3-D disturbances reveals that a general indication of flow destabilisation and development of strongly nonlinear behaviour is indicated as $N=6$ values are attained. However $N$ -factors, based on linear models, can only be used to provide indications and severity of the destabilisation, since the process of disturbance breakdown to turbulence is inherently nonlinear and dependent on the magnitude and scope of the initial forcing.


Desorption kinetics of chemical compounds can be important both for their mobility in soil and for the significance of particle-facilitated transport. We studied desorption of glyphosate [N-(phosphonomethyl)glycine] on mobilized particles from two soil columns (50-cm height, 30-cm diameter), i.e., particles leached by free drainage from the bottom and particles mobilized by splash erosion and collected next to the top of the column. Leaching and splash erosion were driven by three, 30-mm irrigation events following surface application of 14 C-labeled glyphosate. Fresh leachate samples were investigated within 30 min of sampling, and desorption from splash-eroded particles in suspension (100 mg solid L ―1 ) was followed for 48 h (starting 2.0 min after immersion). Glyphosate concentrations were determined by measuring the 14 C activity using liquid scintillation counting. Similar fractional amounts of glyphosate (on average, 10-20% in 20 min) desorbed from leached and from splash-eroded particles (>20 nm) shortly after leaching or immersion, respectively, indicating that the processes of desorption from the different sources of particles were similar. In leachate, about 45 to 79% remained particle bound after 20 min, while calculated values at equilibrium were 20% or less. Equilibrium was established after about 5 to 10 h in suspensions with splash-eroded particles, except for one sample. These direct observations, supported by estimated values of the Damkohler number, lead to the conclusion that desorption kinetics are important for evaluating the significance of dissolved and particle-facilitated transport of glyphosate. To quantify particle-facilitated glyphosate transport, the water and solid phases in the leachate should consequently be separated within a few minutes after leaching.


This article takes a look at the history of Finnish log construction and log architecture. Logs have been used as a building material in Finland for as long as the country has been inhabited. The modern corner-notching technique arrived in Finland in the late Iron Age (600−800 AD) from the east, leading to a building type that survived until the 20th century.During the era of church builders (1620−1810), log construction achieved its highest form: the churches built during this period represent Finnish log architecture of the highest quality. Church builders had an excellent command of log construction techniques and knew logs as a building material extremely well, which allowed them to use the forms of the buildings and the decorative elements for the architectonic expression characteristic of logs.Church architecture adapted to other Western style trends in the 19th century. Although outstanding churches were still being built at the time, their technical developments did not lead to further developments in log construction techniques.The architecture of the Finnish artists' (Akseli Gallen-Kallela et al) villas built in the late 19th century relied on the expressive power of logs, corner joints and handicraft. The walls were stylistically rough-hewn and there was no weatherboarding. The corner notches played a central architectural role and decorative elements were borrowed from Finnish log construction heritage. Artists' villas have a unique position in Finnish architecture: for the first time, logs consciously emerged as a main architectural element. Contemporary industrial log construction began to develop in the 1950s. Product quality has improved considerably since then as a result of development work, and the prefabricated log has become a generally accepted building material. However, these logs no longer have the essence of a natural material and they have therefore lost their power of expression. The emphasis of industrial log construction and architecture is predominantly on manufacturing as economically as possible using existing production technology. In the 2000s industrial log construction finally started losing its romantic and historical burden and finding its own architectural expression.Contemporary hand-crafted log construction can be regarded as a continuation of the vernacular log construction tradition. Training in hand-crafted log construction has been organised since the late 1970s. The level of training has been highly uneven and the lack of a connection between such training and construction education has been one of its problems. The future of log construction is associated with product quality and energy efficiency. Development work and opening up new cooperation channels is important for the future of log construction as a craft.


In 2016, Microsoft launched Tay, an experimental artificial intelligence chat bot. Learning from interactions with Twitter users, Tay was shut down after one day because of its obscene and inflammatory tweets. This article uses the case of Tay to re-examine theories of agency. How did users view the personality and actions of an artificial intelligence chat bot when interacting with Tay on Twitter? Using phenomenological research methods and pragmatic approaches to agency, we look at what people said about Tay to study how they imagine and interact with emerging technologies and to show the limitations of our current theories of agency for describing communication in these settings. We show how different qualities of agency, different expectations for technologies, and different capacities for affordance emerge in the interactions between people and artificial intelligence. We argue that a perspective of "symbiotic agency"—informed by the imagined affordances of emerging technology—is required to really understand the collapse of Tay.


Introduction: Bender Gestalt test is one of the most famous neuropsychological tests that is simple and it can be used to examine brain injuries. The objective of this research was to investigate the validity, diagnostic strength and the replicability of the Bender VisualMotor Gestalt Test in patients with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Methods: 240 participants were tested in a case-control study to examine the validity of this test in two groups included 120 patients with TBI and normal cases. All participants were involved in the study by non-probability and consecutive sampling method. The normal group was matched with the TBI group in terms of age, gender and education level. The Bender Gestalt Test, neurological and dissectional information questionnaire, the demographic variable lists of the patients and the mini-mental examination test (MMSE) were used to collect the data. Results: Findings showed that patients with TBI showed more frequency in Gestalt test's dozen errors than the normal group. The discriminant validity coefficient showed that, in total 98.3% of the participants had been placed correctly in two normal and patient groups. The concurrent validity coefficient with the MMSE was -0.53 and the item-total correlation of this test were in a range of 0.10 to 0.48. The replicability results of this test among three examiners through intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) calculations were 0.81 and the cronbach's Alpha coefficient for the total sample was 0.85. Conclusion: This test has an acceptable discriminant and replicability strength. Regarding the obtained validity and reliability coefficients, it is recommended that this test be applied with the paraclinical diagnostic tools (such as CT-scan and MRI) as the screening tools in patients with TBI.


While catalytic mechanisms on electrode
surfaces have been proposed for decades, the pathways by which the product's chemical
bonds evolve from the initial charge-trapping intermediates have not been
resolved in time. Here, we discover a
reactive population of charge-trapping intermediates with states in the middle
of a semiconductor's band-gap to reveal the dynamics of two parallel transition
state pathways for their decay. Upon photo-triggering the water oxidation
reaction from the n-SrTiO3 surface with band-gap, pulsed excitation,
the intermediates' microsecond decay reflects transition state theory (TST)
through: (1) two distinct and reaction dependent (pH, T, Ionic Strength, and
H/D exchange) time constants, (2) a primary kinetic salt effect on each activation
barrier and an H/D kinetic isotope effect on one, and (3) realistic activation
barrier heights (~0.4-0.5 eV) and TST pre-factors
(~1011 -1012 Hz). A photoluminescence
from mid-gap states in n-SrTiO3 reveals the reaction dependent
decay; the same spectrum was previously assigned by us to hole-trapping at
parallel Ti-O·-Ti (bridge) and perpendicular Ti-O· (oxyl) O-sites using in-situ
ultrafast vibrational and optical spectroscopy. Therefore, the two transition
states are naturally associated with the decay of these respective
intermediates. Furthermore, we show that
reaction conditions select between the two pathways, one of which reflects a
labile intermediate facing the electrolyte (the oxyl) and the other a lattice
oxygen (the bridge). Altogether, we
experimentally isolate an important activation barrier necessary for water oxidation,
which is necessary for designing water oxidation catalysts for high O2
turn-over. Moreover, in isolating it,
we identify competing mechanisms for O2 evolution at surfaces and
show how to use reaction conditions to select between them.


High quality tomographic reconstruction from electron microscope images requires precise alignment of the images. This cannot be accomplished by simple 2D image transformations because the electron trajectories through the object are curvilinear. Accordingly, the alignment process requires an inferred object position and, in addition, nonlinear projection maps for each image. This may be accomplished by means of a generalized bundle adjustment when a consistent set of point-like objects is visible in each EM image. Alternatively, alignment may be accomplished by an extension of the method of occluded contours when a consistent set of linear features, such as projected outlines of surfaces can be identified. In the first case, we report on new results derived from multiple tilt series data, and in the second we report on high quality alignment and reconstruction when the number of point features is insufficient for proper alignment.


In 2005, Hughes et al. introduced the isogeometric analysis. One purpose was to eliminate the conversion between geometry model and analysis model in finite element analyses. NURBS (Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines) were adopted as shape functions and the isoparametric concept was utilized, resulting in the above mentioned analysis method. In this thesis, the differences between traditional finite element analysis and isogeometric analysis have been examined through nonlinear analyses of a gap K-joint subjected to prescribed displacements. The K-joint has been modelled both with solid and thin shell elements in Abaqus/Standard and with solid elements in IFEM. It has been focused on obtaining a mesh of similar refinement for both of the methods to easier be able to compare the results. The results show, as expected, that the thin shell element representation is unsuitable for a three dimensional stress state as around the intersection of the braces and the chord. The analyses with solid elements show a dependence on the continuity of the shape functions. The continuity in an isogeometric analysis is Cp-1 over element borders for basis functions of degree p. In traditional finite element analysis the continuity for solid elements is only C0. This results in differences in the differentiated variables like stresses and strain. Also the calculation of derived values, such as the von Mises stress and principal stresses, has shown to generate differences in the results because this is done differently in Abaqus/Standard and IFEM. The computational time for the isogeometric analyses is higher than for the traditional finite element analyses, and increasing with increasing degree of basis functions because the continuity affects the average bandwidth of the global matrices, and must also be included in the discussions. The conclusion is that more analysis results are needed to be able to make a substantiated conclusion as to which analysis method that is preferable for analyzing a gap K-joint. Regarding which method that is more accurate or conservative, the findings are not consequent.


Facial action units (AUs) recognition is essential for emotion analysis and has been widely applied in mental state analysis. Existing work on AU recognition usually requires big face dataset with accurate AU labels. However, manual AU annotation requires expertise and can be time-consuming. In this work, we propose a semi-supervised approach for AU recognition utilizing a large number of web face images without AU labels and a small face dataset with AU labels inspired by the co-training methods. Unlike traditional co-training methods that require provided multi-view features and model re-training, we propose a novel co-training method, namely multi-label co-regularization, for semi-supervised facial AU recognition. Two deep neural networks are used to generate multi-view features for both labeled and unlabeled face images, and a multi-view loss is designed to enforce the generated features from the two views to be conditionally independent representations. In order to obtain consistent predictions from the two views, we further design a multi-label co-regularization loss aiming to minimize the distance between the predicted AU probability distributions of the two views. In addition, prior knowledge of the relationship between individual AUs is embedded through a graph convolutional network (GCN) for exploiting useful information from the big unlabeled dataset. Experiments on several benchmarks show that the proposed approach can effectively leverage large datasets of unlabeled face images to improve the AU recognition robustness and outperform the state-of-the-art semi-supervised AU recognition methods.


This article proposes a simple balance-sheet solvency test for publicly-traded firms that addresses current limitations of financial-market-based solvency tests. I derive a solvency test from an elementary algebraic relation among the inputs to the balance-sheet solvency calculation for a publicly-traded firm. The solvency test requires only the assumption that the market value of assets equals the sum of the market value of the firm's debt plus the market value of the firm's equity. The solvency test is a generated upper bound on the total amount of debt the firm can have and still be solvent, or, alternatively, the minimum amount of stock-market capitalization the firm must have if it is solvent at current debt prices. The virtue of the method — apart from its ease of implementation — is that it makes possible the detection of balance-sheet insolvent firms notwithstanding the possibility that not all of the firm's liabilities — including hard-to-quantify contingent liabilities — can be identified. As a result, the method allows for the detection of many balance-sheet insolvent firms that otherwise might escape detection. The method proposed here may help identify insolvent firms that should be retaining assets and not paying them out to shareholders as dividends or repurchases, help identify stocks that should be treated by brokers and investment advisers as out-of-the-money call options that may be unsuitable investments or not in the best interest of advised investors, and help identify publicly-traded firms that are candidates for going-concern qualifications by auditors.


This paper addresses the problem of soft equalization for space-time-coded transmissions over frequency-selective fading channels. The structure of the space-time code is embedded in the channel impulse response for efficient joint equalization and decoding. The proposed equalization/decoding approach uses a prefilter to concentrate the effective channel power in a small number of taps followed by a reduced-complexity maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) equalizer/decoder to produce soft decisions. The prefilter introduces residual intersymbol interference which degrades the performance of MAP when applied to the trellis of the shortened channel. However, the shape of the overall shortened channel impulse response allows the M-algorithm to approximate the prefiltered MAP performance with a small number of states. Based on this general framework, we investigate several enhancements such as using different prefilters for the forward and backward recursions, concatenating two trellis steps during decoding, and temporal oversampling. The performance is evaluated through simulations over the EDGE typical urban channel.


Geographies of Identity: Narrative Forms, Feminist Futures explores identity and American culture through hybrid, prose work by women, and expands the strategies of cultural poetics practices into the study of innovative narrative writing. Informed by Judith Butler, Homi Bhabha, Harryette Mullen, Julia Kristeva, and others, this project further considers feminist identity politics, race, and ethnicity as cultural content in and through poetic and non/narrative forms. The texts reflected on here explore literal and figurative landscapes, linguistic and cultural geographies, sexual borders, and spatial topographies. Ultimately, they offer non-prescriptive models that go beyond expectations for narrative forms, and create textual webs that reflect the diverse realities of multi-ethnic, multi-oriented, multi-linguistic cultural experiences. Readings of Gertrude Stein's A Geographical History of America, Renee Gladman's Juice, Pamela Lu's Pamela: A Novel, Claudia Rankine's Don't Let Me Be Lonely, Juliana Spahr's The Transformation, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha's Dictée, Gloria Anzaldúa's Borderlands/La Frontera, and Layli Long Soldier's WHEREAS show how alternatively narrative modes of writing can expand access to representation, means of identification, and subjective agency, and point to horizons of possibility for new futures. These texts critique essentializing practices in which subjects are defined by specific identity categories, and offer complicated, contextualized, and historical understandings of identity formation through the textual weaving of form and content.


Conformational flexibility of the enzyme architecture is essential for biological function. These structural transitions often encompass significant portions of the enzyme molecule. Here, we present a detailed study of functionally relevant RNase A dynamics in the wild type and a D121A mutant form by NMR spin-relaxation techniques. In the wild-type enzyme, the dynamic properties are largely conserved in the apo, enzyme-substrate, and enzyme-product complexes. In comparison, mutation of aspartic acid 121 to alanine disrupts the timing of active-site dynamics, the product-release step, and global conformational changes, indicating that D121 plays a significant role in coordinating the dynamic events in RNase A. In addition, this mutation results in 90% loss of catalytic activity despite the absence of direct participation of D121 in the chemical reaction or in interactions with the substrate. These data suggest that one role of this conserved residue is to facilitate important millisecond protein dynamics.


This paper develops a search and matching model where firms and workers are allowed to form matches (jobs) that can be formal or informal. Workers optimally choose the level of schooling acquired before entering the labor market and whether to search for a job as unemployed or as self-employed. Firms optimally decide the formality status of the job and bargain with workers over wages. The resulting equilibrium size of the informal sector is an endogenous function of labor market parameters and institutions. The paper focuses on an increasingly important institution: a "dual" social protection system whereby contributory benefits in the formal sector coexist with non-contributory benefits in the informal sector. Preferences are estimated for the system—together with all the other structural parameters of the labor market—using labor force survey data from Mexico and the time-staggered entry across municipalities of a non-contributory social program. Policy experiments show that informality may be reduced by either increasing or decreasing the payroll tax rate in the formal sector. They also show that a universal social security benefit system would decrease informality, incentivize schooling, and increase productivity at a relative fiscal cost similar to that generated by the current system.


The spermatophore transferred by male decorated crickets (Gryllodes sigillatus) includes a large gelatinous mass, the spermatophylax, that is consumed by the female after mating. This nuptial gift preoccupies the female while sperm are discharged from the remaining portion of the spermatophore, the sperm ampulla, into her reproductive tract. There is considerable variation in the mass of the spermatophylax, and about half of all males produce spermatophylaxes that are too small to ensure complete sperm transfer. We tested two hypotheses concerning the maintenance of this variation: (i) males trade–off investment in spermatophylaxes against copulation frequency; and (ii) males synthesize the largest spermatophylaxes of which they are physiologically capable. Males synthesizing large and small food gifts were permitted multiple mating opportunities with the same females, and allozyme markers were used to establish the paternity of offspring. There was a significant advantage to those males that mated first irrespective of gift size. This advantage probably arose, in part, because the sperm of first males would have had exclusive access to female's eggs during the first 24 hours of oviposition, and underscores the benefits of matings with virgin females. The paternity of 'small–gift' males increased with gift mass, but there was no such increase in 'large–gift' males. This difference probably stems from the relationship between gift mass and sperm transfer: most of the gifts of the large–gift males would have been above the threshold needed to achieve complete inseminations, whereas those of small–gift males would have been below the threshold. Within mating–order positions, there was no significant difference in the paternity of large–gift and small–gift males, a result seemingly consistent with the 'trade–off' hypothesis. However, there was no correlation between spermatophylax mass and male mating frequency, so that the mechanism by which small–gift males offset their fertilization disadvantage remains unknown.


The aim of the Hungarian apple breeding program started in the Department of Fruit Science was to find resistant apple cultivars against major diseases (scab, powdery mildew, fire blight). The outbreak of fire blight (Erwinia amylovora) in 1996 motivated us to search new resistant sources principally from old traditional apple cultivars. First of all, cultivars have been gathered since 1997 from Carpathia (Visk) and evaluated between 2001 and 2003. In this recent study evaluation of resistance of old Hungarian genotypes to fire blight collected from the English National Fruit Collection (Brogdale, Faversham) is presented.
13 old Hungarian apple cultivars in 2002, and 38 genotypes in 2005 have been evaluated. We used `Idared' and 'Jonathan M41' as susceptible controls and 'Liberty' and 'Remo' as resistant ones. Shoots of two-year-old potted plants were inoculated with a mixture of virulent E. amylovora isolates (Ea2, Ea60, Ea67) at a concentration of 5 x 108 cells/ml. Resistance of apple cultivars was evaluated weekly, four times after inoculation by disease severity of symptoms. Numbers of bacterial colonies in 1 cm length shoot were determined in the fourth week after infection.
8 cultivars in 2002 and 9 cultivars in 2005 displayed notable resistance to fire blight based on one-year data. Based on the coincident data of both years, out of the cultivars collected also from Carpathia 'Ponyik', and `Sikulai' were found to be resistant and gene sources additional old Hungarian valuable apple genotypes could be selected: `Szabadkai szercsika' and `Tordai piros !davit'. The cultivar `Szemes alma' originated from Visk has proved to be recurrently resistant.
The number of bacterial cells in shoots of the investigated cultivars correlated with the severity of symptoms. With this method, which was introduced by us earlier, we can screen cultivars displaying weak visible symptoms, which cannot be proposed as a source of resistance because of their latent infection.


Analyses of bureaucratic power and privilege have an academic pedigree but have also long preoccupied socialists. The collapse of Communist rule in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe puts to a new test the classical theories concerning the relationship between bureaucracy and class. Power and Money is a timely contribution to this renewal theory, exploring the social and historical roots of bureaucracy, both within the capitalist state and in workers' mass organizations. Ernest Mandel draws on archival and contemporary accounts in an analysis of both capitalist administration and the ideology and practice of bureaucratic dictatorship in the Communist bloc. He measures the actual performance of Western and Eastern societies against the forecasts of Lenin and Trotsky, Ludwig von Mises and Roberto Michels, or the more recent reflections of Amitai Etzioni and Alvin Gouldner. This lucid study challenges those theories - Stalinist, Weberian or social-democratic - which claim that an autonomous officialdom is a necessary feature of modern societies. It also furnishes a perceptive account of the specific dynamics of Communist and post-communist society.


ABSTRACT Preterm premature rupture of membranes (PPROM) is often associated with intra-amniotic inflammation and infection. Current understanding of the pathogenesis of PPROM includes activation of pro-inflammatory cytokines and proteolytic enzymes leading to compromise of membrane integrity. The impact of exposure to bacterial pathogens, including Ureaplasma parvum, on gestational membranes is poorly understood. Our objective was to develop a dual-chamber system to characterize the inflammatory response of gestational membranes to U. parvum in a directional nature. Full-thickness human gestational membrane explants, with either choriodecidua or amnion oriented superiorly, were suspended between two washers in a cylindrical device, creating two distinct compartments. Brilliant green dye was introduced into the top chamber to assess the integrity of the system. Tissue viability was evaluated after 72 h using a colorimetric cell proliferation assay. Choriodecidua or amnion was exposed to three doses of U. parvum and incubated for 24 h. Following treatment, media from each compartment were used for quantification of U. parvum (quantitative PCR), interleukin (IL)-8 (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay), and matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2 and MMP-9 activity (zymography). We observed that system integrity and explant viability were maintained over 72 h. Dose-dependent increases in recovered U. parvum, IL-8 concentration, and MMP-2 activity were detected in both compartments. Significant differences in IL-8 concentration and MMP-9 activity were found between the choriodecidua and amnion. This tissue explant system can be used to investigate the inflammatory consequences of directional bacterial exposure for gestational membranes and provides insight into the pathogenesis of PPROM and infectious complications of pregnancy.


BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE
Physiotherapy or Physical Therapy (PT) is the most commonly practised allied health discipline globally. International PT workforce reforms are underway to deal with increasing patient numbers, shrinking medical and nursing workforces and lengthy waiting lists. It is timely to consider international differences in PT, with the aims of identifying opportunities for shared learning and forming stronger international alliances to support consistent and evidence-based workforce reforms.

METHODS
This paper synthesizes freely available information on PT training and service delivery across the UK, Australia and United States (California). The paper considers differences in roles, workplaces, training, legislation and registration, continuing professional development, and accountability.

RESULTS
There are similarities between UK, Australia and United States (California) in many areas of PT roles, training, registration, legislation and professional practice. However, none has a standard national mechanism by which to demonstrate PT accountability, patient safety or quality care. Moreover, there are different approaches to workforce reforms. There is considerable duplication in physiotherapy governance.

CONCLUSION
There are opportunities for targeted international collaborations regarding workforce reforms such as extending scope of practice, and determining and implementing internationally agreed ways of demonstrating PT accountability. The findings of this review have significant policy implications, and identify areas for collaborative research. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Charlotte Ramsay Lennox (1720?27?29?-1804) wrote two novels about life in the New World, one at the beginning of her literary career -- The Life of Harriot Stuart, Written by Herself (1751) -- and the other at the end -- Euphemia (1790). Neither novel has yet received much critical scrutiny, while The Female Quixote; or the Adventures of Arabella, published in 1752 and the only novel of hers currently available in paperback, has received a great deal.(1) I think it is time, as we continue to explore the consequences of the "discovery" of the New World, to "rediscover" these two neglected novels, for Lennox was one of the few to write about the New World from the woman's perspective. Her novels have much to tell us about what the New World meant to the women of the Old. For Lennox, the New World served as a place to chart the unexplored territories of motherhood, female friendship, the powerful mother/child connection, and female subjectivity. Because most readers of this essay will be unfamiliar with Lennox's two "American" novels, I will briefly summarize their very complex plots. The Adventures of Harriot Stuart employs the paratactic shapelessness of the picaresque novel to tell a tale of successive and successful amatory encounters. It begins in England with an affair that occurs when Harriot is eleven years old, and continues with her adventures in America, to which her family goes when her father is made a company commander there. In love with Dumont, she is about to be married to Mr. Maynard when she is rescued by Captain Belmein, who then tries to trick her into marriage. Subsequently, when her father dies, her mother sends her to her aunt in England. On her way there, Harriot and her governess are kidnapped by Spanish pirates but rescued by an English Captain who tries to rape her. After she wounds him with his own sword, his nephew Mr. Campbel protects her from the other men and accompanies her to London, where Harriot learns from her aunt's friend, Mrs. Dormer, that her aunt is mad. Alone, Harriot turns to Lady Cecilia, who finds a position for Harriot in the family of her sister. Sexually assaulted by the family's tutor, Repoli, Harriot is accused of assaulting him. She loses Lady Cecilia's protection and is forced to leave her sister's family. Harriot goes back to Mrs. Dormer, who proceeds to tell her story to Harriot. After this interlude, Dumont returns and they fix their marriage day. When Dumont fails to show up as prearranged, she is made to believe he has married someone else. Subsequently she is abducted and taken to a convent. In the convent she meets Mrs. Belville, who tells her story. Believing she is being rescued from the convent, Harriot is next taken by a Count to a "retreat" outside Paris, from which, she is, in turn, rescued by Mrs. Danville, a woman in man's disguise. Once in Paris, Harriot unexpectedly runs into Mrs. Belville, who offers to escort her back to England, where she is reunited with her mother and sister. She is about to marry Mr. Campbel when her long lost lover Dumont returns to explain that he was tricked just as she was. The novel ends with their marriage. An epistolary novel, Euphemia includes a smaller variety of incidents and much greater detail. Volume One begins with a letter from Maria Harley to Euphemia Neville, narrating the stories of her uncle's marriage to a duplicitous woman and of his great dislike for a particular relative who long ago married the woman he truly loved. Euphemia, in turn, narrates the story of her father's death and of her mother's subsequent illness and straitened circumstances. To please her mother, Euphemia marries Mr. Neville; her mother dies happy just before Mr. Neville procures a commission that will take them to America. In Volume Two, Maria describes her romance with Edward Harley, the son of her uncle's enemy, and her uncle's eventual acceptance and encouragement of their union. In her letters, Euphemia gives details of her journey from London to New York, where she and the Bellenden family (Colonel Bellenden is her husband's superior officer) are received very ceremoniously. …


The people of Burma/Myanmar have suffered for two generations under military dictatorships. Their economy, legal and social orders, cultural diversity, and political freedoms have all steadily declined during that time. The country's human rights record is considered by many to be one of the worst world-wide. In the West, responses have ranged from diplomatic condemnation, to the imposition of economic sanctions, and to the withdrawal of aid and international cooperation. Countries in the region, on the other hand, have been typically less robust, more accepting of assertions of sovereign rights and concerned to promote engagement and dialogue rather than isolation and punishment. Neither approach appears to have had any discernable impact on the attitude of Myanmar's military government or on the plight of its people. Aung San Suu Kyi remains under house arrest, her pro-democracy party banned, and its members persecuted; the rule of law is non existent, and the once flourishing economy is in terminal decline. New strategies to break the impasse are now being contemplated in both the West (more conditional engagement) and the East (more strident conditionality). This article analyzes a controversial Australian human rights initiative that ran in Myanmar from 2000 to 2003, which might be considered a forerunner to these new "third way" approaches. The article describes the objectives, nature, composition and implementation of the program; it assesses its advantages and disadvantages, its risks and potential, and explores some of the criticisms and praise the program engendered. It also provides a detailed backdrop against which one might draw some tentative lessons in terms of the protection and promotion of human rights in both the specific context of Myanmar, and also, by implication, in the global community's approach to intransigent, pariah states.


Revitalization of state brands is deemed important to several constituencies. Stated preference with choice experiment methods were used to elicit consumer preferences for two locally grown products: spinach, which has had a well-publicized food safety incidence, and carrots, which have had no such incidence in recent history. A full factorial design was used to implement the choice experiment, with each commodity having four identical attributes varying at different levels. Findings reveal that consumers are willing to pay a premium for locally grown spinach marked with the Arizona Grown label over locally grown spinach that was not labeled. This premium was higher than the premium that would be paid for state-branded carrots. This difference highlights consumers' perceptions of "locally grown" as an indicator of safety in their food supply. Findings have important implications with respect to providing consumer value and point to differentiated positioning strategies for state-branded produce.


We model and experimentally examine the board structure-performance relationship. We examine single-tiered boards, two-tiered boards, insider-controlled boards and outsider-controlled boards. We find that even insider-controlled boards frequently adopt institutionally preferred rather than self-interested policies. Two-tiered boards adopt institutionally preferred policies more frequently, but tend to destroy value by being too conservative, frequently rejecting good projects. Outsidercontrolled single-tiered boards, both when they have multiple insiders and only a single insider, adopt institutionally preferred policies most frequently. In those board designs where the efficient Nash equilibrium produces strictly higher payoffs to all agents than the coalition-proof equilibria, agents tend to select the efficient Nash equilibria.


The main objective of this study is to define probiotic bacteria efficiency against bacterial infantile diarrhea. Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) was used as a natural resource and extracted of camel milk from southern Algeria. The isolation was followed by molecular identification using the 16S rDNA sequencing method. One hundred and fifty fecal samples were collected over 18 months from children suffering from diarrhea and aged 2 years or under. Identification results reveal the isolated lactic bacteria as Lactobacillus plantarum. In the other side, a total of 120 fecal samples were positive for bacterial growth, these pathogenic bacteria were identified as: Escherichia fergusonii (92%), Salmonella enterica subsp. Diarizonae (7.33%) and Proteus mirabilis (0.66%). The inhibitory effect study of lactic acid bacteria on pathogenic bacteria shows varying effects of L. plantarum in relation to the various pathogenic isolates, mentioning that the most important effect was expressed against Escherichia fergusonii with 22 mm. All the results allow us to classify that camel's milk is a natural source rich in lactic acid bacteria, in particular L. plantarum, with an inhibitory ability against the pathogenic bacteria responsible for diarrhea. Therefore L. plantarum produces bioactive molecules responsible for this effect.


This article explores the phenomenon of nineteenth-century new religious movements as a reaction to the "plain Bible" religious culture of that era. The plain Bible thesis maintained that the Bible was clear in its meaning, persuasive in its message, and authoritative in all matters of truth. Through the examples of Joseph Smith, Mary Baker Eddy and Henry David Thoreau, this article illustrates how three religious innovators reacted against the plain Bible thesis by creating their own versions of scripture which, in turn, aided in creating or strengthening alternative forms of Christianity. With his Mormon scriptural canon, including The Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price, Smith combated the notion that the Bible was clear in meaning; with her sacred text Science and Health Eddy challenged the persuasiveness of the plain Bible; and with his manuscript Wild Fruits , Thoreau undermined the plain Bible's singular authority. This article shows that many new religious movements were not outliers in nineteenth-century Christian culture but were in fact products of that culture, albeit reactionary ones.


This paper defines a resource reservation protocol called hierarchical proxy mobile resource reservation protocol (HPMRSVP). This protocol is based on the hierarchical architecture HMIPv6 and used a modified version of FHMIPv6 to handle the handover. During a session, the resource reservation between two mobile nodes is limited to the access network. Furthermore, when a handover occurs, resources are uniquely reserved to the target access point before the handover is completed. The proposed protocol allows reducing delays and packet loss. In addition, management of refresh messages is moved to the access router, which holds the refresh reservation state for the duration of the session on behalf of the mobile unit. The access network thereby becomes responsible for upholding the session, which optimizes the utilization of the radio link.


The ultimate test of a load factor formula is experience. The chief advantages of a semi rational formula over arbitrary factors are that it fairs in between points of experience and it differentiates according to variables within a type. Structural failure of an airplane apparently safe according to the formula would call for a specific change in the formula. The best class of airplanes with which to check a load factor formula seems to be those which have experienced structural failure. Table I comprises a list of the airplanes which have experienced failure in flight traceable to the wing structure. The load factor by formula is observed to be greater than the designed strength in each case, without a single exception. Table II comprises the load factor by formula with the designed strength of a number of well-known service types. The formula indicates that by far the majority of these have ample structural strength. One case considered here in deriving a suitable formula is that of a heavy load carrier of large size and practically no reserve power.


In this article interrelationship between public governance, Knowledge Management and performance evaluation is discussed. It is argued that Knowledge Management which is defined as steering of processes of creation, sharing and application of knowledge by use of information and communication technologies is related to performance evaluation which includes performance measurement and program evaluation. In the processes of performance measurement and evaluation certain knowledge is created which should also be efficiently distributed and properly applied. Knowledge Management systems could be measured and evaluated too. In the paper the concept of "public governance" as the new paradigm of public administration which differs both of traditional public administration and the New Public Management, is formulated. The arguments are presented that specific Knowledge Management strategies as well as performance evaluation could contribute to implementation of principles of good public governance.


Calmodulin is a calcium-binding protein that participates in the transduction of calcium signals. The electric phenotypes of calmodulin mutants of Paramecium have suggested that the protein may regulate some calcium-dependent ion channels. Calcium-dependent sodium single channels in excised patches of the plasma membrane from Paramecium were identified, and their activity was shown to decrease after brief exposure to submicromolar concentrations of calcium. Channel activity was restored to these inactivated patches by adding calmodulin that was isolated from Paramecium to the cytoplasmic surface. This restoration of channel activity did not require adenosine triphosphate and therefore, probably resulted from direct binding of calmodulin, either to the sodium channel itself or to a channel regulator that was associated with the patch membrane.


We investigated the impact of paracetamol administration on lymphocyte DNA damage and oxidative stress parameters for acute pain management in patients with acute traumarelated pain. Thirty-five adult patients with mild or moderate trauma and 33 eligible healthy volunteers as control subjects were enrolled. Blood samples were obtained from the patients before and at 2 and 12 h after IV administration of paracetamol. Serum lymphocyte DNA damage and total oxidant status (TOS), total antioxidant status (TAS) and oxidative stress index (OSI) were studied as oxidative stress parameters. Serum lymphocyte DNA damage levels were 14.97 ± 12.38 AU (arbitrary units) in Group 1 (before analgesia), 13.94 ± 9.28 AU in Group 2 (2 h after analgesia), and 10.57 ± 8.73 AU in Group 3 (12 h after analgesia). A significant difference was observed among the groups with respect to serum lymphocyte DNA damage (p < 0.01). Mean serum TOS and OSI values were lower in Groups 2 and 3 compared to that in Group 1. Furthermore, mean serum TAS values were higher in Group 3 compared to that in Goup 1. Our data suggest that the treatment of trauma-related acute pain with intravenous paracetamol resulted in decreased DNA damage in human T lymphocytes.


This paper is a response to a 2018 call for greater understanding of how previous examples of marine science diplomacy could help shape present day efforts to draft a new law of the sea that protects marine biodiversity and conserves the marine environment. It tackles this through analysis of the various twists, turns, and challenges of early science diplomacy efforts in marine science during the early twentieth century. It looks in turn at questions of defining and agreeing on research objectives, how backchannel science diplomacy can become official government diplomacy, and finally, how careful science diplomacy brought Germany back to the international research arena so as to successfully put in place marine conservation measures during the 1920s. In doing this, it argues that the foundation of the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas in 1902 represented a revolutionary moment where supra-national scientific research, coordination, and conservation politics for the ocean first emerged; with International Council for the Exploration of the Sea becoming a key model for all subsequent marine science diplomacy. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Science Diplomacy, edited by Giulia Rispoli and Simone Turchetti.


There are well-known difficulties to run numerical weather prediction (NWP) and climate models at resolutions traditionally referred to as 'grey-zone' (~3–8 km) where deep convection is neither completely resolved by the model dynamics nor completely subgrid. In this study, we describe the performance of an operational NWP model, HARMONIE, in a climate setting (HCLIM), run at two different resolutions (6 and 15 km) for a 10-yr period (1998–2007). This model has a convection scheme particularly designed to operate in the 'grey-zone' regime, which increases the realism and accuracy of the time and spatial evolution of convective processes compared to more traditional parametrisations. HCLIM is evaluated against standard observational data sets over Europe as well as high-resolution, regional, observations. Not only is the regional climate very well represented but also higher order climate statistics and smaller scale spatial characteristics of precipitation are in good agreement with observations. The added value when making climate simulations at ~5 km resolution compared to more typical regional climate model resolutions is mainly seen for the very rare, high-intensity precipitation events. HCLIM at 6 km resolution reproduces the frequency and intensity of these events better than at 15 km resolution and is in closer agreement with the high-resolution observations.


This article seeks to contribute to the national conversation on reforming police practices by evaluating the current law on police use of deadly force, identifying problems with that law, and suggesting a modest change to that law in the form of model legislation governing police use of deadly force. Existing statutes on police use of deadly force tend to focus on the reasonableness of the officer's belief in the need to use force. This article suggests that the law should be reformed to explicitly include a focus on the reasonableness of the officer's actions. Under the proposed model statute, in order to be considered a justifiable shooting, the jury must find that both the officer's beliefs and actions were reasonable. To provide better guidance to juries than provided by current use of force statutes, the model statute specifies three factors that the fact finder should consider when deciding whether the officer's actions were reasonable: (1) whether the victim/suspect had or appeared to have a weapon (and whether he or she refused orders to drop it), (2) whether the officer engaged in de-escalation measures prior to using deadly force, and (3) whether the officer engaged in any pre-seizure conduct that increased the risk of a deadly confrontation. It also borrows from imperfect self-defense law in civilian homicide cases, permitting the jury to find an officer charged with murder not guilty of murder, but guilty of voluntary manslaughter if the officer's belief in the need to use deadly force was honest but unreasonable or if the officer's belief was reasonable, but his actions unreasonable.


GINS (Go Ichi Ni San; 5,1,2,3 in Japanese) is a heterotetrameric protein complex known to be essential for the establishment of DNA replication forks and the progression of the replisome. The GINS complex is known to be integral in G1 to S phase transition. GINS may play a role in loading Cdc45 and DNA polymerases [alpha] and [epsilon] and has been suggested to function in the activation of the MCM helicase. The Psf1 subunit of the GINS complex is evolutionarily conserved and has been identified in all sequenced eukaryotic genomes. It has been inferred that Psf1 is required for an early step in DNA replication and the binding of Cdc45. What has been discovered of the Psf1 subunit would indicate an important role DNA replication and viability of the organism. Due to the pivotal role of GINS, we investigated the functional characteristics of Psf1 along with any protein interactions. Understanding Psf1 will give a better understanding of the GINS complex as a whole and possibly reveal its role in the initiation of DNA replication and other important cellular processes.  Our research has focused on a Drosophila psf1 hypomorphic allele. Our project has involved investigating the function of Psf1 using several approaches. First, we explored genetic interactions using a mutant allele of Psf1 in combination with mutant alleles for genes involved in DNA replication. Second, we determined the level of decrease in mRNA of the hypomorphic allele using reverse transcriptase PCR. Third, we used confocal microscopy to analyze the morphology and segregation of chromosomes in different tissues. Confocal microscopy was also used to assess any cell cycle defects through the measurement of mitotic indices. Lastly, we created a true null psf1 mutant allele for further research.


Abstract At $\mathit{Re}= 3900$, Newtonian flow past a circular cylinder exhibits a wake and detached shear layers which have transitioned to turbulence. It is the goal of the present study to investigate the effects which viscoelasticity has on this state and to identify the mechanisms responsible for wake stabilization. It is found through numerical simulations (employing the FENE-P rheological model) that viscoelasticity greatly reduces the amount of turbulence in the wake, reverting it back to a state which qualitatively appears similar to the Newtonian mode B instability which occurs at lower $\mathit{Re}$. By focusing on the separated shear layers, it is found that viscoelasticity suppresses the formation of the Kelvin–Helmholtz instability which dominates for Newtonian flows, consistent with previous studies of viscoelastic free shear layers. Through this shear layer stabilization, the viscoelastic far wake is then subject to the same instability mechanisms which dominate for Newtonian flows, but at far lower Reynolds numbers.


One of the major pedagogical challenges, for teachers at all levels and in all disciplines of the education system, is to acknowledge Africa's presence in the evolution of world civilizations. Knowledge about the existence and evolution of African civilizations before European contact have been suppressed, distorted or erased from textbooks. Furthermore, only relatively recently have a number of historiographies on such topics as the internal, trans-Sahara and trans-Atlantic slave trades and slavery have begun to be produced in academia. Moreover, scholars have been slow to recognize the central role of Africa in disciplines such as economics, art, literature, science and music in the global currents of intellectual and philosophical thought. Hopefully, the voice, agency and self-representation of African/Black people have steadily emerged from the shadows in various forms of life writing, in addition to original research and publications across disciplines. This paper and accompanying workshop for teacher educators is this author's initiative to bring a historical consciousness to both a curricular and pedagogical need for engagement with the scholarship produced by African-descended peoples. My thesis is that various genres of life writing - memoirs, autobiographies and biographies - can enhance the learning and teaching about Africa and African descended peoples in such a way as to bring about a holistic understanding of the historical and institutional bases for their contemporary human condition, locally and globally. Teacher educators who prepare language arts and social studies teachers for the public school system will find texts at various reading levels among the resources. Teachers of the humanities and social sciences at the tertiary level will have the opportunity to explore ways in which auto/biographies may enhance their learning and teaching.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cyclic GMP) in mediating the direct electrophysiological effects of acetylcholine in guinea pig atria. Acetylcholine significantly diminished spontaneous rate of right atria without increasing cyclic GMP content. Reductions in rate following acetylcholine were augmented by pretreatment with physostig- mine, but cyclic GMP levels remained unchanged. In left atria, acetylcholine significantly shortened action potential duration within 5 seconds (both with and without physostigmine pretreatment), but cyclic GMP content was not significantly elevated. Cyclic GMP levels in right atria were significantly increased in response to acetylcholine when the Ca+2 content of the buffer was elevated from 1.25 mu to 2.5 mM; however, reductions in automaticity in the right atria were not augmented in the high Ca2+buffer. Marked increases in cyclic GMP content were produced by Na nitroprusside superfusion without changing automaticity of right atria or action potential duration of left atria. Finally, both right and left atria were superfused with cyclic GMP analogs (8-bromo cyclic GMP and dibutyryl cyclic GMP) at high concentrations (10−4) for 15 minutes without producing significant effects on spontaneous rate or action potential duration. These results failed to show a correlation between total tissue cyclic GMP content and the electrophysiological effects of acetylcholine on guinea pig atria. The reasons for this are either that cyclic GMP does not mediate directly the electrophysiological effects of acetylcholine, or that small changes in cyclic GMP concentrations, undetectable when total tissue nucleotide levels are measured, occur in discrete effector pools of the cardiac cell to mediate the intracellular effects of the choline ester. Ore Res 45: 225-233, 1979


In this study, nanocomposites containing a pre-defined mass ratio of solar salt (NaNO3-KNO3: 60-40 wt.%) dispersed with magnesium oxide (MgO) nanoparticles with nominal sizes of 100 nm were prepared in solid and liquid states. The proposed amounts of sodium nitrate and potassium nitrate were added to certain amounts of ultrapure deionized (DI) water comprising a 5 wt.% concentration of MgO nanoparticles. Afterward, the prepared mixture was placed in a dry oven to mix in a liquid state to obtain well-dispersed nanocomposites. Scanning electronic microscopy (SEM) was conducted to evaluate the uniformity of synthesized, molten salt–based magnesium oxide–nanoparticles, revealing a uniform dispersion. Enthalpy and melting point measurements were performed using differential scanning calorimetry. The experimental results of solar salt–based MgO indicated decreases in melting point and enthalpy by 7% and 12.4%, respectively. The reduction of enthalpy indicated that, with the addition of magnesium oxide to solar salt, the final nanocomposite tends to have more exothermic reactions and enhanced thermal conductivity performance at the melting point. Lower melting points constitute one of the major concerns regarding molten salt–based nanofluids. MgO nanoparticles with a concentration of 5 wt.% have a melting point decreased by 7%. Mass loss and thermal stability measurements were conducted using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The experimentally acquired results revealed an increment of decomposition temperature from 734.29°C to 750.73°C, demonstrating the enhancement of thermal stability at high temperatures.


Abstract Infants are increasingly cared for by adults other than their parents. Here we describe non-parental infant care within a diverse cohort; and investigate the relationship between parents' antenatal intentions and actual infant care. 6822 New Zealand women were recruited during pregnancy and asked about their intentions for childcare. Non-parental care was assessed when infants were nine months old: 1717 (25%) of the 6853 cohort children were receiving more than 8 h per week of regular non-parental care. In comparison with infants of European mothers, infants of Asian or Pacific mothers were more likely to be cared for by extended family; and infants of Māori mothers were more likely to receive centre-based care. Infants from families with lower household incomes, living in more deprived areas were more likely to be cared for by family. When their infants were nine months old, mothers from low- to medium-income households were less likely to be using the type of non-parental care they had intended antenatally, and the same was true when their children were aged 2 years.


ABSTRACTA suite of advanced instruments were employed to measure aerosol hygroscopicity, volatility and chemical composition at a suburban site in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) Region and at a marine site in Okinawa, respectively. The results showed that the particle number concentration in PRD is approximately ten times higher than that in Okinawa. Organics contributes about one half of the total NR-PM1 concentration in PRD, while sulfate is the dominant component (about 60%) in Okinawa. Diurnal variation of the chemical species demonstrated that the site in PRD was affected by traffic-related sources and industrial emissions, while the one in Okinawa is mainly affected by regional emissions. The V-TDMA measurements showed that a large fraction (20–45%) of particles in Okinawa volatilized at about 200°C and nearly all particles volatilized at about 300°C, indicating that the particles were almost volatile in Okinawa. In contrast, a fraction (15–21%) of particles in PRD did not evaporate even when heated to about 300°C, implying that these particles might contain black carbon or low-volatile organics. For 40–200 nm particles in Okinawa, the hygroscopicity parameter κ is around 0.5, significantly higher than that of PRD particles (κ ≈ 0.26). Particles tend to have bimodal distribution in PRD and unimodal in Okinawa, indicating that the former is externally mixed while the latter is internally mixed.


I. Introduction The Carnmenellis granite and its metamorphic aureole were mapped, in 1839, by de la Beche. The area has since been re-surveyed by the Geological Survey and the results recorded in the one-inch maps, nos. 352 and 359 (New Series) and in the Survey Memoir on the Falmouth and Camborne district (Hill & MacAlister, 1906). The granite is an important unit in the chain of post-Carboniferous granite intrusions forming the backbone of the peninsula of Cornwall and Devon. The consanguinity of these intrusions has long been known, but the recognition of the composite character of individual intrusions is comparatively recent. Intrusive relationship between major composite masses was observed on Dartmoor by the members of the Geological Survey (Reid & others, 1912), Brammall (1923), and Osman (1928), and on Bodmin Moor by myself (1927). Intrusion sequences are discussed by Brammall (1923 & 1932) and Osman (1928). Important petrological contrasts between the Devonian and the Cornish granites were pointed out by Flett and Dewey (Reid & others, 1912), and problems of variation within individual complexes have since been made the basis of detailed study by Osman with special reference to the Dartmoor and Scilly Isles masses, by Richardson (1923) dealing with the St. Austell granite, and by myself in a paper on the Bodmin Moor granite (1927), and the Carnmenellis granite, the subject of the present contribution. I would add that, subsequent to the presentation of the paper to the Society, I have had the advantage of re-examining my analytical data


Low‐energy low‐frequency pulsed electromagnetic fields (PEMFs) exert several protective effects, such as the regulation of kinases, transcription factors as well as cell viability in both central and peripheral biological systems. However, it is not clear on which bases they affect neuroprotection and the mechanism responsible is yet unknown. In this study, we have characterized in nerve growth factor‐differentiated pheochromocytoma PC12 cells injured with hypoxia: (i) the effects of PEMF exposure on cell vitality; (ii) the protective pathways activated by PEMFs to relief neuronal cell death, including adenylyl cyclase, phospholipase C, protein kinase C epsilon and delta, p38, ERK1/2, JNK1/2 mitogen‐activated protein kinases, Akt and caspase‐3; (iii) the regulation by PEMFs of prosurvival heat‐shock proteins of 70 (HSP70), cAMP response element‐binding protein (CREB), brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), and Bcl‐2 family proteins. The results obtained in this study show a protective effect of PEMFs that are able to reduce neuronal cell death induced by hypoxia by modulating p38, HSP70, CREB, BDNF, and Bcl‐2 family proteins. Specifically, we found a rapid activation (30 min) of p38 kinase cascade, which in turns enrolles HSP70 survival chaperone molecule, resulting in a significant CREB phosphorylation increase (24 hr). In this cascade, later (48 hr), BDNF and the antiapoptotic pathway regulated by the Bcl‐2 family of proteins are recruited by PEMFs to enhance neuronal survival. This study paves the way to elucidate the mechanisms triggered by PEMFs to act as a new neuroprotective approach to treat cerebral ischemia by reducing neuronal cell death.


From mining EST databases with an algorithm designed to identify helical cytokines, Blumberg et al. have turned up interleukin 20 (IL-20), a cytokine that appears to regulate the epidermis. When IL-20 was overexpressed in transgenic mice, skin abnormalities reflecting hyperproliferation were observed. Biochemical analysis of known class II cytokine receptors revealed that IL-20 binds to a specific heterodimeric receptor that is expressed in human skin, and it is also overexpressed in skin of psoriasis patients. The report suggests that IL-20 may exert its effects through a pathway involving signal transducers and activators of transduction elements (STATS), as STAT3 translocated to the nucleus when cells overexpressing the IL-20 receptor were treated with the cytokine. H. Blumberg, D. Conkin, W. Xu, A. Grossmann, T. Brender, S. Carollo, M. Eagen, D. Foster, B. A. Haldeman, A. Hammond, H. Haugen, L. Jelinek, J. D. Kelly, K. Madden, M. F. Maurer, J. Parrish-Novak, D. Prunkard, S. Sexson, C. Sprecher, K. Waggie, J. West, T. E. Whitmore, L. Yao, M. K. Kuechle, B. A. Dale, Y. A. Chandrasekher, Interleukin 20: Discovery, receptor identification, and role in epidermis function. Cell 104, 9-19 (2001). [Online Journal]


Hardly a profession across the campus does not, at some point, meet the public. Whether this occurs in classrooms, boardrooms, or courtrooms, routinely or occasionally, they offer brief and valuable moments to present ideas, products, positions, and people. No idea, product, or argument can find a public without a spokesperson. Becoming a speaker of ideas is what this course offers. This course uses performance techniques of voice, movement, and presence, to develop greater authenticity for any speaker in any public forum. The course is designed for a broad population across the campus as well as within the host department. As its emphasis is on delivery not content, the techniques are available to students in the business school as well the as arts, in science and in marketing, to any student in any field whose ideas would find a wider audience with improved speaking and presentation skills. Making better speakers doesn't make better science, or better products, but it does make science and products more accessible. 4 credits, A term


We investigate nonce reuse issues with the GCM block cipher mode as used in TLS and focus in particular on AES-GCM, the most widely deployed variant. With an Internet-wide scan we identified 184 HTTPS servers repeating nonces, which fully breaks the authenticity of the connections. Affected servers include large corporations, financial institutions, and a credit card company. We present a proof of concept of our attack allowing to violate the authenticity of affected HTTPS connections which in turn can be utilized to inject seemingly valid content into encrypted sessions. Furthermore, we discovered over 70,000 HTTPS servers using random nonces, which puts them at risk of nonce reuse, in the unlikely case that large amounts of data are sent via the same session.


Abstract. Dense stereo processing requires a critical step that called cost aggregation or cost optimization. Most of the cost aggregation methods are evaluated on close range stereo images from Middlebury or KITTI datasets. While the effect of cost aggregation on high resolution satellite stereo processing has not yet been sufficiently evaluated. In this paper, three typical cost aggregation methods together with another approach which is a combination of these methods are evaluated on high resolution satellite stereo images and then are compared with LiDAR ground truth. These methods including Semi-Global Matching (SGM), Guided Filtering (GF), iterative GF (IGF), and SGM followed by GF (SGM-GF) with Census and Zero Normalized Cross Correlation (ZNCC) cost functions. Although the Census cost function has a good performance on the border of the objects and low blurring effects, the results of both cost functions, i.e. Census and ZNCC, have same treatment on all stereo methods. Also, in order to make an impartial assessment, for all stereo methods, we do not perform any disparity map refinement. The bad-pixel criteria with an absolute difference height error greater than 2 meters for SGM, GF, IGF, and SGM-GF methods is 36.7%, 34.8%, 33.8%, and 28.6% respectively. Also, the Normalized Median Absolute Difference (NMAD) error for SGM, GF, IGF, and SGM-GF is 1.29, 1.15, 1.06, and 0.94 meters, respectively. Overall, the experimental results on WV III stereo images demonstrate that the SGM method has lower accuracy and SGM-GF method is accurate than other methods.


Concerned about their partners' potential desensitization to carceral existence and their ensuing loss of ability to function outside of the penitentiary walls, women whose husbands, fiancés, or boyfriends are incarcerated attempt to involve their loved one in personal and family life by relocating various everyday activities into the prison visiting room. As kinship gatherings, family celebrations, and romance are conducted behind bars, the prison becomes `Papa's house', an alternative site for the performance of `private' behavior. This article draws upon intensive field observations in the visitor-waiting area of California's San Quentin State Prison and in-depth interviews with 50 women whose partners are incarcerated to examine the contradictory emotional and institutional processes that complicate and reshape relationships during periods of incarceration and thereby profoundly transform the nature of precisely what visitation is meant to maintain, namely family ties. The depiction of three ostensibly intimate occurrences - commensality, weddings, and spending the night together - shows that their importation into the correctional facility twists them according to penal criteria and establishes the penitentiary as a domestic satellite. Hence the peculiar predicament facing women battling the `institutionalization' of their mate: through their efforts to create strong inclusive bonds with their partner, they in fact partake in the paradoxical `institutionalization' of their own family life and thus extend the reach and intensity of the transformative effects of the carceral apparatus.


The Total Economic Time Capacity of a Year 525600 minutes is postulated as a time standard for a new Monetary Minute currency in this evaluation study. Consequently, the Monetary Minute MonMin is defined as a 1/525600 part of the Total Economic Time Capacity of a Year. The Value CMonMin of the Monetary Minute MonMin is equal to a 1/525600 part of the GDP, p.c., expressed in a specific state currency C. There is described how the Monetary Minutes MonMin are determined, and how their values CMonMin are calculated based on the GDP and all the population in specific economies. The Monetary Minutes trace different aggregate productivity, i.e. exploitation of the total time capacity of a year for generating of the GDP in economies of different states.


Abstract Hydrocarbon reservoirs hosted in Permian strata were some of the first to have been discovered in Europe. With discoveries in the Zechstein carbonates of Norway in recent years, and with exploration of Zechstein prospects both onshore and offshore UK, as well as in Dutch, Danish and Norwegian offshore sectors, understanding the architecture of the Zechstein carbonates remains very relevant. Here we study outcrops of Roker Formation carbonates (Z2, Ca2) in NE England to better understand geological processes associated with deformation following evaporite dissolution, with implications for exploration and production. Collapse of Z2 Roker Formation strata in NE England, following the dissolution of c. 100 m or more of the Z1 Hartlepool Anhydrite, resulted in fundamental changes to the architecture of the succession. Complete dissolution of the anhydrite removed an effective regional seal and dramatically enhanced matrix and fracture permeability of the overlying Roker Formation. The collapsed Roker Formation can be vertically divided into three zones, based upon the degree of deformation. The lower zone and vertical collapse-breccia pipes that can extend across all zones have the highest permeabilities. The process of collapse was gradual, with local variations in the degree of brecciation. We derive a schematic sequence of collapse, recognizing the impact of mechanical barriers within the succession in retarding deformation up-section and it is this that ultimately leads to the vertical zonation. Timing of evaporite dissolution is poorly constrained: it could have occurred soon after deposition, at the end of the Permian or during Tertiary uplift. It is known that evaporite dissolution has occurred offshore, with the oil fields Auk and Argyll (UK Central North Sea) given as examples of dissolution collapse-brecciated reservoirs. Reservoir quality is typically improved, with both matrix and fracture porosity and permeability enhanced. Complete evaporite dissolution could in some cases lead to the potential breach of the seal.


In this paper we develop a framework for studying tax competition and local public goods supply in a setting where real and fiscal externalities interact with local democracy. We use the framework (a) to analyse if there is any reason to believe that local autonomy generally will give a tax race to the bottom (there is not), and (b) to look more closely at possible sources of oversupply or undersupply of publicly provided goods in a setting where local democracies compete for people. We identify two potential sources – the relationship between individual mobility and willingness to pay for publicly provided goods, and the mobility distribution of individuals (i.e. the distribution of individuals over residential preferences). The two could reinforce each other in a local democracy if the majority of the residents in a community are relatively mobile (the "American" case), while they would pull in opposite directions if the majority of residents are relatively immobile (the "European" case).


The hypothesized collapse in primary productivity associated with the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction would have been particularly severe on suspension feeders dependent on phytoplankton. Previous research on the ecological dynamics of erect bryozoans in the Danish Basin supported the phytoplankton crash hypothesis in showing a major postextinction increase in the skeletal biomass of cyclostome bryozoans relative to the more nutrient-demanding cheilostome bryozoans. New data on the ecological dynamics between these two bryozoan clades across the K-Pg boundary are provided to determine whether the postextinction cyclostome spike is also evident in encrusting bryozoans and over a greater geographical area. Changes across the K-Pg were quantified in encrusting bryozoans using three metrics: (1) abundance of colonies; (2) area of substrate covered; and (3) colony form. Data from the southeastern United States were added to those from Denmark to control for regional factors. Our analyses indicate a globally uniform change among encrusting bryozoans but without the strong postextinction cyclostome spike seen previously in Danish erect bryozoans. An increased proportion of sheet over runner cyclostome colonies was found in the lower Danian of Denmark and the southeastern United States, despite the expectation that runners with widely dispersed zooids should fare better in low nutrient conditions. Furthermore, weighed samples of erect bryozoans from the basal Danian of Maastricht (Netherlands) and the southeastern United States failed to reveal a strong cyclostome spike. These findings question the phytoplankton crash hypothesis, or at least the extent to which this kill mechanism influenced suspension feeders during the K-Pg mass extinction.


The need of advanced and high performance power cycles is becoming an ever increasing social demand, to reduce environmental impacts as well as to get a better use of natural resources in power generation.
 The HAT cycle is one of these advanced cycles being considered for use in the next years. This cycle is gas-turbine based, comprises a recuperator and uses water to recover low temperature energy from compressor intercooler, aftercooler and from exhaust gases. However, this cycle requires high-quality water consumption. Consequently, some concerns about water use and costs are being discussed.
 This work presents an exergetic analysis of the HAT cycle, for different total pressure-ratio on compressor train. The effect of pressure ratio over the water use is also shown. The turbine inlet temperature was kept fixed, to simulate the same technological level on blade cooling and metal alloys. All sub-systems are analyzed from irreversibility viewpoint.
 An exergy-based thermoeconomic evaluation is made, regarding only fuel and water costs and their impacts on power cost. This methodology can highlight not only the final electric power cost (result that could be also achieved by conventional economic analysis), but also the internal costs of each stream and sub-system of the plant. The complete exergoeconomic analysis of the HAT cycle will depend on reliable economic data, as investment costs of each sub-system, operation and maintenance costs and the operational profile of the plant (base or peak load, yearly operation hours), as well as financial conditions.


Attention Restoration Theory suggests that contact with nature supports attentional functioning, and a number of studies have found contact with everyday nature to be related to attention in adults. Is contact with everyday nature also related to the attentional functioning of children? This question was addressed through a study focusing on children with Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). This study examined the relationship between children's nature exposure through leisure activities and their attentional functioning using both within and between-subjects comparisons. Parents were surveyed regarding their child's attentional functioning after activities in several settings. Results indicate that children function better than usual after activities in green settings and that the "greener" a child's play area, the less severe his or her attention deficit symptoms. Thus, contact with nature may support attentional functioning in a population of children who desperately need attentional support.


Meat cutters have long since claimed that knife forces increase with lower meat temperatures. This study was performed to find out what effects the meat temperature has on cutting forces. In addition, the same issue was addressed for pure fat. One hundred and forty four samples of lean meat and of fat respectively were collected and put overnight in one of three refrigerators with temperatures 2, 7 and 12°C, 48 in each. These samples were cut while measuring cutting forces in an Anago KST Sharpness Analyzer machine. The results show that there were no significant differences in knife forces concerning lean meat at the three temperatures. However, the force in pure fat at 2°C was significantly increased by 30% compared to the other temperatures. The forces in fat were generally three times higher than for lean meat, regardless of temperature.


Author(s): Sears, Brad; Ho, Deborah | Abstract: This report presents the results of three studies conducted from 2003 to 2005 measuring HIV discrimination in health care in Los Angeles County. Each of the studies used trained testers posing as either patients who were HIV-positive or organizations working with such patients. Testers called the offices of health care providers and asked if they would accept HIV-positive patients. The studies focused on skilled nursing facilities, cosmetic and plastic surgeons, and obstetricians, in order to determine the percentage of providers in each area who had a blanket policy of refusing services to people living with HIV. The testers also gathered some qualitative information about the reasons why health care providers denied services to HIV-positive patients. The three types of health care providers were chosen based on current medical needs of persons living with HIV/AIDS, including nursing care as the HIV population ages, cosmetic surgery to address the impact of facial wasting, and prenatal care for women living with HIV.


Improved medical care of individuals with Down syndrome (DS) has led to an increase in life expectancy to over the age of 60 years. In conjunction, there has been an increase in age‐related co‐occurring conditions including Alzheimer's disease (AD). Understanding the factors that underlie symptom and age of clinical presentation of dementia in people with DS may provide insights into the mechanisms of sporadic and DS‐associated AD (DS‐AD). In March 2019, the Alzheimer's Association, Global Down Syndrome Foundation and the LuMind IDSC Foundation partnered to convene a workshop to explore the state of the research on the intersection of AD and DS research; to identify research gaps and unmet needs; and to consider how best to advance the field. This article provides a summary of discussions, including noting areas of emerging science and discovery, considerations for future studies, and identifying open gaps in our understanding for future focus.


Online advertisements (ads) provide a powerful mechanism for advertisers to effectively target Web users. Ads can be customized based on a user's browsing behavior, geographic location, and personal interests. There is currently a multi-billion dollar market for online advertising, which generates the primary revenue for some of the most popular websites on the Internet. In order to meet the immense market demand, and to manage the complex relationships between advertisers and publishers (i.e., the websites hosting the ads), marketplaces known as "ad exchanges" are employed. These exchanges allow publishers (sellers of ad space) and advertisers(buyers of this ad space) to dynamically broker traffic through ad networks to efficiently maximize profits for all parties. Unfortunately, the complexities of these systems invite a considerable amount of abuse from cybercriminals, who profit at the expense of the advertisers.
 In this paper, we present a detailed view of how one of the largest ad exchanges operates and the associated security issues from the vantage point of a member ad network. More specifically, we analyzed a dataset containing transactions for ingress and egress ad traffic from this ad network. In addition, we examined information collected from a command-and-control server used to operate a botnet that is leveraged to perpetrate ad fraud against the same ad exchange.


In the past decades, interests in exploiting Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) as a new degree of freedom for encoding the information in optical communication channels have been enhanced. Research results show that OAM modulation can increase the data transmission capacity of next generation networks. All-optical wavelength conversion and amplification of OAM carriers provide the possibility of using them in commercial communication systems based on Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) technique. In this paper, nonlinear Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) interaction and its effect on wavelength conversion and amplification of pulses carrying OAM have been studied. The results prove the conservation of OAM during the wavelength conversion that leads to conservation of modulated information.


Various indicators of corruption show that South Korea has been relatively successful in control of corruption, compared to other Asian countries. Since its independence, South Korea has been transitioning, if not completed a transition, from particularism of the limited access order to ethical universalism of the open access order. How did this happen? This paper first compare the political, economic and social bases of contemporary control of corruption in South Korea with those in the early period of post-independence, focusing on the norms of ethical universalism vs. particularism. Then, the process-tracing analysis finds four periods with different equilibria of norms of particularism and universalism. Each period is defined by major political events such as the establishment of two divided countries (1948), Student Democratic Revolution (1960) followed by the military coup led by Park Chung-hee a year later, democratic transition (1987), and the financial crisis and the first peaceful change of government (1997). This paper also identifies several critical reforms that have contributed to the change of governance norms. The dissolution of the landed aristocracy, relatively equal distribution of wealth and rapid expansion of education due to sweeping land reform (1948 and 1950) laid the structural foundations for the growth of ethical universalism. Gradual expansion of civil service examinations (1950s-1990s), democratization (1960 and 1987), good governance reforms (1988) and post-financial crisis economic reform (1998-9) promoted norms of ethical universalism. This paper also explores how these reforms were carried out, who were the main actors, what factors enabled and constrained them, and what impact they made on governance norms.


Recommender systems have become an essential component in a wide range of web services. It is believed that recommender systems recommend a user items (e.g., videos on YouTube, products on Amazon) that match the user's preference. In this work, we propose new attacks to recommender systems. Our attacks exploit fundamental vulnerabilities of recommender systems and can spoof a recommender system to make recommendations as an attacker desires. Our key idea is to inject fake co-visitations to the system. Given a bounded number of fake co-visitations that an attacker can inject, two key challenges are 1) which items the attacker should inject fake co-visitations to, and 2) how many fake co-visitations an attacker should inject to each item. We address these challenges via modelling our attacks as constrained linear optimization problems, by solving which the attacker can perform attacks with maximal threats. We demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our attacks via evaluations on both synthetic data and real-world recommender systems on several popular web services including YouTube, eBay, Amazon, Yelp, and LinkedIn. We also discuss strategies to mitigate our attacks.


The development of Māori (Indigenous New Zealanders) research capacity over the past 20 years now begs the question of how Māori and Tauiwi (non-Māori) researchers might authentically partner and undertake transdisciplinary research that upholds the integrity and aspirations of both parties. In this article, the notion of interstitial space is suggested as a middle ground whereby researchers can acknowledge their own worldviews and come together for fruitful transdisciplinary engagements. Seven community-up research values set an engagement context in which researchers are called upon to respect one another, share and listen, be cautious and humble, acknowledge ontological and epistemological differences and build commitment to the development of mutual understandings. A scale is proposed to encourage researcher self-reflection on their readiness to join a multicultural, transdisciplinary research group. The readiness of group members to appropriately engage has the potential to spark successful transdisciplinary research in order to provide strategic solutions to complex, real-life problems.


Demand for safe water, as well as access to adequate and affordable products for drinking water treatment, is key for household water treatment (HWT) in low-income countries. Critical barriers, particularly in rural areas, are the lack of adequate marketing and sales models and the challenge of setting up distribution channels that reach low-income customers, leading to the unavailability of HWT products. Trials with four different social marketing and sales models, involving local entrepreneurs, staff of a non-governmental organization (NGO), community health workers and members of community-based organizations, were conducted in Kenya and Bolivia to test which marketing and sales strategies, as well as which behavioural determinants, influence product purchase and water treatment practices in different local contexts. Selling filters through the water utility, a community-based enterprise, was a promising retail model in Kenya and in Bolivia. Most successful were sales done by a women9s group in Bolivia. We found that community education activities, independent of the stakeholder carrying out the activity, are an important element to create demand for water treatment products. Other factors influencing product purchase and practice are very context specific and include: the turbidity of water, risk perception, socio-economic status, social norms and emotional attributes.


The present study was designed to determine the prevalence of different types of mastitis in camels in U.A.E. and to identify the causative microorganisms and their sensitivity to different antimicrobial agents. From 162 lactating she-camels, 630 milk samples were collected from different cities in Abu Dhabi Emirate/UAE. The overall prevalence of mastitis was 18.52% (7.94% on quarter basis), the prevalence of clinical and sub clinical mastitis was found to be 24.70% and 11.67% on animal basis, respectively; it being 9.70% and 5.86% on quarter basis, respectively. The hind quarters were more frequently affected than the fore quarters. Bacteriological examination of milk samples revealed that Staphylococcus was the chief etiological agents both in clinical and sub clinical mastitis (41.67%) in camels, followed by Streptococcus spp . (21.67%), Enterobacter spp . (15.00%), C. pyogenes (10.00%), Micrococcus spp . (5.00%), Pasteurells spp . (5.00%) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa (1.66%). Most of the Staphylococcus spp ., Streptococcus spp . and C. pyogenes strains were sensitive to carbenicillin, gentamycin, kanamycin, and erythromycin, but resistant to colistin and sulphamethoxazole. Other pathogens like Enterobacter , Micrococcus , Pasteurella spp . and Ps . aeuroginosa isolates showed variable sensitivities to the antimicrobials.


This paper investigates developments in labour policies and social norms on gender and work from the perspective of colonial entanglements. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, work was seen a means to morally discipline the poor, both in the Netherlands and the Netherlands Indies. A prime example are the initiatives by Johannes van den Bosch, who first in 1818 established 'peat colonies(!)' in the Netherlands, where the urban poor were transported to become industrious agrarian workers. In 1830, the same Van den Bosch introduced the Cultivation System in the Netherlands Indies, likewise, to increase Javanese peasants' industriousness. During the nineteenth century, ideals and practices of the male breadwinner started to pervade Dutch working-class households, and child and women's labour laws were issued. Instead, legislation in the Netherlands Indies was introduced very late and under heavy pressure of the international community. Not only did Dutch politicians consider it 'natural' that Indonesian women and children worked. What is more, they presented the inherent differences between Indonesian and Dutch women as legitimation for the protection of the latter: a fine example of what Ann Stoler and Frederick Cooper have called a 'grammar of difference'. Length: 17 pages


The impact that food prepared outside of the home has on the nutrient intakes of adults, has been studied previously on the IOI. It was found that food prepared outside the home contains considerably more dietary fat than food prepared within the home and it is also lower in fibre and micronutrients.
safefood has commissioned previous nutritional surveys in the takeaway sector. These surveys revealed that certain foods i.e. potato, chicken, pizzas and burgers prepared outside the home are high in calories, fat and salt. These surveys also reported that there are major differences in portion sizes across takeaway outlets on the IOI.

Traditional Asian diets are low in fat and high in fruit, vegetables and fibre. However, these traditional meals have been adapted to suit Western palates and, in doing so, different ingredients in different quantities are added, possibly increasing their fat and salt content. Recent research has found that Chinese is the single most popular style of meal across both takeaways and restaurants (excluding pub restaurants) on the IOI. Given the diversity of Chinese dishes available, this survey was designed to provide an insight into the energy (calorie), total fat, saturated fat, protein and salt content of a range of Chinese meals from various Chinese takeaways, and Chinese restaurants with a takeaway service.


Introduction: It is possible that progressive renal insufficiency leads to altered hepcidin metabolism, subsequently affecting the enteric absorption of iron and the availability of iron stores. Because of the previous absence of an accurate serum assay, most studies of hepcidin in humans have been performed using a urinary assay. We conducted this study to evaluate the level of serum prohepcidin in anemia of chronic kidney disease (CKD) patients, with close analysis of data to different hematological parameters, especially iron markers. Subjects and Methods: This is an analytical cross-sectional case-control study involving: Group I - 20 patients of CKD on hemodialysis, nine males and 11 females, and their age ranged from 8.6 to 17 years; Group II - 10 patients of CKD stage 3 and 4, six females and four males, and their age ranged from 8.1 to 15 years on conservative treatment; and Group III, 10 control participants with normal kidney function, seven males and three females, and their with age ranged from 8 to 16 years. Diseased patients had six patients on intravenous iron supplementation. All participants met the following criteria at the time of sampling: A stable clinical state and no thrombosis or infection, with controlled blood pressure, no more than twice of the normal SGOT and SGPT. All participants were subjected to full medical history, thorough clinical examination and laboratory evaluation (kidney functions, liver functions, C-reactive protein, serum levels of hepcidin prohormone using ELISA, serum levels of iron, ferritin and total iron binding capacity (TIBC), hemoglobin, hematocrit, intact parathormon level (iPTH), serum albumin, serum cholesterol and triglycerides. Results : Our study demonstrated a significant rise in serum prohepcidin levels in the diseased groups, a significant rise in serum ferritin and no significant difference between TIBC and serum iron levels between the diseased groups and the control group. A significant positive correlation was demonstrated between serum prohepcidin levels and serum ferritin, while a significant negative correlation was revealed between serum prohepcidin and hemoglobin, hematocrit and TIBC. We did not find a significant correlation between serum prohepcidin and C reactive protein (CRP) as an inflammatory marker in our patients. No significant difference was detected in prohepcidin levels in the patients who were on intravenous iron therapy in comparison with who were not. Conclusion : We concluded that there is a positive association between serum prohepcidin level and serum ferritin and other conventional markers of iron metabolism in CKD patients.


Vaccination against human papilloma virus (HPV) in childhood is a significant step forward in the reduction of HPV associated morbidity and mortality and a considerable scientific achievement. However, many challenges remain to be overcome if an effective HPV vaccine programme is to be successfully introduced worldwide. The aim of this review is to identify and summarize the new issues concerning HPV vaccination that have emerged since its introduction into clinical practice in school-aged girls. According to the literature, the overall impact of HPV vaccination on cervical cancer is unlikely to be apparent for the next decade. Cost-effectiveness is of particular importance, particularly in developing countries. Determining the age at which the vaccine should be administered, whether to include boys in addition to girls, the costs and the implications for cervical screening are issues that need to be addressed by conducting further research.


Manganese (Mn) is an essential micronutrient that is not readily available to pathogens during infection due to an active host defense mechanism known as nutritional immunity. To overcome this nutrient restriction, bacteria utilize high-affinity transporters that allow them to compete with host metal-binding proteins. Despite the established role of Mn in bacterial pathogenesis, little is known about the relevance of Mn in the pathophysiology of E. faecalis. Here, we identified and characterized the major Mn acquisition systems of E. faecalis. We discovered that the ABC-type permease EfaCBA and two Nramp-type transporters, named MntH1 and MntH2, work collectively to promote cell growth under Mn-restricted conditions. The simultaneous inactivation of EfaCBA, MntH1 and MntH2 (ΔefaΔmntH1ΔmntH2 strain) led to drastic reductions (>95%) in intracellular Mn content, severe growth defects in body fluids (serum and urine) ex vivo, significant loss of virulence in Galleria mellonella, and virtually complete loss of virulence in rabbit endocarditis and murine catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) models. Despite the functional redundancy of EfaCBA, MntH1 and MntH2 under in vitro or ex vivo conditions and in the invertebrate model, dual inactivation of efaCBA and mntH2 (ΔefaΔmntH2 strain) was sufficient to prompt maximal sensitivity to calprotectin, a Mn- and Zn-chelating host antimicrobial protein, and for the loss of virulence in mammalian models. Interestingly, EfaCBA appears to play a prominent role during systemic infection, whereas MntH2 was more important during CAUTI. The different roles of EfaCBA and MntH2 in these sites could be attributed, at least in part, to the differential expression of efaA and mntH2 in cells isolated from hearts or from bladders. Collectively, this study demonstrates that Mn acquisition is essential for the pathogenesis of E. faecalis and validates Mn uptake systems as promising targets for the development of new antimicrobials.