The growing disparity between processor and memory performance has made cache misses increasingly expensive. Additionally, data and instruction caches are not always used efficiently, resulting in large numbers of cache misses. Therefore, the importance of cache performance improvements at each level of the memory hierarchy will continue to grow. In numeric programs, there are several known compiler techniques for optimizing data cache performance. However, integer (nonnumeric) programs often have irregular access patterns that are more difficult for the compiler to optimize. In the past, cache management techniques such as cache bypassing were implemented manually at the machine-language-programming level. As the available chip area grows, it makes sense to spend more resources to allow intelligent control over the cache management. In this paper, we present an approach to improving cache effectiveness, taking advantage of the growing chip area, utilizing run-time adaptive cache management techniques, optimizing both performance and cost of implementation. Specifically, we are aiming to increase data cache effectiveness for integer programs. We propose a microarchitecture scheme where the hardware determines data placement within the cache hierarchy based on dynamic referencing behavior. This scheme is fully compatible with existing instruction set architectures. This paper examines the theoretical upper bounds on the cache hit ratio that cache bypassing can provide for integer applications, including several Windows applications with OS activity. Then, detailed trace-driven simulations of the integer applications are used to show that the implementation described in this paper can achieve performance close to that of the upper bound.


ABSTRACT Objective: The objective of this study was to assess the impact of the 2010 Chilean earthquake on hospital functions and services. Hospitals functioning in a post-disaster environment must provide emergency medical care related to the event, in addition to providing standard community health services. This study focused on damage to both structural and nonstructural components, as well as to utility services. Methods: Site visits were made to every hospital in a single province (Bio-Bio). Engineers conducted damage assessments while interviews of hospital administrators were conducted. The survey was requested by the Chilean Ministry of Health (MOH) to assess the impact of the earthquake on hospital operations and facility responses to those effects. Other important regional and hospital data were gathered from hospital administrators and the MOH. Results: Seven government hospitals were surveyed. All hospitals in the region lost communications, municipal electrical power and water for several days. All reported some physical damage although only one suffered significant structural damage. All lost some functional capacity as a result of the earthquake. The loss of telephones and cellular service was identified as the most difficult problem by administrators. An average of 3 physical areas per hospital lost some degree of functional capacity following the earthquake. Conclusion: Even in an earthquake-prone and very well-prepared country such as Chile hospital functions were widely disrupted by the event. The loss of hospital functions can occur even with minimal damage to the physical structure. The loss of communications can impede or halt response efforts at all levels. Hospitals should be prepared to self-sustain following a disaster for 2-3 days regardless of the level of structural damage. Understanding the details of these impacts is essential to hospital preparedness and plans for continuing services after a disaster. (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2010;4:122-128)


A 2.4-6 GHz broadband CMOS differential LNA for WLAN and UWB receiver is presented. The LNA is fabricated with the 0.18 μm 1P6M standard CMOS process. Measurement of the chip is performed on a FR-4 PCB test fixture. In the UWB low-band (3 to 5.15GHz), the broadband LNA exhibit a gain of 17.5-18.2 dB, noise figure of 3.4-5dB, input/output return loss better than 10 dB, and input P1dB of –17 dBm, respectively. In the band from 2.4 to 3GHz (covering a 802.11b/g band), the LNA exhibit a gain of 17.518dB and noise figure less than 3.5dB. From 5.2 to 6GHz, the noise figure of the LNA becomes higher than 5 dB. The gain also decrease to about 15 dB. The DC supply is 1.8V.


Objective: Pak1 (p21-activated kinase 1) is increasingly linked to cancer. This is surprising since the PAK I proteins, which participate in the actin-cytoskeleton formation, are tightly regulated by the Cdc42 GTPase. However, assaying interactions of Pak1 with β-karyopherins, the nuclear transport factors, suggests that it could cause cancer in the karyopherin-dependent manner. The Pak1-dependent depletion of Kpnβ1 is predicted to strongly increase the requirement for the Kpn β1 expression. In turn, the increased expression of Kpn β1 is predicted to increase nuclear import of the AP-1 transcriptional regulator, cyclin D1 expression, cell proliferation and cancer growth. We propose that increased binding of Pak1 to Kpn β1 initiates vicious circle in which the Pak1-dependent depletion of Kpn β1 is followed by the increased expression of this protein and cell proliferation.
Methods: The mutagenized Ste20 PAK from S. cerevisiae was tested for its ability to bind to karyopherins. The mutant-expression phenotypes were examined to establish the β -karyopherin deficiency.
Results: Ste20 forms protein complexes with two β-karyopherins, Kap121 (Kpn β3) and Kap123 (Kpn β1-like karyopherin). The loss of-phosphorylation mutation (Ser268, Ser269Ala268, Ala269) increases the binding to Kap123. The deletion of a Cdc42-binding domain (ΔCRIB) increases binding to Kap121. The PAK I binding to karyopherins is separable from its kinase function.
Conclusion: p21-activated kinases could regulate the in vivo availability of β-karyopherin(s). Such a regulation involves the sequestering of karyopherins and increasing the requirement for these proteins expression.


Objectives. We examined disparities in risk determinants and risk behaviors for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) between gay-identified, bisexualidentified, and heterosexual-identified young men who have sex with men (YMSM) and heterosexual-identified young men who have sex with women (YMSW) using a school-based sample of US sexually active adolescent males. Methods. We analyzed a pooled data set of Youth Risk Behavior Surveys from 2005 and 2007 that included information on sexual orientation identity, sexual behaviors, and multiple STI risk factors. Results. Bisexual-identified adolescents were more likely to report multiple STI risk behaviors (number of sex partners, concurrent sex partners, and age of sexual debut) compared with heterosexual YMSW as well as heterosexual YMSM and gay-identified respondents. Gay, bisexual, and heterosexual YMSM were significantly more likely to report forced sex compared with heterosexual YMSW. Conclusions. Our results provide evidence that sexual health disparities emerge early in the life course and vary by both sexual orientation identity and sexual behaviors. In particular, they show that bisexual-identified adolescent males exhibit a unique risk profile that warrants targeted sexual health interventions. (Am J Public Health. 2014;104:1107‐1112. doi:10.2105/ AJPH.2013.301759)


This thesis investigates the effect of alliance experience onto stock-market value creation. Building on existing research, this thesis centres on the distinction between general alliance experience (i.e. the overall experience of managing alliances) and relational experience (i.e. the experience of managing alliances with the same partner). As existing research has identified significant heterogeneity in value creation from these types of alliance experience, the purpose of this thesis is to investigate conditions under which alliance experience is more valued by investors. This thesis therefore disentangles alliance experience into three further dimensions, namely the quality of previous relational experiences, the interrelationship among the two experience types and a temporal dimension of how the two experience types are accumulated in different rhythms over time.Firstly, by using signalling theory, I hypothesize that the quality of the previous partnerships emphasized at announcement positively influences value creation and this effect is moderated by signaller, receiver, and intermediary characteristics. Secondly, in order to investigate the interrelated effect of both types of experience, resource-based, learning and trust-based arguments are used to build an interrelated alliance experience theory. I argue that high levels of general alliance experience create overconfidence in alliance management processes and this negatively affects the value creation of relational experiences. This effect is hypothesized to vary based on firm characteristics. Thirdly, building on organizational learning, resource-based and trust-based perspectives, I propose that both general alliance and relational experiences are negatively affected by irregularity in the rhythm in which they are accumulated.This thesis investigates the effect of these quality, interrelationship and temporal dimensions onto value creation through multiple event studies in the global biopharmaceutical industry in a sample of R&D alliances between 2003 and 2012. Results indicate general support for the arguments and provide evidence that experience-related contingencies affect firms' ability to create value from alliance experiences.


A Vein Contrast Enhancer (VCE) has been constructed to make vein access easier by capturing an infrared image of veins, enhancing the contrast using software, and projecting the vein image back onto the skin. The VCE also uses software to align the projected image with the vein to 0.06 mm.


Business schools expend resources to attract more and higher-quality applicants to their institutions, yet our understanding of what criteria resonate with those who want to find the right fit with a business school and its programs is, paradoxically enough, either not clear or dated. There is a dearth of research on what business students value, resulting in missed opportunities to engage existing students so as to translate their interests and aspirations into prospects for program design, delivery, and enrollment. One important and often overlooked criterion, for example, is the desire of business students to learn about sustainability. Thus, while most studies aim to discover and quantify the selection criteria in students' choice of business schools, this paper builds on the aspect of sustainability. We propose a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) methodology that uncovers an array of essential criteria, including sustainability, for schools to consider in future program revision and development efforts. The proposed approach allows schools to be exact with their resource expenditures in areas that are critical to applicants, including those aligned with sustainability, as well as attract larger numbers of more qualified students. Insights from this study show that with the proper approach to understanding business school candidates, it is possible to quantify the order of priorities that students consider when choosing a business school.


The present study aimed to explore the impact of mispricing on capital investment and capital structure in companies with financial constraints. Methodology is descriptive-analytic with casual-comparative research type. Due to homogenization of statistical sample during research years, population was limited to companies were accepted in stock exchange before 2009 and attended till the end of 2014. According to entry criterion, 101 companies were selected by elimination method as the sample. Models by Trinugroho and Rinofah (2011) were used to analyze the research variables, and Kaplan and Zingales index was applied to indicate companies with financial constraints. Data collected by descriptive tests, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test and multi-variable regression. Results showed that there is negative and significant relationship between capital investment and cash flow. The impact of mispricing on capital investment in companies with high financial constraints is not more than companies with less financial constraints. There is reverse relationship between mispricing and debt ratio. The impact of mispricing on debt ratio in companies with high financial constraints is not more than companies with less financial constraints.


A wide literature demonstrates that people prefer harm caused by omissions over equal or lesser harm caused by actions. This omission bias has been explained referring to several principles, such as causality or responsibility. A convincing research view has been suggested by Sunstein (2005): harmful acts are generally worse than harmful omissions when moral intuitions reflect the "Do not play God" principle: inactions interfere less with the "natural order." In two preliminary studies, we examine the influence of the "Do not play God" principle on individuals moral preferences, using the switch version of the trolley problem. Study 1 demonstrates that our participants' justifications for their inaction choice explicitly refer to the intention of not interfering with the "natural order". Study 2 demonstrates that the presence of stimuli influencing a reduction of protagonist's decisional autonomy (e.g. an authority) activates the "Do not play God" principle, leading them to prefer inaction.


Fibroblasts are an integral component of stroma and important source of growth factors and extracellular matrix (ECM). They play a prominent role in maintaining tissue homeostasis and in wound healing and tumor growth. Notch signaling regulates biological function in a variety of cells. To elucidate the physiological function of Notch signaling in fibroblasts, we ablated Notch1 in mouse (Notch1Flox/Flox) embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs). Notch1-deficient (Notch1 −/−) MEFs displayed faster growth and motility rate compared to Notch1Flox/Flox MEFs. Such phenotypic changes, however, were reversible by reconstitution of Notch1 activation via overexpression of the intracellular domain of Notch1 (NICD1) in Notch1-deficient MEFs. In contrast, constitutive activation of Notch1 signaling by introducing NICD1 into primary human dermal fibroblasts (FF2441), which caused pan-Notch activation, inhibited cell growth and motility, whereas cellular inhibition was relievable when the Notch activation was countered with dominant-negative mutant of Master-mind like 1 (DN-MAML-1). Functionally, "Notch-activated" stromal fibroblasts could inhibit tumor cell growth/invasion. Moreover, Notch activation induced expression of Wnt-induced secreted proteins-1 (WISP-1/CCN4) in FF2441 cells while deletion of Notch1 in MEFs resulted in an opposite effect. Notably, WISP-1 suppressed fibroblast proliferation, and was responsible for mediating Notch1's inhibitory effect since siRNA-mediated blockade of WISP-1 expression could relieve cell growth inhibition. Notch1-induced WISP-1 expression appeared to be Wnt11-dependent, but Wnt1-independent. Blockade of Wnt11 expression resulted in decreased WISP-1 expression and liberated Notch-induced cell growth inhibition. These findings indicated that inhibition of fibroblast proliferation by Notch pathway activation is mediated, at least in part, through regulating Wnt1-independent, but Wnt11-dependent WISP-1 expression.


Carbon is an energetic, plentiful, cheap, non-toxic and non-corrosive material that is however scarcely used as solid fuel in hypergolic propellants for rocket engines, probably due to the luck of hypergolicity and ignition difficulties. Taking into consideration that carbon hypergolicity is a rare phenomenon in the literature, herein is presented a new type of carbon-containing hypergolic compositions based on water-ignitable C-NaH mixtures. In these formulations, carbon might be fullerenes C 60 , multiwall carbon nanotubes MWNTs, charcoal or active carbon, whereas sodium hydride NaH and water react exothermically upon contact to trigger carbon combustion and ignition of the mixtures at ambient conditions. Hence, carbon allotropes appear as potentially new solid fuels in hypergolic propellant compositions, meriting further attention in this direction.


Some fruit and vegetables such as cucumber, tomato, strawberry and watermelon are not suitable for traditional freezing process, due to texture degradation, color alteration, nutritional loss, high energy costs, etc. Poor quality of these frozen tissues can significantly be improved by means of the cryoprotection accomplished by the pre-osmotic dehydration. The application of osmotic pre-treatment of fresh tissue with alternative osmotic solutes, oligofructose and a high-DE maltodextrin, at mild temperature (35°C) caused substantial water loss and solid enrichment. Based on the comparative kinetic study of the quality degradation, the protective effect of both osmotic solutes on vitamin C, lycopene and color was demonstrated. The obtained sugar enrichment and partial water removal improved the sensory characteristics of treated samples (attractive appearance: bright color, good texture and pleasant taste) when compared to untreated ones. The untreated samples suffered from a detrimental texture and taste deterioration during storage.


BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE
Urine drug testing (UDT) may be used to help screen for prescription opioid misuse. There are little data available describing usual pain care practices for patients who have aberrant UDT results. The goal of this research was to evaluate the clinical care for patients prescribed chronic opioid therapy (COT) and have an aberrant UDT.

DESIGN
Retrospective cohort study.

SETTING
VA Medical Center in the Pacific Northwest.

PARTICIPANTS
Patients with chronic pain who were prescribed COT and had a UDT result that was positive for an illicit or nonprescribed substance.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
This was an exploratory study designed to document usual care practices.

RESULTS
Participants' (n = 83) mean age was 49.5 (SD = 9.6) and 81.5 percent were male. The most common substances detected on UDT were marijuana (69 percent) or a nonprescribed opioid (25 percent); 18 percent had a UDT positive for two or more substances. Plans to modify treatment were documented in 69 percent of cases. The most common treatment change after aberrant UDT results was instituting more frequent UDTs, which occurred in 43 percent of cases. Clinicians documented plans to alter their opioid prescribing (eg, terminating opioids, requiring more frequent fills, changing opioid dose, or transitioning to another opioid) in 52 percent of cases, but implemented these changes in only 24 percent.

DISCUSSION
Current methods for optimizing treatment after obtaining aberrant UDT results should be enhanced. To improve the utility of UDT to reduce prescription opioid misuse, additional interventions and support for clinicians need to be developed and tested.


The Southwest of Western Australia (SWWA) is a region of extensive land cover change with an estimated 13 million hectares of native vegetation cleared since European settlement. Whilst previous studies have suggested meteorological and climatological implications of this change in land use, no studies have explicitly focussed on the detailed mechanisms behind the impacts of land-cover change on individual meteorological phenomena. This thesis seeks to identify the physical mechanisms inducing changes within the atmosphere by using the Regional Atmospheric Modeling System (RAMS V6.0) to simulate the impact of land use change on meteorological phenomena at different scales and evaluate these model results against high resolution atmospheric soundings, station observations, and gridded rainfall analyses where appropriate. Sensitivity tests show that land-cover change results in an increase in low-level atmospheric moisture advection associated with the southern sea-breeze due to a reduction in surface roughness. It also results in a decrease in convective precipitation associated with cold-fronts and convective clouds associated with the surface heat trough, due to an increase in wind speed, and a decrease in turbulent kinetic energy and vertically integrated moisture convergence within the PBL. Large-eddy simulations further highlight the role of land-cover change and soil moisture, as well as the contributions of surface versus entrainment fluxes on the growth of the PBL and development of convective clouds. These results are discussed within the broader context of the meteorology of the region.


We present two efficient methods for implementing the Fredkin gate with atoms separately trapped in an array of three high-Q coupled cavities. The first proposal is based on the resonant dynamics, which leads to a fast resonant interaction in a certain subspace while leaving others unchanged, and the second one utilizes a dispersive interaction such that an effective long-distance dipole–dipole interaction between two distributed target qubits is achieved by a virtually excited process. Both schemes can achieve the standard form of the Fredkin gate in a single step without any subsequent single-qubit operation. The effects of decoherence on the performance of the gate are also analyzed in virtue of the master equation, and strictly numerical simulation reveals that the average fidelity of the quantum gate is high.


Interviews with thirty-five economic policymakers who advised presidents from Nixon to Trump.What is it like to sit in the Oval Office and discuss policy with the president? To know that the decisions made will affect hundreds of millions of people? To know that the wrong advice could be calamitous? When the President Calls presents interviews with thirty-five economic policymakers who served presidents from Nixon to Trump. These officials worked in the executive branch in a variety of capacities?the Council of Economic Advisers, the Office of Management and Budget, the Department of the Treasury, and the National Economic Council?but all had direct access to the policymaking process and can offer insights about the difficult tradeoffs made on economic policy. The interviews shed new light, for example, on the thinking behind the Reagan tax cuts, the economic factors that cost George H. W. Bush a second term, the constraints facing policymakers during the financial crisis of 2008, the differences in work styles between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and the Trump administration's early budget process.When the President Calls offers a unique, behind-the-scenes perspective on US economic policymaking, with specific and personal detail?the turmoil, the personality clashes, the enormous pressure of trying to do the right thing while the clock is ticking.Interviews withNicholas F. Brady, Lael Brainard, W. Michael Blumenthal, Michael J. Boskin, Stuart E. Eizenstat, Martin S. Feldstein, Stephen Friedman, Jason Furman, Austan D. Goolsbee, Alan Greenspan, Kevin A. Hassett, R. Glenn Hubbard, Alan B. Krueger, Arthur B. Laffer, Edward P. Lazear, Jacob J. Lew, N. Gregory Mankiw, David C. Mulford, John Michael Mulvaney, Paul H. O'Neill, Peter R. Orszag, Henry M. Paulson, Alice M. Rivlin, Harvey S. Rosen, Robert E. Rubin, George P. Shultz, Charles L. Schultze, John W. Snow, Gene B. Sperling, Joseph E. Stiglitz, Lawrence H. Summers, John B. Taylor, Paul A. Volcker, Murray L. Weidenbaum, Janet L. Yellen


Solid wastes are important components for recycling biomass to return the nutrients to their origin. Traditionally, the people of the Ganges and the Brahmaputra basins have been recycling solid wastes for centuries. The practices which are followed here have scientific merit but in most of the cases, the people are ignorant about those facts. The present study was conducted in 90 rural homes of Ishwarganj and Nandail Upazillas under the district of Mymensingh. The objectives of the work were to find out the scientific explanations of the recycling practices. The study showed that the traditional procedures which are being applied on trial-and-error basis got the effective result of supplementing organic materials to the soil. Although these effective practices have been used generation after generation, in-depth studies were not carried out. This study has uncovered the scientific reasons behind many of the traditional practices of solid waste management. Chemical analyses revealed that most of the macro-nutrients, namely potassium, phosphorus, nitrogen, calcium, sulphur, magnesium, iron and total organic matter contents were not depleted; rather, the total organic matter contents increased significantly after the recycling. This kind of rural home-based and short-cycled solid waste management ensures zero depletion of organic soil content.


Focusing on the application of membranes in an engineering context, this hands-on computational guide makes previously challenging problems routine. It formulates problems as systems of equations solved with MATLAB, encouraging active learning through worked examples and end-of-chapter problems. The detailed treatments of dead-end filtration include novel approaches to constant rate filtration and filtration with a centrifugal pump. The discussion of crossflow microfiltration includes the use of kinetic and force balance models. Comprehensive coverage of ultrafiltration and diafiltration processes employs both limiting flux and osmotic pressure models. The effect of fluid viscosity on the mass transfer coefficient is explored in detail; the effects of incomplete rejection on the design and analysis of ultrafiltration and diafiltration are analysed; and quantitative treatments of reverse osmosis and nanofiltration process analysis and design are explored. Includes a chapter dedicated to the modelling of membrane fouling.


Abstract A pilot investigation of dichotic listening of CV stimuli was undertaken using seven adults who stutter (AWS) and a comparison group of seven adults who do not stutter (AWNS). The aim of this research was to investigate whether AWS show a difference in the strength of the right ear advantage (REA) in both undirected and directed attention tasks when compared to AWNS. The undirected attention task involved manipulating the interaural intensity difference (IID) of the CV stimuli presented to each ear. The CV stimuli were presented with equal intensity for the directed attention task. The undirected attention results indicated that both AWS and AWNS have a REA for processing speech information, with a primary difference observed between groups in regard to the IID point at which a REA shifts to a LEA. This crossing-over point occurred earlier for AWS, indicating a stronger right hemisphere involvement for the processing of speech compared to AWNS. No differences were found between groups in the directed attention task. The differences and similarities observed in dichotic listening between the two groups are discussed in regard to hemispheric specialization in the processing of speech.


Background Pars plana vitrectomy is the only treatment for advanced proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR). However, vitrectomy is not always successful despite current progress in vitreoretinal surgical techniques. The aim of our study was to investigate whether the vitreal concentrations of MCP-1, IL-6, IL-8, and VEGF are elevated after unsuccessful vitrectomy in patients with PDR and to investigate whether the altered levels of these cytokines are associated with the cause for the reoperation. Patients and methods Vitreous samples were collected from 263 eyes of 233 patients: PDR (n=129 eyes), proliferative vitreoretinopathy (PVR; n=24 eyes) and nondiabetic controls (n=110 eyes) prior to vitrectomy. Vitreous samples were also collected from 14 eyes of 14 patients with PDR before vitrectomy and from the same 14 eyes before a second vitrectomy for reoperation. The levels of MCP-1, IL-6, IL-8, and VEGF were measured by flow cytometry using a cytometric bead array (CBA) assay. Results The mean concentrations of vitreal MCP-1, IL-6, IL-8, and VEGF were significantly higher in patients with PDR and PVR (P<0.01). There were significantly high correlations among the concentrations of MCP-1, IL-6, and IL-8, whereas the correlation of VEGF with the other 3 cytokines was lower. Among the 14 patients who required reoperation, the mean vitreal concentrations of MCP-1, IL-6, and IL-8 were higher than that at the time of the initial vitrectomy (P<0.01). At the time of the reoperation vitrectomy, the mean vitreous level of MCP-1, IL-6, and IL-8 in eyes with fibrous proliferation was higher than in those without fibrous proliferation (P<0.05). In contrast, VEGF in eyes with neovascular glaucoma (NVG) or anterior hyaloidal fibrovascular proliferation (AHFVP) was higher than in the eyes without NVG and AHFVP (P<0.05). Conclusion The elevated levels of MCP-1, IL-6, and IL-8 may be the cause of the postoperative fibrous proliferation. In contrast, VEGF may be the cause of the neovascularization after unsuccessful vitrectomy in the eyes of PDR patients.


Patients with Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLE) suffer from widespread subtle white matter abnormalities and abnormal functional connectivity extending beyond the affected lobe, as revealed by Diffusion Tensor MR Imaging, volumetric and functional MRI studies. Diffusion Spectrum Imaging (DSI) is a diffusion imaging technique with high angular resolution for improving the mapping of white matter pathways. In this study, we used DSI, connectivity matrices and topological measures to investigate how the alteration in structural connectivity influences whole brain structural networks. Eleven patients with right-sided TLE and hippocampal sclerosis and 18 controls underwent our DSI protocol at 3T. The cortical and subcortical grey matters were parcellated into 86 regions of interest and the connectivity between every region pair was estimated using global tractography and a connectivity matrix (the adjacency matrix of the structural network). We then compared the networks of patients and controls using topological measures. In patients, we found a higher characteristic path length and a lower clustering coefficient compared to controls. Local measures at node level of the clustering and efficiency showed a significant difference after a multiple comparison correction (Bonferroni). These significant nodes were located within as well outside the temporal lobe, and the localisation of most of them was consistent with regions known to be part of epileptic networks in TLE. Our results show altered connectivity patterns that are concordant with the mapping of functional epileptic networks in patients with TLE. Further studies are needed to establish the relevance of these findings for the propagation of epileptic activity, cognitive deficits in medial TLE and outcome of epilepsy surgery in individual patients.


In October 2011 30 of the 1142 women in Panthangi village in the Nalgonda district of Andhra Pradesh in south India had hysterectomies done. All 30 were in their late 20s. This trend of a rising number of surgical removals of the uterus in young women is happening across India, in economically high and low performing states.

The trend has led to an increasing number of women's groups, non-governmental organisations, and experts questioning the need for the intervention, which they claim its driven more by commercial gain than medical necessity.

In Andhra Pradesh, where the rate of hysterectomies is very high, a study conducted by the non-governmental organisation the Life Health Reinforcement Group found that the median age of women undergoing the procedure was 29 years, globally among the lowest.

In Gujarat, too, a study done by the Self Employed Women's Association, an organisation working with rural women, also found that a high number of women who had hysterectomies were below 35 years old. Several other states have begun to report the same pattern.

In …


Background. Effective communication is an important attribute for practising pharmacists worldwide. However, little is known about the effects of communication skills on pharmacy students' academic performances in Nigerian pharmacy schools. Objectives. To identify the distribution of two communication skills, i.e. assertiveness and reticence, among pharmacy students and the association of these skills with the students' academic performances. Methods. Seven pharmacy schools were randomly sampled in this study. A validated 18-item questionnaire measuring communication constructs, assertiveness and reticence was distributed to eligible students after ethical approval had been obtained. The questionnaire adopted a 5-point Likert scale for responses. Demographic details and self-reported academic performances in the most recent pharmacy examinations were also collected. Descriptive and regression statistics were reported for the distribution of these communication skills and student factors that influence performances, respectively. Results. Pharmacy students ( n =1 550) were surveyed. Students were more assertive (mean 3.40) than reticent (mean 3.30) in their communication. Female students were more reticent and less assertive than male students ( p ≤0.05), but age had no influence on either construct. Being highly assertive was associated with higher grade performances in the three courses examined ( p ≤0.027 for each course). However, for clinical pharmacy, lower reticence scores were associated with better academic performances ( p =0.035). Regression analysis showed that assertive pharmacy students were less likely to report lower grades in all three courses ( p ≤0.004) and reticent students were more likely to report lower grades in only clinical pharmacy ( p =0.042). Conclusions. Assertive and reticent communication skills were present among Nigerian pharmacy students. Being assertive and reticent, as well as students' gender, age and marital status, were associated with the students' self-reported academic performances.


Introduction: Worldwide specific diseases are
jeopardizing people's health in the world as well as in Iran. Chronic renal
failure as a developed and irreversible failure is usually progressive. End
Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is a situation when renal function is not sufficient
to preserve one's life leading to acute
uremia resulting in dialysis and/or kidney transplantation for the patients. Although dialysis methods bring about complications for the patients,
peritoneal dialysis is relatively cost-effective and more convenient to
survive. The present study aimed to investigate (the) Etiologic factor of
renal failure and imposed complications of peritoneal dialysis in the patients
of Isfahan Alzahra hospital. Materials
and Methods: It was a cross-sectional
descriptive study conducted on 67 patients in Isfahan Peritoneal
Dialysis Center. The data from the patients were collected through a
two-section questionnaire whose first section was allocated to demographic
information and the second part was related to the disease and complications of
peritoneal dialysis. The collected data were analyzed by SPSS version 18. Results:
The findings showed that there were 39 (58%) males and 28 (42%) females. Mean
age of the subjects was 48 (18.8) years old. Regarding marital status, 65% were
married and 35% were single. Considering complications, 28 subjects (53.5%)
had infectious complications while 24 subjects (46.2%)
had non-infectious complications. The highest frequency in etiologic factor of
renal failure was diabetes mellitus in 29 subjects (43.9%) and the lowest for
polycystic kidney in 2 subjects (3%); in addition, hypertension was observed in 51
subjects (77.3%). Discussion: The most frequent and important complication of peritoneal dialysis catheters is infection,
which may result in catheter loss and discontinuation of peritoneal
dialysis (PD). Diabetes and hypertension were found as the most important etiologic factors for renal failure. They should also be considered as two major
risk factors in prevention of renal diseases.


Physicians are increasingly being asked to diagnose and treat people made ill by exposure to water-damaged environments, mold, and mycotoxins. In addition to avoidance of further exposure to these environments and to items contaminated by these environments, a number of approaches have been used to help persons affected by exposure to restore their health. Illness results from a combination of factors present in water-damaged indoor environments including, mold spores and hyphal fragments, mycotoxins, bacteria, bacterial endotoxins, and cell wall components as well as other factors. Mechanisms of illness include inflammation, oxidative stress, toxicity, infection, allergy, and irritant effects of exposure. This paper reviews the scientific literature as it relates to commonly used treatments such as glutathione, antioxidants, antifungals, and sequestering agents such as Cholestyramine, charcoal, clay and chlorella, antioxidants, probiotics, and induced sweating.


Radiometric dating, including numerous high-precision U-Pb baddeleyite and zircon ages, of Paleoproterozoic flood basalts, dike swarms, and layered mafic intrusions worldwide, indicates that a substantial volume of mafic magma was produced on Earth ca. 2.45 Ga. New U-Pb data presented here for the 2473 Ma Matachewan and 2446 Ma Hearst diabase dike swarms in North America establish a critical temporal link with ancient flood-basalt volcanism in Karelia and constrain the timing of a very ancient magnetic field reversal on Earth. The potential volume, magnitude, and extent of this magmatism may approach many of the better-known Mesozoic flood-basalt provinces and represent the oldest recognized large igneous province. The initiation and subsequent proliferation of flood-basalt and associated magmatism near the Archean-Proterozoic boundary may reflect a fundamental change in heat flux at the core-mantle boundary that heralded the breakup of a Late Archean supercontinent.


The gene, CRTH2, encoding a receptor for prostaglandin D(2) (PGD(2)), is located within the peak linkage region for asthma on chromosome (Chr.) 11q reported in African American families. Family-based analysis of asthma and two common SNPs [G1544C and G1651A (rs545659)] in the 3'-untranslated region of CRTH2 showed significant evidence of linkage in the presence of disequilibrium for the 1651G allele (P = 0.003) of SNP rs545659. Haplotype analysis yielded additional evidence of linkage disequilibrium for the 1544G-1651G haplotype (P < 0.001). Population-based case-control analyses were conducted in two independent populations, and demonstrated significant association of the 1544G-1651G haplotype with asthma in an African American population (P = 0.004), and in a population of Chinese children (P < 0.001). Moreover, in the Chinese children the frequency of the 1651G allele in near-fatal asthmatics was significantly higher than mild-to-moderate asthmatics (P = 0.001) and normal controls (P < 0.001). The 1651G allele of SNP re545659 was also associated with a higher degree of bronchial hyperresponsiveness (P < 0.027). Transcriptional pulsing experiments showed that the 1544G-1651G haplotype confers a significantly higher level of reporter mRNA stability, when compared with a non-transmitted haplotype (1544C-1651A), suggesting that the CRTH2 gene on Chr. 11q is a strong candidate gene for asthma.


Hypotheses. i) Atypical exposure to measles virus is a factor in the aetiology of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). ii) Measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccination is a factor in the aetiology of autistic enteropathy. Aims. i) To compare a range of molecular techniques for measles RNA amplification. ii) To develop a sensitive and robust method for the detection of measles RNA. iii) To analyse clinical samples from IBD patients for the presence of measles RNA. iv) To analyse clinical samples from autistic enteropathy patients for the presence of measles, mumps and rubella RNA. Methods development. Three RNA amplification methods were compared in terms of their sensitivity and fidelity for the detection of measles RNA and nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) was found to be the most sensitive. In a preliminary study, NASBA did not detect any measles RNA in a coded series of IBD and control intestinal tissues. In order to improve the detection sensitivity, the use of hybrid capture, using measles-specific oligonucleotides linked to paramagnetic solid phase supports, was investigated. Hybrid capture was found to increase the measles RNA detection sensitivity 100-fold when followed by RT-PCR. An internal modified transcript was developed which could be co-amplified with measles RNA as an internal positive control. IBD samples. Resection samples from 20 IBD and control patients were used for measles hybrid capture followed by RT-PCR, in addition to peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) from 13 IBD and control patients. Autistic enteropathy samples. Biopsies, PBMCs and Vero/PBMC cocultures were analysed from 22 patients with autistic enteropathy and 6 controls. Results. Hybrid capture and RT-PCR could detect 104 molecules of a measles RNA transcript added to control tissue homogenates. The fidelity of NASBA, in terms of its nucleic acid error rate, was found to be comparable with that of RTPCR. All samples were found to be positive for a housekeeping RNA species and internal modified positive control RNA. None of the samples tested positive for measles, mumps or rubella RNA, although viral RNA was successfully amplified in positive control samples.


The interactions of rat brain cortical opioid receptors with the guanine nucleotide-binding protein (G protein) Go were probed in membranes by examining the ability of selective antipeptide anti-G protein antisera to disrupt receptor-G protein interactions. This was measured both by antibody-induced alterations in the characteristics of agonist binding to mu and delta receptor binding sites and by antibody attenuation of opioid stimulation of high affinity GTPase activity. Antisera to the amino-terminal 16 amino acids (ON1), amino acids 22-35 (IM1), and the carboxyl-terminal decapeptide (OC2) of forms of Go alpha were able to selectively immunoprecipitate Go from rat cortical membranes. Both antisera OC2 and ON1 were able to immunoprecipitate Go alpha quantitatively. Preincubation of rat cortical membranes with an IgG fraction isolated from antiserum OC2 was able to produce a marked reduction in the ability of the synthetic enkephalin [D-Ala2,D-Leu5] enkephalin (DADLE) (which interacts with delta and mu but not significantly with kappa receptors) to displace specific binding of [3H] diprenorphine (which binds to all of these sites), demonstrating a clear interaction of the mu and delta receptors with one or more variants of Go. An IgG fraction from antiserum ON1 was able to mimic this effect, suggesting that the amino-terminal region of G protein alpha subunits also plays a role in receptor-G protein interactions. In contrast, an IgG fraction from antiserum IM1 was unable to alter the characteristics of DADLE displacement of [3H] diprenorphine binding. Similarly, an antiserum (SG1) directed against the carboxyl-terminal decapeptide common to the alpha subunits of Gi1 and Gi2 was unable to reduce the affinity of DADLE binding to opioid receptors. Use of antiserum OC2 in experiments that allowed pharmacological examination of only the mu-opioid receptor provided independent evidence for the interaction of this receptor site with Go.


Since computer technologies entered the educational domain, a number of metaphors have been introduced in the literature to explain this newly emerged phenomenon to educators in familiar terms. This chapter explores the ways that the conceptualisation of educational technologies as a teaching 'tool' can assist our understanding of the implementation of a new digital technology, the interactive whiteboard (IWB), in teaching children with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). The tool metaphor relates to a socio-cultural concept of a tool mediated purposeful human activity as a unit of analysis in educational research (Vygotsky, 1978). The activity model (Engestrom, 1991) was adopted in this study to focus on the teachers' use of technology. The IWB was then analysed as a teaching tool that can enhance (or hinder) the teacher's pedagogical goals. The chapter then provides a discussion of the use of the IWB in children with ASD using the tool metaphor. The question that we asked was how the tool metaphor can assist our understanding of the pedagogical choices made by a teacher in the process of working with children with ASD. The study demonstrated the usefulness of the tool metaphor for providing insights into what constitutes the effective use of the IWB in teaching children with ASD. The use of the metaphor allowed us to go beyond clinically-based research that has dominated the field of special education, and examine the day-to-day reality of how digital technologies were used in a classroom context with students who have ASD.


Because island communities are derived from mainland communities, they are often less diverse by comparison. However, reduced complexity of island communities can also present ecological opportunities. For example, amphibian diversity on Sulawesi Island is lower than it is in the Philippines, but Sulawesi supports a surprising diversity of Sulawesi fanged frogs (Limnonectes). Here we examine molecular, morphological, and geographical variation of fanged frogs from these two regions. Using genealogical concordance, morphology, and a Bayesian approach to species delimitation, we identified 13 species on Sulawesi, only four of which have been previously described. After evolutionary history is accounted for, a model with multiple body size optima in sympatric species is favored over a "random-walk" model of body size evolution. Additionally, morphological variation is higher among sympatric than nonsympatric species on Sulawesi but not in the Philippines. These findings suggest that adaptive radiation of fanged frogs on Sulawesi was driven by natural selection to infiltrate ecological niches occupied by other frog lineages in the Philippines. This supports a role of ecological opportunity in community assembly: diversification in mature communities, such as the Philippines, is limited by a dearth of unoccupied ecological niches. On Sulawesi, evolutionary novelties originated in a predictable and replicated fashion in response to opportunities presented by a depauperate ancestral community.


While pathologists can readily elucidate disease-relevant information from tissue images, automated algorithms may fail to capture the intricate details of complex biological specimens. As histology patterns vary depending on different tissue types, it is typically necessary to adapt and optimize segmentation algorithms to specific applications. To address this, we present a supervised machine learning method we call Support Vector Shape Segmentation (SVSS) to enhance and improve more general segmentation methods by utilizing a cell shape ranking function. First, we pose shape segmentation as an optimization problem that maximizes shape similarity with respect to the specific shape classes. Secondly, we propose a computationally efficient algorithm to solve the multi-scale segmentation problem in a minimum number of steps. The main advantage of the approach is that it naturally induces a ranking measure given the set of shape exemplars. We demonstrate large-scale quantitative and qualitative results on epithelial cells in a range of tissue types.


AIM
Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG) immunisation is well established as part of the South African national expanded programme for immunisation (EPI). The World Health Organization (WHO) currently recommends that BCG be given to all asymptomatic infants irrespective of HIV exposure at birth but does not recommend BCG vaccination for children with symptomatic HIV infection. This approach, however, has led to HIV-infected neonates who are asymptomatic at birth, developing severe vaccine-related complications. We present a surgical case series, representative of a minority of the cases in circulation, in support of a change to the timing of BCG administration to HIV-exposed neonates.

METHODS
A case series of 17 HIV-infected patients with surgical complications of BCG vaccination.

RESULTS
Seventeen patients are presented. The first two illustrate disseminated systemic BCG infection, resulting in BCG infection of the lymph nodes, liver, spleen and tibia, and the second with gastrointestinal involvement causing bowel obstruction. The other 15 patients represent a series of severe ulcerating lymphadenitis secondary to BCG.

CONCLUSION
The risks of BCG in HIV-infected infants are significant. Current recommendations are not satisfactory, and a change in policy is required to prevent the harmful effects of this vaccine in a high-risk group of patients. We believe that there is sufficient need to adequately stratify patients and vaccinate them according to a protocol that takes impaired immunity into consideration.


AIM To determine influence of neoadjuvant-chemotherapy (NAC) over tumor-infiltrating-lymphocytes (TIL) in triple-negative-breast-cancer (TNBC). METHODS TILs were evaluated in 98 TNBC cases who came to Instituto Nacional de Enfermedades Neoplasicas from 2005 to 2010. Immunohistochemistry staining for CD3, CD4, CD8 and FOXP3 was performed in tissue microarrays (TMA) sections. Evaluation of H/E in full-face and immunohistochemistry in TMA sections was performed in pre and post-NAC samples. STATA software was used and P value < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. RESULTS Higher TIL evaluated in full-face sections from pre-NAC tumors was associated to pathologic-complete-response (pCR) (P = 0.0251) and outcome (P = 0.0334). TIL evaluated in TMA sections showed low level of agreement with full-face sections (ICC = 0.017-0.20) and was not associated to pCR or outcome. TIL in post-NAC samples were not associated to response or outcome. Post-NAC lesions with pCR had similar TIL levels than those without pCR (P = 0.6331). NAC produced a TIL decrease in full-face sections (P < 0.0001). Percentage of TIL subpopulations was correlated with their absolute counts. Higher counts of CD3, CD4, CD8 and FOXP3 in pre-NAC samples had longer disease-free-survival (DFS). Higher counts of CD3 in pre-NAC samples had longer overall-survival. Higher ratio of CD8/CD4 counts in pre-NAC was associated with pCR. Higher ratio of CD4/FOXP3 counts in pre-NAC was associated with longer DFS. Higher counts of CD4 in post-NAC samples were associated with pCR. CONCLUSION TIL in pre-NAC full-face sections in TNBC are correlated to longer survival. TIL in full-face differ from TMA sections, absolute count and percentage analysis of TIL subpopulation closely related.


Bose-Einstein condensation occurs for bosons when, for a temperature low enough (typically a few kelvins for a liquid condensate and a few nanokelvins for a gaseous condensate), a macroscopic fraction1 of the bosons gathers in the quantum state of lowest energy, forming a Bose-Einstein condensate (Bec). In this case, the behavior of the fluid can be described in the case of a dilute gas by the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (Nls), also called the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. It can be shown that the dynamics of the Nls is very close to shallow water dynamics with surface tension. One of the striking features of Becs is the possibility of point vortices to appear, which dynamics is explained in some the oldest textbooks of fluid dynamics (see e.g. [5]). Surprinsingly, although vortices in Becs have been extensively studied, some of the most simple Gendankenexperiments have yet to be studied. In [6] for example, the (apparently) simple problem of the motion of a single vortex along a plane boundary in a semi-infinite, uniform Bec is studied, eleven years after the first experimental realisation of a Bec ([3]) and eighty-two years after Einstein's translation of the letter Bose wrote him about what would later be called Bose-Einstein statistics ([1]). An opportunity is then to be seized by classical fluid dynamicists, who can make the study of quantum fluid dynamics benefit from their experience. The idea of the present project, unlike [6] who use an almost all-analytical approach, is to develop a numerical code to integrate the Nls in polar coordinates and to perform a few numerical experiments about vortices in a two-dimensional circular box (a "glass"). In this report, we will first present some aspects of quantum fluid dynamics for geophysical fluid dynamicists to understand the analogies between the two fields. The code written during the project will then be presented in Section 3. In Section 4, a few numerical experiments will be presented to validate the code, study various simple configurations and see what the code can do. In a last section, conclusions will be drawn and possible extensions of this work will be proposed.


Alzheimer's disease (AD) is an age-related neurodegenerative disease that mainly affects elderly individuals. The disease is characterised clinically by cognitive decline and neuropsychiatric symptoms, while its pathological features are the accumulation of senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles in the brain. Aβ pathology is a central component of the disease. Early aggregated forms of Aβ known as "soluble oligomers" are believed to be a potent neurotoxic agent responsible for nerve cell damage and loss of synapses, so contributing to memory and learning deficits. Therefore, inhibiting the formation of these early aggregates could provide a novel approach to the treatment of AD. A retro-inverso peptide, RI-OR2-TAT, has been developed previously in Lancaster, and this demonstrated good inhibition of early-stage Aβ aggregation, but only at high concentrations of inhibitor relative to Aβ. An improved peptide system was subsequently developed involving attachment of RI-OR2-TAT onto the surface of a lipid nanoparticle scaffold (nanoliposome). The resulting "Peptide inhibitor nanoparticles" (PINPs) demonstrated much more potent inhibition of aggregation, and could penetrate through an artificial BBB. In this project, RI-OR2-TAT, PINPs and a novel retro-inverso peptide, RI-OR2-NAG, were examined for their ability to cross the intact and functional blood-brain barrier (BBB) of WT mice. Their accumulation in the brain, distribution in peripheral tissues, and possible modes of excretion, were examined in WT mice, 1 h following peripheral administration. In fluorescent imaging studies, fluorescein-labelled versions of RI-OR2-TAT, RI-OR2-NAG and PINPs all demonstrated effective penetration across an integral BBB and accumulation in the cortex, hippocampus, and dentate gyrus of the brain, where they were mainly co-localised with glial cells. Luminex technology was used to study the distribution of the first two peptides in the brain, heart, lungs, stomach, liver, spleen, kidneys and small intestine. The results of this study confirmed that these peptides accumulate in small amounts in the brain, but they are mainly found in the small intestine, suggesting a possible elimination route through bile secretions into the duodenum, followed by excretion through the faeces or reabsorption back into the general circulation, for possible excretion through the urine. Finally, as part of the project, the anti-aggregatory properties of the RI-OR2-NAG peptide were investigated, and this proved to be a more effective inhibitor of Aβ aggregation than RI-OR2-TAT. In conclusion, the use of liposomes as an effective carrier nanosystem for targeted delivery could be extended to the RI-OR2-NAG peptide. The results of this PhD thesis project are encouraging and it is hoped that a version of these peptides can progress into clinical trials.


In today's competitive environment and globalized economy, customers are demanding more varieties and better quality products with faster and reliable deliveries. New manufacturing technologies are developing rapidly, resulting in new products, innovations and improvements in the manufacturing process, thus, requiring a proactive approach by organizations. To be proactive, organizations require innovative methods of performance measurement, to assess their progress towards achieving organizational mission, vision and strategic objectives. The recent performance measurement literature has put forward a number of suggestions, recommendations and performance measurement frameworks for manufacturing companies. The purpose of this thesis is to assess the extent to which manufacturing companies are following these prescriptions. This research adopts an exploratory case study approach with a qualitative research method for collecting and analyzing the data. The case chosen in this study is Alfa Laval Lund AB. In this research, the main methods used for data collection are interview, questionnaire and electronic database. The empirical findings were analyzed through identifying themes from the data, by relying on theoretical propositions derived from the literature. In evaluating the organisation's performance measurement system, Kaplan and Norton's balanced scorecard was used as an ideal model. The results show that Alfa Laval Lund AB follows the prescriptions of the recent performance measurement literature, thus, increasing its level of performance measurement competence. The concept of performance measurement competence suggests that organizations use measures that fit with their strategy, their organizational structure and the environmental uncertainty that they face. The type of strategy employed by a firm should influence the design of its performance measurement system.


Governmental initiatives capitalising on multidisciplinary (or interdisciplinary) research are growing in number. They are motivated by the increasingly shared view among academics and policymakers that this mode of research, by favouring innovation in firms, will fuel the economic competitiveness of nations through job creation and increased revenues. However, there is an obvious lack of empirical evidence supporting the connection between multidisciplinary research and innovation. This study partly fills this gap by addressing the following question: Is the knowledge disclosed in a scientific publication more likely to be taken up in innovation (i.e. cited in the patent literature) as its multidisciplinarity index increases? The results thus obtained clearly show, in the aggregates, that multidisciplinarity increases the odds of research results being useful to innovation, thereby supporting existing R&I policy interventions or paving the way for new ones. However, because uptake in innovation, as measured through patent citations to scientific articles, remains a relatively rare phenomenon, multidisciplinary research is not an effective predictor of an individual article being useful to innovation; science is experimental, and the innovation outcome of an individual project cannot be guaranteed ahead of time merely through the extent of disciplinary mixing among the participating researchers.


We previously demonstrated selective enrichment of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class II-specific autoreactive T cells in a subset of mouse CD4+ thymocytes. Here we show that a significant fraction of these autoreactive cells in the normal adult thymus expresses NK1.1 and high levels of Ly-6C and also exhibits flexibility in MHC restriction. In normal mice, this NK1.1+Ly-6Chi subfraction accounts for 10-50% of the CD4+ autoreactive subset and is enriched for MHC class II-restricted autoreactive cells as determined by mixed leukocyte reaction frequency analysis, similar to NK1.1-Ly-6C-CD4+ autoreactive cells. In contrast, in the thymus of class II-deficient littermate mice, NK1.1+Ly-6Chi cells account for most of the mature heat stable antigen (HSA)-CD4+ fraction and exhibit MHC-restricted non- class II autoreactivity. Thus, NK1.1+Ly-6ChiCD4+ T cells show flexibility in MHC class restriction, but their autoreactivity remains MHC dependent.


Background
Healthy children with likely innocent heart murmurs are frequently referred to cardiologists for reassurance. Existing guidelines that advise against these referrals are not consistently followed partly because they involve subjective auscultatory judgements with which many care providers are uncomfortable. Here, we investigate whether clinical criteria with no subjective auscultatory component are sensitive for cardiac pathology.

Methods
A retrospective chart review was performed of all new patients seen in our paediatric cardiology clinic for assessment of a murmur from January 1, 2016 through June 30, 2018. Patients were characterized as "low-risk" if they met all of the following criteria: asymptomatic; normal physical examination other than the murmur; no risk factors for congenital heart disease; and age over 12 months. The primary outcomes were the sensitivity for ruling out pathology and the negative predictive value of the proposed criteria.

Results
Of 915 total patients, 214 met the low-risk criteria. The sensitivity of our criteria for ruling out pathology was 97.2% (95% confidence interval 94.1% to 99.0%) and the negative predictive value was also 97.2% (95% confidence interval 94.0% to 98.7%). Six of the 214 low-risk patients had pathology (2.8%; 95% confidence interval 1.3% to 6.0%), none of which has required intervention since diagnosis. Each of these six children had a murmur that sounded pathological to the auscultating cardiologist.

Conclusions
Basic clinical criteria that do not require auscultation are highly sensitive for ruling out significant cardiac pathology in children over 12 months of age.


This paper provides the first detailed qualitative and quantitative description of metamorphosis in the lamprey Geotria australis, which is the sole representative of the exclusively Southern Hemisphere family Geotriidae. Using a description which separates metamorphosis into seven sequential stages, emphasis has been placed on the pattern of development of ihe unique adult characters found in this family. Such characters include the spatulate shape of the teeth, the markedly tridentate anterior lingual lamina, the prominent longitudinal dorso-lateral blue-green stripes, the pair of enlarged oral disc papillae, and the gap between the second dorsal and caudal fins. Moreover, body proportion data demonstrate that compared with other genera, Geotria has an unusually small eye and oral disc and a relatively long trunk. While during metamorphosis the length remained relatively constant, due to compensatory increases in the actual length of some parts of the body against losses in other regions, both the mean weight and the condition factor declined. The latter reductions are clearly related to the fact that the animal does not feed during the six months between the onset of metamorphosis in late January and early February and the time when the animal embarks on its movement towards the sea in late July and early August. The length and weight data suggest that G. australis enters metamorphosis at a smaller size than any other parasitic species of lamprey. The sex ratio in the 218 individuals whose gonad was examined, indicated that the populations in south-western Australia were characterised by a slight excess of males (1♀: M8♂). The mortality encountered when downstream migrants were transferred to 100% sea water was 36% after direct transfer and 10–12% after prior acclimation to reduced salinities.


The paper presents a method for integrating two different types of data analysis: symbolic inductive learning and statistical methods. The method concerns the problem of discovering rules characterizing the dependence between a group of dependent attributes and a group of independent groups, e.g., decision attributes and measurable attributes. The method proceeds along two paths. One paths generates a set of rules characterizing this dependency using a symbolic inductive learning program (AQ15). In the obtained rules, each attribute is assigned an "importance score" which represents the ratio of the total number of examples that can be classified by this attribute to the maximum number of classified examples. Second path calculates the correlation coefficient between the decision and measurable attributes using the Chi-square test. The independent attributes with low "importance score" and low correlation are considered irrelevant, and removed from the data. The AQ15 is applied again to the data set spanned over the reduced set of attributes, in order to determine the simplest expression characterizing the dependency. The method has been experimentally applied to two real world problems: "Wind bracing" —to determine the dependence of the type of wind-bracing for tall buildings on the parameters of the building, and "Accident factors"—to determine the dependence between the age of construction workers and the types of accidents. The results have shown that the proposed approach of combining two different methods for relevant attribute determination gives better results than those obtained by applying either method separately.


IZA DP No. 12143 FEBRUARY 2019 Home Advantage in European International Soccer: Which Dimension of Distance Matters? We investigate whether the home advantage in soccer differs by various dimensions of distance between the (regions of the) home and away teams: geographical distance, climatic differences, cultural distance, and disparities in economic prosperity. To this end, we analyse 2,012 recent matches played in the UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League. We find that when the home team plays at a higher altitude, they benefit substantially more from their home advantage. Every 100 meters of altitude difference is associated with an increase in expected probability to win the match, as the home team, by 1.1 percentage points. JEL Classification: L83, J44, Z00


The so-called Arab Spring has thrown out of kilter the precarious balance on which the Euro-Mediterranean border-control regime has been built over the years, illustrating the need to set this regime on a new foundation. The breaking point in the crisis came when the flow of migrants landing on Italian shores in Lampedusa took a spike at the beginning of this year. I analyze how the Italian government manufactured the Lampedusa crisis by matching a discursive rhetoric to government strategy, and I highlight how the sovereign prerogative to define emergency was questioned at both a supranational and a subnational level. I also discuss the main assumption behind securitization theory, exploring the complex web of political and institutional relationships involved in the securitization process and illustrating the ambiguity of the security language deployed by the main securitizing actors. Finally, I look at the possible outcomes of the crisis by looking at the interests involved when it comes to reconfiguring the power to define and govern emergency within the framework of the European border-control regime.


Presidential betting markets predict election outcomes more accurately than polls because of their ability to effectively aggregate information. Empirical research and theory indicates that the result extends to other contexts. Betting markets, more formally called information markets, provide accurate predictions about future product sales, box office receipts, and other future events. Moreover, market predictions generally outperform other prediction mechanisms. This paper argues that empirical research and theory indicates that we should use information markets' predictive power to make administrative decisions. In addition, it presents a model information market designed to help policy makers evaluate policies prior to their implementation by providing policy makers information about the policies' effects in the form of market predictions. To design such a market, it is necessary to determine how the market should pay off bettors when the agency does not implement a policy because the market predicts it will have an adverse effect. The problem is that bets pay off based on the outcome of an event, but when the policy makers decide not to implement a policy, the policy has no effect and thus it is unclear how to compensate bettors. This paper shows that through clever market design it is possible to return the market price of a bet, prior to an agency's decision not to implement the policy on which the bet depends, without fear of market manipulation. Consequently, even in cases where using market predictions to make administrative decisions appears problematic, it is possible.


Transient electromagnetic (TEM) surveys have been used broadly in Russia and worldwide for engineering geology, groundwater prospecting, and other near-surface applications (Bucharsky et al., 1986; Plotnikov and Kozhevnikov, 2004; Agafonov et al., 2013; Ranieri et al., 2005; Shaaban et al., 2016, etc.), as well as for petroleum and mineral exploration (Mandelbaum et al., 1983; Korolkov, 1987; McNeill, 1980). Voltage decay patterns are highly sensitive to the presence of conductors associated with ore bodies, water saturation, clay, etc. Another advantage of the method is that it does not need galvanic grounding and works in any climate and terrain. The resolution of shallow transient electromagnetic (sTEM) data has improved greatly in the past two decades due to breakthrough in micro-electronics providing advanced facilities for data acquisition and processing (nanosecond sampling rates, high-resolution ADC, etc.).
Extensive sTEM surveys at a density reaching 33 points per km2 have demonstrated high performance in solving diverse problems of geosciences from structural mapping to environmental monitoring within a range of depths from 10 to 500-600 m.


In this paper, we demonstrate a fully automatic method for converting a still image into a realistic animated looping video. We target scenes with continuous fluid motion, such as flowing water and billowing smoke. Our method relies on the observation that this type of natural motion can be convincingly reproduced from a static Eulerian motion description, i.e. a single, temporally constant flow field that defines the immediate motion of a particle at a given 2D location. We use an image-to-image translation network to encode motion priors of natural scenes collected from on-line videos, so that for a new photo, we can synthesize a corresponding motion field. The image is then animated using the generated motion through a deep warping technique: pixels are encoded as deep features, those features are warped via Eulerian motion, and the resulting warped feature maps are decoded as images. In order to produce continuous, seamlessly looping video textures, we propose a novel video looping technique that flows features both for-ward and backward in time and then blends the results. We demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of our method by applying it to a large collection of examples including beaches, waterfalls, and flowing rivers.


Galilee St. Peter's fish shows unusual lability in caring patterns; male-only, female-only and biparental care all occur in the same population. We present a game-theoretical model and investigate the evolutionary stability of the care frequencies observed. Using mean values for each of the model's parameters (estimated previously for the Lake Kinneret population of St. Peter's fish) we find that the current care frequencies are unstable and male-only care is the only evolutionarily stable parental care strategy. However, two key model parameters have significant dispersions: the operational sex ratio (OSR) varies both temporally and spatially, and the advantage of biparental care relative to uniparental care depends critically on clutch size, which can vary dramatically. Within the full ranges of observed OSRs and clutch sizes, there are regions in which each of male-only, female-only and biparental care is an evolutionarily stable strategy; there is also a region where no evolutionarily stable strategy exists. Thus natural variations in OSR and clutch size may account for the observed care frequencies. 7 1997 Academic Press Limited


The Italian case can be considered one of the most seminal political systems that has adopted open-list proportional representation. We have tested the hypotheses related to the determinants of preference voting. In order to measure the consequences on the voting behaviour, different variables have been considered. Findings coherent with the literature on the topic have confirmed the effects of sociopolitical variables on electoral behaviour. A degree of counter-intuitive and innovative data is also presented, especially concerning the determinants of preference voting. Data vindicate some impressionistic interpretations of Italian political and electoral paths. Party size, social capital, and district magnitude among others predict a big share of variation in preference voting.


In response to environmental stresses, the mammalian serine threonine kinases PERK, GCN2, HRI, and PKR phosphorylate the regulatory serine 51 of the eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2α (eIF2α) to inhibit global protein synthesis. Plasmodium, the protozoan that causes malaria, expresses three eIF2α kinases: IK1, IK2, and PK4. Like GCN2, IK1 regulates stress response to amino acid starvation. IK2 inhibits development of malaria sporozoites present in the mosquito salivary glands. Here we show that the phosphorylation by PK4 of the regulatory serine 59 of Plasmodium eIF2α is essential for the completion of the parasite's erythrocytic cycle that causes disease in humans. PK4 activity leads to the arrest of global protein synthesis in schizonts, where ontogeny of daughter merozoites takes place, and in gametocytes that infect Anopheles mosquitoes. The implication of these findings is that drugs that reduce PK4 activity should alleviate disease and inhibit malaria transmission.


Contextual multi-armed bandit (MAB) algorithms have been shown promising for maximizing cumulative rewards in sequential decision tasks such as news article recommendation systems, web page ad placement algorithms, and mobile health. However, most of the proposed contextual MAB algorithms assume linear relationships between the reward and the context of the action. This paper proposes a new contextual MAB algorithm for a relaxed, semiparametric reward model that supports nonstationarity. The proposed method is less restrictive, easier to implement and faster than two alternative algorithms that consider the same model, while achieving a tight regret upper bound. We prove that the high-probability upper bound of the regret incurred by the proposed algorithm has the same order as the Thompson sampling algorithm for linear reward models. The proposed and existing algorithms are evaluated via simulation and also applied to Yahoo! news article recommendation log data.


Continuous IC process enhancements make possible to integrate on a single chip the re-sources required for simultaneously executing multiple control flows or threads, exploiting different levels of thread-level parallelism: application-, function-, and loop-level. Scalable simultaneous multi-threading combines static and dynamic mechanisms to assemble a complexity-effective design that provides high instruction per cycle rates without sacrificing cycle time nor single-thread performance. This paper addresses the design of the fetch unit for a high-performance, scalable, simultaneous multithreaded processor. We present the detailed microarchitecture of a clustered and reconfigurable fetch unit based on an existing single-thread fetch unit. In order to minimize the occurrence of fetch hazards, the fetch unit dynamically adapts to the available thread-level parallelism and to the fetch characteristics of the active threads, working as a single shared unit or as two separate clusters. It combines static and dynamic methods in a complexity-efficient way. The design is supported by a simulation- based analysis of different instruction cache and branch target buffer configurations on the context of a multithreaded execution workload. Average reductions on the miss rates between 30% and 60% and peak reductions greater than 200% are obtained.


In the present thesis, we delve into different extremal and algebraic problems arising from combinatorial geometry. Specifically, we consider the following problems. For any integer $n\ge 3$, we define $e(n)$ to be the minimum positive integer such that any set of $e(n)$ points in general position in the plane contains $n$ points in convex position. In 1935, Erd\H{o}s and Szekeres proved that $e(n) \le {2n-4 \choose n-2}+1$ and later in 1961, they obtained the lower bound $2^{n-2}+1 \le e(n)$, which they conjectured to be optimal. We prove that $e(n) \le {2n-5 \choose n-2}-{2n-8 \choose n-3}+2$. In a recent breakthrough, Suk proved that $e(n) \le 2^{n+O\left(n^{2/3}\log n\right)}$. We strengthen this result by extending it to pseudo-configurations and also improving the error term. Combining our results with a theorem of Dobbins et al., we significantly improve the best known upper bounds on the following two functions, introduced by Bisztriczky and Fejes T\'{o}th and by Pach and T\'{o}th, respectively. Let $c(n)$ (and $c'(n)$) denote the smallest positive integer $N$ such that any family of $N$ pairwise disjoint convex bodies in general position (resp., $N$ convex bodies in general position, any pair of which share at most two boundary points) has an $n$ members in convex position. We show that $c(n)\le c'(n)\le 2^{n+O\left(\sqrt{n\log n}\right)}$. Given a point set $P$ in the plane, an ordinary circle for $P$ is defined as a circle containing exactly three points of $P$. We prove that any set of $n$ points in the plane, not all on a line or a circle, determines at least $\frac{1}{4}n^2-O(n)$ ordinary circles. We determine the exact minimum number of ordinary circles for all sufficiently large $n$, and characterize all point sets that come close to this minimum. We also consider the orchard problem for circles, where we determine the maximum number of circles containing four points of a given set and describe the extremal configurations. A special case of the Schwartz-Zippel lemma states that given an algebraic curve $C\subset \mathbb{C}^2$ of degree $d$ and two finite sets $A,B\subset \mathbb{C}$, we have $|C\cap (A\times B)|=O_d(|A|+|B|)$. We establish a two-dimensional version of this result, and prove upper bounds on the size of the intersection $|X\cap (P\times Q)|$ for a variety $X\subset \mathbb{C}^4$ and finite sets $P,Q\subset \mathbb{C}^2$. A key ingredient in our proofs is a two-dimensional version of a special case of Alon's combinatorial Nullstellensatz. As corollaries, we generalize the Szemer\'edi-Trotter point-line incidence theorem and several known bounds on repeated and distinct Euclidean distances. We use incidence geometry to prove some sum-product bounds over arbitrary fields. First, we give an explicit exponent and improve a recent result of Bukh and Tsimerman by proving that $\max { |A+A|, |f(A, A)|}\gg |A|^{6/5}$ for any small set $A\subset \mathbb{F}_p$ and quadratic non-degenerate polynomial $f(x, y)\in \mathbb{F}_p[x, y]$. This generalizes the result of Roche-Newton et al. giving the best known lower bound for the term $\max { |A+A|, |A \cdot A |}$. Secondly, we improve and generalize the sum-product results of Hegyv\'{a}ri and Hennecart on $\max{ |A+B|, |f(B,C)|}$, for a specific type of function $f$. Finally, we prove that the number of distinct cubic distances generated by any small set $A\times A\subset \mathbb{F}_p^2$ is $\Omega(|A|^{8/7})$, which improves a result of Yazici et al.


About the book:
Music is omnipresent in human society, but its language can no longer be regarded as transcendent or universal. Like other art forms, music is produced and consumed within complex economic, cultural, and political frameworks in different places and at different historical moments. Taking an explicitly spatial approach, this unique interdisciplinary text explores the role played by music in the formation and articulation of geographical imaginations--local, regional, national, and global. Contributors show how music's facility to be recorded, stored, and broadcast; to be performed and received in private and public; and to rouse intense emotional responses for individuals and groups make it a key force in the definition of a place. Covering rich and varied terrain--from Victorian England, to 1960s Los Angeles, to the offices of Sony and Time-Warner and the landscapes of the American Depression--the volume addresses such topics as the evolution of musical genres, the globalization of music production and marketing, alternative and hybridized music scenes as sites of localized resistance, the nature of soundscapes, and issues of migration and national identity.


An approach is proposed to refining service oriented specification model into an application architecture model using model-theoretic interpretation mapping. The service-oriented feature model is employed to describe the application specification and component-based application model to describe the application architecture. The application specification and application architecture are represented as model theory. Then an isomorphic interpretation mapping is calculated to refine the models. The approach proposed provides a way of bridging the service-oriented specification and the object-oriented software architecture.


This study explored the degree to which deception is perceived to be a socially acceptable form of communication. It was suspected that a liar's motivation for deceiving, a perceiver's cultural background, and the type of relationship between a liar and the target of a lie (e.g., spouse, friend, stranger, etc.) would affect the perceived acceptability of deceptive messages. Students from China and the United States rated the degree to which they perceived deceptive acts depicted in written scenarios as acceptable or unacceptable. Results indicated that 1) lies told for malicious or self‐benefiting purposes were perceived as less acceptable than mutually‐benefiting lies and lies that benefit others; and 2) culture and the type of relationship between liars and targets of lies interacted with motive for lying to affect the perceived acceptability of deception. These results, their implications, and avenues for future research are discussed.


The storage of frequently requested multimedia content at small-cell base stations (BSs) can reduce the load of macro-BSs without relying on high-speed backhaul links. In this work, the optimal operation of a system consisting of a cache-aided small-cell BS and a macro-BS is investigated for both offline and online caching settings. In particular, a binary fading one-sided interference channel is considered in which the small-cell BS, whose transmission is interfered by the macro-BS, has a limited-capacity cache. The delivery time per bit (DTB) is adopted as a measure of the coding latency, that is, the duration of the transmission block, required for reliable delivery. For offline caching, assuming a static set of popular contents, the minimum achievable DTB is characterized through information-theoretic achievability and converse arguments as a function of the cache capacity and of the capacity of the backhaul link connecting cloud and small-cell BS. For online caching, under a time-varying set of popular contents, the long-term (average) DTB is evaluated for both proactive and reactive caching policies. Furthermore, a converse argument is developed to characterize the minimum achievable long-term DTB for online caching in terms of the minimum achievable DTB for offline caching. The performance of both online and offline caching is finally compared using numerical results.


Although large quantities of southern Africa burn every year, minimal information is available relating to the fire regimes of this area. This study develops a new, generic approach to change detection, applicable to the identification of land cover change from high temporal and moderate spatial resolution satellite data. Traditional change detection techniques have several key limitations which are identified and addressed in this work. In particular these approaches fail to account for directional effects in the remote sensing signal introduced by variations in the solar and sensing geometry, and are sensitive to underlying phenological changes in the surface as well as noise in the data due to cloud or atmospheric contamination. This research develops a bi-directional, model-based change detection algorithm. An empirical temporal component is incorporated into a semi-empirical linear BRDF model. This may be fitted to a long time series of reflectance with less sensitivity to the presence of underlying phenological change. Outliers are identified based on an estimation of noise in the data and the calculation of uncertainty in the model parameters and are removed from the sequence. A "step function kernel" is incorporated into the formulation in order to detect explicitly sudden step-like changes in the surface reflectance induced by burning. The change detection model is applied to the problem of locating and mapping fire affected areas from daily moderate spatial resolution satellite data, and an indicator of burn severity is introduced. Monthly burned area datasets for a 2400km by 1200km area of southern Africa detailing the day and severity of burning are created for a five year period (2000-2004). These data are analysed and the fire regimes of southern African ecosystems during this time are characterised. The results highlight the extent of the burning which is taking place within southern Africa, with between 27-32% of the study area burning during each of the five years of observation. Higher fire frequencies are exhibited by savanna and grassland ecosystems, while more dense vegetation types such as shrublands and deciduous broadleaf forests burn less frequently. In addition the areas which burn more frequently do so with a greater severity, with a positive relationship identified between the frequency and the severity of burning.


In this paper, we develop a heterogeneous agent general equilibrium framework to analyze optimal joint policies of a lockdown and transfer payments in times of a pandemic. In our model, the effectiveness of a lockdown in mitigating the pandemic depends on endogenous compliance. A more stringent lockdown deepens the recession which implies that poorer parts of society find it harder to subsist. This reduces their compliance with the lockdown, and may cause deprivation of the very poor, giving rise to an excruciating trade-offbetween saving lives from the pandemic and from deprivation. Lump-sum transfers help mitigate this trade-off. We identify and discuss key trade-offs involved and provide comparative statics for optimal policy. We show that, ceteris paribus, the optimal lockdown is stricter for more severe pandemics and in richer countries. We then consider a government borrowing constraint and show that limited fiscal space lowers the optimal lockdown and welfare, and increases the aggregate death burden during the pandemic. We finally discuss distributional consequences and the political economy of fighting a pandemic.


EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Thanks to the Internet, an increasing number of consumers not only purchase but also resell merchandise through C2C websites. Resellable goods no longer seem to indicate unrecoverable costs but are considered to be liquid assets or an alternative cash account to consumers who master online resale. The value or benefit of a product would be deemed differently when the owners are contemplating reselling such goods. The role of a consumer as a reseller is a relatively new concept. Studies of consumer behavior with regard to selling goals, knowledge, and skills differ tremendously from those of the traditional consumer buying and consumption behavior. Why and how consumers learn to be resellers is an interesting issue in C2C e-commerce research. Unfortunately, the behavior of consumer online resale has not been studied indepth. This specific kind of consumer resale behavior differs from the behavior of retailers and cannot be analyzed from a retailer's perspective. In the present study, we focus on C2C consumer resale behavior instead of the bidding behavior of buyers by looking at the interaction between online and offline behavior rather than treating them as different boundaries. Further, we examine consumer disposition behavior and the linkage between the disposition and acquisition phases, rather than focusing on only one part. This exploratory study conducted in Taiwan and China aims to define and categorize consumer online resale behavior in order to provide a framework for further research. We use participant observations and consumer interviews to explore the background of consumer online resale situations in order to elucidate our research questions for the nature and representation of consumer resale behavior in C2C secondary markets and the possible implications for researchers and marketers. After collecting interview data consisting of 131 online resale transactions reported by 25 consumers from Taiwan and China, we discuss issues related to consumer online resale by conceptually defining and specifying types of consumer online resale behavior with a taxonomy. Then we present a conceptual model of consumer online resale behavior and develop corresponding research propositions from the preliminary findings of an exploratory qualitative study. The conceptual model introduces the possible relationships between types of consumer online resale behavior and their impacts on purchase and online resale decisions. Finally, we provide the conclusions and managerial implications of the study, as well as outline directions for further research. We define "consumer online resale" as an online resale in which the products being resold were purchased mainly for self-use, not for resale. According to the aforementioned definition, all resellers in C2C online auctions can be categorized into three types: professional resellers, mixed-role resellers, and consumer resellers. In our study, we completely exclude "professional resellers" and only focus on consumer online resale performed by "consumer resellers" or "mixed-role resellers". The taxonomy of consumer online resale behavior developed in this study describes consumer resale behavior using the dimensions of "planned" or "unplanned resell" and "used" or "unused products" in order to examine the relationship between consumers' reselling and purchasing behavior. We define the first dimension, "planned resell", as the condition when consumers, before purchase, consider that they can and have the intention to resell the target product after using it for a period of time. Consumers will receive compensation in the future if the product is successfully resold through an online auction site. The second dimension we propose is whether the products consumers sell are "unused" or "used". The behavior of reselling used or unused goods is regarded to be different. Reselling unused products is more similar to the behavior of retailers, while reselling used goods is more similar to traditional consumer disposition behavior. …


A phishing attack exploits both the enormous scale of the web and the fact that users are often enormously confused about what they can trust. Scale allows the phisher to get many responses to his attack, even though the probability of any given user responding is low (it costs the phisher no more to send a million emails than to send one). The enormous confusion about trust allows the phisher make a copy of a bank web-site look as trustworthy to the victim as the original. Previous approaches to this problem have tried to solve the problem by preventing useful information leaking to the phisher; for example by alerting the user to suspicious or low reputation sites. Generally this is done at the client (typically in a browser plugin or add-on).

We propose a scheme that in several respects is a radical departure from previous approaches. First, we make no attempt to prevent information leakage. Rather, we try to detect and then rescue users from the consequences of bad trust decisions. Second, we harness scale against the attacker instead of trying to solve the problem at each client. Thus our scheme increases in efficacy with the scale of deployment: it offers very little protection if a small fraction of users participate, but makes phishing almost impossible as the deployment increases. Finally, we make clear that small trials of our system would prove little. The scale requirements of Password Rescue make it suitable for large deployment or not at all. HotSec seems like the best forum for such ideas.


Background and objective: μ-agonistic opioids cause concentration-dependent hypoventilation and increased irregularity of breathing. The aim was to quantify opioid-induced irregularity of breathing and to investigate its time-course during and after an opioid infusion, and its ability to predict the severity of respiratory depression. Methods: Twenty-three patients breathing spontaneously via a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) mask received an intravenous (i.v.) infusion of alfentanil (2.3 μg kg−1 min−1, 14 patients) or pirinitramide (piritramide) (17.9 μg kg−1 min−1, nine patients) until either a cumulative dose of 70 μg kg−1 for alfentanil or 500 μg kg−1 for pirinitramide had been achieved or the infusion had to be stopped for safety reasons. Tidal volumes (VT) and minute ventilation were measured with an anaesthesia workstation. For every 20 breaths, the quartile coefficient was calculated (Qeff20VT). Results: Both the decrease of minute volume and the increase of Qeff20VT during and after opioid infusion were highly significant (P < 0.001, ANOVA). Patients in which the alfentanil infusion had to be terminated prematurely had lower minute volumes (P = 0.002, t-test) and higher Qeff20VT (P = 0.034, t-test) than those who received the complete dose. Changes in the regularity of breathing measured as Qeff20VT parallel those of minute ventilation during and after opioid infusion. Conclusions: Opioids cause a more complicated disturbance of the control of respiration than a mere resetting to higher PCO2. Furthermore, Qeff20VT appears to predict the severity of opioid-induced respiratory depression.


AbstractThe building sector has now reached the stage where numerous sustainability codes and practices have been introduced and enforced in an attempt to reduce carbon emissions associated with the built environment. While these efforts have been successful in shifting the industry towards more sustainable practices, they have had limited success in reducing the sector's total energy consumption and carbon emissions. This paper discusses how the intended purpose of architecture has contributed to this shortfall, and how it has obstructed the potential environmental benefits of emerging building technologies. It is argued that if the fundamental way in which buildings are designed remains unchanged then it is likely that the targets for reducing carbon emissions will not be met, and that an increase in these emissions will occur. The paper also provides insights into how these shortcomings might be mitigated to ensure that future built environments are created and created using truly sustainable concepts ...


Pandemic Covid-19 influence many aspects of life and the effort to handle is paramount The handling requires political support since it will use massive amount of resources The study is using grounded theory and data collection is made through in-depth interview and triangulation made by conducting meeting and webinar The participants of the interview were nine people, the participants of the meeting were 15 people, and the webinar were participated by 74 people Participants age range from 23-50 years old and having different backgrounds such as volunteers, professionals, company's employees The study found that there are five key factors, namely pandemic hit the people differently (theme a), crisis in political communication (theme b), tension between health versus economic approach (theme c), lack of data and weak institution (theme d), and development of volunteerism (theme e) The features have linkages and influences creating complexity of the issue in which theme d affect theme a, theme b, and theme e;theme a have influence on theme c and theme e;theme c give effects on theme b and theme e;theme b influence theme e The theme that have more influence to other theme is theme d and the theme influenced by all other theme is theme e The recommendation of the study is to use biopolitics and political valued resources to deal with lack of data and weak institution, and integrating volunteerism in dealing with Covid-19


This catalogue of the exhibition curated by Germano Celant in the Correr Museum of Venice investigates a specific aspect of the work of Claes Oldenburg, a major figure of contemporary American art: that of his creations relating to architecture, documenting the large scale projects executed by the artist between 1969 right up to 1999. Here is an opportunity to discover and appreciate the monumental constructions the artist executed all over the world, from Chicago and Philadelphia, Paris and Dusseldorf, Frankfurt to Weil am Rhein, including the latest, original project the artist intends to execute with Coosje van Bruggen for Venice, a lion's tail that, issuing from the Napolconic Wing, will partially take over the space in front of San Marco. The book, aside from the exhibited works, features the forty-eight projects executed on every continent, an offers valuable scientific knowledge of workings of the great American artist, and reflects on the controversial issue of art in public spaces, and the essential collaboration between the artist and the public.