This paper deals with a description of wireless sensor networks at the beginning. Further follows the introduction to the agent platform suitable for wireless networks. Mobile code and sensor networks suffer from considerable security problems. Our proposal of countermeasure is based on combination of smartcards with sensor nodes. Smartcards as a tamper resistant devices offer solution for the most of commonly required security objectives. Analysis of proposed hardware cryptographic platform includes link level communication, transport protocol description, application interface description and demands for power consumption. Today smartcards are highly standardized devices that offer common communication interface and platform could be used with various smartcards in accordance with ISO/EMV standards. At the end, we discuss the combination of agents in wireless sensor networks in conjunction with usage of cryptographic protocols for securing of wireless networks.


To investigate the unregulated Ras activation associated with cancer, we developed and validated a mathematical model of Ras signaling. The model-based predictions and associated experiments help explain why only one of two classes of activating Ras point mutations with in vitro transformation potential is commonly found in cancers. Model-based analysis of these mutants uncovered a systems-level process that contributes to total Ras activation in cells. This predicted behavior was supported by experimental observations. We also used the model to identify a strategy in which a drug could cause stronger inhibition on the cancerous Ras network than on the wild-type network. This system-level analysis of the oncogenic Ras network provides new insights and potential therapeutic strategies.


Companies, government agencies, and other organizations are making their data available to the world over the Internet. These organizations store their data in large tables. These tables are usually kept in relational databases. Online access to such databases is common. Users query these databases with different front-ends. These front-ends use command languages, menus, or form fillin interfaces. Many of these interfaces rarely give users information about the contents and distribution of the data. This leads users to waste time and network resources posing queries that have zero-hit or mega-hit results. Generalized query previews forms a user interface architecture for efficient browsing of large online data. Generalized query previews supplies distribution information to the users. This provides an overview of the data. Generalized query previews gives continuous feedback about the size of the results as the query is being formed. This provides a preview of the results. Generalized query previews allows users to visually browse all of the attributes of the data. Users can select from these attributes to form a view. Views are used to display the distribution information. Queries are incrementally and visually formed by selecting items from numerous charts attached to these views. Users continuously get feedback on the distribution information while they make their selections. Later, users fetch the desired portions of the data by sending their queries over the network. As they make informed queries, they can avoid submitting queries that will generate zero-hit or mega-hit results. Generalized query previews works on distributions. Distribution information tends to be smaller than raw data. This aspect of generalized query previews also contributes to better network performance. This dissertation presents the development of generalized query previews, field studies on various platforms, and experimental results. It also presents an architecture of the algorithms and data structures for the generalized query previews. There are three contributions of this dissertation. First, this work offers a general user interface architecture for browsing large online data. Second, it presents field studies and experimental work that define the application domain for generalized query previews. Third, it contributes to the field of algorithms and data structures. 2001 ii To NİŞVAN ERKAL iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I first would like to thank Ben A. Shneiderman for being my advisor. He is a very patient and inspirational advisor. He encouraged me for many years and helped me stay on track. I learned many valuable things about research, science, and life …


Dispersal in slender-tailed meerkats or suricates, Suricata suricatta, in the south-western Kalahari occurred mainly during the early breeding season, and was age- and sex-dependent. Among yearlings, more males than females were immigrants, but more females than males disappeared. There were no sex differences in dispersal among two-year-olds, but among animals aged three years or older, more males than females emigrated. Most dispersers moved into adjacent bands or joined other transients, and females apparently suffered higher rates of mortality than males. Kinship with the same-sex or opposite-sex breeder had no discernible effect on the likelihood of dispersing. Both males and females made prospecting forays to other groups, apparently to assess dispersal and breeding opportunities. Males made frequent and repeated forays, often in coalitions with other band members or transients, whereas prospecting by females was generally solitary, and they were not known to make multiple forays. Prospecting males successfully took over dominance of two bands, and attempted to take over bands on three other occasions. Animals attempting to join or follow a band (trailers) behaved submissively and were readily chased by residents, whereas those attempting a dominance takeover (invaders) scent-marked at a high rate and showed no submissive behaviours. Dispersing meerkats maximized reproductive success by increasing their mating opportunities, while animals which delayed dispersal received indirect benefits by helping to raise kin.


Over the last few years, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been used successfully for modelling all aspects of geotechnical engineering problems. ANNs are a form of artificial intelligence which attempt to mimic the function of the human brain and nervous system. ANNs are well suited to model the complex behaviour of most geotechnical engineering problems. The purpose of this paper was to assess the layering of subsurface soil using ANNs. Assessing the structure of soil layers on a site, depending on the extent of the study area, requires drilling several boreholes and performing several tests which demand considerable time and money. Increasing the knowledge of soil layer properties between boreholes leads to improved understanding of the near-surface geology. ANNs learn from data examples presented to them in order to capture the subtle functional data relationships, even if the underlying relationships are unknown or the physical meaning is difficult to explain. This paper focuses on the information gathered from the boreholes in a range of 40 square kilometres of Babol City in the north of Iran. The data was collected and classified in order to determine the characteristics of the soil layers. To later classify the different layers at different depths and to determine the thickness of each layer at a specified depth, multi-layer neural networks were trained separately. To quantify the neural network performance in estimating the changes of soil layers, some data from the test boreholes was presented to the network for the first time, and the results of neural networks were compared with actual data obtained from site investigations. The results show a high degree of accuracy in prediction by ANN models.


A long-standing mystery in Drosophila has been: how do certain bristles induce adjacent cells to make bracts (a type of thick hair) on their proximal side? The apparent answer, based on lossand gain-of-function studies, is that they emit a signal that neighbors then transduce via the epidermal growth factor receptor pathway. Suppressing this pathway removes bracts, while hyperactivating it evokes bracts indiscriminately on distal leg segments. Misexpression of the diffusible ligand Spitz (but not its membrane-bound precursor) elicits extra bracts at normal sites. What remains unclear is how a secreted signal can have effects in one specific direction. q 2002 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.


Mass and efficiency are key performance indicators for the development and design of future electric power systems (EPS) for more-electric aircraft (MEA). However, to enable consideration of high-level EPS architecture design trades, there is a requirement for modelling and simulation based analysis to support this activity. The predominant focus to date has been towards the more detailed aspects of analysis, however there is also a significant requirement to be able to perform rapid high-level trades of candidate architectures and technologies. Such a capability facilitates a better appreciation of the conflicting desires to maximize availability and efficiency in candidate MEA architectures, whilst minimizing the overall system mass. It also provides a highly valuable and quantitative assessment of the systemic impact of new enabling technologies being considered for MEA applications. Without this capability, predesign assessments are often time consuming and of a qualitative manner. Accordingly, this paper will present a steady state pre-design analysis tool for MEA architectures, which enables analysis of the architecture performance at different stages of the flight profile. By providing drag and drop models of key MEA electrical power system components configured for common voltage and power levels, the tool facilitates the rapid construction of candidate architectures which then enables the subsequent quantitative assessment of overall system mass and efficiency. Key to the credibility and usefulness of this tool, is the appropriate marrying of validated fundamental mathematical models (for example in the evaluation of system losses), up-to-date data driven models (for example, relating to component masses or power densities) and the flexibility to incorporate new models of technologies under consideration. The paper will describe these core elements and present selected case studies demonstrating potential uses of the tool in architecture assessment and down-selection, technology impact, and design-point sensitivity analysis.


Title of dissertation: FLOW CONTROL IN WIRELESS AD-HOC NETWORKS Georgios Papageorgiou, Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 Dissertation directed by: Professor John S. Baras, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering We are interested in maximizing the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) throughput between two nodes in a single cell wireless ad-hoc network. For this, we follow a cross-layer approach by first developing an analytical model that captures the effect of the wireless channel and the MAC layer to TCP. The analytical model gives the time evolution of the TCP window size which is described by a stochastic differential equation driven by a point process. The point process represents the arrival of acknowledgments sent by the TCP receiver to the sender as part of the self-regulating mechanism of the flow control protocol. Through this point process we achieve a cross-layer integration between the physical layer, the MAC layer and TCP. The intervals between successive points describe how the packet drops at the wireless channel and the delays because of retransmission at the MAC layer affect the window size at the TCP layer. We fully describe the statistical behavior of the point process by computing first the p.d.f. for the interarrival intervals and then the compensator and the intensity of the process parametrized by the quantities that describe the MAC layer and the wireless channel. To achieve analytical tractability we concentrate on the pure (unslotted) Aloha for the MAC layer and the Gilbert-Elliott model for the channel. Although the Aloha protocol is simpler than the more popular IEEE 802.11 protocol, it still exhibits the same exponential backoff mechanism which is a key factor for the performance of TCP in a wireless network. Moreover, another reason to study the Aloha protocol is that the protocol and its variants gain popularity as they are used in many of today's wireless networks. Using the analytical model for the TCP window size evolution, we try to increase the TCP throughput between two nodes in a single cell network. We want to achieve this by implicitly informing the TCP sender of the network conditions. We impose this additional constraint so we can achieve compatibility between the standard TCP and the optimized version. This allows the operation of both protocol stacks in the same network. We pose the optimization problem as an optimal stopping problem. For each packet transmitted by the TCP sender to the network, an optimal time instance has to be computed in the absence of an acknowledgment for this packet. This time instance indicates when a timeout has to be declared for the packet. In the absence of an acknowledgment, if the sender waits long for declaring a timeout, the network is underutilized. If the sender declares a timeout soon, it minimizes the transmission rate. Because of the analytical intractability of the optimal stopping time problem, we follow a Markov chain approximation method to solve the problem numerically. FLOW CONTROL IN WIRELESS AD-HOC NETWORKS by Georgios Papageorgiou Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2009 Advisory Committee: Professor John S. Baras, Chair/Advisor Professor Armand M. Makowski Professor Sennur Ulukus Professor Nuno C. Martins Professor A. Udaya Shankar, Dean's Representative c © Copyright by Georgios Papageorgiou 2009


This research examines the hypothesis that installation art:

-is not a medium but a mode of address, addressing the world as a multiplicity;

-uses tactics of 'dispersal', which as perceptual gesture is in affinity with notions of multiplicity.

The explanatory framework, which legitimates 'dispersal' as installation's defining tactic, is introduced step by step, through the articulation of certain concepts such as: 'field of activities' (Kaye, 2000), 'intervening screen', (Deleuze, 1968), 'dilation' (Ahearne, 1995), afterwardness' (Laplanche, 1992), 'the knowing not to know' (Derrida, 1992), 'emotion-value' (Barthes, 1977) and 'autopoetics closure' (Luhmann, 2000).

Structured by this framework, the practice for this research addresses, on one hand, the concept of otherness - understood as the infinite learning of 'differential truths' (Ahearne, 1995, p. 192) and on the other hand, a notion of urban image - understood as fragmentary imagery able to accommodate a sense of public space over imprints of experienced time. From the analysis of this practice the research concludes that:

-the employment of 'dispersal' as a defining tactic allows the work to surface into visibility as a sharing of a system of relevance;

-this sharing aims to displace meaning, by pushing it away from an autonomous condition, located on the work's surface;

-meaning, when presented as a sharing of a system of relevance, is relocated throughout different 'levels of immersion' inside the work;

-from this new positioning, meaning will only be retrieved by the work-in-situ of a particular viewer's reading;

-this condition of random retrieval implies that the work will generate meaning as 'differential truth' (Ahearne, 1995, p. 192), which exists outside 'the disease of identity' (Certeau, 1969, p. 179);

-as 'differential truth', meaning becomes a function, not of the authority of a specific voice, but of the ability to respond [a response-ability], exercised by the maker in facing the world, and by the viewer in the face of the work.


A conceptual model is formulated that shows that a downward sloping supply function may exist for a profit maximizing firm facing a cash-flow constraint. The necessary requirement is that at least one factor must be a non-cash input. The model is tested using analysis of variance on two groups of producers from farm record data, one group facing a binding budget constraint the other group not. The results indicate that farms facing a cash flow constraint increase output more than farms not restricted by a cash flow constraint in response to a price decrease.


Doll play is critical in the formation of young black girls' gender, race, and class identities. In this article, I use textual analysis that emphasizes how physical changes in dolls correspond to contextual shifts in society over the last seven decades, and qualitative research with ten Afro-Caribbean girls and young women in Toronto to reveal the racial and cultural meanings of dolls in young people's everyday lives and how doll play is complicated by racist and classist representations of dolls. By exploring what doll play meant to them, I show how it helps black girls understand racial and gendered norms. Through doll play, girls reveal an understanding of their racialized identities and marginalization as they demonstrate unacknowledged skills in their ability to navigate barriers that reinforce racial inequalities and social hierarchies in girls' material culture in a multicultural Toronto.


Corruption is pervasive, but we know little about its effects on individual lives. This paper examines whether living in a corrupt society has deleterious effects on health. Using individual-level data from 28 post-communist countries, we demonstrate that bribing for public services worsens self-assessed health. Unlike other studies, we account for endogeneity of bribery and show that bribing for any type of public service, not just for health services, has an adverse impact. We also find that bribery lowers the quality of services received. Moreover, there are potentially high indirect costs of bribery since, as we show, it comes at the expense of cutting food consumption. These findings suggest that corruption is a potentially important source behind the poor health outcomes in many developing countries. JEL classification: I15; K42; D73; H11.


" About the Book

The term Facilities Management has become global but fraught with confusion as to what the term signifies. For some, notably in the USA, Facilities Management remains a discipline of human ecology. Elsewhere the term has become conflated with an alternative meaning: providing or outsourcing the provision of various services essential to the operation of particular buildings. This volume redresses that imbalance to remind Facilities Management of its roots, presenting evidence of Facilities Management success stories that engage the wider objectives of the organizations they serve, and engaging students, scholars and critical practitioners of general management with an appreciation of the power and influence of physical space and its place in the theory and practice of organizations.

This book includes management perspectives from outside the field to ensure that the issues raised are seen in an organizational and management context, informing debate within the Facilities Management fraternity. It draws on human ecology and the perspective of the firm as, itself, an intra-organizational ecology of social constructs. The ecology of a firm is not restricted to the firm's boundaries. It extends to wider relationships between the firm and its stakeholders including, in an age of outsourced building services, the Facilities Management supply chain. This volume offers arguments and evidence that managing such constructs is a key role for Facilities Management and an important participant in the provision of truly usable spaces. "-- Publisher website


We describe a hybrid meta-heuristic algorithm for combinatorial optimization problems with a specific reference to the travelling salesman problem (TSP). The method is a combination of a genetic algorithm (GA) and greedy randomized adaptive search procedure (GRASP). A new adaptive fuzzy a greedy search operator is developed for this hybrid method. Computational experiments using a wide range of standard benchmark problems indicate that the proposed hybrid meta-heuristic approach is very efficient.


How do visual luminance, shape, motion, and depth bind together in the brain to represent the coherent percept of a 3-D object within hundreds of milliseconds (msec)? We provide evidence from simultaneous magnetoencephalographic (MEG) and electroencephalographic (EEG) data that perception of 3-D objects defined by luminance or motion elicits sequential activity in human visual cortices within 500 msec. Following activation of the primary visual cortex around 100 msec, 3-D objects elicited sequential activity with only little overlap (dynamic 3-D shapes: MT-LO-Temp; stationary 3-D shapes: LO-Temp). A delay of 80 msec, both in MEG/EEG responses and in reaction times (RTs), was found when additional motion information was processed. We also found significant positive correlations between RT, and MEG and EEG responses in the right temporal location. After about 400 msec, long-lasting activity was observed in the parietal cortex and concurrently in previously activated regions. Novel time-frequency analyses indicate that the activity in the lateral occipital (LO) complex is associated with an increase of induced power in the gamma band, a hallmark of binding. The close correspondence of an induced gamma response with concurrent sources located in the LO in both experimental conditions at different points in time (200 msec for luminance and 300 msec for dynamic cues) strongly suggests that the LO is the key region for the assembly of object features. The assembly is fed forward to achieve coherent perception of a 3-D object within 500 msec.


Nanoparticulate drug delivery systems have an advanced and modern approach over the traditional delivery system. This systematic review on nanoparticulate drug delivery containing lipid and focus on preparation, challenges and advancement of delivery of the drug via topical and transdermal route. The first era of lipid nanoparticles were SLN and have more sustaining action as well as suitable for the higher permeation of drug. The NLC is the second generation lipid nanoparticles developed to overcome the limitation associated with SLN i.e low drug loading capacity, polymorphism of solid lipid. Production of solid lipid nanoparticles and nanostructured lipid carriers are produced by a variety of technologies which explored in the current review. Lipid nanoparticle has various properties for topical use of cosmetics and other pharmaceutical formulation, i.e. controlled and sustained release of medicaments, Physical and chemical stability of active pharmaceutical ingredients, targeted release, film formation and enhancing penetration with the enhancement of skin hydration. Skin hydration plays a major role in the topical delivery of API as it hydrates the skin which leads to opening of pores of skin. Due to occlusion nature of lipid nanoparticles trans epidermal water loss decline which softening the skin. The use of biodegradable grade lipid makes it more suitable because it does not cause any toxicity as created by polymeric nanoformulations. Furthermore, a discussion about the benefit/risk ratio of a nanoparticulate system containing lipids also explored in this paper. The SLN and NLC are a "nanosafe" carrier for the delivery of active pharmaceutical via topical route.


We present the results of the spectral analysis of intense ultrashort laser pulses propagating through nonlinear transparent media. We discuss the spectral features characteristic of the self-phase-modulation process, which is the most prominent process during nonguided propagation in the weakly nonlinear regime. We describe an application of automatic pulse phase retrieval based on the Kerr-like nonlinearity.


The missions TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X jointly share the same space segment consisting of two almost identical satellites orbiting in close formation and are operated using a common ground segment, that was originally developed for TerraSAR-X and that has been extended for the TanDEM-X mission. A key issue in operating both missions jointly is the different acquisition scenarios: whereas TerraSAR-X requests are typically single scenes for individual scientific and commercial customers, the global DEM requires a global mapping strategy.

Thus the TerraSAR-X mission goal is retained and served by both satellites, whose performance is almost identical. Due to the excellent calibration the final image products are not distinguishable from the user's point of view. The TerraSAR-X mission provides the 'classic' product portfolio containing Stripmap, ScanSAR and Spotlight mode images in single and dual polarization. The portfolio will be upgraded by two new products, which are currently under development: a Wide-ScanSAR product with an extended swath width of ca. 200 km and a Staring Spotlight product with a geometric resolution of 1 m and considerably improved radiometric resolution.

Meanwhile TerraSAR-X, launched in June 15, 2007, has reached its nominal lifetime end of 2012. Yet the current status of the spacecraft resources allow at least two years extra lifetime until end of 2014, providing four years of joint operation with its twin satellite in order to accomplish the TanDEM-X mission.

TanDEM-X (TerraSAR-X add-on for Digital Elevation Measurement) opens a new era in spaceborne radar remote sensing. A single-pass SAR interferometer with adjustable baselines in across- and in along-track directions is formed by adding a second, almost identical spacecraft to TerraSAR-X and flying the two satellites in a closely controlled formation. With typical across-track baselines of 200 m – 400 m a global Digital Elevation Model (DEM) with 2 m relative height accuracy at a 12 m posting will be generated.

After the launch of the TanDEM-X satellite in June 2010 the monostatic commissioning phase was dedicated to calibration and performance verification and revealed calibration accuracies and overall performance of the TanDEM-X SAR system and its products as good as for TerraSAR-X. After comprehensive testing of the various safety measures close formation was achieved mid October 2010 and the operations at typical distances between 150 and 500 m is running remarkably smooth and stable since then.

The subsequent bistatic commissioning phase of the TanDEM-X mission concentrated on checking out the complete bistatic chains from acquisition planning to bistatic and interferometric processing and generation of so-called raw DEMs. Global DEM acquisitions have started in December 2010 and the first global coverage (except Antarctica) was completed in January 2012. Parallel to the first month of operational data acquisition the team concentrated its efforts on the calibration of the bistatic interferometer. Correction of differential delays between TSX and TDX was necessary to facilitate the utilization of radargrammetry for resolving the 2π-ambiguity band. A comprehensive monitoring system has been established to evaluate the performance of each individual data take and provide feedback to the TanDEM-X acquisition planning for additional acquisitions. In the meantime phase, delay and baseline calibration have reached such an accuracy level, that more than 90% of all so-called Raw DEMs are within ±10 m of DEM derived from SRTM/ICESat data already before the final calibration step using ICESat data as reference heights.

Efforts currently concentrate on making the final calibration and mosaicking chain fully operational. Based on the first global acquisition so-called intermediate DEMs are being produced for larger regions. The second global coverage will be completed in the first quarter of 2013. Planning for the third or even fourth acquisitions over difficult terrain is in preparation. This period will also include Antarctica during local winter conditions in summer 2013. It is anticipated to finalise data acquisitions by the end of 2013. First parts of the global TanDEM-X DEM will become available in early 2014.

After the standard DEM acquisitions, DEMs of even higher accuracy will be produced for selected areas. In addition, interferometric acquisitions with even larger baselines can be adjusted for the exploration and demonstration of scientific experiments.


Background: Indian-Asian multiple sclerosis behaves somewhat differently from Western disease. It is not known if the response to β-interferon is also different. Aim: To demonstrate the decrease in relapses with β-interferon in Indian patients with multiple sclerosis. Patients and Methods: Patients with relapsing–remitting or secondary progressive multiple sclerosis with at least two relapses were started on β-interferon. Results: Sixteen patients were followed up for a period of 1–3 years. Fifteen had relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis (MS). The mean number of relapses in these patients before interferons were started was 3.4. The mean yearly relapse rate was 1.3. The mean Kurtzke Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) at the start of β-interferon therapy in relapsing–remitting MS was 1.7. Ten of these patients were on Avonex® (interferon β1a) and six (including the patient with secondary progressive MS) were on Betaferon® (interferon β1b). On follow-up, three patients (two on Avonex® and one on Betaferon® ) had relapses. The respective β-interferon being received by these patients was continued, with no further relapses. The remaining patients had no relapse or clinical or MRI progression after starting the drug. The side effect profile of the drug in these patients was favorable; although nearly all developed fever on the first day of the injection, only 50% of the patients continued to have fever after 3 months. Two patients developed psychiatric symptoms, requiring discontinuation of the drug. Conclusion: Our prospective follow-up study shows that β-interferons are safe and effective in Indian patients with relapsing–remitting or secondary progressive MS.


In this bold and original study, Jeff Kochan constructively combines the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) with Martin Heidegger's early existential conception of science. Kochan shows convincingly that these apparently quite different approaches to science are, in fact, largely compatible, even mutually reinforcing. By combining Heidegger with SSK, Kochan argues, we can explicate, elaborate, and empirically ground Heidegger's philosophy of science in a way that makes it more accessible and useful for social scientists and historians of science. Likewise, incorporating Heideggerian phenomenology into SSK renders SKK a more robust and attractive methodology for use by scholars in the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). Kochan's ground-breaking reinterpretation of Heidegger also enables STS scholars to sustain a principled analytical focus on scientific subjectivity, without running afoul of the orthodox subject-object distinction they often reject. Science as Social Existence is the first book of its kind, unfurling its argument through a range of topics relevant to contemporary STS research. These include the epistemology and metaphysics of scientific practice, as well as the methods of explanation appropriate to social scientific and historical studies of science. Science as Social Existence puts concentrated emphasis on the compatibility of Heidegger's existential conception of science with the historical sociology of scientific knowledge, pursuing this combination at both macro- and micro-historical levels. Beautifully written and accessible, Science as Social Existence puts new and powerful tools into the hands of sociologists and historians of science, cultural theorists of science, Heidegger scholars, and pluralist philosophers of science.


BACKGROUND
Local anesthetic administered directly to the operative site by slow infusion has become a popular supplementary pain management strategy following rotator cuff surgery, but it is expensive and there is little conclusive evidence that it provides additional benefits. The purpose of this study was to determine the effectiveness and safety of ropivacaine infusion following arthroscopic or mini-incision rotator cuff surgery.

METHODS
We performed a randomized, participant and outcome assessor-blinded, placebo-controlled trial. Participants, stratified by operative procedure (either arthroscopic decompression or rotator cuff repair), were given preemptive 1% ropivacaine (20 mL) and intraoperative intravenous parecoxib (40 mg) and were randomly assigned to 0.75% ropivacaine or placebo by elastomeric pump at 5 mL/hr. Pain at rest was reported on a verbal analogue scale at fifteen, thirty, and sixty minutes and at two, four, eight, twelve, eighteen, and twenty-four hours. The use of alternative analgesia, delay in discharge, and adverse events, including development of stiff painful shoulder, infection, and leakage, were also assessed.

RESULTS
Eighty-eight participants received arthroscopic decompression (forty-three in the placebo arm and forty-five in the ropivacaine arm) and seventy received rotator cuff repair (thirty-five participants in each treatment arm). Compared with placebo, ropivacaine infusion resulted in a significant but clinically unimportant improvement in average pain in the first twelve hours following both procedures (the average pain score was 1.62 and 2.16 for the ropivacaine and placebo arms, respectively, in the arthroscopic decompression group and 2.12 and 2.82 in the rotator cuff repair group, with a pooled difference between groups of 0.61; 95% confidence interval, 0.22 to 1.01; p = 0.003). When adjusted for opioid use, the pooled difference between groups was 0.49 (95% confidence interval, 0.12 to 0.86; p = 0.009). No difference was detected between groups with regard to the maximum pain in the first twelve hours or the average or maximum pain in the second twelve hours, with or without adjustment for opioid use, and no difference was found between groups with regard to the amount of oral analgesia used. No difference was detected between groups with regard to the prevalence of nausea and vomiting, catheter leakage, delayed discharge, or stiff painful shoulder, and no participant in either group had a postoperative infection develop.

CONCLUSIONS
We found minimal evidence to support the use of ropivacaine infusion for improving outcomes following rotator cuff surgery in the setting of preemptive ropivacaine and intraoperative parecoxib.


Translating Catechisms, Translating Cultures explores the dimensions of early modern transcultural Christianities, the leeway of religious negotiation in and outside of Europe by comparing catechisms and their translations in the context of several Jesuit missions (including China, India, Japan, Ethiopia, Northern America and England).


Embodied virtual reality faithfully renders users' movements onto an avatar in a virtual 3D environment, supporting nuanced nonverbal behavior alongside verbal communication. To investigate communication behavior within this medium, we had 30 dyads complete two tasks using a shared visual workspace: negotiating an apartment layout and placing model furniture on an apartment floor plan. Dyads completed both tasks under three different conditions: face-to-face, embodied VR with visible full-body avatars, and no embodiment VR, where the participants shared a virtual space, but had no visible avatars. Both subjective measures of users' experiences and detailed annotations of verbal and nonverbal behavior are used to understand how the media impact communication behavior. Embodied VR provides a high level of social presence with conversation patterns that are very similar to face-to-face interaction. In contrast, providing only the shared environment was generally found to be lonely and appears to lead to degraded communication.


A significant challenge for U.S. transportation agencies is managing the transportation asset base while funding expansions of the network to meet increasing demands. The Federal Highway Administration, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, and National Cooperative Highway Research Program sponsored a scanning study of asset management experience, techniques, and processes in Australia, Canada, England, and New Zealand. In its study, the U.S. team observed that asset management as an organizational culture and decisionmaking process is critical to transportation programs facing significant capital renewal and preservation needs and that successful programs require top-level commitment. The team also learned that agencies in the countries studied used asset management practices to obtain funding for transportation infrastructure. The team's recommendations for possible implementation in the United States include using asset management principles to assess and invest in the Interstate System, creating a National Asset Management Steering Committee to distribute information and provide training, developing a Web-based asset-management toolbox, and conducting research on asset management topics.


Introduction Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a chronic intestinal disorder, often leading to an impaired quality of life in affected patients. The importance of environmental factors in the pathogenesis of IBD, including their disease-modifying potential, is increasingly recognised. Hypoxia seems to be an important driver of inflammation, as has been reported by our group and others. The aim of the study is to evaluate if hypoxia can alter disease activity of IBD measured by Harvey-Bradshaw Activity Index in Crohn's disease (increase to ≥5 points) and the partial Mayo Score for ulcerative colitis (increase to ≥2 points). To test the effects of hypoxia under standardised conditions, we designed a prospective and controlled investigation in healthy controls and patients with IBD in stable remission. Methods and analysis This is a prospective, controlled and observational study. Participants undergo a 3-hour exposure to hypoxic conditions simulating an altitude of 4000 metres above sea level (m.a.s.l.) in a hypobaric pressure chamber. Clinical parameters, as well as blood and stool samples and biopsies from the sigmoid colon are collected at subsequent time points. Ethics and dissemination The study protocol was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Kanton Zurich (reference KEK-ZH-number 2013-0284). The results will be published in a peer-reviewed journal and shared with the worldwide medical community. Trials registration number NCT02849821; Pre-results.


This short essay responds to Alexandra Natapoff's article Misdemeanors, which shines a much-needed spotlight on the mass production of criminal justice and injustice in millions of low-level cases. The prime culprit in Natapoff's story is the hidden, informal discretion that police officers enjoy to arrest, charge, and effect convictions, abetted by prosecutors' and judges' abdication and defense counsel's absence or impotence. The roots of the problem she identifies, I argue, go all the way down to the system's professionalization and mechanization. Given the magnitude of the problem, Natapoff's solutions are surprisingly half-hearted, masking the deeper structural problems that demand wholesale reforms. Systemic change, I argue, is a worthwhile ideal even though it is unlikely to happen any time soon.


We describe a method for differential phase measurement of Faraday rotation from multiple depth locations simultaneously. A polarization-maintaining fiber-based spectral-domain interferometer that utilizes a low-coherent light source and a single camera is developed. Light decorrelated by the orthogonal channels of the fiber is launched on a sample as two oppositely polarized circular states. These states reflect from sample surfaces and interfere with the corresponding states of the reference arm. A custom spectrometer, which is designed to simplify camera alignment, separates the orthogonal channels and records the interference-related oscillations on both spectra. Inverse Fourier transform of the spectral oscillations in k-space yields complex depth profiles, whose amplitudes and phase difference are related to reflectivity and Faraday rotation within the sample, respectively. Information along a full depth profile is produced at the camera speed without performing an axial scan for a multisurface sample. System sensitivity for the Faraday rotation measurement is 0.86 min of arc. Verdet constants of clear liquids and turbid media are measured at 687 nm.


The aim of the current study is to analyze motivational drivers important for the competitive and for the cooperative personality types which may have relevant implications for HR management. Nowadays, corporations in their search for efficiency should enhance their talent management and focus on the most relevant motivational factors. Today, another significant aspect of a dynamic corporation refers to the need for people who are both greatly cooperative and reactive to competitive forces within the corporation. Our analysis is based on a data collected via online questionnaire survey. The sample (N = 629) consists of Czech economically active population. Personality types (competitive and cooperative) are derived from the Neo (big five) personality inventory methodology. The study includes nine motivational factors such as financial reward, appreciation of work performance, stability of a job, potential for personal development, etc. Analytical methods used in the study include factor analysis, correlation analysis, and a three-dimensional graphical analysis - for better presentation of results and practical implications. The results correspond to the empirical expectations and at the same time bring an interesting insight which improves understanding of the psychological functioning of a personality as well as ways of efficient motivation of personnel in the corporate environment.


Gender equality has long been an issue for gender and language research from as early as the 1970s to the contemporary era in the 2010s, and gender stereotyping in textbooks is an issue in many different countries (Davis, 1995; see also Blumberg, 2007, 2008). While secondary English Language textbooks published in Hong Kong have already been investigated by Lee and Collins (2008), primary English Language textbooks have rarely been investigated (but see Au, 1992; Au, 2004). Therefore, the present study investigates gender representation in two widely-used primary English Language textbook series, Step Up and Primary Longman Express, by examining two subgenres that can be widely found in all language textbooks: reading passages and dialogues, and visuals. In other words, textual (lexis and grammar), discourse and visual representations of gender are analysed. A combination of different methods is used in this study. First, to answer the research question of how gender is represented in the reading passages in the Step Up and Primary Longman Express series in terms of lexis and grammar (Research Question A), content, linguistic and discourse analyses are conducted. Then, pragmatics and conversation analysis are used to analyse how the discourse of male and female speakers is represented in the dialogues in the two textbook series (Research Question B). Finally, to analyse the representation of gender in the visuals in the two textbook series (Research Question C), the method of visual analysis is used. To make sure that the quantitative results obtained are significant, the chi-square test is also used and log-likelihood values are calculated. The results of this study are encouraging in that males and females are represented similarly and fairly, and show an improvement over previous textbook studies in gender representation. In textual representation of gender, at the lexical level, though males were represented more often than females in terms of having a higher frequency of occurrence of node words, nomination, and pronouns when counted as 'tokens' in the two series, both males and females were portrayed as having jobs outside home and engaging in household chores (even if only playing a supportive role for males). At the formal grammatical level, the 'generic' use of masculine pronouns to refer to human beings in general could not be found in the two textbook series either. As regards gender representation in dialogues, the results vary between the two textbook series and across different dialogue subgenres. Male/female invisibility and domination in dialogues do not exist, and there are no instances of gender stereotyping in the analysed dialogues of the two series. Finally, in visual representation of gender, though males were represented more than females in the illustrations in the two textbook series, the phenomenon of gender stereotyping in terms of occupations and activities engaged in the illustrations in the selected books of either textbook series is not prominent.


This investigation of the potential savings to the State of North Dakota because of reduced office space and labor costs and alternatively, the potential benefits to rural communities of increasing employment by adding some state agency jobs was stimulated by Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 4006, which directed the Legislative Council to study state agency office space needs to determine the feasibility and desirability of transferring state agencies or state employees to rural areas. The objective of this analysis was two-fold; (1) determine the cost difference of operating offices in Bismarck versus rural communities and (2) determine the local/regional economic impacts of the potential jobs. The results indicated that development of satellite data processing offices may be a way for the State of North Dakota to save resources by decreasing operating expenses for wages and office rent. The increase in telecommunication costs would not outweigh the benefits. Furthermore, the metro areas of North Dakota do not have an excess capacity in local services (e.g., schools, city services) which means the metro areas are faced with additional investments in public infrastructure that many rural communities would not be faced with. The economic benefits to rural areas could be substantial; a satellite office with 5 employees in Bowman, North Dakota, would have the same relative impact as a new employer with 209 jobs in Bismarck.


A new method of clear-air turbulence (CAT) forecasting based on the Lighthill–Ford theory of spontaneous imbalance and emission of inertia–gravity waves has been derived and applied on episodic and seasonal time scales. A scale analysis of this shallow-water theory for midlatitude synoptic-scale flows identifies advection of relative vorticity as the leading-order source term. Examination of leading- and second-order terms elucidates previous, more empirically inspired CAT forecast diagnostics. Application of the Lighthill–Ford theory to the Upper Mississippi and Ohio Valleys CAT outbreak of 9 March 2006 results in good agreement with pilot reports of turbulence. Application of Lighthill–Ford theory to CAT forecasting for the 3 November 2005–26 March 2006 period using 1-h forecasts of the Rapid Update Cycle (RUC) 2 1500 UTC model run leads to superior forecasts compared to the current operational version of the Graphical Turbulence Guidance (GTG1) algorithm, the most skillful operational CAT forecasting method in existence. The results suggest that major improvements in CAT forecasting could result if the methods presented herein become operational.


Background: Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is although one of the most effective treatments in psychiatry, and many a times patients refuse the same. Although, there is information about the knowledge about and attitude towards ECT among people who receive the same, little is known about these among those who refuse ECT. Aim: This study attempted to assess and compare the knowledge about and attitude toward ECT in patients with severe mental illness who accepted and refused ECT. Methodology: 68 patients divided into 3 groups (readily accepted; accepted, with initial reluctance; refused) based on the readiness for ECT were evaluated using ECT knowledge and attitude questionnaire. The higher proportion of those who refused had poor knowledge about the frequency of ECT sessions, investigations required before ECT and believed that ECT can be given against patient and family members' consent. Higher proportion of those who initially refused but later agreed believed that ECT can be given without the patient or family members'consent and it is given only to those patients who are unlikely to improve when compared to those who agreed ECT. Compared to those who agreed spontaneously, higher proportion of the participants in other two groups believed that ECT is not useful in the treatment of psychiatric disorders and they lacked knowledge about headache being a side effect of ECT. In terms of attitude toward ECT, higher proportion of those who refused ECT (n = 24; 89%) had a negative attitude in terms of not recommending the same for their relatives and were reluctant to receive ECT themselves. Conclusions: The results highlight that negative perception toward ECT in patients who refuse to receive ECT. Thus, it is essential to convey adequate information about ECT to enhance their understanding and acceptance.


Cryptic and pseudo-cryptic species are common amongst marine phytoplankton, and may cause misleading inferences of ecological and physiological data of plankton community studies. Deciphering the diversity and distribution of species of the benthic dinoflagellate Ostreopsis is one example, as there are many morphologically indistinct clades that differ greatly genetically and toxicologically from one another. In this study, a new species, Ostreopsis rhodesae from the southern Great Barrier Reef was described. While it initially appeared to be highly similar to several other Ostreopsis species, we found O. rhodesae can be distinguished based on the relative size of the second apical plate (20), which is twice as long as the APC plate, and separates the third apical (30) from the third precingular (30 0) plate. Phylogenetic trees based on the SSU, ITS/5.8S and D1-D2 and D8-D10 regions of the LSU rRNA were well supported, and showed a clear difference to other Ostreopsis clades. Compensatory base changes (CBCs) were identified in helices of the ITS2 between O. rhodesae and O. cf. ovata and O. cf. siamensis, which were also present in the same habitat. Fish gill cell lines were toxic to O. rhodesae, cell extracts but no palytoxinlike analogues were found in them. The findings highlight a case of pseudo-cryptic speciation, found in sympatry with closely related and morphologically similar species, but biologically and functionally distinct. ã 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.


The IEEE is an international body, and its standards are likewise international in scope. However, in many areas such as EDA, the major locus of development work is in the US, and more specifically, in Silicon Valley. It is very easy to take the path of least resistance and hold standards meetings in San Jose, California, where attendance is generally good because many participants live within a few miles. Unfortunately, this path can lead to a myopic view of user needs and frustrate interested people from other regions. The Design Automation Standards Committee (DASC; http://www.dasc.org) of the IEEE Computer Society has a long history of rotating its meetings to other areas, including Europe and Asia, to avoid this problem.


"Sesame Street" is the longest-running-and arguably most beloved- children's television program ever created. Today, it reaches some six million preschoolers weekly in the United States and countless others in 140 countries around the world. "Street Gang" is the compelling, comical, and inspiring story of a media masterpiece and pop- culture landmark. Television reporter and columnist Michael Davis - with the complete participation of Joan Ganz Cooney, one of the show's founders-unveils the idealistic personalities, decades of social and cultural change, stories of compassion and personal sacrifice, and miraculous efforts of writers, producers, directors, and puppeteers that together transformed an empty soundstage into the most recognisable block of real estate in television history.


Introduction: This study aimed to investigate the decisional balance for exercise and its relationship with stages of change in exercise behavior among employees in city of Gorgan, north of Iran. Material and Methods: This crosssectional study was performed on 991 employees selected through random cluster sampling. Data were collected using the stages of change and decisional balance questionnaires. Results: a unit increase in the mean score of barriers decreased the possibility of moving to later stages by 49%, while a unit increase in the mean score of exercise benefits increased the possibility by 61%. There was a significant relationship between gender and stages of change (P<0.001) in a way that more female employees were in the early stages of exercise compared with males. Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that the disadvantages of exercise decrease through while subjects move toward later stages. Majority of the participant, specifically female employees, are in the early stages of exercise and are expected to have a sedentary lifestyle.


Pit latrines are an important form of decentralized wastewater management, providing hygienic and low-cost sanitation for approximately one-quarter of the global population. Latrines are also major sources of the greenhouse gas methane (CH4) from the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter in pits. In this study, we develop a spatially explicit approach to account for local hydrological control over the anaerobic condition of latrines and use this analysis to derive a set of country-specific emissions factors and to estimate global pit latrine CH4 emissions. Between 2000 and 2015 we project global emissions to fall from 5.2 to 3.8 Tg y(-1), or from ∼ 2% to ∼ 1% of global anthropogenic CH4 emissions, due largely to urbanization in China. Two and a half billion people still lack improved sanitation services, however, and progress toward universal access to improved sanitation will likely drive future growth in pit latrine emissions. We discuss modeling results in the context of sustainable water, sanitation, and hygiene development and consider appropriate technologies to ensure hygienic sanitation while limiting CH4 emissions. We show that low-CH4 on-site alternatives like composting toilets may be price competitive with other CH4 mitigation measures in organic waste sectors, with marginal abatement costs ranging from 57 to 944 $/ton carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2e) in Africa and 46 to 97 $/ton CO2e in Asia.


The influence of water vapor on bentonites or smectites is of interest in many different fields of applied mineralogy such as nuclear-waste sealing or casting in the foundry industry. The water vapor affects the smectite surface and perhaps its structure probably leading to mostly unfavorable changes in its properties. In this first part of the present study, the influence of hot water vapor (200°C) on the physicochemical and mineralogical properties of smectite-group minerals was studied. After the steam treatment, turbidity measurements, methylene-blue sorption, water adsorption, and cation exchange capacity (CEC) were measured on both untreated and treated samples. Mineralogical changes were monitored by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) was used to measure O, Al, and Si. Only a few parameters showed differences between the untreated and vapor-treated samples. Sedimentation volumes (SV) decreased following the treatment. As shown by XRD and XPS, the crystalline structure of smectite remained unaffected by the steam treatment. Equivalent sphere diameters (ESD) were not affected systematically by the steam treatment. Differences in CEC values between untreated and treated samples were observed, but only for smectites with monovalent interlayer cations. From the variety of different measurements the conclusion of the present study was that steam treatment changes the charge properties at or near the smectite particle surface.


Objectives There remains concern regarding the use of survey data to assess aspects of healthcare quality. The relationship between patient experience and adverse events as documented by patient safety indicators (PSIs) is a timely research topic. The objectives were to document the association of PSIs and patient experience scores, and to determine risk-adjusted odds of high experience scores versus PSI presence. Setting and participants From April 2011 to March 2014, 25 098 patients completed a telephone survey following discharge from 93 inpatient hospitals in Alberta, Canada. Research design A modified version of the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) instrument was used. Surveys were linked to inpatient records and PSI presence was documented using a validated algorithm. Measures Three questions about overall hospital, physician and nurse ratings were scored on an 11-point Likert scale from 0 (worst) to 10 (best). Experience was classified as high (9 or 10) versus low (0–8). Demographic/clinical differences between respondents with/without a PSI were assessed. Logistic regression examined the relationship between factors including PSI and experience ratings. Results Overall, physician and nurse care was rated high by 61.9%, 73.7% and 66.2% of respondents. 1085 patients (4.3%) had a documented PSI. Most frequent PSIs were haemorrhagic events (n=502; 2.0% of sample), events relating to obstetrics (n=373; 1.5%) and surgical-related events (n=248; 1.0%). Risk-adjusted models showed patients with PSIs had decreased odds of having high overall (OR=0.86; 95% CI 0.75 to 0.97), physician (OR=0.76; 95% CI 0.66 to 0.87) and nurse (OR=0.83; 95% CI 0.73 to 0.94) ratings. Conclusions There is clear evidence that inpatient experience ratings are associated with PSIs, one element of quality of care. Future research, examining individual PSIs and patient experience questions, is warranted, as this may inform targeted quality improvement initiatives.


This retrospective analysis of 15 dogs with postcontrast ring enhancing brain lesions, each detected by a single Computed Tomography [CT] examination, searched for any association between their CT appearance and the pathologic diagnosis. In a subgroup of these dogs [n = 7] necropsied within 2 days of the last CT scan, we evaluated whether there was any anatomic correlation between the ring zone and the histopathologic features of the lesions. Our study consisted of eight dogs with primary brain tumors [3 meningiomas, 3 astrocytomas, 1 mixed glioma, 1 oligodendroglioma], 4 with metastatic brain tumors [2 fibrosarcomas, 1 mammary carcinoma, 1 melanoma] and 3 with non-neoplastic brain lesions [2 intraparenchymal hemorrhages, 1 pyogranulomatous meningoencephalitis]. The overall size and shape of the contrast enhancing CT lesions, as well as the thickness, surface texture and degree of enhancement of the ring were subjectively evaluated. No association was found between the CT lesion characteristics and the pathologic diagnosis. In the sub-group of dogs euthanatized within 2 days of the CT examination, distinct histologic features which anatomically correlated with the zone of ring enhancement were found in 3 of 7 lesions. The findings of this study are consistent with those of ring-enhancing lesions in people, and indicates that CT ring enhancement is a non-specific phenomenon which can occur in a variety of neoplastic and non-neoplastic lesions in the dog.


The history of 'community and mutual ownership' and the implications for policy and practice in this area. Policy-makers have identified that community and mutual ownership can make a significant contribution to the economy, welfare and society more generally. A historical analysis of social change can inform contemporary understanding, policy and practice. This study: adopts a broad definition of 'community and mutual' as a way of exploring the history of ownership; identifies five models: customary and common, community, co-operative and mutual, charitable, and municipal and state forms of ownership; argues that systematic and values-based approaches are needed to develop community and mutual ownership to respond to current social problems; notes that time is needed to develop democracy, membership and belonging, all factors that have been historically important to the success of community and mutual ownership.


Background: Physical activity is both a therapeutic intervention and an important outcome in people with rheumatic and musculoskeletal disease (RMDs). Subjective methods are prone to response bias and underestimate low-intensity activities, which are common in older adults. Activity monitors may provide an objective solution by measuring step-count, but limited previous research has identified reduced accuracy in people with RMDs. This study aimed to evaluate the concurrent validity of the ActiGraph with both standard and Low Frequency Extension (LFE) algorithms; Fitbit-Zip in both recommended positions; and explore which factors influence device error in people with polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR).

Methods: The ActiGraph (±LFE), Fitbit-Zip (waist) and Fitbit-Zip (shirt) were concurrently evaluated using a two-minute-walk-test (2MWT) and stairs test in people with PMR (>1 month glucocorticoid treatment). Participants walked at their normal pace and with any assistive devices required. A GAITRite instrumented walkway collected temporal and spatial gait parameters. Gold standard step-counts were derived from a mean of three manual counts taken from half speed video replays by two investigators. Bland-Altman plots describing the mean bias (95% confidence intervals (CI)) and 95% limits of agreement (LoA) were used to determine monitor accuracy. Spearman's rho described association of step-count differences with demographic, clinical, and gait parameters.

Results: Data was collected on 27 PMR patients (24 female; mean (SD) age 69.2 (8.8); BMI 28.3 (5.6) kg/m2; median (IQR) steroid dose 9.0 (5.0, 12.5) mg/day; Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) 0.63 (0.13, 1.25); FACIT-F 38 (33, 45)). The median (IQR) gold standard step-counts were; 2MWT 206 (197, 220); stairs 15 (15, 16). All monitors systematically underestimated 2MWT step-counts. The Fitbit-Zip (waist) achieved closest agreement to the gold standard step-count in the 2MWT (mean (95%CI) bias 10 (-3, 23), 95%LoA -55, 74). Conversely, the ActiGraph (LFE) performed best during the stairs test (mean (95%CI) bias 0 (-1, 1), 95%LoA -5, 5 followed closely by the Fitbit-Zip (waist) (mean (95%CI) bias 1 (-1, 3), 95%LoA -8, 10). The LoA were particularly influenced by 2 outliers: one participant had a severe level of impairment (HAQ=2.13), which affected all accelerometers during both tests. The second was a Fitbit-Zip (waist) measurement on the stairs test, which was out by an order of magnitude, possibly due to operator error. On all devices, step count difference correlated negatively with gait velocity (rho=-.37 to -.58) and stride length (rho=-.31 to -.72) and positively with HAQ scores (rho=.32 to .57) and duration of double-limb support phase (rho=.33 to .61).
Conclusion: Close agreement with the gold standard step-counts suggests the Fitbit-Zip (waist) is a reliable measure of physical activity in people with PMR receiving treatment. The ActiGraph however, cannot be recommended without activation of LFE filter. Device performance reduces in participants with higher levels of functional impairment.


With the development of high-efficiency and high-power Light-Emitting Diodes (LEDs), it has become possible to use LEDs in lighting and illumination. In last decades, developing a new method for improving lumen output and Angular Color Uniformity (ACU) is the main direction in LED technology. In this paper, an innovative approach for enhancing lighting performance (lumen output and angular color uniformity) of Multi-Chip White LED lamps (MCW-LEDs) was proposed and demonstrated by mixing the green Ce0.67Tb0.33MgAl11O19: Ce,Tb (CeTb) phosphor into their phosphor compounding. With varying CeTb concentration, ACU and lumen output with Conformal Phosphor Package (CPP) and In-cup Phosphor Package (IPP) are calculated, displayed and analyzed. The results show that the lumen output and the ACU of 7000 K and 8500 K MCW-LEDs increased remarkably in comparison with the older works. Using green CeTb is a prospective method for improving lighting performance of MCW-LEDs in future.


During vertebrate locomotion, spinal neurons act as oscillators when initiated by glutamate release from descending systems. Activation of NMDA receptors initiates Ca2+-mediated intrinsic membrane potential oscillations in central pattern generator (CPG) neurons. NMDA receptor-dependent intrinsic oscillations require Ca2+-dependent K+ (KCa2) channels for burst termination. However, the location of Ca2+ entry mediating KCa2 channel activation, and type of Ca2+ channel – which includes NMDA receptors and voltage-gated Ca2+ channels (VGCCs) – remains elusive. NMDA receptor-dependent Ca2+ entry necessitates presynaptic release of glutamate, implying a location at active synapses within dendrites, whereas VGCC-dependent Ca2+ entry is not similarly constrained. Where Ca2+ enters relative to KCa2 channels is crucial to information processing of synaptic inputs necessary to coordinate locomotion. We demonstrate that Ca2+ permeating NMDA receptors is the dominant source of Ca2+ during NMDA-dependent oscillations in lamprey spinal neurons. This Ca2+ entry is synaptically located, NMDA receptor-dependent, and sufficient to activate KCa2 channels at excitatory interneuron synapses onto other CPG neurons. Selective blockade of VGCCs reduces whole-cell Ca2+ entry but leaves membrane potential and Ca2+ oscillations unaffected. Furthermore, repetitive oscillations are prevented by fast, but not slow, Ca2+ chelation. Taken together, these results demonstrate that KCa2 channels are closely located to NMDA receptor-dependent Ca2+ entry. The close spatial relationship between NMDA receptors and KCa2 channels provides an intrinsic mechanism whereby synaptic excitation both excites and subsequently inhibits ventral horn neurons of the spinal motor system. This places the components necessary for oscillation generation, and hence locomotion, at glutamatergic synapses.


Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer related deaths in the developed nations. Early detection and removal of colorectal polyps via screening is the most effective way to reduce colorectal cancer (CRC) mortality. Computed Tomography Colonography (CTC) or Virtual Colonoscopy (VC) is a rapidly evolving non-invasive technique and the medical community view this medical procedure as an alternative to the standard colonoscopy for the detection of colonic polyps. In CTC the first step for automatic polyp detection for 3D visualization of the colon structure and automatic polyp detection addresses the segmentation of the colon lumen. The segmentation of colon lumen is far from a trivial task as in practice many datasets are collapsed due to incorrect patient preparation or blockages caused by residual water/materials left in the colon. In this thesis a robust multi-stage technique for automatic segmentation of the colon is proposed tha t maximally uses the anatomical model of a generic colon. In this regard, the colon is reconstructed using volume by length analysis, orientation, length, end points, geometrical position in the volumetric data, and gradient of the centreline of each candidate air region detected in the CT data. The proposed method was validated using a total of 151 standard dose (lOOmAs) and 13 low-dose (13mAs-40mAs) datasets and the collapsed colon surface detection was always higher than 95% with an average of 1.58% extra colonic surface inclusion.

The second major step of automated CTC attempts the identification of colorectal polyps. In this thesis a robust method for polyp detection based on surface curvature analysis has been developed and evaluated. The convexity of the segmented colon surface is sampled using the surface normal intersection, Hough transform, 3D histogram, Gaussian distribution, convexity constraint and 3D region growing. For each polyp candidate surface the morphological and statistical features are extracted and the candidate surface is classified as a polyp/fold structure using a Feature Normalized Nearest Neighbourhood classifier. The devised polyp detection scheme entails a low computational overhead (typically takes 3.60 minute per dataset) and shows 100% sensitivity for polyps larger than 10mm, 92% sensitivity for polyps in the range 5 to 10mm and 64.28% sensitivity for polyp smaller than 5mm. The developed technique returns in average 4.01 false positives per dataset.

The patient exposure to ionising radiation is the major concern in using CTC as a mass screening technique for colonic polyp detection. A reduction of the radiation dose will increase the level of noise during the acquisition process and as a result the quality of the CT d a ta is degraded. To fully investigate the effect of the low-dose radiation on the performance of automated polyp detection, a phantom has been developed and scanned using different radiation doses. The phantom polyps have realistic shapes (sessile, pedunculated, and flat) and sizes (3 to 20mm) and were designed to closely approximate the real polyps encountered in clinical CT data. Automatic polyp detection shows 100% sensitivity for polyps larger than 10mm and shows 95% sensitivity for polyps in the range 5 to 10mm. The developed method was applied to CT data acquired at radiation doses between 13 to 40mAs and the experimental results indicate th a t robust polyp detection can be obtained even at radiation doses as low as 13mAs.


Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms. It is the ultimate surface material that can divide space by its existence down to nano- or even sub-nanometer scale. Space in between two graphene sheets placed in parallel is essentially a slit channel confined by one-atom thick walls. Accordingly, stacking multiple graphene layers can achieve maximum efficiency in engendering multiple channels in a given amount of space. The research reported therein is devoted to understanding and exploring applications of the space-dependent ion transport across an array of cascading nanoslits enclosed by fuzzily confined graphene multilayers at sub-10 nm scale. This thesis is unfolded into three parts. In the first part, methods of engineering channel confinement at sub-10 nm scale is developed. The statistical channel dimension is defined by the interlayer spacing in between solvated graphene layers. By manipulating the supramolecular interactions among solvated graphene sheets, the interlayer spacing can be continuously adjusted from 0.6 to 16 nm. Based on this method of engineering interlayer spacing, in the second part, ion permeation across graphene multilayers is investigated. The circuitous geometry of the cascading nanoslits enclosed by graphene multilayers is numerically depicted which has a large length-to-height aspect ratio over 5×104. Ion transport behavior across these nanoslits is then systematically investigated. Sub-10 nm ion transport profile is experimentally revealed for the first time, showing regions of critical length scales below 2 nm where fast ion transport behaviors occur which deviate from that in bulk. The peak of non-degenerate ion transport decays in amplitude while shifts unexpectedly to larger length scales as an increase in ionic concentration. In the third part, efforts are directed towards translating these new findings in graphene-confined nanoionic flow into graphene-based technologies that mainly includes development of new characterization means for nanoporous structures and capacitive energy storage. Taking advantage of the enabling role of graphene multilayers, which is simultaneously being a unique nanofluidic platform as well as a model porous electrode, the research initiates researching nanofluidics using methodologies established in electrosorption science. Such effort not only leads to a dynamic electrosorption approach proposed as a viable characterization means for nanoporous carbon in solution phase, but also gives a semi-numerical reasoning that demonstrates the essential role of spatially efficient ion transport in achieving high density capacitive energy storage. In sum, the PhD research establishes a new multilayered graphene based nanofluidic platform that generates much needed experiment evidence for researching anomalous ion transport at sub-10 nm length scales. The work shows the great potential of multilayered graphene-based materials for high density capacitive energy storage. Most importantly, this work identifies the core characteristics with which a materials system should be endued for future applied nanofluidics, which extends the scope of current nanofluidics and applications. The thesis is concluded with personal perspectives on future directions and opportunities particularly in disciplines such as membrane technology, chromatography separation and nanofluidic energy harvesting the graphene-based nanofluidics could pursue.


Background: There is a paucity of literature evaluating the effect of cigarette smoking on outcomes in patients undergoing hip arthroscopy and labral reconstruction. Purpose: (1) To report minimum 2-year patient-reported outcome (PRO) scores for patients who smoke cigarettes and underwent primary hip arthroscopic labral reconstruction and (2) to compare these results with those of a propensity-matched control group of patients who have never smoked. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: Data were collected for all patients who underwent primary hip arthroscopy for labral reconstruction between January 2011 and January 2019. Patients were eligible for the study if they indicated that they smoked cigarettes within 1 month of surgery and had minimum 2-year postoperative outcome scores for the modified Harris Hip Score (mHHS), Nonarthritic Hip Score (NAHS), and the visual analog scale (VAS) for pain. The percentage of patients achieving the minimal clinically important difference (MCID) and patient-acceptable symptom state (PASS) was recorded. Rates of revision surgery were also documented. These patients were then propensity matched in a 1:3 ratio to patients who had never smoked (controls) for comparison. Results: A total of 20 patients (20 hips) were included with a mean follow-up of 39.9 ± 13.0 months and mean age of 41.4 ± 10.4 years. These patients demonstrated significant improvement from preoperatively to the minimum 2-year follow-up for mHHS, NAHS, and VAS (P < .05). They also achieved MCID for mHHS and VAS at acceptable rates, 70% for both. When outcomes were compared with those of 60 control patients (60 hips), patients who smoke demonstrated lower preoperative PRO scores but similar minimum 2-year postoperative PRO scores for mHHS and NAHS. Patients who smoke demonstrated lower rates of achieving PASS for mHHS (55% vs 75%) and NAHS (40% vs 61.7%) compared with controls; however, these findings were not statistically significant. Rates of secondary surgery were statistically significantly higher in the smoking group compared with controls (25% vs 5%; P = .031). Survivorship for the smoking patients was 80% and 98.3% for the control group. At the two-year mark survivorship was 90% for the smoking group and 100% for the control group (P = .06) Conclusion: While smokers can still derive significant improvement from hip arthroscopy, their ultimate functional outcome and rate of secondary surgeries are inferior to those of nonsmokers. As smoking is a significant and modifiable risk factor, we should continue to counsel smokers on smoking cessation prior to and after surgery


Technological innovation depends on knowledge developed by scientific research. The number of citations made in patents to the scientific literature has been suggested as an indicator of this process of transfer of knowledge from science to technology. We provide an intersectoral insight into this indicator, by breaking down patent citations into a sector-to-sector matrix of knowledge flows. We then propose a method to analyze this matrix and construct various indicators of science intensity of sectors, and the pervasiveness of knowledge flows. Our results indicate that the traditional measure of the number of citations to science literature per patent captures important aspects of intersectoral knowledge flows, but that other aspects are not captured. In particular, we show that high science intensity implies that sectors are net suppliers of knowledge in the economic sector, but that science intensity does not say much about pervasiveness of either knowledge use or knowledge supply by sectors. We argue that these results are related to the specific and specialized nature of knowledge.


In various biological systems and small scale technological applications particles transiently bind to a cylindrical surface. Upon unbinding the particles diffuse in the vicinal bulk before rebinding to the surface. Such bulk-mediated excursions give rise to an effective surface translation, for which we here derive and discuss the dynamic equations, including additional surface diffusion. We discuss the time evolution of the number of surface-bound particles, the effective surface mean squared displacement, and the surface propagator. In particular, we observe sub- and superdiffusive regimes. A plateau of the surface mean-squared displacement reflects a stalling of the surface diffusion at longer times. Finally, the corresponding first passage problem for the cylindrical geometry is analysed.


ABSTRACT
 The parasitoid fly Ormia ochracea uses the calling song of its host Gryllus spp. to locate an area inhabited by potential hosts. Once a calling male has been located, O. ochracea deposits live larvae on the host, and on substrates surrounding the host to enable the larvae to attach to and enter individuals in the vicinity of the calling male. In Texas, where O. ochracea parasitizes the Texas field cricket Gryllus texensis, we observed juvenile crickets in the mating aggregations that form around calling males. Juvenile G. texensis crickets are, therefore, potentially susceptible to parasitism by O. ochracea. Here we investigated whether laboratory reared juvenile field crickets could successfully host O. ochracea larvae. We found that juvenile crickets were appropriate hosts for O. ochracea.


The present paper consists of the confirmation of previous works where the great variety of the acoustic emission (AE) characteristics of different metals have been found. Based on the experiments conducted for the St90P A steel, possibilities of the fatigue cracks initiation detection by use of the AE method are discussed herein. Relations between the fatigue crack length and AE count rate or count sum have been determined and the possibilities of the application of AE in fracture toughness estimation as well as in critical strcss intensity factor K1c calculations have been prcsented. It has been stated that creation of the fatigue cracks in steel can be detected much earlier by use of the AE method than it was possible by use of the classical optical method. AE method also makes the estimation of the propagating crack length easier as well as it can make the estimation of the fracture toughness more accurate.


Background and Aim: Occupational stress in nursing profession can result in poor nursing care and health problems. Bornout is the other problem in nursing practice that could result in absenteeism, low energy and low nursing care efficiency. In the other hand, high stress can result in mental disorders like depression. This study was carried out to determine levels of occupational stress, burnout and general health in critical nurses of Tabriz teaching hospitals. Materials and Method: This was a fragment of a larger cross-sectional study in which 63 nurses, working in critical care units of Tabriz teaching hospitals, were selected. Data were gathered by Occupational stress questionaire, Maslach Burnout Inventory and General Health Questionaire. Data were analyzed using Chi-square test and Pearson correlation coefficient. Results: The findings indicated that total levels of occupational stress in majority of nurses (49.2%) was high. Regarding burnout, 44.4% of nurses had high levels of burnout in emotional exhaustation aspect and 46.0% of nurses had high levels of burnout in personal accomplishment aspect. The majority of nurses (42.4%) reported high levels of anexeity. There was a statistically significant relationship of emotional exhaustation with occupational stress (P(cid:6)0.05) and mental helth was (P(cid:6)0.05). Conclusion: Occupational stress and burnout may have undesired influences on nursing function and mental health. Stratetegies decreasing stress and burnout can promote nursing mental health and quality of care.


From the cloning of Dolly the sheep a decade ago to more recent advances in embryonic stem cell research, new genetic technologies have often spurred polemical, ill-informed debates. Perhaps nowhere is this more evident than in the field of reproductive genetics, where difficult bioethical issues are distilled into sound bites and far-fetched claims for easy public consumption. The underlying complexities of reprogenetic research and practice are often drowned out by the noise. In this thoughtful and informed collection, Lori P. Knowles and Gregory E. Kaebnick bring together bioethicists from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom to examine the ethical and policy quandaries created by new genetic technologies. Featuring an overview of the field's history (including lessons to be learned from eugenics), comparisons of international and domestic governmental regulations, and discussions of how the market and public opinion affect research, this book considers both the risks and the benefits of combining genetic and reproductive technologies. Concluding with a cautionary call for increased regulation, Reprogenetics introduces fact, history, and reason into a public discussion of complex and vexing issues.


This working paper looks at excess reserves in historical context and analyzes whether they constitute a monetary policy problem for the Federal Reserve System (the "Fed") or a potential-ly inflationary problem for the rest of us. Generally, this analysis shows that both absolute and relative sizes of excess reserves are a big problem for the Fed as well as the general public because of their inflationary potential. However, like all contingencies, the timing and extent of the damage that reserve-driven inflation might cause are uncertain. It is even possible today to find articles in both scholarly circles and the popular press arguing either that the inflationary blow-off might never happen or that an increasing tendency toward prolonged deflation is the more probable outcome.


ABSTRACT The 2 km thick Late Triassic Hungarian carbonate platform has a completely dolomitized lower part and a limestone-dominated upper part. The platform succession is made up of meter-scale, possibly precessional ( 20 ky) carbonate cycles. In the lower platform (Main Dolomite), cycles are completely dolomitized and capped by caliche laminites and pisolites. In the upper platform (Dachstein Limestone), dolomite is confined to laminite caps of cycles that are bounded by clayey paleosols. Most of the dolomitization in the platform interior occurred early in tidal-flat settings during each high-frequency cycle. Subtidal dolomites are slightly coarser grained, are low in Fe2+ and Mn2+, and have the heaviest 18O signature. This indicates they formed from evaporative, oxidizing brines sourced from supratidal flats. Intertidal-supratidal dolomites are fine grained, commonly Fe2+ and/or Mn2+ rich, and slightly enriched in 18O compared to the marine calcite cement. They formed from marine water that was weakly to moderately reducing. Dachstein paleosols have light 18O and 13C signatures reflecting meteoric soil waters. Repeated emergence stabilized the dolomites to low Sr2+ and Na+ dolomite similar to Cenozoic platform dolomites. In contrast to these early cyclic dolomites, coarse-grained platform-margin dolomites with very low Mn2+ and Fe2+ and light 18O signatures formed as thermally driven, warm, oxidizing marine water associated with Jurassic rifting of the Neo-Tethys Pennini Ocean circulated through the margin. Early dolomitization of cycles may have been controlled by high-frequency sea-level changes, but the overall vertical distribution of early dolomite on the platform does not reflect long-term eustasy. Rather, the intense dolomitization of the lower platform reflects a semiarid, hot subtropical, seasonal setting and megamonsoonal climate. Global cooling and increased humidity toward the latest Triassic and Early Jurassic inhibited pervasive early dolomitization, leaving the upper platform largely as limestone.


This report is a review concerned with traffic loads and the dynamic stresses they cause in highway bridges. Special attention is given to techniques of measurement and to the nature of the load and stress spectra. The review was undertaken as part of a programme of research relevant to wholly steel bridges. The different types of dynamic weighbridge used to measure wheel loads are summarised. These measure total (dynamic plus static) load and must be sited in a smooth straight road to minimise dynamic effects. Units which can be fixed to the road surface as pads are very convenient but not very accurate except as indicators of general trends. Units which are installed in pits can give accuracies of plus or minus 10 per cent. Measurement of dynamic stresses requires considerable care to eliminate features such as noise and temperature drifting. In cases where fatigue is in question it is necessary to measure the full range of stresses. Stress histories can be complex and constituent cycles are counted using a method such as range-pairs or a variation. For lightweight steel decks, stresses close to the deck plate are reduced by the structural action of asphalt surfacings; the degree of reduction is affected by temperature and vehicle speed. Dynamic behaviour of vehicles is considered. Variations of wheel load occur even on a very smooth road surface so that the traffic induced stresses are affected by factors such as vehicle speed, and type of suspension. (Author/TRRL)


The University of Washington eScience Institute runs an annual Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) program that selects four projects each year to train students from a wide range of disciplines while helping community members execute social good projects, often with an urban focus.
We present observations and deliberations of one such project, the DSSG 2017 'Equitable Futures' project, which investigates the ongoing gentrification process and the increasingly inequitable access to opportunities in Seattle. Similar processes can be observed in many major cities. The project connects issues usually analyzed in the disciplines of the built environment, geography, sociology, economics, social work and city governments with data science methodologies and visualizations.


Starting from integrable su(2) (quasi-)spin Richardson–Gaudin (RG) XXZ models we derive several properties of integrable spin models coupled to a bosonic mode. We focus on the Dicke–Jaynes–Cummings–Gaudin models and the two-channel (p + ip)-wave pairing Hamiltonian. The pseudo-deformation of the underlying su(2) algebra is here introduced as a way to obtain these models in the contraction limit of different RG models. This allows for the construction of the full set of conserved charges, the Bethe ansatz state, and the resulting RG equations. For these models an alternative and simpler set of quadratic equations can be found in terms of the eigenvalues of the conserved charges. Furthermore, the recently proposed eigenvalue-based determinant expressions for the overlaps and form factors of local operators are extended to these models, linking the results previously presented for the Dicke–Jaynes–Cummings–Gaudin models with the general results for RG XXZ models.


ODIN, the Online Database of INterlinear text, is a resource built over language data harvested from linguistic documents (Lewis, 2006). It currently holds approximately 190,000 instances of Interlinear Glossed Text (IGT) from over 1100 languages, automatically extracted from nearly 3000 documents crawled from the Web. A crucial step in building ODIN is identifying the languages of extracted IGT, a challenging task due to the large number of languages and the lack of training data. We demonstrate that a coreference approach to the language ID task significantly outperforms existing algorithms as it provides an elegant solution to the unseen language problem. We also discuss several issues that make automated Language ID and the maintenance of ODIN very difficult.


In this study, we examined the characteristics of adolescents' deep interests or "sparks," the role of relationships in supporting the development of sparks, and whether having a spark was associated with positive developmental outcomes. Participants included 1,860 15 years olds from across the United States who participated in the national Teen Voice survey (56% European American, N = 1,860). Profile-centered analyses suggested that sparks are characterized by the intensity of positive feelings, immersion, and utility. The strongest sparks were associated with pursuits requiring more interpersonal engagement, such as sports, drama and dance, participating in politics, and serving others. Spark intensity was related to better social, academic, and affective outcomes. Additionally, youth with stronger sparks reported more encouragement, financial support, and transportation to spark activities from parents, mentors, extended-family, neighbors, school-based adults, and peers. Benefits of adolescents' engagement in interest-driven activities and the role of caring relationships in supporting such interests are highlighted.


This study was designed to seek explanations for differences in academic performance among junior secondary school pupils in a Ghanaian municipality.
A random sample of 600 junior secondary school pupils in form 2 was used for the study. Multiple regression procedures were used to analyse the data. The results of the study showed that in both Mathematics and English Language, mothers' reinforcement of their children's academic progress, fathers' education, and area of residence have indirect effects on children's academic performance. Children's academic effort is an intervening variable. Implications for parents and teachers are discussed (IFE Psychologia (2002) 10(2), 136-148)


Memory bandwidth compression can be an effective way to achieve higher system performance and energy efficiency in modern data-intensive applications by exploiting redundancy in data. Prior works studied various data compression techniques to improve both capacity (e.g., of caches and main memory) and bandwidth utilization (e.g., of the on-chip and off-chip interconnects). These works addressed two common shortcomings of compression: (i) compression/decompression overhead in terms of latency, energy, and area, and (ii) hardware complexity to support variable data size. In this paper, we make the new observation that there is another important problem related to data compression in the context of the communication energy efficiency: transferring compressed data leads to a substantial increase in the number of bit toggles (communication channel switchings from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0). This, in turn, increases the dynamic energy consumed by on-chip and off-chip buses due to more frequent charging and discharging of the wires. Our results, for example, show that the bit toggle count increases by an average of 2.2× with some compression algorithms across 54 mobile GPU applications. We characterize and demonstrate this new problem across a wide variety of 221 GPU applications and six different compression algorithms. To mitigate the problem, we propose two new toggle-aware compression techniques: energy control and Metadata Consolidation. These techniques greatly reduce the bit toggle count impact of the six data compression algorithms we examine, while keeping most of their bandwidth reduction benefits.


We use data from the SDSS to investigate the evolution of the large-scale galaxy bias as a function of luminosity for red galaxies. We carefully consider correlation functions of galaxies selected from both photometric and spectroscopic data, and cross-correlations between them, to obtain multiple measurements of the large-scale bias. We find, for our most robust analyses, a strong increase in bias with luminosity for the most luminous galaxies, an intermediate regime where bias does not evolve strongly over a range of two magnitudes in galaxy luminosity, and no evidence for an upturn in bias for fainter red galaxies. Previous work has found an increase in bias to low luminosities that has been widely interpreted as being caused by a strong preference for red dwarf galaxies to be satellites in the most massive haloes. We can recover such an upturn in bias to faint luminosities if we push our measurements to small scales, and include galaxy clustering measurements along the line of sight, where we expect non-linear effects to be the strongest. The results that we expect to be most robust suggest that the low-luminosity population of red galaxies is not dominated by satellite galaxies occupying the most massive haloes.


Molecular mechanisms underlying mineralocorticoid receptor (MR)-mediated gene expression are not fully understood but seem to largely depend upon interactions with specific coregulators. To identify novel human MR (hMR) molecular partners, yeast two-hybrid screenings performed using the N-terminal domain as bait, allowed us to isolate protein inhibitor of activated signal transducer and activator of transcription (PIAS)1 and PIASxbeta, described as SUMO (small ubiquitin-related modifier) E3-ligases. Specific interaction between PIAS1 and hMR was confirmed by glutathione-S-transferase pull-down experiments and N-terminal subdomains responsible for physical contacts were delineated. Transient transfections demonstrated that PIAS1 is a corepressor of aldosterone-activated MR transactivation but has no significant effect on human glucocorticoid receptor transactivation. The agonist or antagonist nature of the bound ligand also determines PIAS1 corepressive action. We provided evidence that PIAS1 conjugated SUMO-1 to hMR both in vitro and in vivo. Deciphering the unique sumoylation pattern of hMR, which possesses five consensus SUMO-1 binding sites, by combinatorial lysine substitutions, revealed a major impact of sumoylation on hMR properties. Using a murine mammary tumor virus promoter, PIAS1 action was independent of sumoylation whereas with glucocorticoid response element promoter, PIAS1 corepressive action depended on hMR sumoylation status. Taken together, our results identify a novel function for PIAS1 which interacts with the N-terminal domain of hMR and represses its ligand-dependent transcriptional activity, at least in part, through SUMO modifications.


OBJECTIVE
Autoimmune diseases predominantly affect women, suggesting that female sex hormones may play a role in the pathogenesis of such diseases. We have previously shown that persistent mild-to-moderate elevations in serum prolactin levels induce a break in self tolerance in mice with a BALB/c genetic background. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of hyperprolactinemia on the mechanisms of B cell tolerance induction.

METHODS
Effects of prolactin on splenic B cell subsets were studied in female BALB/c mice. B cell receptor (BCR)-mediated apoptosis and proliferation of transitional B cells were analyzed by flow cytometry. Expression of apoptotic genes was examined by microarrays and real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis. B cells coexpressing kappa/lambda light chains were assessed by flow cytometry and immunohistochemistry. Activation status of transitional type 3 (T3) B cells was evaluated by BCR-induced calcium influx studies.

RESULTS
BCR-mediated apoptosis of the T1 B cell subset, a major checkpoint for negative selection of autoreactive specificities, was decreased in prolactin-treated mice. Microarray studies indicated that this event may be mediated by the prolactin-induced up-regulation of the antiapoptotic gene interferon-gamma receptor type II and down-regulation of the proapoptotic gene Trp63. Prolactin treatment also altered the amount of receptor editing, as indicated by the increased number of transitional B cells coexpressing kappa/lambda light chains. Additionally, hyperprolactinemia modified the level of B cell anergy by increasing the degree of BCR-induced calcium influx in the T3 B cells.

CONCLUSION
Persistently elevated serum prolactin levels interfere with B cell tolerance induction by impairing BCR-mediated clonal deletion, deregulating receptor editing, and decreasing the threshold for activation of anergic B cells, thereby promoting autoreactivity.


We analyze third degree price discrimination by an upstream monopolist to a continuum of heterogeneous downstream firms. The novelty of our approach is to recognize that customizing prices may be costly. As a consequence, partial price discrimination arises in equilibrium; in particular, we show that inefficient downstream firms receive personalized prices whereas efficient firms are charged a uniform price. The extreme cases of complete price discrimination and uniform price arise in our setting as particular cases, depending on the cost of customizing prices.