Introduction
Autonomic regulation of immune functions has increasingly been studied in recent decades. The attenuating effect of the parasympathetic nervous system on inflammatory processes is demonstrated in studies on inflammatory disease like rheumatoid arthritis, chronic bowel disease and heart failure. Similar inflammatory processes play a role in the development of tissue damage following myocardial infarction (MI). In this study, effects of vagus nerve stimulation (VS) on tissue damage and function loss after MI in the mouse heart were measured.
Methods
Anaesthetized male C57Bl6 mice were treated with or without 30 seconds of VS prior to experimental MI. Baseline and terminal heart function were studied. After 48 hours animals were sacrificed and infarct size and presence of inflammatory cells in different locations in the infarcted heart were determined. Inflammatory responsiveness and inflammatory cells in the blood were measured as well.
Results
The differences in ejection fraction and infarct size were found to be not significant. Counts of T-lymphocytes and macrophages were equal on baseline and at termination. Neutrophil counts were higher in the area remote from the infarction in the MI group compared to that in the VS+MI group. VEGF amounts were not different in the infarcted hearts of MI as compared to the hearts of VS+MI treated mice.
Conclusion
Ejection fraction decreased at 48 hours, less in the VS+MI group than in MI alone. However, this decrease, compared between groups was not significantly different. Although values of infarct size and cardiac function come close to significant reduction this study does not show clear proof for an inhibiting effect of VS on MI injury or function loss. Since the limited time period after MI could be of influence on the variation in the data future research is necessary to provide more information on the development of tissue damage and functional reduction.


A biochemically-based model was developed to simulate the growth, development, and metamorphosis of larvae of the Pacie c oyster, Crassostrea gigas. The model dee nes larvae in terms of their protein, lipid, carbohydrate, and ash content and includes variation in growth efe ciency and egg quality to better simulate cohort population dynamics. Changes in tissue composition occur as the larva grows and in response to the biochemical composition of the food. The premise behind this modeling study was that certain periods of larval life are more critical than others with respect to the availability of food and that food quality is as important as food quantity. The results of the simulations indicate that critical periods do exist, but that the period of larval life which is critical depends upon the composition of the available food supply and how it varies over time. Overall, the most critical time is late in larval life, near the time of metamorphosis. At this point, some variations in food quality are particularly efe cacious, others particularly disastrous. But, under certain circumstances, events early or midway in larval life also dramatically change cohort survival. Simulations show that cohort survival varies in a relatively predictable way when salinity or food quantity vary. Both control time-integrated food supply to the larva by varying the amount of food ingested. Reduction of time-integrated ingestion reduces survival. Larvae with high growth efe ciency are more successful, as are larvae coming from large eggs. The simple effect of timeintegrated food presents a stark contrast to the complexity introduced by varying food quality. Simulations indicate that it is late in larval life when larvae are most sensitive to changes in food quality. Increased protein at this time always improves survival. Increased lipid is most efe cacious midway in larval life, but also exerts a positive impact late in larval life. Variations in carbohydrate are relatively inconsequential in affecting larval survival. Simulations in which food quantity and food quality vary independently show that cohort survival is sensitive to the exact timing and type of environmental change. Transient changes in food quantity ine uence survival primarily by varying the length of larval life. Transient changes in food quality, on the other hand, can produce large changes in survivorship by restricting the range of genotypes in the cohort that can survive, as well as by varying larval life span. The simulations support the adaptive advantage of larval cohorts with a relatively wide range of genotypes and suggest the important ine uence of variations in food quality in maintaining genetic variability.


As with everything, the Pharmaceutical Society of South Africa has also evolved over the 7 decades of its formal existence. The 'big bang' in this case was the 1946 unification of the pharmaceutical societies that developed in different parts of the country following the establishment of the South African Pharmaceutical Association in 1885. This unified society developed and functioned as independent branches and separate bodies representing the various spheres of pharmacy practice until establishment of the current constitution towards the end of the 20th century, creating one umbrella society with four sectors representing pharmacists in Academia, Industry, Hospital and Institutional, and Community Pharmacy respectively. The 13 branches, representing all pharmacists and sectors in a specific region, continued functioning under the PSSA.


I. INTRODUCTION Effective October 1, 1999, the Commercial Code of Japan ("the Code") was amended to permit Japanese companies to effect corporate acquisitions and reorganizations by means of a "stock swap." (1) The new stock swap system was widely touted by the Government of Japan and commentators as a positive step towards promoting and facilitating merger and acquisition ("M&A") activity in Japan. In a nutshell, the stock swap amendment to the Code ("the Amendment") permits, among other things, an acquiror to compel minority shareholders of a target company to exchange their shares of target company stock for newly issued shares of the acquiror's stock in a tax-free manner, following approval of the transaction by holders of two-thirds of the shares represented at a meeting of the target's shareholders, and provides dissenting shareholders with appraisal rights (i.e. the right to receive the cash equivalent of the value of their shares rather than stock of the acquiror). (2) This new share exchange system can be used by Japanese companies to consummate both so-called "squeeze-out" (3) acquisitions and "going private" (4) transactions provided that stock, rather than cash consideration, is used. (5) On its face, the Amendment is a significant step towards creating a more flexible M&A environment similar to that of the State of Delaware, where a substantial majority of the corporations that have been involved in the M&A boom in the United States are incorporated. However, additional amendments to the Code are necessary if the goal is to create an economically efficient market for M&A activity in Japan while providing sufficient protection to minority shareholders. (6) The Amendment is most notable for taking the first small step towards making it easier to acquire 100% of a Japanese company despite minority shareholder opposition. Until recently, squeeze-out transactions and contested or hostile acquisitions have been not only difficult, but also entirely unthinkable in Japan. In addition to oft-cited cultural taboos in Japan concerning the negative implications of acquisitions (i.e., that the target company was having financial problems or was being mismanaged), the traditional Japanese pattern of cross-shareholdings and stable shareholders and the obstacles inherent in the Japanese legal system have been largely responsible for the rarity of such transactions. The widely-publicized contested acquisition of International Digital Communications Inc. (IDC) last year before the Amendment was adopted was significant because it was one of the first high profile contested acquisitions of a Japanese company by a foreign company. Notably, however, the IDC acquisition and the more recent attempted contested acquisitions have involved cash, rather than stock consideration, making the Amendment inapplicable. Even if stock was the chosen form of consideration, foreign companies, such as IDC, are not permitted to use the stock swap mechanism and, thus, currently have no squeeze-out tool available to them. (7) The going private transaction is also a fairly new concept in the Japanese M&A market. Unlike U.S. companies, Japanese public companies have not yet gone through the cycle of being bought by controlling shareholders in partnership with private equity funds, taken private, restructured, and then taken public again within a few years. (8) Whether or not this is an investment technique that should be encouraged in Japan is debatable, but it is clear that the current state of Japanese law makes it more difficult to replicate this model for both foreign and Japanese acquirors. Due to the nature of going private transactions, stock is rarely the desired form of consideration unless the transaction is part of an internal corporate reorganization. By preventing cash from being used in squeeze-out transactions, current Japanese law restricts the ability of Japanese, not just foreign, venture capitalists and controlling shareholders to successfully take a company private. …


Insanity is a legal term of art that changes definitions depending on the legal standard in American jurisprudence, which explains why a man who mental health professionals described as having an uncontrollable obsession with killing people can be found not insane and guilty. This Note addresses the current state of the Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984 and its widespread implementation at the state level. Part II supplies background information on the history of the insanity defense and how it has transformed over the years in American jurisprudence. Part III provides an analysis of the of the insanity defense. Part IV suggests a new standard of for the insanity defense with a more accommodating application to a wider degree of mental diseases.


The use of a new thallium-ion (Tl^(+)) source for glass optical power splitter fabrication based on a NaNO_(3^(-)) Tl_(2)SO_(4) mixture is proposed and demonstrated. Planar optical power splitters were made using glassessuch as K_(6), K_(8), K_(9). The optical quality of the devices prepared compares favorably with the qualityobtained using other fabrication techniques (such as dry etching) and the processing time is considerablyreduced.


Low level gamma spectrometry is a very precise techniqueto measure the concentration of nuclides present in different samples in Bq kg-1. The quality control of the procedure and method used be carried out by intercomparison exercises with world reconized institutios. During the last three years the Nuclear Physics Laboratory of the University of Costa Rica (LAFNA) has been participating in the international quality assessment program (QAP) carried out by the Environmental Measurements Laboratory (EML), Department of Energy, USA. The results show a very good agreement with the rest of the participant laboratories. This provide a very objetive evaluation of the high precision of the methods used by LAFNA in low leel spectroscopy measurements.


PURPOSE
This article describes an innovative technique to confirm needle tip positioning using digital subtraction fluoroscopy and air within a targeted joint.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Digital subtraction fluoroscopy with air was utilized to confirm intra-articular needle tip position in 12 joints over a 14-month period at a single institution. Procedural details were recorded for each joint including: joint location, fluoroscopy time, patient age, patient body mass index, and change in subjective pain rating following the injection. Shoulder and hip phantoms were utilized to compare radiation dose differences between fluoroscopy with digital subtraction technique and fluoroscopy without digital subtraction technique.

RESULTS
All of the 12 injections were technically successful with air clearly visualized within each targeted joint and subjective pain ratings either did not change or decreased following the injection. Patient age ranged from 51 to 87 years old and body mass index values ranged from 19.2 to 37.1 kg/m2. Fluoroscopy times ranged from 11.1 to 32.9 seconds. There were no complications during or immediately following the injections. The addition of digital subtraction technique increased the skin dose at the shoulder by approximately 2.6 times and at the hip by approximately 2.2 times. Likewise, the cumulative dose at the shoulder increased by approximately 2.7 times and at the hip by 2.0 times.

CONCLUSION
Fluoroscopic digital subtraction air arthrography is a valuable option for needle tip confirmation when using air as a contrast agent. This novel combination of established fluoroscopic techniques can be incorporated into most clinical practices.


Recent advancements in micro-flow technologies and a drive toward more efficient, greener and safer processes have led to a renaissance in flow-chemistry for pharmaceutical production. In this work, we demonstrate the use of a stabilized Pd nanoparticle-organic-silica catalyst to selectively catalyze the hydrogenation of N-4-nitrophenyl nicotinamide, a functionalized active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) surrogate. Extensive catalyst and reactor characterization is provided to establish an in-depth understanding of the unique multiphase dynamics within the micro-packed bed reactor, including the identification of a large liquid holdup (74–84%), rapid multiphase mass transfer (kma > 1 s ), and liquid residence time distributions. A kinetic analysis has revealed that the surface catalyzed hydrogenation progresses through a condensation mechanism whereby an azo dimer intermediate is formed and rapidly consumed. Finally, a parametric study was performed at various pressures, temperatures, residence times and flow regimes to achieve quantitative chemoselective conversion of the nitroarene to the corresponding primary amine.


Multiagent planning is computationally hard in the general case due to the exponential blowup in the action space induced by concurrent action of different agents. At the same time, many scenarios require the computation of plans that are strategically meaningful for self-interested agents, in order to ensure that there would be sufficient incentives for those agents to participate in a joint plan. In this paper, we present a multiagent planning and plan improvement method that is based on conducting iterative best-response planning using standard single-agent planning algorithms. In constrained types of planning scenarios that correspond to congestion games, this is guaranteed to converge to a plan that is a Nash equilibrium with regard to agents' preference profiles over the entire plan space. Our empirical evaluation beyond these restricted scenarios shows, however, that the algorithm has much broader applicability as a method for plan improvement in general multiagent planning problems. Extensive empirical experiments in various domains illustrate the scalability of our method in both cases.


This paper estimates the causal impact that changes in household´s income have on Domestic Violence (DV) rates in Colombia. Using the arguably exogenous variation in time and space of the payments of a Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program and a three-year-long monthly municipal balanced panel data set, we find that DV rates decrease by six percent in the months when the transfers are received. However, this effect is only transitory and varies according to households' expectations on when the transfers are received. Negative shocks that take place when families do not receive the transfer they were expecting, intensify economic scarcity, and DV rates in those months follow suit. On the contrary, positive shocks that occur when families receive an unexpected transfer only have a marginal reduction on DV. The channel that appears to be explaining our results is a budget constraint alleviation mechanism that reduces scarcity as the timing of the receipt of the transfer consistently reduces DV and increases consumption in the month of payment. Furthermore, there is no clear evidence of alternative channels that could explain the results such as changes in female empowerment, marital status, labor participation, or social networks of the beneficiary women.


The aeronautical industry is in a new era of growth thanks to numerous technological advances.
One of them is the UAS; Unmanned Aircraft Systems are able to fly by themselves
with autonomous operation capabilities.
UAS can advantage manned aircrafts in the so called D-cube applications: Dull, Dirty or
Dangerous. Risks and costs can be minimized using UAS since they need no crew and
their construction, operation and maintenance costs are comparatively lower.
This Master Thesis has been developed in the ICARUS (Intelligent Communications and
Avionics for Robust Unmanned aerial Systems) research group, which is developing a new
platform with UAS technology for civil use. It is true that this type of technology is already used in the military field for years, but it is now in the civil use where it can be expanded even more.
Under this scenario, a certain level of control and monitoring is required from the ground segment so that the pilot in command (PiC) is able to supervise the VAS operations. Therefore, it is needed an application in order to solve all pilot in command necessities. A real UAS flight has many different specific phases, for each one of the phases is needed a specific information to shown. This application has to control the UAS, the flight plans and
will receive all the information that generates the UAS payload.
This Master Thesis solves some of the objectives of the ICARUS research group. One
of the main parts of the project is the design and implementation of two applications for the Ground Control Station (GCS). In the GCS we need different workstations, each one for flight plan modifications. In GCS we need three different workstations, each one for
different purpose. The first one is the workstation for the PiC to flight control (called Flight Monitor Service). The second one is the workstation for the PoC to manage the flight plan modifications (called Flight Plan Monitor Service) and the las one is for mission and payload management.
This project is focused in the design and development of the first two workstation.


The control of the efficiency of therapy on brain tissues requires an imaging at the microscopic scale and preferably in vivo. Here, we show that the intravital two-photon excited fluorescence microscopy already known for its capability in imaging the microvasculature can also be used to get three dimensional images of other cortical tissues in the brain of living mouse by taking profit of the dense capillary network to irrigate them. The technique which uses the differential imaging of two dyes: One being diffusing through the blood brain barrier, while the other don't, gives access to tissues which are usually difficult to image in vivo.


Primary reproductive traits (those traits directly associated with sexual reproduction) have evolved both rapidly and divergently. Despite considerable advances in our understanding of the mechanisms that drive the evolution of these traits, we still have a very limited understanding of how male and female traits interact and how environmental factors influence the expression of these traits. Previous research has shown developmental temperature to affect the ejaculatory characteristics of male Callosobruchus maculatus, which subsequently affected copulatory behaviour and the outcome of sperm competition. However, given there is some evidence that both copulatory behaviour and the outcome of sperm competition are a product of male-female interactions, I here examine the effect of developmental temperature on the expression of female reproductive traits and determine its effects on copulatory behaviour. Populations of C. maculatus were raised at different temperatures (17oC, 27oC and 33oC) in order to investigate the effects of developmental temperature on: 1) female reproductive trait anatomy, 2) copulatory behaviour and 3) the outcome of sperm competition.
Developmental temperature significantly affected female reproductive architecture. The bursa copulatrix of females grown at 17oC tended to be longer and thinner than those grown at 27oC or 33oC. This was evident from linear and shape measurements. The bursa copulatrix is where females receive the spermatophore, therefore variation in the shape of this structure could influence how copulation proceeds in this species. The spermathecal duct length (a key feature of sperm-female coevolution) was shortest in those females grown at 17oC, although not significantly so.
The developmental temperature experienced by both males and females affected the duration of copulation. Females from the 27oC treatment group experienced shorter copulations than those from the 17oC and 33oC temperature groups, whilst males reared at 17oC copulated for longer than males reared at the two warmer temperatures. Females reared at 17oC were very reluctant to mate at all, with only 14% of 111 attempts resulting in copulation. This may be related to the bursa copulatrix of 17oC females being abnormally shaped.
The effect of both male and female developmental temperature on the outcome of sperm competition was estimated using the genetic marker technique (colour polymorphisms). Both female and male developmental temperature had a significant effect on the outcome of sperm competition. P2 was highest in those females reared at 33oC whilst males from the 27oC
ii
treatment achieved higher P2 values than males reared at either 17oC or 33oC. There was no effect of male nor female development temperature on P1.
In conclusion, this research illustrates how a change in developmental temperature can affect the expression of primary reproductive traits in females and affect copulatory behaviour and the outcome of sperm competition. Given temperature can vary on a micro-climate scale as well as local and global scales, I argue that these results are important for those considering the evolution of primary reproductive traits, as variation in female reproductive architecture is likely to help maintain genetic variation in high-fitness male reproductive traits.


In one guise or another, the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) has dominated Cambodia for almost half a century, much longer than any other modern Cambodian political organization and despite UN intervention, the introduction of electoral democracy and massive changes in Cambodia's political economy. Since the mid 2000s, the prevailing scholarship emphasised clientelism and party performance legitimacy-based explanations to explain Cambodia's puzzling regime durability. A closely related body of analysis is steeped in anachronistic culturalist assumptions about political behaviour. These accounts saw no endpoint to the continued hegemony of the CPP through the ballot box in competitive but authoritarian elections. However, these arguments do not adequately explain the resurgence of popular opposition from 2012 and the close-run election in 2013. They also did not predict the revanchist authoritarian moves by the government to maintain power. Since 2013 sustained highand low-intensity coercion has successfully suppressed the popular challenge, auguring a return to one party rule. This empirical challenge is addressed in this thesis, which refocuses attention to the centrality of coercion for regime durability. It traces the origins of Cambodia's coercion-dominant winning coalition from repressive single party rule in the 1980s, to show how regime elites embedded in the state and its security forces from this period were joined by economic elites dependent on them. Competitive elections in the 2000s were supposed to stamp legitimacy on the coalition's dominance of the state and the economic benefits it extracted by dominating it. The majority of Cambodians have been politically marginalized and excluded from reaping the benefits of the country's economic transformation. When elections appeared to threaten rather than enhance the winning coalition's dominance they were disregarded, in favour of system of rule that exposed pre-existing asymmetries of power and wealth that privilege repression over reform, coercion over redistribution, and elite cohesion over fragmentation.


There are many applications that use maps, and more detailed the maps are, more applications can benefit from the map. Many maps are still manually created and also the underlying attributes are informed in a manual process. This thesis presents a method to automatically derive and update attribute road data by mining and analyzing movement trajectories. The method used for this thesis implemented OpenStreetMap as the underlying map which will be updated. GPS tracks are the movement trajectories that will be used to derive the information for the road attributes. There are attributes that are already conceptually present in OpenStreetMap but are in practice rarely filled. The attributes that will be investigated to derive are: whether the road is a one or two way road, the speed limit of the road, the number of lanes of the road and which vehicles have access to the road. Also, new attributes are introduced in this thesis. These are the average speed of the road, the hours in which the road is congested, the importance of the road and whether the road has a certain geometrical error. Preprocessing is performed before the attributes can be derived. Important are the classification of the transportation mode of the GPS tracks and the map matching of the GPS points to the roads they are on. When the IDs of the roads, where the GPS points are on, are known the attribute extraction algorithms can be applied. These algorithms all have different methods for deriving their attributes. There are attributes that use the speed of the GPS point, the distance from the point to the road or the heading of the point. For some attributes, a hierarchical code list is created to provide different perspectives on the error of the attributes. The code list consists of the values of the attributes and the hierarchy between these lists describes the level of detail and the granularity of the values. While some attributes were classified correctly in almost 100\% of the cases, the extraction of the attributes were not all successful. The number of lanes proved to be too difficult to derive out of the available data and the importance of a road relies on a complete coverage of data which was not the case. Although, the latter is applied in this research. The other attributes had different results, the accuracy of the classification of the speed limit was 69,2\%. However, when taking into account speed limits that are only one step away (e.g. 60 km/h instead of the classified 50 km/h) the classification increases to 95\%. The classification of the roads that allow bicycles was 74\% and the attribute to determine whether a road is a one or two way road has a classification accuracy of 99\%. In the future, the attribute extraction algorithms could be improved or expanded. More detailed levels in the hierarchical code list could be added and constraints could be added to improve the attributes. Also, some techniques might be enhanced for better results. Finally, the ideal application of this method would be deriving and updating the attributes in real-time. This could lead to live maps which would change real-time with the changes on the road.


This article assesses the main welfare implications of US policies to support biofuels, with an emphasis on corn-based ethanol. The analysis relies on an open economy, multimarket equilibrium model that links world and domestic energy and agricultural markets and explicitly accounts for the externalities of carbon emissions. The first-best policy in our context entails a carbon tax (implemented with a tax on fuel and a subsidy for ethanol), an import tariff on oil, and an export tax on corn. Although this policy is likely not feasible, we show that a secondbest policy with an optimally chosen fuel tax and ethanol subsidy can approximate fairly closely the welfare gains associated with the first-best policy. The largest welfare gains to the US economy from firstand second-best policies arise from their impact on the terms of trade, particularly in the oil market.


Nature's Covenant, a reading of John Ruskin, including his neglected poems and early prose writings, brings forth a fresh awareness of his career as an interpreter of landscape, where landscape is conceived as a filter of human meaning, of aesthetic and theological significance. The book shows the correlation in Ruskin's work between the Reformed theology of his religious tradition and the Romantic poetics of literature that he sought to practice. It reconstructs the particular hermeneutic of landscape that Ruskin developed, a vision of the natural world that depended equally upon the Romantic/evangelical renovation of heart and eye and a remarkable articulation of the typology of nature. Ruskin's own theoria, or contemplation of nature's text, the full-scale development of which takes place in Modern Painters II, is revealed and explored, inviting renewed understanding of works both early and late, especially of certain key chapters of such often neglected works as "The Requiem" of St. Mark's Rest or the "Revision" of Deucalion.Finley shifts the emphasis away from the secularized readings of this century to recover lost religious meanings in Ruskin's critical writing, including his unpublished sermons. No previous modern study has focused on Ruskin's religious upbringings and its influence on his mature writings while countering the critical received orthodoxy about his faith, his "unconversion," and inevitable secularization often retold as part of the narrative of modernism, which proclaimed the necessary supersession of Victorian superstition by modern enlightenment. Because of its commitment to a reading of Ruskin's religious sense in light of his romantic inheritance, Nature's Covenant is also a book about Victorian romanticism, sharing in the current reevaluation of Wordsworth's later career, and in the renewed scholarly attention to Sir Walter Scott."


The purpose of the Intrusion Detection Exchange Format Working Group
(IDWG) is to define data formats and exchange procedures for sharing
information of interest to intrusion detection and response systems
and to the management systems that may need to interact with them.
This document describes the high-level requirements for such a
communication mechanism, including the rationale for those
requirements where clarification is needed. Scenarios are used to
illustrate some requirements. This memo provides information for the
Internet community.


The combination of the Ugi four-component reaction (Ugi-4CR) with acyclic diene metathesis (ADMET) or thiol-ene polymerization led to the formation of poly-1-(alkylcarbamoyl) carboxamides, a new class of substituted polyamides with amide moieties in the polymer backbone, as well as its side chains. 10-Undecenoic acid, obtained by pyrolysis of ricinoleic acid, the main fatty acid of castor oil, was used as the key renewable building block. The use of different primary amines, as well as isonitriles (isocyanides) for the described Ugi reactions provided monomers with high structural diversity. Furthermore, the possibility of versatile post-modification of functional groups in the side chains of the corresponding polymers should be of considerable interest in materials science. The obtained monomers were polymerized by ADMET, as well as thiol-ene, chemistry and all polymers were fully characterized. Finally, ortho-nitrobenzylamide-containing polyamides obtained by this route were shown to be photoresponsive and exhibited a dramatic change of their properties upon irradiation with light.


Balur treatment aimed to leach free radicals overwhelmingly produced in unhealthy body with rubbed over the human body. In Balur used some amino acid and herbal such as Bawang Sabrang ( Eleutherine palmifolia (L.) Merr), Kopi Balur (Mixed Coffea arabica L. with Acetosal), Coconut Water ( Cocos nucifera L.), Secang ( Caesalpinia sappan L.) and "Divine" smoke from cloves ( Syzygium aromaticum (L.) Merr. & L. M. Perry) and Tobacco ( Nicotiana tabacum L). This is an observation research of Balur application in volunteers during four years at Rumah Sehat, Malang, Indonesia. The result suggested that Balur can improve quality of life  in male volunteers i.e. 61,54% for Cancer (39 volunteers); 80% for Tumor (20 volunteers); 86,36% for Diabetes mellitus (22 volunteers); 93,33% for Heart (15 volunteers); 92,86% for Autism (28 volunteers); 72,73% for Hepatitis (11 volunteers); 100% neuron disease for (2 volunteers); 93,62% for various of disease (94 volunteers). Moreover imrovement quality of life in female volunteers i.e. 72,31% for Cancer (65 volunteers); 88,57% for Tumor (35 volunteers); 75% for Diabetes mellitus (16 volunteers); 100% for Hemorrhoid (3 volunteers); 100% for stroke (3 volunteers); 40% for Cardiomegaly (5 volunteers); 66,67% for Autism (3 volunteers); 88% for various of disease (50 volunteers) and 100% for healthy (3 volunteers). Keywords : Balur , herb in Balur process, improving quality of life


The hydrolysis of sodium borohydride (NaBH4) over efficient metal catalysts is a
promising approach to hydrogen storage. An alkali such as NaOH is often added to
stabilise the system in practical applications. The concentration of the NaBH4 solution
should be as high as possible to improve energy density of the system. However, the byproduct
sodium metaborate (NaB02) would become saturated and precipitate from the
solution when the concentration of sodium borohydride is over a limit, resulting in piping
blockage and the decrease of the catalyst efficiency. The theme of this thesis was to
investigate the maximum NaB~ concentration. Below the maximum concentration, the
precipitation of the by-product will not occur, and above the maximum concentration, the
by-product tends to precipitate from the solution. Hydrogen generation rate was then
investigated up to high concentration.
The maximum concentration was studied using a thermodynamic approach. The
relationship between the solubility and the temperature was derived based on the equality
of the chemical potential of the solute in solution and in its solid state. The solubility data
of NaBH4 and NaB02 were obtained by analysing the phase diagrams of NaBH4-NaOHH20
and NaB02-NaOH-H20 respectively. The model parameters were then determined
by regression of the solubility data and the temperature. Activity coefficients of NaBH4
and NaB02 were needed during the regression and these were achieved by hydration
analysis of the phase diagrams. The maximum concentration of NaBH4 was obtained by
taking the maximum between the water in saturated NaBH4 solution and the sum of the
water in saturated NaB02 solution and the water consumed for hydrolysis. The maximum
concentration ofNaBH4 is mainly determined by the solubility of NaB02. The modelling
of the maximum concentration was then validated experimentally.
The rate of hydrogen generation from NaBH4 hydrolysis was then investigated over
carbon supported ruthenium catalyst over a wide range of concentrations. The intrinsic
hydrolysis rate is zero-order to NaBH4 concentration, and has a linear relationship with
the basicity of the solution (-ln[OH]). The overall kinetics was modelled by building
diffusion and heat effect into the intrinsic rate expression. Experimental results agree well
with model prediction.


We revisit certain aspects of thermalization in 2D conformal field theory (CFT). In particular, we consider similarities and differences between the time dependence of correlation functions in various states in rational and non-rational CFTs. We also consider the distinction between global and local thermalization and explain how states obtained by acting with a diffeomorphism on the ground state can appear locally thermal, and we review why the time-dependent expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor is generally a poor diagnostic of global thermalization. Since all 2D CFTs have an infinite set of commuting conserved charges, generic initial states might be expected to give rise to a generalized Gibbs ensemble rather than a pure thermal ensemble at late times. We construct the holographic dual of the generalized Gibbs ensemble and show that, to leading order, it is still described by a Banados-Teitelboim-Zanelli black hole. The extra conserved charges, while rendering c < 1 theories essentially integrable, therefore seem to have little effect on large- c conformal field theories.


Supplemental Digital Content is available in the text. Background. Chronic lung allograft dysfunction (CLAD), is a major hurdle for long-term lung allograft survival after lung transplant and roughly 50% of lung transplant recipients (LTxRs) develop CLAD within 5 years. The mechanisms of CLAD development remain unknown. Donor-specific immune responses to HLA and lung self-antigens (SAgs) are vital to the pathogenesis of CLAD. Reduction in Club cell secretory protein (CCSP) has been reported in bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) fluid samples from LTxRs with bronchiolitis obliterans syndrome (BOS). CCSP levels in BAL fluid and development of antibodies to lung SAgs in plasma were determined by ELISA. Cytokines in BAL fluid were analyzed by 30-plex Luminex panel. Exosomes from BAL fluid or plasma were analyzed for SAgs, natural killer (NK) cells markers, and cytotoxic molecules. Results. We demonstrate that LTxRs with BOS have lower CCSP levels up to 9 months before BOS diagnosis. LTxRs with antibodies to SAgs 1-year posttransplant also developed DSA (43%) and had lower CCSP. BOS with lower CCSP also induced Interleukin-8 and reduced vascular endothelial growth factor. Exosomes from BOS contained increased SAgs, NK cells markers, and cytotoxic molecules. Conclusions. We conclude lower CCSP leads to inflammation, pro-inflammatory cytokine production, immune responses to HLA and SAgs, and induction of exosomes. For the first time, we demonstrate that CCSP loss results in exosome release from NK cells capable of stimulating innate and adaptive immunity posttransplant. This increases the risk of BOS, suggesting a role of NK cell exosomes in CLAD development.


CXC chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) is a G protein–coupled receptor (GPCR) located on the cell surface that signals upon binding the chemokine stromal derived factor-1 (SDF-1; also called CXCL 12). CXCR4 promotes neuroblastoma proliferation and chemotaxis. CXCR4 expression negatively correlates with prognosis and drives neuroblastoma growth and metastasis in mouse models. All functions of CXCR4 require its expression on the cell surface, yet the molecular mechanisms that regulate CXCR4 cell-surface levels in neuroblastoma are poorly understood. We characterized CXCR4 cell-surface regulation in the related SH-SY5Y and SK-N-SH human neuroblastoma cell lines. SDF-1 treatment caused rapid down-modulation of CXCR4 in SH-SY5Y cells. Pharmacologic activation of protein kinase C similarly reduced CXCR4, but via a distinct mechanism. Analysis of CXCR4 mutants delineated two CXCR4 regions required for SDF-1 treatment to decrease cell-surface CXCR4 in neuroblastoma cells: the isoleucine-leucine motif at residues 328 and 329 and residues 343–352. In contrast, and unlike CXCR4 regulation in other cell types, serines 324, 325, 338, and 339 were not required. Arrestin proteins can bind and regulate GPCR cell-surface expression, often functioning together with kinases such as G protein–coupled receptor kinase 2 (GRK2). Using SK-N-SH cells which are naturally deficient in β-arrestin1, we showed that β-arrestin1 is required for the CXCR4 343–352 region to modulate CXCR4 cell-surface expression following treatment with SDF-1. Moreover, GRK2 overexpression enhanced CXCR4 internalization, via a mechanism requiring both β-arrestin1 expression and the 343–352 region. Together, these results characterize CXCR4 structural domains and β-arrestin1 as critical regulators of CXCR4 cell-surface expression in neuroblastoma. β-Arrestin1 levels may therefore influence the CXCR4-driven metastasis of neuroblastoma as well as prognosis.


The Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) is first-of-its-kind hyperspectral instrument that employs two dimensional UV-enhanced CCD's to measure radiation backscattered by the Earth's atmosphere from 270-500 nm at high spectral resolution (0.45-0.63 nm), and with higher spatial resolution compared to the predecessor instruments (TOMS, SBUV, GOME, and SCIAMACHY). OMI is a Dutch-Finnish contribution to the NASA EOS Aura satellite, which was launched on 15 July 2004. The hyperspectral capability of OMI allows one to measure several trace gases in the boundary layer (NO2, SO2, HCHO, BrO) at urban scale resolution. In addition, OMI continues the 28-year record of data collected by the TOMS-series of instruments since Nov 1978, and SBUV-series of instruments since April 1970. These products include ozone profile, total column ozone, tropospheric column ozone, volcanic SO2, and daily global maps of UV-absorbing aerosols. In this paper we discuss recent results from OMI, focusing on OMI products related to air quality over the Asian-Pacific region. OMI has the unique capability of seeing transport of dust and smoke above clouds. Recent refinements to the algorithm are providing estimate of aerosol absorption, important for estimating the solar radiation reaching the ground.


Cognitive stylistics is primarily concerned with the cognitive processes – mental simulations – experienced by readers. Most cognitive stylisticians agree that experiences of reading texts are dynamic and flexible. Changes in the context of reading, our attentional focus on a given day, our extra background knowledge about the text, and so on, are all factors that contribute to our experience of a fictional world. A second reading of a text is a different experience to a first reading. As researchers begin to systematically distinguish between the 'solitary' and 'social' readings that constitute reading as a phenomenon (Peplow et al., 2016), the relationship between multiple readings and the nature of their processing becomes increasingly pertinent. In order to explore this relationship, firstly we examine the different ways in which re-reading has previously been discussed in stylistics, grounding our claims in an empirical analysis of articles published in key stylistics journals over the past two decades. Next, we draw on reader response data from an online questionnaire in order to assess the role of re-reading and the motivations that underpin it. Finally, we describe an exercise for the teaching of cognitive stylistics, specifically applying schema theory in literary linguistic analysis (Cook, 1994), which illustrates the need to distinguish between readings as part of an analysis. Through these three sections we argue that our experiences of texts should be considered diachronically, and propose that the different readings that make up an analysis of a text should be given greater attention in stylistic research and teaching.


C. diff-CUBE, a dot immunobinding assay (DIA) (Difco Laboratories, Ann Arbor, Mich.) for detection of Clostridium difficile toxin A in stool specimens, was compared with latex agglutination (LA) (Marion Laboratories, Kansas City, Mo.) and cytotoxin assay (CTA) for the laboratory diagnosis of C. difficile-associated diarrhea. A total of 200 stool specimens collected from 169 patients with suspected C. difficile diarrhea were tested. Of the 198 specimens evaluated by all three methods, 36 (18%) from 36 patients were positive by one or more of the tests. Twenty-five, 26, and 23 specimens were positive by CTA, DIA, and LA, respectively; 14 were positive by all three methods. Eight specimens yielded nonspecific LA test results; all eight were negative by CTA, and one was positive by DIA. DIA results agreed with CTA results in 183 (92%) cases and with LA results in 175 (88%) cases. CTA and LA results agreed in 179 (90%) cases. Freezing of the specimen did not appear to adversely affect either the DIA or LA test. These preliminary results suggest that C. diff-CUBE may be useful as a rapid screen for the diagnosis of C. difficile-associated diarrhea. However, for optimum laboratory diagnosis, further testing of all stools that are negative by DIA is warranted.


Climate change and its associated sea-level rise are expected to significantly affect vulnerable coastal communities. Although the extent of the impact will be localised, its assessment will adopt a monitoring approach that applies globally. The topography of the beach, the type of geological material and the level of human intervention will determine the extent of the area to be flooded and the rate at which the shoreline will move inland. Gleefe, a coastal community in Ghana, has experienced frequent flooding in recent times due to the increasing occurrence of storm surge and sea-level rise. This study used available geospatial data and field measurements to determine how the beach topography has contributed to the incidence of flooding at Gleefe. The topography is generally low-lying. Sections of the beach have elevations of around 1 m, which allows seawater to move inland during very high tide. Accelerated sea-level rise as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will destroy homes of the inhabitants and inundate the Densu wetlands behind the beach. Destruction of infrastructure will render the inhabitants homeless, whilst flooding of the wetlands will destroy the habitats of migratory birds and some endangered wildlife species such as marine turtle. Effective adaptation measures should be adopted to protect this very important coastal environment, the ecology of the wetlands and the livelihoods of the community dwellers.


Purpose: All men diagnosed with prostate cancer must undergo the complex process of treatment decision-making. Research indicates that most men are not prepared to fully interact with the information environment when they are initially diagnosed. The reasons behind this lack of preparedness are not fully understood. More information is needed about psychosocial facilitators and barriers to information gathering before appropriate interventions can be developed. The purpose of this research was to explore the different types of psychosocial assistance that men might need to help them begin gathering treatment information. Methods: A purposive sample of 63 African-American and Caucasian men treated for or actively monitoring localized prostate cancer (Stage T1 or T2) was recruited to participate. All recruitment was completed via cancer registries, newspaper ads, and word-of-mouth. All participants completed a 30-45 minute self-administered survey on a laptop or touchscreen computer. Data collected included: (1) demographic information and (2) information about their self-reported levels of (a) confidence, (b) confusion, (c) worry, (d) comfort, (e) ease, and (f) organization during their initial searches for treatment information. All men received a $25.00 honorarium for participating. Results: The mean age of participants was 64.17 years. Participants were between six months to 10 years post prostate cancer diagnosis (mean = 5.21 years, SD= 3.23). At the initial search for treatment information, the majority of men (82.5%) were not confident they knew all of the right information to look for and were not confident they could find answers for all of their questions (79.3%). When psychosocial barriers were compared by race, one significant relationship was found. A greater proportion of African Americans (19.2%) found the initial information gathering process more difficult than their Caucasian counterparts (13.5%) (p Citation Format: Heather Guerreso, Jarrett Johnson, Levi Ross. Racial differences in psychosocial barriers to initiate prostate cancer treatment information seeking. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eighth AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 13-16, 2015; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2016;25(3 Suppl):Abstract nr A45.


Names for establishments, though becoming more and more important in the place-name stocks of recent centuries, constitute a less frequently discussed subtype of toponyms in the literature. Their contemporary significance urges the author to find solutions to some related problems occurring in different branches of name studies as well as in applied onomastics. The first part of the paper presents Hungarian as well as international terms used with the sense of 'names for establishments', accounting also for the terms adopted to indicate the possible subtypes of these names. Hungarian onomasticians usually use one of the following terms: épületnév ('names for houses'), építménynév ('names for buildings') or létesítménynév ('names for establishments'). The author defines these expressions as terms referring to an increasingly broader set of entities, suggesting that the latter should be used as a blanket term for all relevant entities. The second part of the paper discusses possible connections between names for establishments and common nouns, but the relations between names for establishments and other types of proper names (especially names for institutions and names for objects) are also treated. The function of names for establishments among toponyms is explored as well. The author argues that names for establishments as a complex category can be further divided: defining the subtypes is a future task for onomasticians.


Understanding the behavior of stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in the context of deep neural networks has raised lots of concerns recently. Along this line, we theoretically study a general form of gradient based optimization dynamics with unbiased noise, which unifies SGD and standard Langevin dynamics. Through investigating this general optimization dynamics, we analyze the behavior of SGD on escaping from minima and its regularization effects. A novel indicator is derived to characterize the efficiency of escaping from minima through measuring the alignment of noise covariance and the curvature of loss function. Based on this indicator, two conditions are established to show which type of noise structure is superior to isotropic noise in term of escaping efficiency. We further show that the anisotropic noise in SGD satisfies the two conditions, and thus helps to escape from sharp and poor minima effectively, towards more stable and flat minima that typically generalize well. We verify our understanding through comparing this anisotropic diffusion with full gradient descent plus isotropic diffusion (i.e. Langevin dynamics) and other types of position-dependent noise.


The stable matching problem (also known as the stable marriage problem) is a well-known problem of matching men to women, so that no man and woman, who are not married to each other, both prefer each other. Such a problem has a wide variety of practical applications, ranging from matching resident doctors to hospitals, to matching students to schools or, more generally, to any two-sided market. In the classical stable marriage problem, both men and women express a strict preference order over the members of the other sex, in a qualitative way. Here, we consider stable marriage problems with weighted preferences: each man (resp., woman) provides a score for each woman (resp., man). Such problems are more expressive than the classical stable marriage problems. Moreover, in some real-life situations, it is more natural to express scores (to model, for example, profits or costs) rather than a qualitative preference ordering. In this context, we define new notions of stability and optimality, and we provide algorithms to find marriages that are stable and/or optimal according to these notions. While expressivity greatly increases by adopting weighted preferences, we show that, in most cases, the desired solutions can be found by adapting existing algorithms for the classical stable marriage problem. We also consider the manipulability properties of the procedures that return such stable marriages. While we know that all procedures are manipulable by modifying the preference lists or by truncating them, here, we consider if manipulation can occur also by just modifying the weights while preserving the ordering and avoiding truncation. It turns out that, by adding weights, in some cases, we may increase the possibility of manipulating, and this cannot be avoided by any reasonable restriction on the weights.


To the Editor: The novel metallo-β-lactamase named New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase (NDM-1) was identified from Klebsiella pneumoniae and Escherichia coli isolates in Sweden from a patient previously hospitalized in India (1). NDM-1 is spreading rapidly worldwide to nonclonally related isolates, many of which are directly or indirectly tracked to the Indian subcontinent (2). A carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae strain, KLZA, was isolated in May 2009 from the culture of a blood sample from of a 40-year-old man on the day after his admission to a surgical intensive care unit of the Clinical Hospital Center in Zagreb, Croatia. The patient had been transferred after 5 days of hospitalization in Bosnia and Herzegovina following a car accident. The clinical history mentioned antimicrobial drug treatment that did not include carbapenems (gentamicin, metronidazole, and ceftriaxone) and no link to the Indian subcontinent. Antimicrobial drug susceptibility testing was performed by Vitek2 (bioMerieux, Marcy-l'Etoile, France) and broth microdilution and interpreted according to the latest documents from the European Committee on Antimicrobial Susceptibility Testing (www.eucast.org/clinical_breakpoints/, version 1.1).

The strain proved resistant to imipenem and meropenem, to all broad-spectrum cephalosporins, and to aminoglycosides and susceptible to ciprofloxacin and tigecycline (Table). We checked for blaVIM, blaIMP, blaSPM, blaGIM, blaSIM, and blaNDM resistance genes by using PCR. A PCR product was obtained only with the NDM primers, after being purified (QIAquick PCR Purification Kit, QIAGEN, Hilden, Germany), its sequence showed 100% identity with blaNDM-1.

Table

MIC of the KLZA strain of Klebsiella pneumoniae and its transconjugant and recipient

Strain genotyping was performed by multilocus sequence typing to determine the sequence type (ST) of the isolate and to establish a comparison with previously reported NDM-1–producing isolates. Allelic numbers were obtained on the basis of sequences of 7 housekeeping genes at www.pasteur.fr/recherche/genopole/PF8/mlst/Kpneumoniae.html. Multilocus sequence typing identified K. pneumoniae KLZA as an ST25 strain, which significantly differs from the ST14 type found in the index NDM-1–producing strain and from other isolates originating from India (1) and then in other countries. ST25 K. pneumoniae was also found in K. pneumoniae isolates in Geneva (3). Other K. pneumoniae STs harboring NDM-1 were ST15, ST16, and ST147 (4–7).

Resistance was transferred by conjugation to E. coli J53, with selection based on growth on agar in the presence of ceftazidime (10 mg/L) and azide (100 mg/L). The conjugant T1 showed resistance to β-lactams, including all carbapenems, as well as decreased susceptibility to ciprofloxacin.

The KLZA strain and its transconjugant harbored other determinant of resistance, namely blaCTX-M-15, blaCMY-16, and qnrA6. Plasmid incompatibility groups, determined by a PCR-based replicon typing method, belonged to the incA/C replicon type.

This report of an NDM-1–producing K. pneumoniae in Croatia adds to those of other cases in patients from patients hospitalized in the Balkan area. The patient in this report had no apparent link to the Indian subcontinent.

In a survey conducted by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to gather information about the spread of NDM-1–producing Enterobacteriaceae in Europe and reporting cases from 13 countries during 2008–2010, five of the 55 persons with known travel histories had traveled to the Balkan region during the month before diagnosis of their infection: 2 to Kosovo and 1 each to Serbia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. All had received hospital care in Balkan countries because of an illness or accident that occurred during the journey (7). Two of the latter cases (4,8) and a case from Germany (9) were subsequently published. No patient had any apparent link to the Indian subcontinent.

Although the way NDM-1 isolates might have been imported to western Europe not only from the Indian subcontinent but also from Balkan countries (10) has been highlighted, awareness of western Europe as a possible area of endemicity remains limited. The aforementioned report from Germany, although recognizing that the patient had been repatriated after hospitalization in Serbia, declared "no evidence about contact with people from regions where NDM-enterobacteria are endemic" (9). This limited awareness shows the threat of neglecting to screen patients who are transferred from countries thought not to be at risk for NDM-1. Furthermore, it means that specimen are not sent to the local reference laboratories and recognized as positive for NDM-1, thus permitting wide dissemination of NDM-1–producing enterobacteria in the community (4). The accumulating evidence of NDM-1 from the Balkan area could suggest a possible multifocal spread of this enzyme, with the Balkans as a possible second area of endemicity, in addition to the Indian subcontinent, and prompts for widespread epidemiologic surveillance.


The problem of finding the convex hull of a set of points in the plane is one of the fundamental and well-studied problems in Computational Geometry. However, for a set of imprecise points, the convex hull problem has not been thoroughly investigated. By imprecise points, we refer to a region in the plane inside which one point may lie. We are particularly interested in finding a minimum perimeter convex hull of a set of imprecise points, where the imprecise points are modelled as line segments. Currently, the best known algorithm that solves the minimum perimeter convex hull problem has an exponential running time in the worst case [14]. It is still unknown whether this problem is NP-hard. We explore several approximation algorithms for this problem. Finally we propose a constant factor approximation algorithm that runs in O(n log n) time.


The first part of this dissertation presents an innovative method for the assessment of generation system reliability. In this method, genetic algorithm (GA) is used as a search tool to truncate the probability state space and to track the most probable failure states. GA stores system states, in which there is generation deficiency to supply system maximum load, in a state array. The given load pattern is then convoluted with the state array to obtain adequacy indices.
In the second part of the dissertation, a GA based method for state sampling of composite generation-transmission power systems is introduced. Binary encoded GA is used as a state sampling tool for the composite power system network states. A linearized optimization load flow model is used for evaluation of sampled states. The developed approach has been extended to evaluate adequacy indices of composite power systems while considering chronological load at buses. Hourly load is represented by cluster load vectors using the k-means clustering technique. Two different approaches have been developed which are GA parallel sampling and GA sampling for maximum cluster load vector with series state revaluation.
The developed GA based method is used for the assessment of annual frequency and duration indices of composite system. The conditional probability based method is used to calculate the contribution of sampled failure states to system failure frequency using different component transition rates. The developed GA based method is also used for evaluating reliability worth indices of composite power systems. The developed GA approach has been generalized to recognize multi-state components such as generation units with derated states. It also considers common mode failure for transmission lines.
Finally, a new method for composite system state evaluation using real numbers encoded GA is developed. The objective of GA is to minimize load curtailment for each sampled state. Minimization is based on the do load flow model. System constraints are represented by fuzzy membership functions. The GA fitness function is a combination of these membership values. The proposed method has the advantage of allowing sophisticated load curtailment strategies, which lead to more realistic load point indices.


Implementation of winter cover crops (CC) is a conservation practice aimed at improving soil health and increasing water infiltration. Reduced tillage (e.g., no-till), another, more common conservation practice, shares these aims. While the literature concerning the main effects of CC and reduced tillage is rich, the additive effects of CC and reduced tillage are unclear and understudied—specifically, the adoption of reduced tillage long before (20+ years) CC implementation, which is common in the last half-century. This study assessed two of the potential short-term effects of CC when added in a long-term no-till system: reduction of soil compaction (SC) and addition of soil total carbon (STC). Four field plots in northeast Mississippi were planted with CC while two were utilized as controls having no CC. All plots were under no-till for the last 20+ years. Soil penetration resistance measurements (SC) and soil cores were collected in April of 2017, following two years of CC implementation, from 20 semirandomly selected locations in each plot. Model comparisons were used to explore variation in SC and STC between CC and control plots, and the contributions of covariates to the observed variation. Results of the selected models (model with highest Akaike's weight) indicated there was no difference in SC between CC and control plots; however, slight variation in STC did exist between the two treatment levels (d ± 95% CI = 0.46 ± 0.39, p < 0.05). Cover crops explained ≃0.7% and ≃5.0% of the variation in SC and STC, respectively. Results showed that soil moisture and unidentified field-scale variables (plots were divided between two adjacent fields) explained an additional ≃20% of the variation in SC and ≃13% in STC. The results in this study suggest that the addition of CC in a long-term no-till system helps to conserve STC over a shorter period than previously expected. Further investigation with more control in the experimental design is needed to better understand how the addition of CC to long-term no-till systems may compound benefits, lead to better management, and, potentially, increase adoption by producers.


The rapid rise in prevalence of diabetes and the upward shift of population age distributions are coincident demographic changes that explain why older adults have become the fastest growing diabetic population. In 2017 what do we know about diabetes in older adults? The initial clinical trials that elucidated the associations between glycemic control, hemoglobin A 1c (HbA 1c ) as well as onset and development of diabetic complications focused on adults but often excluded ≥65 year olds (1,2).


Many individuals and institutions – from scholar Edward Said to media watchdog Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting – have noted the Western media's imbalance in presenting the struggles of the Palestinian people, particularly during the ongoing Al-Aqsa Intifada. Yet as the mainstream media continue to under-report violence against Palestinians and misrepresent the occupation of Palestinian lands, Palestinian filmmakers have begun to generate their own images, often through the genre of the documentary. This article examines one such documentary, Mai Masri's Frontiers of Dreams and Fears, a study of the daily lives of children living in Shatila and Dheisheh refugee camps. It argues that Masri's film, through its restoration of the lost voice of the refugee child and its insistence on Palestinian narrative, provides an essential alternative to the exploitative images of the institutionalized media.


Natural selection is expected to favour the integration of dispersal and phenotypic traits allowing individuals to reduce dispersal costs. Accordingly, associations have been found between dispersal and personality traits such as aggressiveness and exploration, which may facilitate settlement in a novel environment. However, the determinism of these associations has only rarely been explored. Here, we highlight the functional integration of individual personality in nest-defence behaviour and natal dispersal propensity in a long-lived colonial bird, the Alpine swift (Apus melba), providing insights into genetic constraints shaping the coevolution of these two traits. We report a negative association between natal dispersal and nest-defence (i.e. risk taking) behaviour at both the phenotypic and genetic level. This negative association may result from direct selection if risk-averseness benefits natal dispersers by reducing the costs of settlement in an unfamiliar environment, or from indirect selection if individuals with lower levels of nest defence also show lower levels of aggressiveness, reducing costs of settlement among unfamiliar neighbours in a colony. In both cases, these results highlight that risk taking is an important behavioural trait to consider in the study of dispersal evolution.


It has been 80 years since John Maynard Keynes first proposed a plan that would have disciplined persistent surplus countries. But the Keynes Plan, like the subsequent Volcker Plan in 1972-74, was defeated by the major surplus country of the day (the United States and Germany, respectively), and today China (not to mention Japan or Germany) exhibits no enthusiasm for new revisions of these ideas. Williamson evaluates the two earlier attempts and several new proposals now on the table. Morris Goldstein proposes using the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to discipline surplus countries. Countries showing large and persistent current account surpluses would receive a Fund mission with the purpose of judging whether the country had a misaligned exchange rate. Penalties would depend on the size and persistence of any misalignment the Fund diagnosed. Aaditya Mattoo and Arvind Subramanian propose that countries could bring a case for unfair trade through currency undervaluation to the World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement system. The WTO would seek to establish the facts of the matter from the IMF. C. Fred Bergsten proposes that either a reserve currency country or the IMF itself should be able to engage in counter-intervention to push up the value of a currency that is being deliberately held down to an undervalued rate through intervention. US Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner, echoing ideas of the Korean G-20 summit hosts and endorsed by Yi Gang, a vice governor of the People's Bank of China, has proposed that members of the G-20 should commit themselves to limit their current account imbalances to a maximum of 4 percent of GDP. Daniel Gros and Gary Hufbauer have advanced other ways of disciplining surplus countries, by limiting or taxing the assets that surplus countries can hold. Williamson suggests incorporating ideas from the various proposals into a feasible mechanism for disciplining surplus countries. He finds the Mattoo-Subramanian proposal most attractive for typical countries: They focus attention on the exchange rate rather than reserve holdings, seek to use the IMF in an area where it undoubtedly has expertise, but also exploit the greatest success in international cooperation in recent years, namely the dispute settlement mechanism of the WTO. To deal with the problem when a member of a monetary union--which by definition does not have an independent exchange rate--has an excessive surplus, Williamson suggests running the Goldstein proposal in parallel--perhaps operated by the European Central Bank rather than the IMF, and with the focus on the level of demand rather than the exchange rate.


We examine how the mandatory adoption of IFRS in Continental Europe affects the contractual usefulness of accounting information in executive compensation, as reflected in pay-performance sensitivity (PPS) and relative performance evaluation (RPE). The empirical evidence indicates a weak increase in accounting-based PPS in the post-adoption period, primarily driven by countries with large differences between IFRS and their previously adopted local accounting standards. We also document a significant increase in accounting-based RPE using foreign peers after the adoption. Additional analysis shows that the increase in RPE is greater for firms with more foreign sales, and for those with lower availability of domestic peers of comparable size. The overall results are consistent with the compensation committees in those countries perceiving earnings after IFRS adoption to be of higher quality and comparability. Our paper highlights an important benefit of IFRS largely ignored by the literature, i.e., the higher earnings quality and comparability brought by the adoption of IFRS facilitate executive compensation contracting.


Previous work suggested that convexity in the Euler lattice can be interpreted in terms of consonance [1]. In this paper, a second hypothesis is presented that states that compactness in the Euler lattice is an indication of consonance. The convexity and compactness of chords is used as the basis of a model for the preferred intonation of chords in isolation (without a musical context). It is investigated if, and to which degree convexity and compactness are in agreement with the preferred intonation of chords in isolation. As measure of consonance to compare the model to, Euler's Gradus function is used. It is stressed however, that in the context of this paper, Euler's consonance model is able to represent a general consonance model rather than only the Gradus function itself. First, the diatonic chords are observed, after which the compactness, convexity and consonance according to Euler, is calculated for all chords in general containing 2, 3 and 4 notes within a bounded note name space, such that the relation between these three measures can be obtained. The principle of compactness turns out to be a strong indicative of consonance for chords, having the preference over other consonance models that it is simple and intuitive to use.


Abstract This paper presents the changes in urban population density in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in an area of approximately 20,000 km2 in southern Poland, which includes close to 100 towns and cities with a population of almost 4.5 million (in 2011) and an urbanisation index over 70%. It is the most urbanised part of Poland and includes the Cracow agglomeration and the Upper Silesian conurbation. The analysis was performed using one of the statistical methods for estimating discrete distributions, the kernel function method. The conclusions served as a basis for the presentation of changes occurring in this area against the backdrop of political and economic transformation in Poland, as well as a scientific discussion concerning the state and future of the merging of these agglomerations in the light of the factors discussed.


The aim of this research was to evaluate the genetic uniformity of blackberry plants (Rubus fruticosus L. 'Loch Ness' and 'Chester Thornless') obtained by micropropagation. Genetic uniformity was analysed by using RAPD and SRAP markers. For the in vitro multiplication, the slightly modified Murashige and Skoog (1962) basal medium was used, supplemented with 0.5 mg/l 6-Benzyladenine (BA), prepared with tap water and 50 g/l wheat starch as the gelling agent. This culture medium ensured the regeneration of well-developed plantlets, with multiplication rates of more than 42 for both cultivars. The in vitro multiplication was carried out in 30 months including 12 subcultures. The plants obtained from the 3rd and 11th subcultures were compared with the mother plants using 64 SRAP primer combinations (eight forward and eight reverse primers) and 20 RAPD primers to check their genetic fidelity. The amplification products were monomorphic in the micropropagated plants and the mother plant. No polymorphism was detected, thus proving the genetic fidelity and uniformity of the micropropagated plants.


The Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan (PCIP) is a temporary program implemented under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to make health insurance coverage available to uninsured individuals with preexisting conditions until 2014, when exchange-based health insurance becomes available to all. The PCIP program began enrolling applicants in July 2010. This issue brief examines enrollment trends, early changes to plan structures and premiums, and estimates of out-of-pocket costs by utilization pattern and type of plan. It also provides information about the age and medical conditions of early PCIP enrollees. Although PCIP enrollment has been lower than expected due to affordability issues, a lack of public awareness, and the requirement that applicants be uninsured for six months, the plans are nonetheless playing an important role in making coverage available to otherwise uninsurable Americans with preexisting conditions.


Quantifying habitat selection in marine organisms is challenging because it is diffi- cult to obtain species location information with multiple corresponding habitat measurements. In the ocean, habitat conditions vary on many spatiotemporal scales, which have important conse- quences for habitat selection. While macroscale biotic and abiotic features influence seasonal movements (spatial scales of 100�1000 km), selectivity of conditions on mesoscales (1�100 km) reflects an animal's response to the local environment. In this study, we examined habitat selec- tivity by pairing acoustic telemetry with environmental habitat parameters measured by an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), and demonstrate that migrating sand tiger sharks Carcharias taurus along the East Coast of the USA did not randomly use the coastal environment. Of the variables examined, we found evidence to suggest that sand tigers were selecting their habitat based on distance to shore, salinity, and colored dissolved organic matter (CDOM). Notably, temperature was not predictive of habitat use in our study. We posit that during their coastal migration, sand tigers select for specific mesoscale coastal habitats that may inform navi- gation or feeding behaviors. To our knowledge, this is the first empirical measure of mesoscale habitat selection by a coastal marine organism using an AUV. The applications of this method extend beyond the habitat selectivity of sand tigers, and will prove useful for future studies com- bining in situ observations of marine habitats and animal observations.


We focus on measuring relationships between pairs of objects in Wikipedia whose pages can be regarded as individual objects. Two kinds of relationships between two objects exist: in Wikipedia, an explicit relationship is represented by a single link between the two pages for the objects, and an implicit relationship is represented by a link structure containing the two pages. Some of the previously proposed methods for measuring relationships are cohesion-based methods, which underestimate objects having high degrees, although such objects could be important in constituting relationships in Wikipedia. The other methods are inadequate for measuring implicit relationships because they use only one or two of the following three important factors: distance, connectivity, and cocitation. We propose a new method using a generalized maximum flow which reflects all the three factors and does not underestimate objects having high degree. We confirm through experiments that our method can measure the strength of a relationship more appropriately than these previously proposed methods do. Another remarkable aspect of our method is mining elucidatory objects, that is, objects constituting a relationship. We explain that mining elucidatory objects would open a novel way to deeply understand a relationship.


We develop a learning principle and an efficient algorithm for batch learning from logged bandit feedback. This learning setting is ubiquitous in online systems (e.g., ad placement, web search, recommendation), where an algorithm makes a prediction (e.g., ad ranking) for a given input (e.g., query) and observes bandit feedback (e.g., user clicks on presented ads). We first address the counterfactual nature of the learning problem (Bottou et al., 2013) through propensity scoring. Next, we prove generalization error bounds that account for the variance of the propensity-weighted empirical risk estimator. In analogy to the Structural Risk Minimization principle of Wapnik and Tscherwonenkis (1979), these constructive bounds give rise to the Counterfactual Risk Minimization (CRM) principle. We show how CRM can be used to derive a new learning method--called Policy Optimizer for Exponential Models (POEM)--for learning stochastic linear rules for structured output prediction. We present a decomposition of the POEM objective that enables efficient stochastic gradient optimization. The effectiveness and efficiency of POEM is evaluated on several simulated multi-label classification problems, as well as on a real-world information retrieval problem. The empirical results show that the CRM objective implemented in POEM provides improved robustness and generalization performance compared to the state-of-the-art.


Becoming more creative and improvising have certain dynamics that can be used by therapists in fostering a more healing process. Playfulness, imagination, dialogue, skill-building, narrative, inspiration and integration can all be employed in clinical settings. These tools create an environment where spontaneity can arise, anxiety is reduced, and patients are more receptive to their own intuition.


In this study, we analysed data from a survey of Australian women (n=9,284) to identify women at the highest risk of physical and sexual violence and coercive control during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic Logistic regression modelling identified that specific groups of women were more likely than the general population to have experienced physical and sexual violence in the past three months These were Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, women aged 18-24, women with a restrictive health condition, pregnant women and women in financial stress Similar results were identified for coercive control, and the co-occurrence of both physical/sexual violence and coercive control These results show that domestic violence during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic was not evenly distributed across the Australian community, but more likely to occur among particular groups


The modern era of drug development for Alzheimer's disease began with the proposal of the cholinergic hypothesis of memory impairment and the 1984 research criteria for Alzheimer's disease. Since then, despite the evaluation of numerous potential treatments in clinical trials, only four cholinesterase inhibitors and memantine have shown sufficient safety and efficacy to allow marketing approval at an international level. Although this is probably because the other drugs tested were ineffective, inadequate clinical development methods have also been blamed for the failures. Here, we review the development of treatments for Alzheimer's disease during the past 30 years, considering the drugs, potential targets, late‐stage clinical trials, development methods, emerging use of biomarkers and evolution of regulatory considerations in order to summarize advances and anticipate future developments. We have considered late‐stage Alzheimer's disease drug development from 1984 to 2013, including individual clinical trials, systematic and qualitative reviews, meta‐analyses, methods, commentaries, position papers and guidelines. We then review the evolution of drugs in late clinical development, methods, biomarkers and regulatory issues. Although a range of small molecules and biological products against many targets have been investigated in clinical trials, the predominant drug targets have been the cholinergic system and the amyloid cascade. Trial methods have evolved incrementally: inclusion criteria have largely remained focused on mild‐to‐moderate Alzheimer's disease criteria, recently extending to early or prodromal Alzheimer disease or 'mild cognitive impairment due to Alzheimer's disease', for drugs considered to be disease modifying. The duration of trials has remained at 6–12 months for drugs intended to improve symptoms; 18‐ to 24‐month trials have been established for drugs expected to attenuate clinical course. Cognitive performance, activities of daily living, global change and severity ratings have persisted as the primary clinically relevant outcomes. Regulatory guidance and oversight have evolved to allow for enrichment of early‐stage Alzheimer's disease trial samples using biomarkers and phase‐specific outcomes. In conclusion, validated drug targets for Alzheimer's disease remain to be developed. Only drugs that affect an aspect of cholinergic function have shown consistent, but modest, clinical effects in late‐phase trials. There is opportunity for substantial improvements in drug discovery and clinical development methods.


Infertility affects approximately 2–3 million married couples in the USA and a larger cohort of unmarried men and women. For those not inclined to adopt, science has provided another option, one based on assisted reproduction through artificial insemination, commonly known as in vitro fertilization (IVF). Under this framework a woman, designated as a "surrogate", bears a baby on behalf of the intended parents with the objective of relinquishing her rights to the child after birth. The subcontract for the services of a "surrogate" or more specifically for the use of her "womb" can be viewed as part of the literature on outsourcing of production by a vertically integrated family. The lack of universal enforcement of "surrogacy" contracts in the USA creates a demand for outsourcing of surrogacy services. One beneficiary of this uncertainty in enforcement is India which provides gestational services to intended international parents.


A B S TRACT: The kinetics of structural change of a highly ordered kaolinite intercalated with potassium acetate have been studied through both intercalation and deintercalation. Deintercalation of the intercalated kaolinite, brought about by washing for different time intervals was followed by both X-ray diffraction and Raman microscopy. X-ray diffraction shows the kaolinite to be highly ordered with a Hinekley index of 1.42 and intercalated to ~90%. X-ray diffraction also showed that the intercalated kaolinite was deintercalated by 80% in the first minute of washing. An additional Raman band, attributed to the inner surface hydroxyl groups, strongly hydrogen bound to the acetate, is observed at 3605 cm-I for the potassium acetate intercalate with the concomitant loss of intensity in the bands at 3652, 3670, 3684 and 3693 cm -1. Upon deintercalation, the intensity of the 3605 cm -1 band decreased as the 3695 cm -1 band increased. The Raman spectral changes brought about upon deintercalation mirrored the changes observed by X-ray diffraction. Deintercalation of kaolinite caused disordering of the kaolinite.


"Over the past several decades, China has made tremendous progress in market integration and infrastructure development. Demand for natural resources has increased from the booming coastal economies, causing the terms of trade to favor the resource sector, which is predominantly based in the interior regions of the country. However, the gap in economic development level between the coastal and inland regions has widened significantly. In this paper, using a panel data set at the provincial level, we show that Chinese provinces with abundant resources perform worse than their resource-poor counterparts in terms of per capita consumption growth. This trend that resource-poor areas are better off than resource-rich areas is particularly prominent in rural areas. Because of the institutional arrangements regarding property rights of natural resources, most gains from the resource boom have been captured either by the government or state owned enterprises. Thus, the windfall of natural resources has more to do with government consumption than household consumption. Moreover, in resource-rich areas, greater revenues accrued from natural resources bid up the price of non-tradable goods and hurt the competitiveness of the local economy." from Authors' Abstract


Providing effective analgesia and sedation for critically ill children means addressing both their physical and psychological comfort. Correctable environmental and physical factors causing discomfort should be dealt with in the first instance; these factors might include medical devices, beds, lighting, noise reduction strategies, fluid and feeding regimes, day-night orientation and maintenance of sleep structure. Factors such as these should be considered before the introduction of any pharmacological agents, and should be continually reassessed during the course of a critical care admission.

After a satisfactory level of analgesia has been achieved, additional sedative agents may be required by some children. The aims of sedation are to reduce levels of anxiety and distress in the child, and to allow for better tolerance of therapeutic or diagnostic procedures. The specific strategies employed to achieve satisfactory levels of analgesia and sedation in critically ill children will depend on whether prolonged sedation is required, as is normally needed to facilitate invasive mechanical ventilation, or if short-term sedation is required to facilitate a procedure. The requirement profile for sedative agents in critically ill children can vary considerably during the course of their admission; a young child mechanically ventilated for a week may require a gradually increasing level of "background" sedation to allow them to tolerate tracheal intubation, particularly if tolerance to sedative agents develops, and in addition they may require several episodes of controlled deepening of sedation to facilitate specific procedures.

In both cases, environmental and non-pharmacological techniques can reduce the need for pharmacological agents. Massage and relaxation techniques have been shown to be beneficial in critically ill adults1–3 and the watching of videos has also been shown to reduce the sedation requirements of children undergoing procedures.4 The benefits of music therapy in critically ill adults have been well described and can …


Spintronics is a new class of spin-dependent electronics with great potential for nonvolatile memory and logic technology. Additionally, spintronics may be combined with optoelectronic applications to achieve higher efficiency and novel capabilities. All of these developments require growth and characterization of new materials to polarize and transport electron spin currents. In this context, spin-polarized and non spin-polarized spatially resolved conductance measurements performed by scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) are effective means to investigate the spin and charge quantum transport in magnetic and organic systems, particularly for systems that are prone to phase separations and complex magnetic properties, such as the colossal magnetoresistive (CMR) manganites La_(1-x)Ca_xMnO_3 (LCMO) that are known to exhibit intrinsic electronic heterogeneity due to strong electronic correlation and competing orders in the ground state. Additionally, STM measurements can provide direct information about the band structure and mobility of the organic semiconductor 8-hydroxyquinoline aluminum (Alq_3) in the Alq_3/LCMO heterostructures to further understand their performance in spintronic devices. The manganite compound La_(1-x)Ca_xMnO_3 (LCMO) with a bulk doping level x = 0.3 is a ferromagnetic metal with a relatively high Curie temperature T_c = 270K. This system is promising for spintronic device applications, and may be used as a spin current injector because of the gapped band structure for minority spins, a property known as half-metallicity. On the other hand, even in this bulk ferromagnetic metallic phase, inherent electronic inhomogeneity at microscopic scales is expected. To further study this effect, we have investigated x = 0.3 LCMO thin films using scanning tunneling microscopy in spectroscopic mode under varied temperature, magnetic field and spin polarization of the tunneling current. Spatially resolved maps of tunneling conductance taken with non polarized Pt/Ir tip show variations on the scale of a few hundred nanometers in size in the bulk ferromagnetic state, which are believed to be the result of intrinsic inhomogeneity of the manganites due to their tendency toward phase separation. Maps of tunneling conductance taken with spin-polarized Cr coated tips are consistent with the convolution of the LCMO and Cr density of states, and below the T_c of LCMO the spin-polarized tunnel junction can be described as a spin valve configuration. The electronic homogeneity in the material increases above the magnetic ordering temperature, or with application of magnetic field in the bulk ferromagnetic state. We identified gaps in the conductance at two separate characteristic energies. The first gap of energy approximately 0.6 eV is believed to arise from a ferromagnetic insulator (FI) surface phase due to its disappearance above the Curie temperature (T_c) and the dependence of gap energy on relative tip and sample magnetic orientation. The surface phase may be stabilized by Ca deficiency at the LCMO surface, corroborated by x-ray photoemission spectroscopy (XPS). Second, we observe a nearly temperature independent and spatially varying gap of approximately 0.4 eV for all zero-field tunneling spectra, which is believed to be associated with the psuedogap (PG) phenomena in the manganites. Application of a magnetic field converts the regions of PG phenomena to FI, in conjunction with an increase in the homogeneity of the lm conductance. These findings suggest that the PG phenomena arise from electronic inhomogeneity in the manganite film, in agreement with theoretical investigations, and that the vertical and lateral electronic inhomogeneity, along with its dependence on temperature and applied magnetic field, has important implications for use of these materials in high-density nanoscale spintronic devices. We have also successfully deposited and investigated Alq_3/LCMO heterostructures of varying thicknesses to investigate charge transport in Alq_3. Bulk Alq_3 structural properties are preserved down to 10 nm in thickness with a -0.3 eV offset in band energies. The lack of band bending between LCMO and Alq_3 is suggestive of a shift in the preferred isomer from meridinial to facial at the interface. The absence of polaron states from our STM studies implies the relative unimportance of polarons in Alq_3 for this heterostructure. In addition, the measured mobilities on the order of 10^(-5)cm^2(Vs)^(-1) for electrons and holes in Alq^3 lms deposited on heated LCMO substrates more closely resemble values of the intrinsic mobility estimated from the muon spin relaxation measurements than those from studies of the bulk LED structures, suggesting that superior film conductivity close to the fundamental limit is possible with a heated substrate during sublimation.


Knowledge management can play a central strategic role in organisational life, potentially initiating from strategy planning to performance achievement. The continuous adjustment of organisational strategy and performance can be powerful in knowledge intensive organisations such as think tanks. Think tanks are policy research organisations, usually of small to medium size, and non-profit in nature. The Pakistani think tank 'industry' is at an important tipping point in terms of establishing knowledge 'impact' for the state and the wider society. Think tank organisations are gaining dual attention for creating awareness in society and suggesting policies to the state.

The central purpose of this research is to provide an explanation of why and how knowledge management plays a role within think tanks, especially with regards to organisations linking strategy and performance. It also seeks to provide evidence from Pakistani think tanks providing suggestions for organisational improvement that may be applicable to think tanks in other developing countries. A thorough literature review from the field of knowledge management includes knowledge, knowledge management, and the strategic relationship of knowledge management, organisational strategy and organisational performance. Specifically, the research seeks to analyse knowledge management in social sciences policy research think tanks based in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. The participation of eight think tanks provided access for field visits to conduct interviews, observations and document collection.

From the findings, it is recommended that consciousness towards knowledge management can highlight the natural and independent process to keep organisational strategy and performance improving continuously in a cyclic manner. Knowledge resources with Pakistani think tanks demand proper recognition and valuation, as they are potentially being worth more compared to material resources. Amongst the knowledge resources, cultural values and norms, multilingual skills, 'friendly' internal environments and leadership are found to be important. The strength of Pakistani think tanks is in their Relational Capital, which they appear to be utilising. Informal-Tacit knowledge management practices are highlighted more in the context, though gaps do appear to exist for formal practices. It is suggested that think tanks could further enhance real visibility through their Relational Capital and making use of tacit informal practices leading to friendly, multilingual and effectively leadership cultures with positive values. Think tanks have the potential to help provide solutions during turbulent times, both leading and managing knowledge – effecting a positive impact upon both state and society.


CELL CYCLEA convergence of research in yeast genetics, cell biology, and biochemistry is suggesting an answer to the question of how the dividing cell keeps track of its chromosomes: Molecular nannies called kinetochores keep a sharp eye on them so that the cell doesn't divide before they all attach to the fibers of the mitotic spindle and line up in the middle of the cell. Although the kinetochores, specialized bits of DNA and protein, were already known to have a mechanical role in cell division, the new work, some of which was presented last month at the annual meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in Washington, suggests that they play an active role in controlling cell division. Kinetochores that have not yet attached to the spindle make sure that the chromosomes are not pulled apart prematurely by releasing a protein signal that works with other proteins to put the brakes on cell division. But when the spindle attaches, a protein involved in that linkage somehow disables the wait signal, thereby releasing the brakes on mitosis. The work is intriguing because it adds to recent evidence that the cytoskeleton doesn't just carry out orders issued elsewhere in the cell but instead is an integral part of the cell's command structure. In this case, the work links the cytoskeleton to the continuation of the cell cycle.


Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) represents an emergent global threat which is straining worldwide healthcare capacity. As of May 27th, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) has resulted in more than 340,000 deaths worldwide, with 100,000 deaths in the US alone. It is imperative to study and develop pharmacological treatments suitable for the prevention and treatment of COVID-19. Ascorbic acid is a crucial vitamin necessary for the correct functioning of the immune system. It plays a role in stress response and has shown promising results when administered to the critically ill. Quercetin is a well-known flavonoid whose antiviral properties have been investigated in numerous studies. There is evidence that vitamin C and quercetin co-administration exerts a synergistic antiviral action due to overlapping antiviral and immunomodulatory properties and the capacity of ascorbate to recycle quercetin, increasing its efficacy. Safe, cheap interventions which have a sound biological rationale should be prioritized for experimental use in the current context of a global health pandemic. We present the current evidence for the use of vitamin C and quercetin both for prophylaxis in high-risk populations and for the treatment of COVID-19 patients as an adjunct to promising pharmacological agents such as Remdesivir or convalescent plasma.


Analysis of asylum policy in the United Kingdom thus requires examination of the complex interaction between domestic and international pressures, between legislative and judicial action, and between expansionism and restrictionism. In Part I, this paper considers the history of asylum in the UK through the 1990s, looking at the changes that occurred over the 20th century, and the international legal obligations at the core of the UK's asylum policy. The paper specifically addresses Britain's new commitments to European Union asylum policies, and the ways in which Britain's overall relationship with the EU affects Britain's domestic asylum policy. In Part II, the paper examines the two most significant recent changes in UK asylum law, namely the passage of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002, and the passage and implementation of the Human Rights Act in 1998. Finally, in Part III, the paper situates each of these major developments in the wider context of the various forces for expansion and restriction, in the UK and Europe. The paper concludes by examining the balance that may be struck as these forces interact.