Objectives The early identification of factors contributing to the successful treatment of hepatitis C infection is important for researchers and clinicians. Studies carried out on the role of an ultrarapid viral response (URVR) for the prediction of a sustained viral response (SVR) have shown its high positive predictive value (PPV). However, data on the combined effect of URVR with IL28B genotypes for the prediction of SVR are lacking. Our aim was to study the role of URVR and IL28B genotypes in the prediction of SVR among patients in Georgia infected with genotype 1. Methods Of a total of 156 patients enrolled in the study, 143 were included in the final analyses. Viral load testing for monitoring the viral response was carried out at 3, 24, 48, and 72 h and at 1, 2, and 4 weeks after the initiation of treatment. IL28B single nucleotide polymorphisms in rs12979860 were genotyped using real-time PCR methods. Results Our study showed that URVR was the earliest treatment predictor among genotype 1 patients harboring the IL28B C/C genotype (PPV-100%). Moreover, the C/C genotype was found to have a high PPV among genotype 1 patients without URVR or a rapid viral response, unlike patients infected with genotype 2 or 3. URVR and IL28B C/C genotypes were not as predictive of an SVR among genotype 2 and 3 patients; however, rapid viral responses were highly predictive of an SVR in these patients. Conclusion Our results suggest that testing for IL28B genotypes and viral load at weeks 1 and 2 may improve the ability to predict an SVR among hepatitis C virus genotype 1 patients; this information may be useful to ensure patient compliance with treatment.


Genetic and physiological characterization of bacteria derived from nodules of leguminous plants in the exploration of biofertilizer is of paramount importance from agricultural and environmental perspectives. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA gene of 84 isolates derived from Bangladeshi soils revealed an unpredictably diverse array of nodule-forming and endosymbiotic bacteria—mostly belonging to the genus Bradyrhizobium. A sequence analysis of the symbiotic genes (nifH and nodD1) revealed similarities with the 16S rRNA gene tree, with few discrepancies. A phylogenetic analysis of the partial rrn operon (16S-ITS-23S) and multi-locus sequence analysis of atpD, glnII, and gyrB identified that the Bradyrhizobium isolates belonged to Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens, Bradyrhizobium elkanii, Bradyrhizobium liaoningense and Bradyrhizobium yuanmingense species. In the pot experiment, several isolates showed better activity than B. diazoefficiens USDA110, and the Bho-P2-B2-S1-51 isolate of B. liaoningense showed significantly higher acetylene reduction activity in both Glycine max cv. Enrei and Binasoybean-3 varieties and biomass production increased by 9% in the Binasoybean-3 variety. Tha-P2-B1-S1-68 isolate of B. diazoefficiens significantly enhanced shoot length and induced 10% biomass production in Binasoybean-3. These isolates grew at 1–4% NaCl concentration and pH 4.5–10 and survived at 45 °C, making the isolates potential candidates for eco-friendly soybean biofertilizers in salty and tropical regions.


We generalize a spectral sequence of Brun for the computation of topological Hochschild homology. The generalized version computes the E-homology of THH(A;B), where E is a ring spectrum, A is a commutative S-algebra and B is a connective commutative Aalgebra. The input of the spectral sequence are the topological Hochschild homology groups of B with coefficients in the E-homology groups of B ∧A B. The mod p and v1 topological Hochschild homology of connective complex K-theory has been computed by Ausoni and later again by Rognes, Sagave and Schlichtkrull. We present an alternative, short computation using the generalized Brun spectral sequence.


With the rapid technological change of society with Artificial Intelligence, elementary schools' goal should be to prepare the next generations according to competencies. We propose an AI curriculum to cultivate students' AI literacy to answer the question of 'why and what to teach' on AI. The proposed AI curriculum focuses on achieving AI literacy based on three competencies: AI Knowledge, AI Skill, and AI Attitude. We anticipate that the proposed curriculum will equip students with core competencies for the future with AI.


The post-1994 observations of the blazar OQ 530 in optical BVRI bands, and radio observations at 22 GHz and 37 GHz were collected. The date compensated discrete Fourier transform (DCDFT) and CLEANest methods were used to search for possible periodicities. Two possible periods of 456±100 days and 258±29 days were found in the optical bands. The existence of possible correlations between the optical and radio emissions was investigated by means of discrete correlation function (DCF) analysis, and no significant correlation was found. Some possible mechanisms for the periodic variability are discussed.


Horses develop severe and often fatal hemolytic anemia after ingesting dried leaves from red maple (Acer rubrum) trees. Toxicosis appears related to an unknown oxidant present in the dried or wilted leaves. This case report describes 2 horses that aborted and developed fatal hemolytic anemia after consuming wilted leaves from red maple (Acer rubrum). While an absolute diagnosis was not confirmed due to lack of proper antemortem and postmortem examinations, red maple toxicosis appeared a reasonable diagnosis based on clinical signs and laboratory findings. Other differentials include equine infectious anemia, autoimmune hemolytic anemia, piroplasmosis, leptospirosis, ehrlichiosis, and other plant or chemical sources of oxidants (onion, garlic, kale, phenothiazines).


We present an approach for implementing a formally certified loop-invariant code motion optimization by composing an unrolling pass and a formally certified yet efficient global subexpression elimination. This approach is lightweight: each pass comes with a simple and independent proof of correctness. Experiments show the approach significantly narrows the performance gap between the CompCert certified compiler and state-of-the-art optimizing compilers. Our static analysis employs an efficient yet verified hashed set structure, resulting in fast compilation.


The authors present two principal advances in multistep direct theory: (1) A two-component formulation of multistep direct reactions, where neutron and proton excitations are explicitly accounted for in the evolution of the reaction, for all orders of scattering. While this may at first seem to be a formidable task, especially for multistep processes where the many possible reaction pathways becomes large in a two-component formalism, the authors show that this is not so -- a rather simple generalization of the FKK convolution expression 1 automatically generates these pathways. Such considerations are particularly relevant when simultaneously analyzing both neutron and proton emission spectra, which is always important since these processes represent competing decay channels. (2) A new, and fully microscopic, method for calculating MSD cross sections which does not make use of particle-hole state densities but instead directly calculates cross sections for all possible particle-hole excitations (again including an exact book-keeping of the neutron/proton type of the particle and hole at all stages of the reaction) determined from a simple non-interacting shell model. This is in contrast to all previous numerical approaches which sample only a small number of such states to estimate the DWBA strength, and utilize simple analytical formulae for the partial state density, based on the equidistant spacing model. The new approach has been applied, along with theories for multistep compound, compound, and collective reactions, to analyze experimental emission spectra for a range of targets and energies. The authors show that the theory correctly accounts for double-differential nucleon spectra.


Six controlled trials of a topical interferon inducer, N',N'-diotadecyl-N',N'-bis-(2-hydroxyethyl) propanediamine (CP 20961), against rhinovirus infection in volunteers were reviewed. Controls were the drug vehicle (which consisted of a mixture of polysorbate-80 in gylcerol and saline), saline only, and oral lactose. Multiple doses of the inducer given before challenge in any of three regimens reduced the symptomatic response to viral infection. Treatment with three doses of drug the day before challenge enhanced the interferon response to virus; four days of treatment with either the drug or its vehicle before challenge produced a refractoriness to further interferon induction. Both the drug and its vehicle were capable of inducing nasal interferon. When interferon was present at the time of viral inoculation, symptoms were reduced with or without an increase in the interferon response to infection. The rates of infection and illness were increased after a single dose of drug and decreased after a single dose of the vehicle alone.


Paper determines contribution of Agha Khan Education Services Pakistan (AKESP) for primary education at Chitral. Findings indicated that AKESP primary schools provide free admission for all students. Teachers at AKESP primary schools are highly qualified; they are provided refreshes courses, AKESP schools have proper building, furniture, electricity, computer, library, sick room, drinking water and proper toilet facilities. Scholarships are given to outstanding students and fee concession facility for poor students. Findings depicted that curriculum taught at AKESP primary schools was according to needs of students. Problems at AKESP schools were shortage of teachers, especially English teachers and lack of teaching aids. AKESP may take suitable measures to solve these problems. Researches can be planned to standards of quality primary education in AKESP primary schools and public sector primary schools, or differences in provision of facilities at AKESP's primary schools and public sector primary schools may be examined.


The most important inorganic contaminant is nitrate ion, NO 3 - .Excess nitrate ion in drinking water is a potential health hazard: risk of methemoglobinemia (or "blue-baby" syndrome). Sources of nitrate in groundwater: nitrogen fertilizers, atmospheric deposition, human sewage deposited in septic systems. The results of the study show that the values of parameters of the water samples such as, alkalinity, phosphate and nitrate etc are higher than WHO standards. None of the samples had nil value of nitrates and nitrites. The levels of nitrogen ammonium were less than WHO limits of 1.5 mg/L. All the samples had the phosphate concentration higher than 0.01 mg/L (WHO) Guideline value. The mean values also exceeded the limits. It was recommended that, the focus of any programme designed to deliver safe drinking water should therefore be the effective management and operation of water sources, treatment plants and distribution systems whether piped or manual. This will demand action by water suppliers, environmental protection agencies and health bodies.


A simple and rapid analytical method for the simultaneous determination of abamectin, emamectin, eprinomectin, ivermectin, doramectin and moxidectin residues in tea by ultra-performance liquid chromatography-electrospray tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC/ESI-MS/MS) has been developed. The avermectins were extracted from the tea with acetonitrile after the tea was infiltrated in saturated aqueous NaCl solution, then cleaned up with a C18 solid phase extraction cartridge. The linear ranges were 2.0-50 microg/L and the correlation coefficients were all above 0.9920. Several UPLC-MS/MS conditions that included the mobile phase, monitor ions and the selection of calibration of the measurement were studied. The average recoveries and the relative standard deviations ranged from 61.7% to 85.4% and from 9.37% to 17.19%, respectively, in spiked samples at the concentrations of 5, 10, 20 microg/kg for moxidectin and 2, 5, 10 microg/kg for other analytes. This method is suitable for the determination of avermeetin residues in tea.


A multimodal spectroscopic fiber probe for combined Raman, fluorescence and reflectance measurements was designed, developed and used for tissue diagnostics. Two visible laser diodes emitting in the visible range, a laser diode emitting in the NIR, and a halogen lamp were respectively used for fluorescence, Raman and reflectance spectroscopy. The probe was based on a custom fiber bundle, equipped with various types of fibers for exciting and detecting the signals of interest. Fluorescence, Raman and reflectance spectra were acquired using the same detection unit, based on a cooled CCD camera, connected to a spectrograph. The probe was successfully employed for diagnostic purposes on various tissues in a good agreement with common routine histology. This study included skin, brain and bladder tissues and in particular the classification of: malignant melanoma against melanocytic lesions and healthy skin; urothelial carcinoma against healthy bladder mucosa; brain tumor against dysplastic brain tissue. The diagnostic capabilities were determined using a cross-validation method with a leave-one-out approach, finding very high sensitivity and specificity for all the examined tissues. The obtained results demonstrated that the multimodal approach is crucial for improving diagnostic capabilities, as well as for performing tumor grading. The system presented here can improve diagnostic capabilities on a broad range of tissues and has the potential of being used for endoscopic inspections in the near future.


Nunn AD, Copp GH, Vilizzi L, Carter MG. Seasonal and diel patterns in the migrations of fishes between a river and a floodplain tributary. Ecology of Freshwater Fish 2010: 19: 153–162. © 2009 John Wiley & Sons A/S

Abstract –  The population behaviours associated with the migrations of fishes in lowland river ecosystems are amongst the most poorly-understood dispersal mechanisms of temperate freshwater organisms. This study evaluated the influence of four environmental variables (light levels, river discharge, water temperature and water velocity) on the timing, intensity and direction of fish movements between the River Avon (Hampshire, England) and a small floodplain tributary, Ibsley Brook, over a 12-month period. Using canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) to identify patterns of movement (by groups of species) and the relative strengths of explanatory variables in the data, the probability of fishes migrating between the river and tributary was determined using Bayesian modelling. The intensity and direction of fish movements between the river and tributary varied temporally, both on a diel and seasonal basis, and there were species- and age-specific patterns in behaviour. Diel movements appeared to be triggered by changes in light intensity and brook water velocity, whereas seasonal movements were mostly driven by changes in river discharge and water temperature, particularly those associated with floods. This study emphasises the importance of connectivity in river systems, as fishes migrated in all conditions, but especially during rapidly-rising discharge.


Nonlinear light generation in optical fibers is an indispensable tool for generating light to access wavelengths away of the fundamental laser lines broadening the field of applications in biophotonics, metrology, and communications. However, most multi-wavelength sources rely on glass fibers which are static in their material properties after fabrication, thus post-tuning their properties is impossible. Complementary to the pressure-adjustable gas-filled hollow-core fibers in the high power laser regime [1], liquid-core fibers (LCF) offer a versatile platform for tunable nonlinear light generation and pulse control in the low- to medium-power regime. Recently, we demonstrated accurate control of the soliton fission process via temperature due to the large thermo-optical coefficient of the core liquid [2]. However, those experiments were performed with rather cost-intensive thulium laser technology.


Fuzhuan brick-tea is a special dark tea prepared from the leaves of Camellia sinensis var. sinensis. Its production involves a fungal fermentation stage, which forms the unique flavors and functions by a series of biochemical reactions. Our phytochemical research of the material led to the isolation of two new B-ring fission lactones of flavan-3-ols, fuzhuanins A (1) and B (2). In addition, three other flavan-3-ol derivatives (3-5), three flavone C-glycosides (6-8), eight flavonoid O-glycosides (10-17), five simple phenolics (19-23), two norisoprenoid glycosides (24, 25), two sesquiterpenoids (26, 27), and theobromine (28), as well as two flavonoid anions (9 and 18), were also identified. The structures of these compounds were determined by spectroscopic methods. Compounds 4, 19, 20, 22-24, 26, and 27 were reported for the first time in Camellia spp. and tea. Furthermore, HPLC analysis method was performed to compare the chemical constituents of the before/after fungal fermentation Fuzhuan brick-teas. Compound 1 was indicated as one of the major characteristic constituents generated in the fungal fermentation process. The IC50 value of the antiproliferative activity of 2 on HeLa cells was assayed as 4.48 μM. None of the isolated compounds showed any inhibition activity against the enteric pathogenic microbes at 800 μg/mL by the hole plate diffusion method.


Desirability approaches have been proposed to find an optimum of multiple response problem. The existing desirability approaches use either of mean or min of individual desirability in aggregation of multiple responses. However, in order to find an optimum having high mean and low dispersion among individual desirability, the dispersion needs to be simultaneously considered with its mean. This study proposes bias and variance (BV) method which aggregates bias (ideal target-mean) and variance of individual desirability in multiple response optimization. The proposed BV method was applied to an example to evaluate its usefulness by comparing with existing methods. Evaluation results showed that the solution of BV method was a fairly good compared with DS (Derringer and Suich, 1980) and KL (Kim and Lin, 2000) methods. The BV method can be utilized to multiple response surface problems when decision makers want to find an optimum having high mean and low variance among responses.


Stability characteristics of aerofoil flows are investigated by linear stability analysis of time-averaged velocity profiles and by direct numerical simulations with time-dependent forcing terms. First the wake behind an aerofoil is investigated, illustrating the feasibility of detecting absolute instability using these methods. The time-averaged flow around an NACA-0012 aerofoil at incidence is then investigated in terms of its response to very low-amplitude hydrodynamic and acoustic perturbations. Flow fields obtained from both two- and three-dimensional simulations are investigated, for which the aerofoil flow exhibits a laminar separation bubble. Convective stability characteristics are documented, and the separation bubble is found to exhibit no absolute instability in the classical sense; i.e. no growing disturbances with zero group velocity are observed. The flow is however found to be globally unstable via an acoustic-feedback loop involving the aerofoil trailing edge as a source of acoustic excitation and the aerofoil leading-edge region as a site of receptivity. Evidence suggests that the feedback loop may play an important role in frequency selection of the vortex shedding that occurs in two dimensions. Further simulations are presented to investigate the receptivity process by which acoustic waves generate hydrodynamic instabilities within the aerofoil boundary layer. The dependency of the receptivity process to both frequency and source location is quantified. It is found that the amplitude of trailing-edge noise in the fully developed simulation is sufficient to promote transition via leading-edge receptivity.


Using U.S. venture capital investment data from 1985 to 2008 and qualitative interviews, we examine how group dynamics influence the growth of interorganizational collaborations through the addition of new members. We argue that group dynamics that develop among members in a collaboration, as well as between each member and prospective newcomers, influence which new members join existing collaborations. For prospective newcomers, we distinguish between their depth of embeddedness, the strength of a prospective newcomer's past relationships with any incumbent member of the collaboration, and breadth of embeddedness, the proportion of incumbent members with which the newcomer has had prior ties. For incumbent members, we examine network faultlines, or subgroups in their collaboration, that may lead to power struggles. We find that when strong network faultlines exist, the depth and breadth of a prospective newcomer's embeddedness will have different influences on its likelihood of joining the collaboration: A newcomer with greater depth of embeddedness with the collaboration may be perceived to influence power dynamics in the group, leading to lower likelihood of joining, whereas a newcomer with greater breadth may not suffer the same liability. We also find that newcomers with greater depth benefit from the status of their strongest tie in the collaboration, and newcomers with greater breadth are more desirable partners when they are more experienced. Overall, our results highlight the mechanisms of anticipated power distribution and mediation as overlooked concerns in member additions to collaborations, especially when there is conflict.


Abstract The superoxide anion scavenging capacity of two flavonols (quercetin and kaempferol) and some of their conjugates (quercetin-3-rhamnoglucoside, quercetin-3-sophoroside, quercetin-3-sulphate, quercetin-3-glucuronide, kaempferol-3-sophoroside, kaempferol-3-glucuronide) and of several hydroxycinnamic acids (caffeic acid, ferulic acid, 5-5 diferulic acid, 8-O-4 diferulic acid and 8-8 diferulic acid) were studied. Superoxide anions were generated non-enzymatically in a phenazine methosulphate-NADH system and assayed by reduction of nitro-blue tetrazolium. Among the flavonols examined, the most effective scavengers of superoxide anions were the sophoroside, glucuronide and rhamnoglucoside conjugates. Conversely, quercetin-3-sulphate and the flavonol aglycones, exhibited some pro-oxidant activity at the range of concentrations tested (0.5-10 μM). These results show that conjugation has a marked effect on the scavenging capacity of flavonols and that the type of conjugate at the 3-position determines the final superoxide scavenging capacity. Caffeic acid and ferulic acid showed no effect on the generation of superoxide anions by phenazine methosulphate-NADH. However, dimerization of ferulic acid enhanced the superoxide scavenging capacity of this hydroxycinnamic acid, but this depended on the type of linkage between the monomers. The order, from highest to lowest, of superoxide radical scavenging capacity for the dimers of ferulic acid was: 5-5-diferulic acid > 8-O-4-diferulic acid > 8-8-diferulic acid.


Purpose. To study the dynamics of electrophysiological parameters of the retina and optic nerve after vitrectomy for a primary fullthickness macular hole.Patients and Methods. Electrophysiological examination was performed in 40 patients (40 eyes) before vitrectomy, on the 1st, 3rd, 7th, 14th, 30th, 60th, 180th day after the operation. Three groups of patients were formed depending on the intraocular tamponade: the first group — air tamponade, the second group — gas (C3F8) tamponade, the third group — silicone oil tamponade.Results. In the first, second and third groups significant decrease in the retinal and optic nerve electrogenesis was revealed on the 1st day (p < 0.001) after vitrectomy. By the end of observation period all electrophysiological indices in the first, second and third groups recover to normal levels, excluding the retinal cone system and optic nerve parameters in the third group. Electrophysiological indices recovered twice as slow in the second group, compared to the first group, due to C3F8 gas tamponade inhibitory effect. In the first and second groups the photoreceptors recovered twice as fast as bipolar cells.Conclusions. Vitrectomy causes significant inhibition of photoreceptors, bipolar and ganglion cells electrogenesis. The duration of vitrectomy is a significant negative factor determining retinal and optic nerve electrogenesis inhibition in the postop. Intraocular C3F8 gas, silicon oil tamponade (compared to air tamponade) is a significant adverse factor affecting retinal and optic nerve electrogenesis inhibition in the postop. The primary full-thickness macular hole diameter is a significant factor in inhibiting electrogenesis of the retinal cone system. Photoreceptors have a greater rehabilitation ability than bipolar cells.


Background When performing percutaneous radiofrequency ablation (RFA) of small renal masses (SRM), use of optimized periprocedural image guidance is essential to secure curative outcome of the treatment. Purpose To retrospectively compare the short-term radiological and clinical outcomes of RFA under combined ultrasound (US) and computed tomography (CT) guidance with that of a previously performed US-guided series at the same institution. Material and Methods From November 2009 to November 2013, 60 patients (mean age, 70.1 years; range, 34–86 years) with renal masses measuring in the range of 13–50 mm in maximal diameter (mean diameter, 25.4 ± 6.8 mm) underwent percutaneous RFA with combined US/CT guidance. The technical success rate, recurrence-free survival, rate of complications, and the percentage change in the estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) were compared with that of a previously published series of 41 patients with SRM treated with US-guided RFA between November 2002 and December 2008. Results The tumor and patient characteristics were similar between the two treatment groups. The primary and secondary technical success rate was significantly higher in the group treated with combined US/CT guidance compared with the group treated with US guidance alone (100% and 100% vs. 82% and 91%, respectively). The local recurrence-free survival was significantly better in the combined US/CT-guided group than in the US-guided group (P = 0.016). There was no significant difference in the rate of overall complications (13% vs. 17%) or the mean percentage decrease in the eGFR after the respective treatment (1.1 ± 18.3% vs. 5.0 ± 11.7%). Conclusion The use of combined US/CT guidance when performing renal RFA resulted in superior primary and short-term outcome compared to the use of US guidance alone in patients treated at the same institution.


Osmium tetroxide and TMEDA form stable crystalline adducts with alkenes. The structure of liquid alkenes can be determined through the X-ray analysis of these derivatives. Osmium, a heavy atom, facilitates the crystallographic analysis and the determination of the absolute configuration using common Mo X-ray sources. The utility of this method for assigning structures and absolute configurations was demonstrated on a number of unsaturated substrates that include simple alkenes, enones, enol ethers, and silyl enol ethers.


We present the first direct observation of the UV SPPs using a UV compatible near field scanning optical microscope system. Subwavelength interference phenomenon in 1D and 2D are both observed.


Background Despite therapeutic options for osteoporosis have greatly expanded over the past few decades, the treatment of patients with established severe osteoporosis still remains challenging. Recently the combined teriparatide (TPD) and denosumab therapy was shown to increase bone mineral density (BMD) more than either agent alone. Objectives The aim of this study was to compare the changes in bone turnover markers and in inhibitors of the Wnt canonical pathway in patients treated with either denosumab alone or TPD alone or when TPD was added to patients previously treated with denosumab. Methods Open label prospective randomized study, involving 59 women over 65 years old affected by severe postmenopausal osteoporosis (with the evidence of at least two moderate-severe vertebral fractures), Bone turnover markers C-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen (CTX) and intact N-propeptide of type I collagen ad (P1NP) and inhibitors of the Wnt canonical pathway sclerostin (SOST) and Dickkopf-related protein 1 (DKK1) were evaluated. Results In the groups treated with TPD or with denosumab alone bone turnover markers rose and decreased, respectively. In TPD group a later significant increase in DKK1 was observed, while in denosumab group a progressive increase in SOST was associated with a progressive significant decrease in DKK1. In the group treated first with denosumab and in which TPD was added 3 months later, the rounded values of both CTX and P1NP increased 3 months after the beginning of TPD by approximately the same absolute and percentage value of the group of patients treated with TPD alone, showing that the strong effect of denosumab on bone turnover is easily reversed by TPD treatment. In this group, SOST increased as in the denosumab alone group, while DKK1 progressively increased as in the TPD alone group. Conclusions In conclusion, in this study we showed that TPD is able to express its biological activity even when bone turnover is fully suppressed by denosumab treatment. The combination therapy is associated with significant increases in both DKK1 and SOST, suggesting that the Wnt signalling pathway is not involved in the positive bone balance seen in the combination TPD-denosumab group. Disclosure of Interest None declared


An improved collecting apparatus for small aquatic or airborne organisms such as plankton, larval fish, insects, etc. The improvement constitutes an apertured removal container within which is retained a collecting bag, and which is secured at the apex of a conical collecting net. Such collectors are towed behind a vessel or vehicle with the open end of the conical net facing forward for trapping the aquatic or airborne organisms within the collecting bag, while allowing the water or air to pass through the apertures in the container. The container is readily removable from the collecting net whereby the collecting bag can be quickly removed and replaced for further sample collection. The collecting bag is provided with means for preventing the bag from being pulled into the container by the water or air following therethrough.


We thank Dr Messerli and colleagues for their interest in the extended follow-up of the lipid-lowering component of the Antihypertensive and Lipid-Lowering Treatment to Prevent Heart Attack Trial (ALLHAT). The long-term benefit of pravastatin on coronary heart disease (CHD) mortality and combined fatal/nonfatal CHD in black participants was statistically significant and consistent with the benefit observed for fatal/nonfatal CHD during the trial. In contrast, the elevated risk for stroke mortality in blacks was nonsignificant as was the intrial risk for stroke for the entire ALLHAT black cohort (hazard ratio 1.12, 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.86– 1.48 vs 0.74, 95% CI, 0.57–0.96 in non-blacks). During the extended follow-up there was a nonsignificantly higher risk in blacks and a nonsignificantly lower risk in non-blacks for both kidney disease mortality and endstage renal disease in the pravastatin group compared to usual care. Although this finding was not seen during the trial and could have arisen simply by chance as a result of multiple comparisons, a potential differential effect of statins on renal outcomes in blacks and non-blacks should be investigated in other long-term outcome studies. Further analyses of the ALLHAT data, including additional extended follow-up of the ALLHAT participants, may also prove informative.


Summary: The ultrastructure of Bacillus finitimus and B. thuringiensis spores has been examined using the freeze-etching technique. Labelled antibodies have been used in an attempt to locate crystal antigen in the spores of B. thuringiensis, which have a more complex structure than those of B. finitimus. The results of morphological studies and the use of labelled antibodies to stain sections of sporulating cells of B. thuringiensis suggest a relationship between crystal protein and the sporecoat of the organism. The different aspects of ultrastructure and their relation to crystal structure and formation are discussed.


BECAUSE of the considerable complexity of the field of radiation hazards, no one of us is able to explore every aspect in the detail necessary for a complete understanding. I shall discuss details that pertain to public health.
 The swift changes in the field of science affect our personal roles. Speaking personally, some years ago I was one of the principal architects in the national community-wide mass x-ray survey program. I now find myself in the present position of discouraging such a special type of effort, except of course for particular population groups where that technique clearly carries more benefit than it does risk.
 One theme that is worthy of special mention concerns the role that the physician—and today it is the pediatrician in particular—needs to exercise in the important field of radiological health. During the spring of 1960, the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy of the 86th Congress conducted open public hearings for nearly 2 weeks on the subject of radiation protection standards. Some of us present at the Annual Meeting of the Academy of Pediatrics participated in the hearings, as well as in others held earlier. Frequent references were made to the important work of Dr. Friedell's special ad hoc committee of the National Committee on Radiation Protection and Measurements dealing with human population exposure to the radionuclide, strontium-90 (published in Science, 131:3399, 1960); that important document should be read and re-read. At the hearings we tried to represent the profession of medicine and public health. It is worthy of note that ours was only one of many professions to appear.


The existence of a tide relationship between fundamental chemical properties of either copper or manganese as 3d transition elements and advanced functional properties of related oxide materials is demonstrated using original experimental results. The complex role of ionic sizes, oxidation and spin states, and Jahn–Teller distortions is discussed in terms of the influence of these phenomena on the crystal structure, phase assemblage, microstructure, and physical properties of three key classes of modern copper- and manganese-containing materials (high-temperature superconductors, colossal magnetoresistive compounds, and 1d superionics), bringing up innovation technologies in electrical power engineering, micro- electronics, spintronics, magnetic field sensing, electrode materials, and fuel cells.


Existing electrical DRAM technologies are not expected to supply sufficient bandwidth for many-core architecture as hundreds of cores are integrated on a single chip in the near future. The discrepancy of many-core processor-to-memory bandwidth will continue to enlarge. In this paper, we introduced optical burst switching to meet the many-core bandwidth challenge. Our optical technology is enabled by the prosperity of silicon photonic devices. Optical burst switching is a natural paradigm for bursty traffic which is common found in on-chip slef-similar flows. Memory access overhead is amortized by big burst length. Results of performance simulation and analysis reveal its outstanding advantages over electronic I/O signaling in terms of throughput, latency and energy consumption.


Lifeboats are the most used marine evacuation craft in both the shipping and offshore industries. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) Lifesaving Appliances (LSA) code does not have criteria for the manoeuvring performance of lifeboats nor for their habitability and effects on human subjects. During standard seakeeping exercises conducted with a SOLAS approved 20-person lifeboat in Conception Bay, NL two NRC employees (coxswain and assistant) wearing certified immersion suit systems had their skin temperature, deep body temperature, and heart rate measured while performing their assigned duties. During the morning of July 24th, 2009, the outside air temperature was 14°C and the water temperature was approximately 7.6°C, with little to no cloud cover. While piloting the lifeboat with the hatches closed, the interior temperature of the lifeboat rose from 19.4°C to 28.5°C over the course of approximately two hours. With the immersion suits fully zipped, the coxswain experienced an increase in mean skin temperature of 3.4°C, while the assistant's rose by 2.7°C. The coxswain's mean body temperature rose by 0.74°C, and the assistant's by 1.0°C. After the two-hour time period, both the coxswain and assistant's clothing were heavily soaked with sweat, and both reported moderate levels of thermal discomfort due to the heat. In the afternoon of the same day, with little to no cloud cover, the outside air and water temperatures registered 15°C and 8.78°C, respectively. For the afternoon trials, the lifeboat hatches were left open, and the immersion suits were unzipped. Over a two-hour period, the interior temperature of the lifeboat rose by only 0.2°C, the coxswain's mean skin temperature rose by 0.5°C, and the assistant's by 0.5°C. After the two hour afternoon session was completed, both the coxswain and the assistant reported little to no thermal discomfort with the interior temperature of the lifeboat. Based on these preliminary observations, prolonged occupancy of a sealed lifeboat with a high level of clothing insulation may lead to increased thermal stress on the evacuees.


The Hb F levels in beta-thalassaemia can be affected by factors both linked and unlinked to the beta-globin gene cluster. We have recently analysed a group of patients with a homozygosity for the IVS-I-6 (T-->C) mutation, showing a wide variation in Hb F levels (2-47%) which could not be accounted for by any sequence variation within regulatory elements of the beta-globin gene cluster. In order to further investigate factors underlying this phenotypic difference we have developed a competitive reverse transcription/polymerase chain reaction procedure and used this method to determine the relative amounts of gamma- and beta-mRNAs in 10 patients with the IVS-I-6 homozygosity and 15 heterozygous parents, two IVS-I-6/delta beta-thalassaemia compound heterozygotes, five homozygotes for the beta(+) IVS-I-110 (G-->A) mutation, and in two with a homozygosity for the beta(0) codon 39 (C-->T) mutation. Three heterozygotes were also included. The percentages of gamma/(gamma(+) beta) mRNA were 10-73% in the IVS-I-6 homozygotes and < 2% to 10% in their heterozygous parents. A direct relationship existed between the level of mRNA and the % Hb F. However, the relative gamma-mRNA levels in the IVS-I-6 homozygotes were higher than their Hb F levels, indicating a possible competition between the gamma and beta transcripts for translational factors with a less efficient initiation of protein synthesis on the gamma-mRNA or a preferential survival of cells with mainly beta-globin gene expression at the post-reticulocyte stage. The gamma-mRNA levels in the two IVS-I-6/delta beta-thalassaemia compound heterozygotes were 71% and 62%, similar to their Hb F levels (63% and 59%), and averaged 82% (range 65-91%) in the five IVS-I-110 homozygotes, and 97.5% in the two codon 39 homozygotes. The correlation between these values and the % Hb F could not be evaluated because of the transfusion regimens; however, the levels of gamma-mRNA were as expected for patients with these beta-thalassaemia alleles.


Recombinant activated coagulation factor VII (rFVIIa) (NovoSeven) was developed for treatment of bleeding in hemophilia patients with inhibitors (antibodies) against factors VIII or IX. rFVIIa initiates the coagulation cascade by binding to tissue factor at the site of injury and causes the formation of sufficient amounts of thrombin to trigger coagulation. Patients with a variety of other coagulation deficiencies than hemophilia characterized by an impaired thrombin generation and life-threatening bleeding have been reported as successfully treated with rFVIIa. Data are now entered into clinical registries established to further monitor this experimental treatment with NovoSeven. rFVIIa is produced free of any added human protein. The amino acid sequence of rFVIIa is identical to plasma-derived FVIIa (pdFVIIa). Posttranslational modifications (i.e., gamma-carboxylations, N- and O-glycosylations) are qualitatively identical in pdFVIIa and rFVIIa although some quantitative differences exist. The activities of rFVIIa and pdFVIIa are indistinguishable. Manufacturing of rFVIIa involves expression in baby hamster kidney (BHK) cells followed by purification, including three ion-exchange and one immunoaffinity chromatography steps. The last anion-exchange chromatography step ensures completion of the autoactivation of recombinant factor VII (rFVII) to rFVIIa. This review describes the mechanism of action, characterization, manufacturing, and preclinical and current clinical evidence for the efficacy and safety of rFVIIa.


Background: When medical model is requested, in the most times the suggested scanning protocol of the CT scan involve the thinnest possible slice to be taken. This will result in increased dosage of radiation that the patient will receive as the thinnest the slice in the CT scan the more radiation it requires. Five DICOM data sets were selected randomly from our hospital radiology unit. These data (skull images) were taken using CT scan protocol specific for PNS (paranasal sinuses). The protocol involves (0.625mm) slice thickness. Five Skull models sets were reconstructed first according to these original data thickness (0.625mm). These skull models sets were reconstructed again after modifying the slice thickness of the original DICOM data to be (1 mm) by a software used in the CT scan unit (mention the software used for this purpose). An advanced software (ATOS PROFESSIONAL/GOM GMBH), used in aerospace and automotive industries, compare precisely these two skull models derived from both original data sets and modified data sets by inspection of any dimensional and anatomical changes of skulls that were reconstructed from the modified data . Aim of study: to see if the increase slice thickness in the CT scanning obtained for reconstruction of medical models has a strong effect on overall accuracy of those models, this is in favor of decreasing the high radiation dosage that may be applied when obtain a thinner slice. Results: The inspection showed that both models (original data model and modified data model) for each patient were almost the same from the anatomical point of view and both are nearly superimposed on each other except minute deviations which were not statistically significant. Conclusion: by overall inspection of the two models sets we support that scanning protocols of 1mm slice thickness yields a very similar results to those resulted with usage of 0.625mm slice thickness protocols, and can be applied in craniofacial modelling with the benefit from concomitant radiation dosage reduction.


Contemporary organizations perceive introducing various kinds of innovations as the foundation for their long-term competitiveness, thus, they focus on increasing their ability to innovate.The issues of innovations and positive relationships at work have been mostly studied in for-profit organizations [e.g. Roberts 2007; Davidson and James 2007; Quinn 2007; Ibarra 1993], however, there is a considerable lack of such research concerning the social enterprises. Our paper aims to narrow the gap in the field and investigate how innovation orientation is determined by positive relationships at work both in social enterprises and for-profit organisations. Pobrane z czasopisma Annales H Oeconomia http://oeconomia.annales.umcs.pl Data: 30/08/2020 01:48:05


With recent advances in semiconductor technologies, the design and use of memories for realizing complex system-on-a-chip (SoC) is very widespread. The growing need for storage in computer, communication, and network appliances has motivated new advancements in faster and more efficient ways to test memories. Efficient testing schemes for single-port memories have been readily available. Multiport memories are widely used in multiprocessor systems, telecommunication application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), etc. Research papers which define multiport memory fault models and give march tests for the same are currently available. However, little work has been done to use the power of serial interfacing for testing multiport memories. In this paper, we develop a powerful test architecture for two-port memories using the serial interfacing technique. Based on the serial testing mechanism, we propose new march algorithms which can prove effective to reduce hardware cost considerably for a chip with many two-port memories. Once we understand how serial interfacing helps test two-port memories, one possible extension is to use serial interfacing for p-port memories (p > 2). The proposed method based on the serial interfacing technique has the advantages of high fault coverage, low hardware overhead, and tolerable test application time.


Provided is a surface electrolytic treatment method for clothing accessory components, whereby a variety of metallic colors can be cost-effectively applied to metal clothing accessories. A first metallic color can be applied to one outer surface side of the clothing accessory and, simultaneously, a second metallic color can be applied to the other outer surface side, as a result of: arranging at least one metal clothing accessory in an electrolytic solution, in a state of non-contact with a positive electrode and a negative electrode that are for conducting electricity to the electrolytic solution; conducting electricity to the electrolytic solution; and causing a bipolar phenomenon in the clothing accessory. A step can be included in which the posture of the clothing accessory is controlled during electricity conduction to the electrolytic solution, such that one side of the outer surface of the clothing accessory is faced towards the positive electrode and the other side is faced towards the negative electrode. In addition, a step can be included in which, during electricity conduction to the electrolytic solution, at least part of the outer surface of the clothing accessory is polished.


Computed Tomography (CT) is generally accepted as the most sensitive way for lung cancer screening. Its high contrast resolution allows the detection of small nodules and, thus, lung cancer at a very early stage. In this paper, we propose a method for automating nodule detection from high-resolution 3D chest CT images. Our method focuses on the detection of both calcified (high-contrast) and noncalcified (low-contrast) granulomatous nodules less than 5mm in diameter, using a series of 3D filters including a filter for vessels and noise suppression, a filter for nodule enhancement, and a filter for false-positive elimination based on local skeletonization of suspicious nodule areas. We also present promising results of applying our method to various clinical chest CT datasets with over 90%


BACKGROUND
The outcome of vital pulp treatment after carious pulp exposure is multifactorial and related to the procedure, biomaterial and preoperative pulpal diagnosis.

OBJECTIVES
To conduct a systematic review and meta-analysis determining outcome of direct pulp capping (DPC) in mature permanent teeth with a cariously exposed pulp and a clinical diagnosis of reversible pulpitis, and ascertain whether the capping material influences the outcome.

METHODS SOURCES
MEDLINE Ovid-SP, Cochrane Central-Register of Controlled-Trials (CENTRAL), International Clinical Trials Registry Platform (ICTRP), ClinicalTrials.gov, Embase, and Web of Science until April 2020. Inclusion: Prospective, retrospective cohort studies and randomised trials investigating DPC outcome or comparing different capping materials after carious pulp exposure. Exclusion: Primary teeth, mechanical, traumatic or not-specified pulp exposure, teeth with irreversible pulpitis or no pulpal diagnosis. Risk of bias assessed using Cochrane and modified-Downs and Black quality assessment checklist. Meta-analysis on combined clinical/radiographic outcome was performed using a random effect model. Success was defined as absence of signs and symptoms of irreversible pulpitis, apical periodontitis or loss of pulp vitality.

RESULTS
Quality assessment highlighted four non-randomised studies to be of fair and five of poor-quality. Four randomised trials showed high risk of bias. The pooled success rate differed based on material and follow-up. Calcium hydroxide success rate was 74% at 6-months, 65% at 1-year, 59% at 2-3 years and 56% at 4-5 years. Mineral trioxide aggregate (MTA) success was 91%, 86%, 84% and 81% at the same time points. Biodentine success was 96% at 6-months, 86% at 1 year and 86% at 2-3 years. Meta-analysis revealed different MTA had better success than calcium hydroxide at 1-year (OR 2.66, 95% CI; 1.46- 4.84, p=0.001) and 2-3 years follow-up (OR 2.21, 95% CI; 1.42 - 3.44, p=0.0004). There was no difference between MTA and Biodentine.

DISCUSSION
These results were based on poor methodological quality studies. The effect size for of MTA vs Ca (OH)2, although modest, was consistent with narrow CI.

CONCLUSIONS
Low-quality evidence suggests a high success rate for DPC in teeth with cariously exposed pulps with better long-term outcomes for MTA and Biodentine compared to calcium hydroxide.


Rocket fuel needs to stay cool—super cool, in fact. The ability to store gas propellants like liquid hydrogen and oxygen at cryogenic temperatures (below -243 °F) is crucial for space missions in order to reduce their volumes and allow their storage in smaller (and therefore, less costly) tanks. The Agency has used these cryogenic fluids for vehicle propellants, reactants, and life support systems since 1962 with the Centaur upper stage rocket, which was powered with liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen. During proposed long-duration missions, supercooled fluids will also be used in space power systems, spaceports, and lunar habitation systems. In the next generation of launch vehicles, gaseous propellants will be cooled to and stored for extended periods at even colder temperatures than currently employed via a process called densification. Densification sub-cools liquids to temperatures even closer to absolute zero (-459 °F), increasing the fluid's density and shrinking its volume beyond common cryogenics. Sub-cooling cryogenic liquid hydrogen, for instance, from 20 K (-423 °F) to 15 K (-432.4 °F) reduces its mass by 10 percent. These densified liquid gasses can provide more cost savings from reduced payload volume. In order to benefit from this cost savings, the Agency is working with private industry to prevent evaporation, leakage, and other inadvertent loss of liquids and gasses in payloads—requiring new cryogenic systems to prevent 98 percent (or more) of boil-off loss. Boil-off occurs when cryogenic or densified liquids evaporate, and is a concern during launch pad holds. Accurate sensing of propellants aboard space vehicles is also critical for proper engine shutdown and re-ignition after launch, and zero boil-off fuel systems are also in development for the Altair lunar lander.


Purpose: Tertiary hyperparathyroidism (THPT) occurs in less than 8% of the patients with secondary hyperparathyroidism after successful kidney transplantation. Tertiary hyperparathyroidism is commonly due to parathyroid hyperplasia, but about 2.6% of the THPT cases may be due to single or double adenomas. We investigate the usefulness of limited resection of single or two-gland parathyroid by comparing the blood calcium and PTH levels with respect to operative strategy. Methods: We analyzed a total of 13 cases of tertiary hyperparathyroidism that were diagnosed and operated on at Asan Medical Center from May 1996 to April 2005. The patients were grouped according to the operative strategy: 3 and 1/2-parathyroidectomy (n=5), 3-parathyroidectomy (n=6), and 2-parathyroidectomy (n=2), and then we compared the mean blood PTH, calcium and creatinine levels. One patient in the 3-parathyroidectomy group underwent hemodialysis due to kidney transplant rejection, and this data was excluded from the analysis. Results: The mean blood calcium and PTH levels of the 2-parathyroidectomy group were higher than that of the other two groups. There were no cases of transient hypocalcemia in the 3 groups (<7.5 ㎎/㎗), and there were no cases of hypercalcemia at one year postoperative in the 3 &1/2-parathyroidectomy and 2-parathyroidectomy groups. The blood calcium and blood PTH levels were less than 9.1 ㎎/㎗ and more than 100 pg/㎖, respectively, in the one 3-parathyroidectomy patient who underwent hemodialysis due to kidney transplant rejection. Conclusion: Our preliminary conclusions, based on our small groups and the short follow-up period, are that the blood calcium and PTH levels will be higher in the limited resection group if kidney transplant rejection occurs, and tumor recurrence will be also more often found in the limited resection group. Therefore, our recommendation is that 3 and 1/2-parathyroidectomy and 2-parathyroidectomy are preferable operative strategies for tertiary hyperparathyroidism.


This report concerns the control of various types of bleeding by means of subcutaneous injections of a snake venom. In our experience this method has proved superior to the other forms of treatment commonly employed in cases characterized by a hemorrhagic tendency other than hemophilia or thrombocytopenic purpura haemorrhagica. In 1928, Shwartzman1described a phenomenon of skin reactivity (local hemorrhagic necrosis) to bacterial filtrates, which was produced when intradermal injections of these filtrates were followed at a suitable interval by intravenous injections. In 1930, one of us (S. M. P.) attempted, unsuccessfully, to produce the Shwartzman phenomenon with fungous extracts and then to render the reaction site more sensitive to the hypothetical toxic substances in fungous cultures by previous local injections of a vascular poison, snake venom. This proved unsuccessful. In the course of experiments2it was found that, if a period of from fourteen days to one


Elucidation of the molecular forces governing small molecule-RNA binding is paramount to the progress of rational design strategies. The extensive characterization of the aminoglycoside-16S rRNA A-site interaction has deepened our understanding of how aminoglycosides bind to their target and exert their antimicrobial effects. However, to date no other RNA binding compounds have undergone such rigorous evaluation, and in general the origins of small molecule-RNA binding remain a mystery. We recently reported the identification of small molecules, dimers of 2-deoxystreptamine, which are able to bind selectively to RNA tetraloops and octaloops, respectively [Thomas, Liu, and Hergenrother (2005) J. Am. Chem. Soc. 127, 12434-12435]. Described herein is the biochemical and biophysical characterization of the RNA binding properties of the most selective compound, B-12, as well as closely related analogues. These studies further substantiate that B-12 is indeed selective for RNA octaloop sequences and indicate that the origin of this selectivity may lie in B-12's unusual binding mode, in which entropic factors are major contributors to the overall binding energy. In fact, isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) experiments indicate that the binding of B-12 and most of its analogues is associated with a strong entropic contribution to the total binding energy. This is in stark contrast to the aminoglycosides, for which favorable enthalpy typically provides the driving force for binding. These studies are the first to examine small molecule-RNA hairpin loop binding in detail and are a necessary step toward the design of compounds that are specific binders for a given RNA sequence.


OBJECTIVE
To study the effect of down-regulation of histone deacetylase 2 (HDAC2) expression on cell proliferation and cell cycle in cervical carcinoma cell lines HeLa.

METHODS
HDAC2 siRNA and control siRNA were transfected to HeLa cells. CCK-8 and flow cytometry were used to analyze the changes of cell proliferation and cell cycle, respectively. Western blot was employed to detect the changes of cell proliferation and cell cycle-related proteins.

RESULTS
HDAC2 siRNA significantly down-regulated the expression of HDAC2 protein in HeLa cells, resulting in marked inhibition of cell proliferation. In addition, the percentage of cells in G(0)/G(1) phase in HDAC2 siRNA group (63.3% ± 2.0%) was significantly higher than that in untreated group (29.3% ± 1.7%) or control siRNA group (29.4% ± 1.7%), F = 354.181, P = 0.000. Furthermore, Western blot demonstrated that down-regulation of HDAC2 expression decreased the expression of cyclin D1, cyclin E and CDK2 proteins but increased the expression of p21 protein.

CONCLUSIONS
Down-regulation of HDAC2 expression mediates proliferation inhibition and cell cycle arrest. It is associated with decrease in cyclin D1, cyclin E and CDK2 protein expression and increase in p21 protein expression.


Highly crystalline, defect free ZnO nanoparticles have been
synthesised by the chemical co-precipitation technique. The product sample
was characterised by the X-ray diffraction (XRD) and UV-visible absorption
spectra. Analysis shows that there is no indication for oxygen vacancies in the
as-prepared ZnO nanomaterials. Normally, a green absorption broad band at
around 520 nm is observed in the absorption spectrum of ZnO due to oxygen
vacancy. This defect is not observed in the present nanomaterial. The shape and
size of the prepared nanoparticles were also observed by transmission electron
microscope (TEM). The nanoparticles are of semispherical shape having
average particle size ~30 nm. The effect of sonicating time on the morphology
of the prepared nanoparticles is also studied. Increasing the sonicating time
provides quite spherical well-separated nanoparticles. These remarkable results
for producing highly crystalline ZnO nanoparticles with a uniform shapes are
quite useful for using them in several applications such as UV light emitting
devices and biosensors.


Papers p 533

The global burden of childhood bacterial meningitis is substantial. A systematic review of 36 studies from the world's developing nations estimated that there are 126 000 cases of neonatal meningitis annually, with over 50 000 deaths.1 In these countries the major neonatal pathogens are Gram negative bacilli, such as Escherichia coli and Klebsiella species. A further recent review of almost 30 000 children and adults in 50 studies from 25 African countries found Streptococcus pneumoniae and Haemophilus influenzae type b to be the commonest causes of bacterial meningitis, with Neisseria meningitidis ranked third.2 Annually there are 400 000 cases alone of H influenzae b meningitis in the developing world: 80% are in infants, nearly 30% die, and another 30% have major impairments.3 Experience in the developed world suggests that even if mortality can be greatly reduced, the burden of continuing morbidity from meningitis in infancy remains high.

After the introduction of conjugate H influenzae b vaccines the United States has seen a 73% reduction in the incidence of paediatric bacterial meningitis, with fewer than 3000 cases each year.4 A meta-analysis of 1602 prospectively enrolled children with bacterial meningitis from 19 studies in Europe and …


An efficacious stakeholder engagement process is instrumental in achieving success in large transport infrastructure projects. This is due to the integral role of public stakeholders' participation in the decision-making process. The purpose of this study is to explore the key components that are essential for an effective public stakeholder engagement process in large transport infrastructure projects. The paper entails an in-depth analysis of stakeholder management processes, large transport infrastructure complexities, and stakeholder engagement as a holistic framework. A mixed-methods approach is adopted, together with a comparative case study design utilizing various data from large transport infrastructure projects. The findings demonstrate that the engagement framework and objectives are the key components of large transport infrastructure planning. Moreover, such components are dependent upon the characteristics of public stakeholders and the project scope. These findings can assist transport planners in devising effective techniques for stakeholder engagement during the initiation of such projects.


A 49-year-old Hispanic woman presented with a 4-month history of scaling and a macerated rash localized between her toes. The rash was malodorous, mildly erythematous, and sometimes associated with pruritus. The patient had no relevant medical history. Potassium hydroxide testing was performed and found to be negative. So a Wood's lamp was used to examine the patient's toes--and it revealed the diagnosis. WHAT IS YOUR DIAGNOSIS? HOW WOULD YOU TREAT THIS PATIENT?


The production of lipase by Candida rugosa growing on media with various carbon and nitrogen sources was studied. While high yields of enzyme activity (5.58 U mL-1) were obtained with yeast extract and proteose-peptone in the medium with olive oil, the minimum lipase activity (2.81 U mL-1) was observed with tryptone and lactose. In the absence of olive oil, the media with proteose peptone and glucose gave the maximum enzyme activity (2.21 U mL-1). The best results in the production of lipase were obtained with the use of olive oil as the carbon source in the presence of nitrogen sources. Biomass concentration was also high in the presence of olive oil. Biomass concentration ranged from 1.76 to 2.05 mg mL-1 and 0.09 to 0.23 mg mL-1 in the medium with and without olive oil, respectively. Both lipase activity and lipase specific activity were higher in bran than in soyflour and cheese whey. Among the industrial by-products, bran was determined to be an efficient medium for the production of lipase.


Social exclusion has been found to impair working memory (WM). However, the emotional mechanism underlying this adverse effect remains unclear. Besides, little is known about how to alleviate this adverse effect. In the current study, 128 participants were randomly assigned to a social excluded group or an included group while they received anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) or sham tDCS over the right ventrolateral pre-frontal cortex (rVLPFC), then they completed the 2-back task. ANOVA results showed that under the sham tDCS condition, mood rating score and 2-back task accuracy of excluded participants were both lower than included participants, and after anodal tDCS, mood rating score and 2-back task accuracy of excluded participants were both higher compared to sham tDCS. Besides, the mediation model showed that negative emotion mediated the relationship between social exclusion and WM under the sham tDCS condition, while the mediating effect disappeared under the anodal tDCS condition. Based on these results, we argued that anodal tDCS over the rVLPFC could alleviate the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM by reducing negative emotion. These findings contributed to further understanding of the emotional mechanism underlying the adverse effect of social exclusion on WM, and providing a clinical treatment in response to social exclusion.


The new construction method known as Industrialized Building System (IBS) offers several benefits compared to the Conventional Building System (CBS); however, IBS is perceived by most of the practitioners to be an expensive method for being utilized in construction industry. Whilst relatively numerous studies have been carried out on the subject of IBS and CBS methods, there has not been any exploiting building information modeling (BIM) as a useful tool to calculate quantities, time, and cost needed to construct building with each of the two aforementioned methods. The aim of this paper is to calculate cost of two similar buildings (one is constructed with IBS method and other one with CBS method) and compare them in terms of economy based on a chosen case study and same initial investment. To this end, the construction cost of buildings is calculated using BIM software, namely Revit Architecture and Navisworks Manage for modeling the chosen case study and estimating construction cost, respectively. The findings indicated that IBS was not economic in low investment of company; however, with investment on more than 100 units of IBS, this method was shown more economical compared to CBS method. In addition, the initial investment on IBS method could be returned when more than 200 units of IBS were implemented in the projects.


An integrated immobilization to encapsulate the Pd/C-coated magnetic nanoparticles within the chiral Ru/diamine-functionalized silica shell for the construction of a bifunctional magnetic catalyst is developed. This catalyst realizes a synergistic Suzuki cross-coupling/asymmetric transfer hydrogenation and a successive reduction/asymmetric transfer hydrogenation for the preparation of chiral aromatic alcohols.


A structure-activity study was carried out for some new antiinflammatory compounds 2,3-dihydrobenzo-furan-2-ones, analogues of the natural product wortmannin (the mold metabolite), inhibitors of prostaglandin synthesis. The results show that lipophilicity and steric properties are very important in two testing models.


The electronic spectroscopy of jet-cooled 5-phenyl-1-pentene was studied by resonant two photon ionization (R2PI). This molecule is of interest because intramolecular photochemistry occurs from intermediate conformations that bring the vinyl group up over the phenyl ring. Five conformations were confirmed by UV-UV hole-burning (UVHB) spectroscopy. The origins of these conformations were found between 37507 and 37585 . The origin transitions clearly separate into two groups split by about 50 (three to the red and two to the blue). According to existing literature, the interaction of the methylene gamma hydrogen with the pi cloud of the ring in gauche conformations causes a red shift in their origins. Therefore, the three origins to the red are anticipated to be gauche conformations while the origins to the blue are anti conformations. Tentative structural assignments have been made by comparing rotational band contours with calculated contours based on transition moments and rotational constants from ab initio calculations. These assignments and experimental techniques will be discussed. A study was also conducted to look for conformation-specific lifetime shortening in vibronic levels above the origin, but no evidence of this was found.


Background: Variable pupillary responses have been described with carotid-cavernous sinus fistulas. These often are associated with a decrease in visual acuity and attributed to retinal ischemia. We propose a novel pathophysiologic mechanism for changes in pupillary reactivity involving anatomic changes secondary to choroidal effusion. Methods: To demonstrate proof-of-concept, we investigated 2 consecutive patients with carotid-cavernous sinus fistulas and pupillary disturbances using repeated refractions and anterior segment ultrasound biomicroscopy. Results: Ultrasound biomicroscopy demonstrated choroidal thickening and ciliary body effusion with forward rotation of the lens–iris diaphragm altering refraction and mechanically limiting iris movements. Conclusions: Where there are acute elevations in orbital venous pressure causing ciliary body effusion, changes in visual acuity and pupillary abnormalities can be produced by mechanical effects.


Although sometimes it is necessary, no one likes to stay in a hospital, and patients who need to stay in bed but do not require constant medical surveillance prefer their own bed at home. At the same time, a patient in a hospital has a high cost for the community, that is not acceptable if the patient needs service only a few minutes a day. For these reasons, the current trend in Europe and North-America is to send nurses to visit patients at their home: this choice reduces costs for the community and gives better quality of life to patients. The challenge is to deliver the service in a cost effective manner without a detriment of the service quality. These social and health management issues have interesting implications from the mathematical viewpoint, introducing a challenging combinatorial optimization problem. The problem consists in assigning patients' services to traveling nurses and defining the nurse itineraries so that the following optimization aspects are considered: the nurse workloads (including service as well as travel time) are balanced, patients are preferentially served by a single nurse or just a few ones, and the overall travel time is minimized. These objectives are somehow conflicting and a reasonable trade off must be found. The complexity of the problem calls for suitable optimization-based algorithmic support to decisions, in particular in the perspective of an increasing diffusion of the service.This problem is known in the literature as the Home Health Care (HHC) problem. In this paper, we address the HHC problem in the municipality of Ferrara, a mid-sized city in the North of Italy. The problem is currently solved by hand, starting from a partitioning of patients based on predefined zones. We describe a Constraint Programming model that solves the HHC problem, and show significant improvements with respect to the current manual solution.


Brain tumor behavior is driven by aberrations in the genome and epigenome. Many of these changes, such as IDH mutations in diffuse low-grade glioma (DLGG), are common amongst the same class of tumour and can be incorporated into the diagnostic criteria. However, any given tumor may have other, less common genomic aberrations that are essential for its biological behavior and may inform on underlying aberrant cellular pathways, and potential therapeutic agents. Precision oncology is a genomics-based approach which profiles these alterations to better manage cancer patients and has established itself within the practice of oncology and is slowly making its way into neuro-oncology. The BC Cancer's Personalized OncoGenomics (POG) program has profiled 16 adult tumours originating from the central nervous system using whole genome and transcriptome analysis (WGTA), for the first time, within a meaningful clinical timeframe/setting. As expected, primary genomic drivers were consistent with their respective diagnoses, though secondary drivers were found to be unique to each tumour. Although these analyses did not result in altered clinical management for these patients, primarily due to availability of drug or clinical trials, they highlight the heterogeneity of secondary drivers in cancers and provide clinicians with meaningful biological information. Lastly, the data generated by POG has highlighted the frequency and complexity of novel driver fusions which are predicted to behave similarly to canonical driver events in their respective tumours. The information available to clinicians through POG has provided paramount knowledge into the biology of each unique tumour.


In long document controllable summarization, where labeled data is scarce, pretrained models struggle to adapt to the task and effectively respond to user queries. In this paper, we introduce Socratic pretraining, a question-driven, unsupervised pretraining objective specifically designed to improve controllability in summarization tasks. By training a model to generate and answer relevant questions in a given context, Socratic pretraining enables the model to more effectively adhere to user-provided queries and identify relevant content to be summarized. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach through extensive experimentation on two summarization domains, short stories and dialogue, and multiple control strategies: keywords, questions, and factoid QA pairs. Our pretraining method relies only on unlabeled documents and a question generation system and outperforms pre-finetuning approaches that use additional supervised data. Furthermore, our results show that Socratic pretraining cuts task-specific labeled data requirements in half, is more faithful to user-provided queries, and achieves state-of-the-art performance on QMSum and SQuALITY.


The swirl flow in gas turbine combustor plays a major role in flame stabilisation and performance of engine. Since the swirl flow is very complex and boundary sensitive phenomena, it is difficult to interpret it properly. High shear injector is being used now a days in modern gas turbine combustor to generate the swirl flow and achieve better fuel atomisation in the combustion chamber. High shear injector accommodates a series of swirlers (primary and secondary) with a diverging flare at the exit and fuel nozzle mounted at the centre of the swirler.
 In the present study it is tried to understand the influence of the flare angle on the non-reactive flow behaviour of the swirling spray flow-field generated through counter-rotating high shear injector. To perceive the influence of flare angle on the flow topology of the spray flow-field generated by a high shear injector, seven different flare half angles (β): 40°, 45°, 50°, 55°, 60°, 65° and 70° respectively were selected as a geometrical parameter to conduct the experiments. High-Speed Particle Image Velocimetry (HSPIV) technique was employed to perceive the topological structure of the spray flow field, mean and instantaneous behaviour of the velocity fields respectively. For all the cases mass flow of air and liquid (water) were kept constant. It was observed that with change in flare angle the size of the CTRZ, mean velocity and turbulent behaviour were also changing. Here the size of CTRZ is represented in terms of nondimensional radial width (W/Df) and height (H/Df) of the recirculation zone. The experiment was conducted without flare, initially and then subsequently with flares. It was found that both the radial width and the height of the recirculation zone were smallest for without flare case. With increase in flare angle the radial width and height of the CTRZ increases initially up to 60° flare angle and afterward decreased. The experiments made clear that flare angle has strong effect on the spray flow-field.


Self-heating effects and temperature rise in AlGaN/GaN HEMTs grown on silicon and sapphire substrates are studied, exploiting transistor DC characterization methods. A negative differential output resistance is observed for high dissipated power levels. An analytical formula for a source-drain current drop as a function of parasitic source resistance and threshold voltage changes is proposed to explain this behavior. The transistor source resistance and threshold voltage is determined experimentally at different elevated temperatures to construct channel temperature versus dissipated power transfer characteristic. It is found that the HEMT channel temperature increases rapidly with dissipated power and at 6 W/mm reaches values of /spl sim/320/spl deg/C for sapphire and /spl sim/95/spl deg/C for silicon substrate, respectively.


Along with the development of modern science and technology, the clinical application of deafness gene detection technology is becoming more and more extensive. Gene detection technology has experienced the process from the gene chip technology to the first generation DNA sequencing technology, and then to the second generation DNA sequencing technology. They are widely used in diagnosis of hereditary deafness etiology in clinical practice. In recent years, they are further applicated in the detection of neonatal deafness gene screening, prenatal diagnosis and pre marital and pre pregnancy. This paper will reviews the significance, technology progress, clinical diagnosis and application of gene detection technology.


ABSTRACT Shin, C.H.; Yoon, S.B., and Oh, S.C., 2018. A comparison of numerical models with experimental data for stem waves along a vertical wall due to monochromatic waves. In: Shim, J.-S.; Chun, I., and Lim, H.S. (eds.), Proceedings from the International Coastal Symposium (ICS) 2018 (Busan, Republic of Korea). Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 85, pp. 1121–1125. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. Recently, vertical-type structures are frequently constructed in coastal area to protect ports and operation areas. When the waves propagate at oblique angles to the vertical-type structures, stem waves are generated along a structure due to the nonlinear interaction of incident and reflected waves. Thus, for the design of vertical structures the stem waves should be accurately evaluated using numerical models. In this study the performance of three nonlinear wave models based on different types of governing equations, REF/DIF 1, COULWAVE, and SWASH, was compared by using the measured data from laboratory experiment. The comparison was focused on accurate calculation of nonlinear effect. Overall performance of three wave models to generate the stem waves is compared and discussed. All the numerical models simulated fairly well the diffraction and reflection of waves for small amplitude waves. However, the model accuracy was somewhat degenerated as the wave amplitude becomes large. Among the three models, COULWAVE could not accurately reproduce the stem waves. The nonhydrostatic model, SWASH, gives the best results which agree with the experimental measurements.


A series of 52 patients with squamous cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder were studied over a 6-year period. They constituted 27% of all bladder tumours. The male:female ratio was 12:1; 62% of the patients were below the age of 50 years (mean 47) and 31% had a previous history of urinary bilharziasis. Associated stigmata of Schistosoma haematobium, as sandy patches, were detected in 69% of patients. Fourteen had bilharzial ureteric strictures as seen on intravenous urography and most of the tumours occurred in the region of the trigone; 60% had T3 NO MO tumours at presentation. Eighteen patients received radical radiotherapy and 16 patients under the age of 55 years underwent radical cystectomy with diversion of urine to an isolated rectum. The 5-year survival rate in the radical cystectomy group was 75%. Other modalities of treatment and their results are discussed.


The
analysis of the effectiveness and efficiency of Vernomia amydalina (VA) solution as an inhibitor on offshore
pipeline and Ship materials (Steel) was carried out with the preparation of the
specimen and the VA solution. The specimens were kept in a workable state and
the VA Solution (inhibitor) prepared from 1200 g
of bitter leaf was plucked, weighed and crushed separately. 600 cl of water was
added to each of the crushed leaves. The mixture was put in a filter cloth and
squeezed with hand to filter out the active concentration ingredients
responsible for corrosion inhibition, which produced a 2 M concentration
of VA extract solution. After the experiment was carried out the specimen was
air-dried and weighed to determine the corrosion rate and weight loss. This was
followed by the determination of the inhibitor efficiency at the different
hours and at different percentage/concentration of the VA solution on the
specimen. Results were obtained for different hours and at different percentage (0%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20% and 25%
inhibitor)/concentration of the VA solution and graphs plotted. It was
observed that at the first week of exposure to corrosive medium there was a
substantial reduction in weight of coupons but over the next three weeks there
was a gradual decline in weight loss and the corrosion rate reduced evenly. It
can be said that the percentage of inhibitor to corrosive medium is
insufficient. From the graphs plotted, the inhibitor
efficiency is considered high when the concentration of the VA solution is high, which
implies a right percentage of inhibitor needs to be administered to obtain good
efficiency of the solution. Hence as the weeks go by it was clear that the
inhibitor was gradually losing its effectiveness. This means that inhibitors need to
be added at regular intervals to sustain the effectiveness
of the inhibitor. It is also of vital interest to apply the right concentration
of inhibitor since CR increases at
high concentrations and temperature. This process did not take into
consideration moving water.


The aim of the report is to re-emphasize how dangerous fish bone impaction in the esophagus could be and that a combination of pointing sign with radiographic features improves the specificity of the diagnosis. A 45-year-old male civil servant presented with 4 days history of fish bone impaction in the throat while taking meal containing fish with accidental ingestion of fish bone. This was associated with odynophagia, dysphagia, drooling of saliva, failed attempted dislodgement with swallowed boluses and positive pointing sign. Neck X-ray showed prevertebral widening and radio-opaque  tracheoesophageal penetrating foreign body. He had endoscopy under general anesthesia with retrieval of the fish bone-Laryngo-esophagoscopy showed a laceration in the esophageal mucosal, which penetrated into the laryngeal inlet. This case report re.emphasizes the danger of attempting to dislodge such sharp foreign bodies with boluses of food.


The self-regulating and self-stabilizing natures of a Pressurized Water Reactor (PWR) make it most suitable for the nuclear power industry. However, handling the disturbance and stabilizing a PWR with the disturbance are highly challenging tasks for control engineers due to inherent nonlinearity in a reactor. It leads to change in the behavior with variation in reactor power. Further, plenty of uncertainties exist in a PWR due to the heat transfer from fuel to coolant and the reactivity changes due to component faults and variation in fuel and coolant temperatures. Thus, it is essential to design a robust controller which can stabilize the system in presence of uncertainties and disturbances as well. In this paper, a state space model has been considered using the point kinetics equations of PWR coupled with the Mann's thermal-hydraulic equations. The system matrices have been evaluated at different power levels with uncertainty in parameters to produce an interval state space model. A H∞ based Full State Feedback Controller (SFSC) has been designed for this interval plant and then used for establishing a stability criterion in presence of disturbances. The outcomes have been validated using MATLAB simulations and discreetly exemplified in the result section.


A series of Cu(NN′)2(OTf)2 complexes containing pyridine–triazole ligands [OTf = OSO2CF3; NN′ = NN′Ph (1), NN′hex (2), NN′py (3)] with different substituents at the triazole N4 position or 2,2′-bipyridine (bpy; 4) have been synthesized. Crystal structures of 1 and 3 reveal a trans-isomer with strong preference for regular-type triazole coordination (for 3) whereas the Cu–bipyridine complex 4 is more stable in a cis-form. Cyclic voltammetry of 1–4 suggest that the electron-donating strength follows the trend: bpy > NN′py > NN′hex ∼ NN′Ph. The catalyst systems consisting of 5 mol% Cu(OTf)2/NN′/TEMPO (TEMPO = (2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidin-1-yl)oxy) in the presence of 2 × 2.0 cm2 Cu0 sheets as a reducing agent and 10 mol% N-methylimidazole (NMI) exhibit good activities for aerobic oxidation of benzyl alcohol to benzaldehyde. Catalytic studies have shown that the activities were higher with more electron-rich N-based ligands. Furthermore, oxidation of aliphatic alcohols such as 1-hexanol and 2-methyl-1-pentanol using the Cu catalyst system with the NN′py ligand at room temperature afforded the corresponding aldehydes in >99% and 46% yields, respectively after 24 h.


Experimental data on the concentration of phenolic compounds in classical Vitis vinifera grapes and hybrid varieties growing in various soil and climatic zones of the Krasnodar Territory are presented. It has been shown that the technological stock of phenolic compounds varies widely – from 5420 to 7360 mg / dm3, depending on the grape variety and the place of its growth. Moreover, in hybrid varieties, the accumulation of the sum of polyphenols is higher than in classical ones. according to the technological stock of PS, the studied varieties can be arranged in the following row: Golubok> Krasnostop anapsky> Harmony> Alkor, Saperavi. On the example of the Cabernet-Sauvignon variety, the influence of the place of grape growth on the technological stock of polyphenols is shown: the largest amount of the phenolic compounds was in the grapes of AF Myskhako, where the highest amount of active temperatures was noted. The farms of Temryuk district obtained close results. The largest amount of resveratrol stilbene, phenolic acids, including chlorogenic, gallic acid, was found in the must of Cabernet-Sauvignon grape variety grown in AF Myskhako and AZOS ViV. The identity of the qualitative composition of the phenolic complex of all investigated grape varieties, including hybrids, has been established. In the studied grape varieties, monomers of flavonoids are represented by anthocyanins, quercetin, (+) - D-catechin, (-) - epicatechin. Among the monomeric non-flavonoids, hydroxy acids were determined, among the oligomeric polyphenols, the oligomeric procyanidins B1, B2, B3, which are condensed derivatives of catechin, were found.


Several passive components based on the quarter- wavelength transmission line can be integrated with active circuits for millimeter-wave applications. Passive components such as Marchand baluns, quadrature couplers, and rat-race hybrids are directly implemented on the standard low-resisitivity (~10 Omegaldr cm) silicon substrate. New circuit design concepts such as balanced loss and distortionless transmission line are applied to tolerate the unavoidable loss and thus the size reduction is achieved because of the high effective dielectric constant.


A mother sets out to discover how her late son's organs helped to advance scientific research. A data scientist reveals how invisiblealgorithms perpetuate inequality. A citizen scientist delights in the contributions of enthusiastic volunteers. Taking a cuefrom the season, the books on this year's fall reading list are poignant, crisp, and reflective. Learn how to combat medical sciencedenial and why we tempt fate by building in disaster-prone areas. Join an awe-inspiring journey through the cosmos, delveinto a light-hearted exploration of profanity, or contemplate the path forward for autonomous vehicles and animal agriculture.


Background Every year an increase in new cases of patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) from HCV has been registered. The availability of second-generation DAA (DAA-2) has permitted a rise of SVR rates compatible with a good safety profile. Purpose To research literature evidence regarding existence of tolerability and safety data obtained from a comparison between DAA-2 and standard of care. Material and methods The review included RCT and other CT concluded and published until 20 June 2017, related to patients with CHC treated with DAA-2 (sofosbuvir; simeprevir; ledipasvir; daclatasvir; ombitasvir; paritaprevir; dasabuvir) in monotherapy or combined therapy, compared with gold standard (PegIFN ±Ribavirin (RBV) ±first generation DAA (DAA-1). Adverse reactions (ADR) data were searched during the treatment period and not beyond 30 days from the end of it. Databases Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials/Central, Embase and Pubmed were consulted: the research methodology adopted was the one with MeSH Terms when available. For included studies the meta-analysis with R was made. Results The articles identified were 174. Some (nine) were recognised by more databases and the articles (168) that did not find correspondence with the primary endpoint and did not belong to inclusion criteria were discarded. The studies included were six: five RCT and one observational study. The serious adverse events (SAE) and interruptions of therapy data between exposed (treated) and not-exposed (controls) patients were used for meta-analysis. One study that did not report the SAE numbers for controls was excluded from the meta-analysis. No differences in the effect between treated and controls were observed, neither for SAE incidence nor for interruptions treatment incidence. The 95% CI of the OR around the evaluation of the overall effect included the value 1: OR: 0.702 (95% CI: 0.381 to 1.295) and OR: 0.769 (95% CI: 0.277 to 2.138), respectively. The overall effect for SAE and interruptions resulted with P0.257 and P0.615, respectively. Conclusion No substantial differences remained in SAE and the interruptions rate between the two treatments, DAA-2 and gold standard. Furthermore, a significant heterogeneity between studies was observed. The introduction of large registries would be useful in valuing the risk of ADRs, their nature and the real frequency of SAE in the population, that can be barely estimated only by RCT. References and/or Acknowledgements R Core Team. http://www.R-project.org/ No conflict of interest


The 21st-century skills are skills that students must master to survive and compete in this 4.0 industrial revolution era. Teachers need to have good professional competence in order to facilitate students to develop 21st-century skills. This also applies to elementary school teachers. Therefore, the teacher needs training that can provide knowledge and skills for teachers to present such learning. The training program participant is an elementary school teacher at the Indonesian School of Johor Bahru Malaysia. The problem identified is that not all SIJB's primary school teachers have diverse educational backgrounds, and the learning presented is not based on 21st-century skills. The participants of this training are 19 teachers. The program is web-based training using the ADDIE model. This training is conducted in three stages, namely the pre-implementation, implementation, and post-implementation stages. At the implementation stage, there are eight meetings containing materials on 21st Century Skills-based learning in Indonesian Language, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies and Civics, English, Arts, ICT, innovative learning models and learning life skills. Participants were given a pretest and posttest understanding of 21st Century learning. The pretest results showed an average value of 60.8, which means that participants' understanding of 21st Century learning is still quite good and the posttest average score of 84.5, which means that understanding participants is good. The result shows that the participants' understanding increased after attending the training. Based on the questionnaire results, the participant's response was quite good, and hoped that the training activities could be carried out on an ongoing basis.
Keywords: 21st Century Skills Training Program, Professional Competency of Elementary Teacher


Theory of lossless nonlinear standing waves in tubes is extended to the case when dissipation exists due to the boundary layer inside the tube. And the viscous loss is taken care of with a complex wave number. The solutions thus obtained for the nonlinear standing wave satisfy exactly the hydrodynamic equations. The unusual situations encountered in developing the formulae of the field parameters into their frequency components are discussed and solutions proposed.


Colorectal malignancies continue to be one of the most frequent and life-threatening diseases throughout the world. Pronyl-lysine, a product obtained from bread crust, is a potent free radical scavenging antioxidant exerting chemopreventive activity by reducing oxidative stress. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of pronyl-lysine supplementation on the formation of colonic precancerous lesions, circulatory lipid peroxidation, and enzymic antioxidant status in 1,2-dimethylhydrazine-induced colon carcinogenesis. Male Wistar rats were randomized into seven groups; group 1 was control rats, group 2 received pronyl-lysine (2 mg/kg body weight orally) everyday, rats in groups 3–7 were administered subcutaneous 1,2-dimethylhydrazine (20 mg/kg body weight) once a week for 15 consecutive weeks. In addition, group 4 (pre-initiation), 5 (initiation), 6 (post-initiation), and 7 (entire period) received pronyl-lysine (2 mg/kg body weight orally) everyday. At the end of 34 weeks, indicative markers of lipid peroxidation and changes in antioxidant defense system were measured in circulation. The results showed that 1,2-dimethylhydrazine significantly increased total aberrant crypt foci formation, total number of dysplastic foci, &bgr;-catenin accumulated crypts and proliferating cell nuclear antigen labeling index in the colon, and enhanced lipid peroxidation markers and decreased enzymic antioxidant activities in the plasma and erythrocyte lysate as compared with untreated controls. Pronyl-lysine supplementation significantly reversed the changes as compared with the rats treated with 1,2-dimethylhydrazine alone. The effect of pronyl-lysine was more pronounced when supplemented throughout the study period (group 7). These findings suggest that pronyl-lysine suppresses 1,2-dimethylhydrazine-induced colon carcinogenesis effectively.


OBJECTIVE
To determine whether the presence of anticardiolipin antibodies (aCL) of a specific IgG subclass is associated with clinical complications of the antiphospholipid antibody syndrome (APS) and whether polymorphisms of Fc receptors for IgG (FcgammaR) with differential binding preferences contribute to an increased risk of thrombotic complications.

METHODS
In 60 patients with IgG aCL, we assessed clinical complications of the APS, measured the level of antibody activity, and determined the IgG subclass distribution of aCL by a modified enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with murine anti-human IgG subclass monoclonal antibodies. Selective IgG subclass adsorption studies were performed to determine the relative contribution of specific IgG subclasses to overall aCL activity. Fcgamma receptor IIA (FcgammaRIIA) genotypes of aCL patients with thrombosis and of non-systemic lupus erythematosus controls were determined by polymerase chain reaction amplification of genomic DNA and allele-specific probes.

RESULTS
IgG2 aCL, detected in 75% of the patients, was the major subclass of aCL. Selective adsorption studies demonstrated that IgG2, in contrast to IgG1, was the predominant subclass responsible for aCL reactivity. IgG2 aCL was the only subclass associated with clinical complications, specifically, arterial and/or venous thrombosis (P < 0.04). The presence of FcgammaRIIA-H131, a receptor expressed on platelets, monocytes, and endothelial cells and the only human FcgammaR which efficiently recognizes IgG2, was associated with thrombosis in aCL patients. Among 45 high-titer (>40 GPL [IgG phospholipid] units) aCL patients with thrombosis, 40% were homozygous for FcgammaRIIA-H131, compared with 25% of disease-free controls (P = 0.042).

CONCLUSION
While all 4 IgG subclasses are found in autoimmune aCL, only the presence of IgG2 is significantly associated with thrombotic complications. Reactivity in aCL ELISA is largely due to the presence of IgG2 in high-titer patients. The presence of IgG2 aCL, particularly in association with FcgammaRIIA-H131, may be a useful clinical predictor of increased thrombotic risk in patients with autoimmune IgG aCL. Allelic variants of FcgammaRIIA with distinct capacities to interact with IgG subclasses provide a mechanism for genetic susceptibility to an autoantibody-induced prothrombotic state.


Antifreeze proteins (AFPs) facilitate cold-survival of the organisms living under freezing environment by inhibiting ice crystal growth. In this study, we focused on a fungal AFP denoted TisAFP secreted from a psychrophilic snow-mold fungus, Typhula ishikariensis. It reported seven isoforms of TisAFP that share a high sequence identity. Significantly, fluorescencebased ice plane affinity (FIPA) analysis showed that the ice binding specificity of TisAFP8 is quite different from the others. To clarify what determines the uniqueness of TisAFP8, we performed mutagenesis experiments on TisAFP8, especially on the residues constructing its putative ice-binding site. The data suggested an importance of inward pointing residues not just outward pointing residues of TisAFP8.