Introduction: N-Acetylcysteine (NAC) is a direct precursor in the synthesis of intracellular Glutathione (GSH). NAC protects the liver by restoring the GSH levels or by acting as an alternate substrate for conjugation and hence, detoxification of the reactive metabolite of hepatotoxic drug. Aim: To evaluate the effects of oral NAC on the haemato-biochemical and histopathological changes on the liver of albino rats. Materials and Methods: The study was carried out in animal house located at Sumandeep Vidyapeeth, Piparia. The healthy albino rats of either sex weighing 150-400 gm body weight were grouped into two for the experimental study and were housed in animal house for duration of 24 hours. Before initiation of any procedures; after overnight fasting; the albino rats belonging to Group I Control Group (n=6) were administered distilled water 10 mL/kg orally; Group II NAC treated (n=6) were administered NAC 450 mg/kg as a single oral dose. Blood samples were collected after 24 hours of treatment, to evaluate the effect of NAC on the haemato-biochemical and histopathological changes on the liver. All results were expressed as Mean±SEM. Results: NAC as a single oral dose of 450 mg/kg does not caused statistically significant changes in the serum enzymes levels. Moreover, histopathology showed normal appearance of the liver was similar to that of the control treated rats, with no change in the texture and liver tissue showed normal morphology. Conclusion: NAC as a single oral dose of 450 mg/kg body weight has no toxic effect on the liver in albino rats.


The present paper is part of a general investigation of the thermodynamic properties of metal-semiconductor systems involved in the nanowires growth. Here, we will show that many aspects of the growth mechanisms, such as the surface curvature of the solid phase (in the nano or micrometer range), in equilibrium with the liquid phase are extremely important. We calculate and construct all binary Au-Si phase diagrams corresponding to nanosystems. By choosing the S(V)LS process rather than the VLS process, we succeeded in answering not only the origin of the driving force needed to trigger off the precipitation of solid nanowire but also the thorny question of the size limit of nanowires in relation with our specific growth conditions.


In this present work, the behavior of AA7349 aluminum alloy under constant and cumulative creep-fatigue interaction has been studied by using an electrical system designed and built in order to investigate creep-fatigue interaction at different stress levels and temperatures. An hour-glass shaped specimen of AA7349 aluminum alloy has been subjected to a constant and variable creep-fatigue tests performed under rotating bending loads and stress control at stress ratio R=-1. The results of the creep –fatigue life have been studied by Miner rule and compared with the proposed and experimental methods. It was shown that the Miner rule and proposed model give reasonable results and they are in a good agreement with the experimental fatigue lifetimes.


Sciatic nerve of 16, 18, 20 and 24 weeks old fetuses was examined electron microscope. Morphologic specificiity and difference between the structure of fetal and mature nerves were demonstrated. The myelination of human sciatic nerve was found to begin after the 16th week of fetal life. From that time the number of myelinated fibers increases progressively and the number of fetal fibers decreases. The time of the end of myelination in man is unknown. The studies of the later period of development and maturation of fetal nerve may give necessary information about the period of the end of myelination. In view of increasing interest in pathogensis of comparable data studies on embryogenesis of human peripheral nerve are indispensable for evaluation of some changes observed in congenital diseases. The ultrastructural observations of human fetal nerve are scarce (3, 6, 7, 10) and they concern only single nerves. The morphological specificity of fetal nerve and characteristic difference between fetal and mature nerves require basic data on different forms of fetal nerve and time of transition of one form into another.


Background. Immediate postpartum intrauterine contraceptive device (IPPIUCD) is a lucrative postpartum family planning method which provides effective reversible contraception to women in the delivery setting. Our aim was to study the clinical outcomes of IPPIUCD insertions and compare them as a factor of route of insertion (vaginal versus caesarean). Methods. This is a retrospective analytical study done in a tertiary care teaching institute. A Cohort of 593 vaginal and caesarean deliveries with IPPIUCD insertions, over a two-year period, was studied and compared for follow-up results. Outcome measures were safety (perforation, irregular bleeding, unusual vaginal discharge, and infection), efficacy (pregnancy, expulsions, and discontinuations), and incidence of undescended IUCD strings. Descriptives were calculated for various outcomes and chi square tests were used for comparison in between categorical variables. Results. Overall complication rates were low. No case of perforation or pregnancy was reported. Spontaneous expulsions were present in 5.3% cases and were significantly higher in vaginal insertions (p = 0.042). The incidence of undescended strings was high (38%), with highly significant difference between both groups (p = 0.000). Conclusion. IPPIUCD is a strong weapon in the family planning armoury and should be encouraged in both vaginal and caesarean deliveries. Early follow-up should be encouraged to detect expulsions and tackle common problems.


A computational model is developed to estimate thermal stresses in nonlinearly hardening elastic-plastic axisymmetric systems in cylindrical polar coordinates. The model is based on von Mises' yield criterion, total deformation theory and Swift's hardening law. Various numerical examples including plane strain and generalized plane strain problems in cylinders and tubes are handled. Comparisons are made with existing analytical solutions employing Tresca's yield criterion for elastic-ideally plastic and elastic-linearly hardening systems. Parametric analyses are carried out to investigate the effect of important model parameters on the stresses and deformations.


Gastrointestinal (GI) issues are commonly experienced by patients with Parkinson's disease (PD). Those that affect the lower GI tract, such as constipation, are the most frequently reported GI problems among patients with PD. Upper GI issues, such as swallowing dysfunction (dysphagia) and delayed gastric emptying (gastroparesis), are also common in PD but are less well recognized by both patients and clinicians and, therefore, often overlooked. These GI issues may also be perceived by the healthcare team as less of a priority than management of PD motor symptoms. However, if left untreated, both dysphagia and gastroparesis can have a significant impact on the quality of life of patients with PD and on the effectiveness on oral PD medications, with negative consequences for motor control. Holistic management of PD should therefore include timely and effective management of upper GI issues by utilizing both non-pharmacological and pharmacological approaches. This dual approach is key as many pharmacological strategies have limited efficacy in this setting, so non-pharmacological approaches are often the best option. Although a multidisciplinary approach to the management of GI issues in PD is ideal, resource constraints may mean this is not always feasible. In 'real-world' practice, neurologists and PD care teams often need to make initial assessments and treatment or referral recommendations for their patients with PD who are experiencing these problems. To provide guidance in these cases, this article reviews the published evidence for diagnostic and therapeutic management of dysphagia and gastroparesis, including recommendations for timely and appropriate referral to GI specialists when needed and guidance on the development of an effective management plan.


Abstract With short term shearing at low degrees of supercooling a method has been developed by which nucleation during shearing can effectively be separated from the subsequent crystal growth, which, in these experiments, mainly occurs after the cessation of the flow. In this way the kinetics of nucleation by shear could be unravelled for isotactic polypropylene. The required measurement consists of the monitoring of the optical retardation which increases with the monitoring time and levels off by saturation. From these measurements conclusions could be drawn with respect to the modes of formation of the nuclei and of their type. Model predictions could be confirmed with the aid of electron micrographs.


To help facilitate play and learning, game-based educational activities often feature a computational agent as a co-player. Personal-izing this agent's behavior to the student player is an active area of research, and prior work has demonstrated the benefits of personalized educational interaction across a variety of domains. A critical research challenge for personalized educational agents is real-time student modeling. Most student models are designed for and trained on only a single task, which limits the variety, flexibility, and efficiency of student player model learning. In this paper we present a research project applying transfer learning methods to student player models over different educational tasks, studying the effects of an algorithmic "multi-task personalization" approach on the accuracy and data efficiency of student model learning. We describe a unified robotic game system for studying multi-task personalization over two different educational games, each emphasizing early language and literacy skills such as rhyming and spelling. We present a flexible Gaussian Process-based approach for rapidly learning student models from interactive play in each game, and a method for transferring each game's learned student model to the other via a novel instance-weighting protocol based on task similarity. We present results from a simulation-based investigation of the impact of multi-task personalization, establishing the core viability and benefits of transferrable student models and outlining new questions for future in-person research.


Recent Trends in Hydrogeology consists of a set of papers presented during a birthday party on February 9, 1979. The birthday party, or, more properly, the symposium, was convened to honor a distinguished hydrogeologist, Paul A. Witherspoon, on his 60th birthday. Many of the papers were written by Witherspoon's former students as well as by his current colleagues at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley.

A preface by the editor (T. N. Narasimhan) provides an introduction to the volume and short commentaries on each of the 23 papers as well as ideas on probable future directions in hydrogeology. According to the preface, the purpose of the symposium was "to attempt a reasonable coverage of the important facets of hydrogeology" and "to provide a global picture of hydrogeology" where hydrogeology is defined as "the discipline concerned with those geologic processes that are influenced by water," presumably meaning subsurface water. Hence, the material covered in this volume is broad, ranging from topics traditionally associated with hydrogeology, such as well hydraulics and regional flow system analysis, to more exotic subjects, such as geothermal resources and induced seismicity. As a result, only those with the most catholic interests will read all 23 papers.


Between November, 1966, and March, 1970, 2736 patients with single thyroid nodules were investigated at the Alexandra Hospital. Females were more frequently affected than males, with a ratio of females to males of about 7:1. The right lobe was one and a half times more frequently involved than the left. In both lobes the lower pole was six to eight times more commonly involved than the upper pole. Pathological data after surgical excision were available in 692 of these patients. Malignancy was proved in 81 cases. The overall incidence of carcinoma was 11.7 per cent. Malignant nodules were two to three times more frequent in persons aged below 20 and over 60 and in males than in females. The incidence of carcinoma in cold and warm nodules was 12.8 and 6.6 per cent respectively. No malignancy was foun in a hot nodule or in a toxic adenoma. The location of the nodule was not helpful in predicting malignancy. It is concluded that the incidence of malignancy in cold and warm single thyroid nodules in high, and for this reason surgical removal supplemented with replacement therapy is recommended.


Benthic foraminifera are ubiquitous marine organisms in Antarctica, but little is known about their ecology despite their importance as climate-change proxies. A fundamental question remains unanswered: is foraminiferal diversity highly localized and similar to reports for Antarctic benthic invertebrates? If so, high endemism would result driven by dispersal limitation with little connectivity among sites. To answer this question, the composition, abundance, spatial distribution and alpha (α) and beta (β) diversity of foraminiferal species that encrust living shells of the Antarctic scallop Adamussium colbecki were compared within and between two sites located 30-km apart in McMurdo Sound, Ross Sea, Antarctica: Bay of Sails (BOS), an open coastal region with annual sea-ice cover, and Explorers Cove (EC), a protected embayment with multiannual sea-ice cover. Foraminiferal community structure differed between the sites, generated by variations in species abundance, turnover of rare species, and heterogeneity in species composition between top and bottom valves. Foraminifera were significantly more common on the scallop's auricles, perhaps driven by nutrients generated by the scallop. Calcareous taxa were significantly more abundant at EC despite lower seawater pH, while agglutinated taxa were significantly more abundant at BOS. Alpha diversity (species richness, Shannon H , e H ) was higher at BOS than at EC and is similar to deep-sea diversity reported for Caribbean encrusting foraminifera. Based on Shannon H , foraminifera at EC may represent a stressed community dominated by Cibicides antarcticus , while those at BOS may represent a transitional community. Within-site β-diversity was high, spurred by the turnover of rare species between top and bottom valves, which acted as separate microhabitats. Higher β-diversity at BOS suggests that foraminiferal dispersal and recruitment were more localized than at EC. Additive partitioning revealed that encrusting diversity was mostly held at the local level, and that BOS and EC have high connectivity, similar to deep-sea communities. The Antarctic endemicity of these protists is questionable, and is in stark contrast to Antarctic invertebrates with high within- and between-site diversity. Therefore, Antarctic encrusting foraminifera appear to be influenced primarily by niche-based processes, rather than dispersal limitation. Indeed, habitat islands, such as carbonate shells, are essential for generating Antarctic diversity, and are integral for the conservation of Antarctica's unique polar ecosystem.


DC micro-grid is a novel super high quality electric power system. The power is transmitted through dc distribution line and converted to required ac or dc voltages by converters placed near loads. Those load side converters do not need transformers by choosing proper dc distribution voltage (plusmn170 V). The dc power line is composed of 3 wires: +170 V line, neutral line and -170 V line. The distribution voltages have to be balanced to keep high quality power supplying. In this paper, a voltage balancer for dc distribution are proposed and studied. Computer simulation results demonstrated that dc micro-grid was able to supply both ac and dc power to loads simultaneously and stably by 3-wire dc distribution line and load side converters. In addition, another voltage balancer (dc/dc converter type) is also proposed and studied in the last section.


Document image binarization is a central problem in many document analysis systems. Indeed, it represents one of the basic challenges, especially in case of historical documents analysis. In this paper, we propose a novel robust multi stage framework that combines different existing document image thresholding methods for the purpose of getting a better binarization result. CLAHE technique is introduced to significantly enhance contrast in some poor images. The proposed method then uses a hybrid algorithm to partition image into foreground and background. A special procedure is finally applied in order to remove small noise and correct characters morphology. Experimental results prove the accuracy and the efficiency of our approach on document images binarization over three popular datasets compared to some well-known methods in literature.


For parents of children with cancer, the experience of completing treatment can be a time of celebration and hope as well as anxiety and fear. Previous research has identified the time immediately following completion of therapy as one of the most difficult and anxiety producing periods in parents' trajectory of cancer treatment. A gap in knowledge exists to guide nursing practice regarding parents' educational needs. The purpose of this study was to (a) determine the educational needs of parents as their children completed cancer treatment and (b) assess the feasibility of measuring parental educational needs, anxiety, and family management styles as treatment ends. The results support previous findings that parents are anxious at the end of therapy. Fear of relapse was their primary concern. Although parents desire education at the end of therapy, attention to parental readiness to learn and the individual needs of the patient and family must be considered. In the feasibility portion of this study, parents were able to complete the questionnaires with no negative feedback provided.


A solitary brain tumour originating from a lung adenocarcioma in a 68-year-old man is reported. The imaging features were discordant with the clinical picture and prompted surgery and subsequent histological examination. Results of computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging suggested that the lesion was a haematoma. However, during positron-emission tomography using 2-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose labeled with fluorine 18, the lesion showed predominantly low tracer avidity and an abnormal focus of signal intensity. The resected mass showed a high degree of haemorrhage, and histological examination of the mass revealed features characteristic of a metastatic adenocarcinoma — namely, clearly formed glands and mucin production. For any intracerebral haemorrhage that does not resolve or shows imaging features atypical of haematoma, a histological diagnosis should be sought.


The aim of this study was to determine the effect of IL-23 on the activity and proliferation of osteoclasts (OC) in co-culture with osteoblasts (OB). OB and OC were individually separated from the skull and femoral bone of a SD rat. OB-OC co-culture with IL-23 added was designed as the experimental group, while the OB-OC co-culture without IL-23 was the control group. In the experimental group, five different concentrations of IL-23 were added, and the cells were then cultured for 24, 48 and 72 h. For each concentration at these three time points, cell proliferation, tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase (TRAP) activity and the lacunae in the bone slices were evaluated, compared with control group at the same time points. Compared to the control group, proliferation and TRAP activity of OC were significantly increased at 24, 48 and 72 h with addition of 0.5 to 10 ng/mL IL-23 (P<0.05). In addition, a dose- and time-dependent correlation between the effect of IL-23 and osteoclastogenesis was noticed though the comparison. Moreover, the area of lacunar resorption in each experimental group was significantly larger than in the control group (P<0.05). In conclusion, IL-23 promotes the proliferation, TRAP activity and bone resorption of OC in OB-OC co-culture.


The semiclassical approximation takes into account the gravitational contribution of zero-point energies. We model this contribution via the renormalized stress-energy tensor (RSET) of a massless scalar field, which we compute in a cutoff-regularized version of the Polyakov approximation. When the field is in the Boulware vacuum state (the natural vacuum for stellar geometries), the RSET works in favor of violating the Buchdahl compactness limit. We review the family of classical constant-density stellar solutions, paying particular attention to the notion of criticality—the presence of offsets in the mass function—and use it as a warm up for the analysis of the semiclassical set of solutions. For stars that surpass Buchdahl limit by far, the critical solution has an irregular pressure. This divergence in pressure moves inward by introducing a negative offset in the mass. In the semiclassical theory we find something rather different, namely that the critical configuration already displays a pressure that diverges exactly at the center of the structure. This drastic difference between the classical and semiclassical space of solutions suggests that semiclassical gravity could potentially allow for the existence of ultracompact stellar objects.


In this thesis, I propose a revision of various positions taken by feminist study which aid us in considering the implications of imminent technological changes, particularly in the fields of reproduction and sexuality. Using a feminist cartography to address the discursive and corporeal processes of techno-science may be useful in imagining the political action deriving from a power with implications for our desires and our identities, as women, as potential childbearers, as mothers and as subjects, or rather from our identities as multiples. To this end, my first endeavour will be to travel between various philosophies generated by the feminist movement on both a theoretical and political level, with the aim of accessing dialogues between society and technologies. In order to efface the technological change to which it found itself subjected, twentieth century society had to contend with a series of ethical, moral, political, legal and psychological dilemmas. Since the beginning of a century in which scientific interest focused upon biological reproduction as a source of power and knowledge, feminism, whether as the protagonist of events or simply as the critical resistance against them, has been present as a constituent force of the know-how which is sexuality.


Compartments play an important role in molecular and cell biology modeling, which motivated the development of BETA-BINDERS, a formalism which is an extension of the pi-CALCULUS. To execute BETA-BINDERS models, sophisticated simulators are required to ensure a sound and efficient execution. Parallel and distributed simulation represents one means to achieve the later. However, stochastically scheduled events hamper the definition of look aheads for a conservative parallel synchronization scheme, while an optimistic parallel simulation implies expensive rollback operations due to the dynamic structures of BETABINDERS models. Therefore, a time-bounded window approach is suggested, which allows the different logical processes to proceed optimistically up to a barrier. Rollbacks are thus temporally constrained. In addition, the dynamic structure of BETA-BINDERS models requires a special state handling. BETA-BINDERS models and states are represented as tree structures to facilitate state updates and rollbacks by the simulation engine.


We evaluate a set of two 3,4-propylenedioxythiophene (ProDOT) and two acyclic dioxythiophene (AcDOT) homopolymers with each type of XDOT having either branched or linear solubilizing side chains. We show that while altering the structure of the polymer does have an effect on the degree of intermolecular ordering of the polymer film, these as-cast morphologies are not correlated with enhanced charge transport properties. When using linear n-octyl solubilizing side chains rather than branched ethylhexyl chains, we see a multiple order of magnitude increase in the solid-state electrical conductivity for both ProDOT and AcDOT polymers. When using an ammoniumyl-based dopant (Magic Blue) as a chemical oxidant, these polymers show conductivities on the order of 100 S cm−1. In terms of redox properties, linear side chains lower the onset of oxidation by 300 mV and increase the electrochemical conductance. Finally, the polymers substituted with linear side chains have higher ionic mobility implying that these polymers are more effective at transporting both electronic charge carriers and ions through the film.


Aims: We aimed to determine the impact of aging on ischemic acute kidney injury, especially in terms of the pathological mechanisms of kidney and heart crosstalk. Method: The effects of 45 min of unilateral ischemic reperfusion (IR) of the renal artery on the contralateral kidney and heart were histologically assessed in 7- and 40-week-old SD rats after 7 days. Results: Glomerular sclerosis, interstitial fibrosis and numbers of ED1 cells were significantly increased in the contralateral kidneys of the 40-, but not the 7-week-old rats. The numbers of ED1 cells in the heart significantly and similarly increased in both groups, but reactive fibrosis after IR was significant only in the 40-week-old rats. The exaggerated profibrotic response induced by aging seemed to be closely associated with the increased number of ED1 cells in the affected area. Conclusion: Aging could play a major role in exaggerating the pathological processes of inflammation to fibrosis in remote organs including the heart and the nonischemic kidney after IR stimulation of the unilateral kidney.


Drastic reduction of Arctic sea ice in recent years demands ice monitoring over various spatial and temporal scales. Sea ice backscatter signatures from field measurements and from model analyses are obtained at L-band and C-band frequencies. Based on these signatures, capabilities for Arctic sea ice mapping are determined for current and future satellite active microwave sensors including synthetic aperture radars (SAR) and scatterometers. This study includes L-band and C-band radars such as the ERS (European Remote Sensing), Envisat (Environmental Satellite), RADARSAT-1 and 2, ALOS (Advanced Land Observing Satellite), and DESDynI (Deformation, Ecosystem Structure, and Dynamics of Ice) SARs with resolutions from 10 to 100 m, and the SMAP (Soil Moisture Active-Passive) scatterometer with resolutions from 1 to 10 km.


The review deals with the new rapidly developing field of homogeneous catalysis and coordination chemistry, namely with reactions involving hydrogen transfer from organic compounds to transition metal complexes accompanied by the dissociation of a C–H bond and the formation of a metal–hydrogen bond. Particular attention has been devoted to catalytic reactions in which transition metal compounds serve as catalysts of hydrogen transfer and of the reduction of organic compounds by the C–H bonds of other organic molecules. The bibliography includes 177 references.


The launching process of artillery fully immersed in the water is more complicated than that of in the atmospheric environment. In this paper, aiming at the launching process of fully immersed artillery, based on the classical interior ballistic model, the optimum design of internal ballistic parameters was conducted by using multiisland genetic algorithm. Factors such as the work of the projectile on the water column in the barrel, the water resistance of the muzzle and the influence of water depth are all considered. The loading parameters and propellant parameters, such as the chamber volume, projectile travel length, propellant web size, insensitive depth, surface burning rate coefficient correction, mass of charge, etc., are obtained which are satisfying the requirements of maximum bore pressure and muzzle velocity. Engineering analysis of the optimization results are carried out. This paper has certain reference significance for the interior ballistic design of underwater artillery.


The structure and performance of a transversal filter interference suppressor that has been constructed using a surface acoustic wave (SAW) delay line are described. The delay line operates at a center frequency of 300 MHz and has eight equally spaced taps with an intertap delay of 150 ns. In the programmable mode, the tap weights are externally controllable, and in the adaptive mode, the tap weights are adjusted using the Widrow-Hoff least-mean-squared algorithm. Experimental results are provided that illustrate the performance of the filter ill both the adaptive and programmable modes. Filter responses obtained in the adaptive mode are shown, along with spectra demonstrating the corresponding interference suppression. Bit-error-rate performance results for a single-tone jammer interfering with a direct sequence spread spectrum signal are presented.<<ETX>>


We report a case of cycloserine-induced Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) in a 38-year-old male with the acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) and multidrug resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB). The patient developed a cutaneous reaction after 60 days of therapy with ofloxacin, streptomycin (SM), pyrazinamide (PZA), ethambutol (EMB), and cycloserine (CSN). All drugs were stopped and the rash improved. Due to the severity of his disease, anti-tuberculosis drugs were resumed, one at a time. The patient developed a recurrent rash consistent with SJS, which began when CSN was restarted. CSN was stopped and the SJS began to gradually resolve with palliative treatment despite continuation of the other anti-tuberculosis drugs. However, the patient's overall condition gradually deteriorated and he died. To our knowledge, this is the first case of probable CSN-related SJS.


Internal displacement has become one of the most pressing geo-political concerns of the twenty-first century. There are currently over 45 million internally displaced people worldwide due to conflict, state collapse and natural disaster in such high profile cases as Syria, Yemen and Iraq. To tackle such vast human suffering, in the last twenty years a global United Nations regime has emerged that seeks to replicate the long-established order of refugee protection by applying international law and humanitarian assistance to citizens within their own borders. This book looks at the origins, structure and impact of this new UN regime and whether it is fit for purpose.


A psychosocial approach to rural development and development interventions, which we designate as 'psychology of rural development' (PsyRD), does not yet exist as an area of research or intervention within the field of psychology or development studies, even though rural development is in part obviously shaped by psychosocial factors. Thus, in this discussion paper, we argue the need for PsyRD, explore how it may provide new insights and tools for analysis vis-a-vis rural development scenarios and issues of social equity and outline the shape that, in our view, such a psychology should take. First, the multiple dimensions of rural development and the many practical problems faced by rural development agents contain strong psychosocial elements that require contributions from psychology. Yet at the same time, the psychological literature on this topic contains many limitations and biases, which leads us to, in the second part of the paper lay the groundwork for a PsyRD that focuses on the importance of adopting a critical and interdisciplinary approach capable of dealing with complexity and multidetermination. Finally, we conclude by outlining the challenges of PsyRD.


Cobalt(II) and nickel(II) complexes of the antibacterial drug Ceclor have been synthesized and characterized on the basis of their elemental analysis, molar conductance, magnetic moment and electronic and infrared spectral data. These complex have been, then subjected to screening for their antibacterial properties against bacterial species such as Streptococcus pyogenes, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli. In comparison to uncomplexed Ceclor, the metal complexes have been shown to be more antibacterial.


Protein phosphorylation is the most common reversible post-translational modification of proteins and is key in the regulation of many cellular processes. Due to this importance, phosphorylation is extensively studied, resulting in the availability of a large amount of mass spectrometry-based phospho-proteomics data. Here, we leverage the information in these large-scale phospho-proteomics data sets, as contained in Scop3P, to analyze and characterize proteome-wide protein phosphorylation sites (P-sites). First, we set out to differentiate correctly observed P-sites from false-positive sites using five complementary site properties. We then describe the context of these P-sites in terms of the protein structure, solvent accessibility, structural transitions and disorder, and biophysical properties. We also investigate the relative prevalence of disease-linked mutations on and around P-sites. Moreover, we assess the structural dynamics of P-sites in their phosphorylated and unphosphorylated states. As a result, we show how large-scale reprocessing of available proteomics experiments can enable a more reliable view on proteome-wide P-sites. Furthermore, adding the structural context of proteins around P-sites helps uncover possible conformational switches upon phosphorylation. Moreover, by placing sites in different biophysical contexts, we show the differential preference in protein dynamics at phosphorylated sites when compared to the nonphosphorylated counterparts.


Objective: To explore The feasibility of digital guidance drill templates assisted expansive open-door laminoplasty. Methods: Ten specimens of normal adult cervical spine (C3-7) were selected, including six males and four females. The specimens aged 42-67 years, with an average age of (43.6±4.2) years. After CT scanning, the date was imported into Mimics software in DICOM format. 3D models were reconstructed and the position and depth of troughs on the open side and hinge side were selected for expansive open-door laminoplasty. Drill templates were designed and exported in STL, manufactured by 3D printing finally. Then drill templates were attached to the posterior part of cervical lamina and spinous process. Under guidance of templates, troughs of both sides were conducted by using a high-speed drill. Then the lamina is elevated and instrumentations were implanted. Postoperative CT scanning was conducted to record the fracture of trough on the hinge side. 3D reconstruction was performed again to compare the position and depth between theory and actual trough on both sides by paired t test. Results: A total of 50 drill templates were designed and manufactured. There was no occurrence of hinge fracture after operation. In C3-7, the distance range between the theory position of troughs on the open side and the midline was 11.8-14.4 mm, while in actual it was 11.4-14.0 mm. The distance range between the theory position of troughs on the hinge side and the midline was 11.6-14.3 mm; in actual, it was 10.9-14.0 mm. The theory depth range of trough on the hinge side was 3.0-3.8 mm, while the actual depth was 3.1-3.8 mm. According to the statistical analysis, the difference in the position of trough on the open side, the position of trough on the hinge side and the depth of trough on the hinge side between theory and actual were not statistically significant (all P>0.05). Conclusion: Digital guided template assisted open-door laminoplasty is a feasible technique, which can improve the accuracy and safety of the position and depth of the trough, and has clinical application value.


The authors review the essential elements of the ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) technique and presents a framework for the definition of ATM, based on the ISDN (integrated-services digital network) protocol reference model. A layered functional model of an ATM open system is presented and the relation with existing packet techniques is studied. The use of ATM in the subscribers' premises network (SPN) is analyzed. A two-tier SPN architecture is proposed covering both residential and business environments, in line with the modeling principles outlined. The merits of this architecture in the field of standardization are emphasized. Some implementation issues and the relation with the reference configuration are discussed. >


The present investigation compares early and late onset community dysthymia groups on insidious onset patterns, cognitive, coping, and symptom measures testing the assumption implicit in DSM-III-R that the two groups are qualitatively dissimilar. The results suggest that, regardless of age of onset, the groups did not differ except on some features of coping style. Homogeneity, not heterogeneity, was the predominant finding. The results call into question the DSM-III-R procedure for classifying dysthymia by age of onset, but also point to the need for additional research.


Prevailing practices in evaluating workfare programs have ignored the disutility of the type of work done, with theoretically ambiguous implications for the impacts on poverty. In the case of India's National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, past assessments have relied solely on household consumption per person as the measure of economic welfare. The paper generalizes this measure to allow for the disutility of casual manual work. The new measure is calibrated to the distribution of the preference parameters implied by maximization of an idiosyncratic welfare function assuming that there is no rationing of the available work. The adjustment implies a substantially more "poor-poor" incidence of participation in the scheme than suggested by past methods. However, the overall impacts on poverty are lower, although still positive. The main conclusions are robust to a wide range of alternative parameter values and to allowing for involuntary unemployment using a sample of (self-declared) un-rationed workers.


Abstract Objective To compare round window niche visibility as seen endoscopically during cochlear implant surgery with pre-operative high-resolution computed tomography of the temporal bone. Methods Nineteen patients scheduled for cochlear implantation, aged 2–20 years, were referred for computed tomography from October 2016 to March 2018. Angles were measured between the lines passing through the mid-sagittal plane and cochlear basal turn on the scans. Endoscopic round window niche visibility during posterior tympanotomy was categorised as: type I = 100 per cent, type IIa = more than 50 per cent, type IIb = less than 50 per cent or type III = 0 per cent. Pre-operative computed tomography measurements were used to predict round window niche visibility before surgery and correlated with intra-operative findings. Results The mean (range) of pre-operative angles on computed tomography for endoscopic visibility types I, IIa and IIb, were 64.06° (61.16–69.37°), 63.81° (58.61–71.35°) and 56.48° (50.37–59.05°), respectively, a statistically significant finding (one-way analysis of variance test, p = 0.016). Conclusion Pre-operative high-resolution temporal bone computed tomography measurements are useful in predicting round window niche visualisation as viewed endoscopically during posterior tympanotomy. The angle was more acute in type IIb compared to type I.


In this study 1,079 occupational accident reports were used to examine the characteristics and causes of occupational injuries in the small-sized textile companies with less than 50 employees. These data were analyzed in terms of age of injured person, work experience, accident type, injury type, and agency of accident. The results show that there are some patterns: (1) injuries occur more frequently in the 40~49yr age group; (2) about half of all accident occurred during the first year of employment; (3) there is a higher percentage of sick people leaving in the 29~90day range; (4) 'caught in and between objects' represents the leading accident type; (5) the most common type of incidence is related to the machinery; (6) 'lower back injuries' is the leading type of occupational disorder. These results can be used to develop more effective accidental occupational injury prevention programs for small-sized textile industries.


Protein toxins are important virulence factors contributing to neonatal sepsis. The major pathogens of neonatal sepsis, group B Streptococci, Escherichia coli, Listeria monocytogenes, and Staphylococcus aureus, secrete toxins of different molecular nature, which are key for defining the disease. Amongst these toxins are pore-forming exotoxins that are expressed as soluble monomers prior to engagement of the target cell membrane with subsequent formation of an aqueous membrane pore. Membrane pore formation is not only a means for immediate lysis of the targeted cell but also a general mechanism that contributes to penetration of epithelial barriers and evasion of the immune system, thus creating survival niches for the pathogens. Pore-forming toxins, however, can also contribute to the induction of inflammation and hence to the manifestation of sepsis. Clearly, pore-forming toxins are not the sole factors that drive sepsis progression, but they often act in concert with other bacterial effectors, especially in the initial stages of neonatal sepsis manifestation.


The motion of solid particles and the "fish-hook" phenomenon in an industrial classifying hydrocyclone of body diameter 355 mm is studied by a computational fluid dynamics model. In the model, the turbulent flow of gas and liquid is modeled using the Reynolds Stress Model, and the interface between the liquid and air core is modeled using the volume of fluid multiphase model. The outcomes are then applied in the simulation of particle flow described by the stochastic Lagrangian model. The results are analyzed in terms of velocity and force field in the cyclone. It is shown that the pressure gradient force plays an important role in particle separation, and it balances the centrifugal force on particles in the radial direction in hydrocyclones. As particle size decreases, the effect of drag force whose direction varies increases sharply. As a result, particles have an apparent fluctuating velocity. Some particles pass the locus of zero vertical velocity (LZVV) and join the upward flow and have a certain moving orbit. The moving orbit of particles in the upward flow becomes wider as their size decreases. When the size is below a critical value, the moving orbit is even beyond the LZVV. Some fine particles would recircuit between the downward and upward flows, resulting in a relatively high separation efficiency and the 'fish-hook" effect. Numerical experiments were also extended to study the effects of cyclone size and liquid viscosity. The results suggest that the mechanisms identified are valid, although they are quantitatively different. (C) 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 56: 1703-1715, 2010


Proc Amer Assoc Cancer Res, Volume 47, 2006

5584

Epidemiological studies suggest an inverse association between soy intake and prostate cancer risk. Genistein, the predominant phytoestrogen in soy food, has been proposed as a potential chemopreventive agent mainly due to its estrogen/anti-estrogen and tyrosine kinase inhibitory properties. We used the Transgenic Adenocarcinoma Mouse Prostate (TRAMP) model to test the hypothesis that dietary genistein would prevent prostate cancer progression. To determine the most effective period for genistein chemoprevention, we treated TRAMP mice (30/group) with a) AIN-76A control diet only, or 250 mg genistein/kg AIN-76A diet during the following periods b) prepubertal only, c) as adults only and d) for lifetime. At 28 weeks of age, histopathological evaluations performed by a certified pathologist revealed the following incidence of poorly differentiated adenocarcinomas, controls: 34.4%; genistein from 1–35 days: 32.3%; genistein from 84–196 days: 24.1%; genistein from 1–196 days: 16.7%. The most significant effect was seen in the TRAMP mice exposed to genistein throughout life (1–196 days) with a 51% decrease in poorly-differentiated cancerous lesions compared to controls. To investigate the effect of adult genistein treatment on androgen-independent prostate cancer development, TRAMP mice were castrated at 12 weeks of age and monitored until sacrifice at 28 weeks. After castration, controls were provided with AIN-76A diet only (n=47) or 250 mg genistein/kg AIN-76A diet from 12 to 28 weeks (n=39). Castrated TRAMP mice fed control diet had 23% poorly-differentiated prostate cancerous lesions while castrated TRAMP mice fed genistein had 15% incidence poorly-differentiated cancerous lesions. Hence, dietary genistein suppressed poorly-differentiated cancerous lesions by a 35% decrease compared with control group in castrated TRAMP mice. Associated with this suppressive effect on androgen-independent prostate cancer is down-regulation of SV40 T-antigen protein levels and cell proliferation as measured by immunohistochemistry for proliferating cell nuclear antigen, respectively. Castration of TRAMP mice resulted in decreased androgen receptor and increased phospho-extracellular regulated kinases 1 and 2 protein expression in prostate tumors. Our data obtained in intact and castrated transgenic mice that spontaneously develop prostate tumors suggest that genistein may be a promising chemopreventive agent against prostate cancer. Supported by NIH/NIEHS 1 R01 ES-11743.


We followed 205 of 232 patients with medically intractable cervical dystonia for at least 3 months and up to 4 years, during which time they received 1,074 injections in 505 visits. One hundred forty-five of the 205 patients (71%) improved substantially (global rating $2; from 0 = no response to 4 = marked improvement in severity and function) after 1 or more visits. Of the 89 patients who reported pain, 68 (76%) had almost complete relief of their pain. While most patients noted improvement within the 1st week after injection, some had a latency of up to 8.5 weeks. Duration of maximum benefit lasted up to 12.5 months in some, but the average was 11.2 weeks. Only 58 of 205 (28%) patients, seen in 76 of 505 visits (15% of all visits), had complications, primarily mild dysphagia (35 patients) or neck weakness (17 patients). We conclude that botulinum toxin is a safe and effective therapy for most patients with cervical dystonia.


'Sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction. Was Sir Winston Churchill really a Druid? Did Charlie Chaplin lose a lookalike competition? Did The Who's drummer Keith Moon drive his Rolls Royce into a swimming pool? The man with the answers is Albert Jack...' - "Daily Express". From Walt Disney's frozen head to the kidnap of JFK's brain, Albert Jack gathers together all the strangest, sickest, funniest and most unforgettable urban legends and recounts them with his usual deadpan humour. But this is more than just a collection of urban legends, it is also a detective story. Exploring the real events behind conspiracy theories, the exaggerations of history and the assumptions of old wives' tales, Albert Jack shows us that the truth can definitely be stranger than fiction.


YETTY RAMLI. Utilization of Bone Marrow Mesenchymal Stem Cells for Therapeutic Model of Epilepsy. Under the directions of SRI ESTUNINGSIH, ARIEF BOEDIONO, and NURHADI IBRAHIM. Epilepsy is a chronic neurologic disease, caused by abnormal electrical activity in the brain. Uncontrolled medication using the currently available antiepileptic drugs may result in low quality of life. Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell (bMSCs), one source of stem cell that is multipotent, can be given as an alternative treatment for intractable epilepsy. This research was aimed to (1) analyze the effect of chemical substance that can damaged the brain, to make a suitable animal model for epilepsy, (2) study of the culture bMSCs, and induced to become neurons in vitro neuron progenitor cells, before it can be transplanted to the animal model, (3) observe the effect of different dosages of bMSCs, and comparing the 2 routes of administration, through an intravenous line or a direct intracerebral approach. This study used 46 Spraque Dawley rats, aged 2 months which were divided to 7 groups consisted 6 rats each (1) negative control group, were given only 1ml NaCl 0.9% intravenous, (2) development of animal group model, 3 rats were given lidocaine 90mg/kg, 3 rats injected with bicuculine 8mg/kg, 1 rat was sacrificed each at the point of 24 hours, 3 days and 7 days after treatment, (3) positive epilepsy group, injected with bicuculine 8mg/kg intraperitoneally, and 3 rats were sacrificed each after 3 weeks and 6 weeks, (4-7) epilepsy group, after injected with bicuculine 8mg/kg intraperitoneally, at day-7 received bMSCs injection, each using 3x2x10 5 cell intravenous, 1x5x10 6 cell intravenous, neuron progenitor at 1x2x10 6 cell intravenous and neuron progenitor at 1x2x10 5 cell intracerebral. The result of this study showed that bicuculine injection, as a GABA-antagonist, was better when applied to create an epilepsy animal model. The most severe irreversible damaged occurred after the 7 th day of treatment. The amount of cells of bMSCs culture at the 4 th and 5 th passages was sufficient to be transplanted, and the induction of neuron progenitor with basic fibroblast growth factor and epidermal growth factor was seen by noticing the change of the fibroblasts to neurons. The activity of bMSCs to regenerated neurons could be seen that injection of bMSCs 3x2x10 5 results the highest number of survived neurons. There was no systemic effect of bMSCs. From this study concluded that bMSCs improved regenerate the damage of hippocampal area caused by seizure in epilepsy model animals. A low dose, intravenous administration, given repeatedly every 2 weeks gives a better respon compared to a bolus with high dose intravenous and , intracerebrally. bMSCs treatment was better than progenitor neuron treatment.


This paper presents a novel framework for accurate estimation of key statistical parameters of the subthreshold-and gate-leakage distributions of a chip under parameter variations while considering both within-die and die-to-die variabilities in process (P), temperature (T), and supply voltage (V). For the first time, temperature variations and, more importantly, electrothermal couplings between junction (substrate or die) temperature and leakage power have been accounted for in a full-chip leakage estimation methodology. In the proposed framework, instead of exact leakage distribution profile, its statistically important parameters, such as nominal value and spread, are computed. Initially, at the transistor level, a quantitative analysis of the relative sensitivities of device leakage components to P-T-V variations is performed to extract a transistor-level variation model. It is shown that the proposed statistical model, as compared to others in the literature, shows better agreement with BSIM1 model-based simulations. It is also demonstrated that failing to account for temperature variations and electrothermal couplings can result in significant inaccuracy in chip-level leakage estimation. Furthermore, the full-chip leakage-power distribution is used to estimate the leakage-constrained yield under the impact of variations. The calculations show that yield is significantly lowered due to the within-die and die-to-die process and temperature variations. Subsequently, the proposed framework is applied in the leakage estimation of complex logic circuits with a consideration of spatial correlations of process parameters and transistor stacking effects.


The article covers results of studies concerning prevalence of skin diseases among drivers, repair and service workers, managers of motor transport enterprises.


Background Psoriatic arthritis (PsA) is an inflammatory arthritis associated with psoriasis (1). PsA and its associated psoriatic skin lesions have been found to lower the health-related quality of life, effecting physical functioning and psychosocial well-being (2). Impairment of sleep and quality of life are important symptoms in PsA. Objectives Assesment of sleep quality and its relation with quality of life in PsA patients. Methods 40 patients fulfilling Caspar criteria for psoriatic arthritis were selected for this study. Patients with malignancy, fibromyalgia syndrome and other systemic inflammatory rheumatic diseases were excluded. Various clinical data including patients' general health and pain assesment with visual analog scale (VAS), morning stiffness, duration of psoriasis and psoriatic arthritis were recorded. Sleep disturbance was evaluated with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). Quality of life was assessed with Psoriatic Arthritis Quality of Life (PSAQol) and Notthingham Health Profile (NHP). Maastricht Ankylosing Spondylitis EnthesitisScore (MASES) was used for evaluation of enthesitis. Results 40 patients (14 men, 26 women) were recruited into this study. The mean age of patients was 46,06 years and the median disease duration was 9 months. Mean score for PSOI was 5,66±3,66. 44,8 % of patient were calssified to be poor sleepers (PSOI>5). No significant correlations could be found between PSQI and VAS for pain, VAS for general health, disaese duration, morning stiffness, PASI and MASES scores. Howewer, there was a significant correlation between PSQI scores and NHP total score (p=0,001, r=0,610) and PsAQoL score (p=0,029, r=0,477). There was a statistically significant positive correlation between PsAQoL score and VAS for pain scores (p=0,002, r=0,552); with VAS for general health scores (p=0,010, r=0,471) and with MASES (p=0,001, r=0,653). There was no significant correlation between PSAQoL and erytrhocyte sedimentation rate, PASI, duration of psoriatic arthritis, duration of psoriasis Conclusions Sleep quality in PsA patients has good correlation with quality of life. Disease duration, severity of pain, skin leisons and entesitis did not seem to interfere with sleep quality for PsA. Treatment strategies in PsA should includes not only arhritis and skin lesions but also sleep therapies to increase the quality of life of patients. References Duffin K.C., Wong B., Horn E, J., Krueger G. G. Psoriatic arthritis is a strong predictor of sleep interference in patients with psoriasis. J Am Acad Dermatol.2009;60(4):604-608. Kwok T. and Pope J. E., Minimally Important Difference for Patient-reported Outcomes in Psoriatic Arthritis: Health Assessment Questionnaire and Pain, Fatigue, and Global Visual Analog Scales, J Rheumatol 2010;37;1024-1028. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


Title devised by Library staff based on caption information and inventory lists.
Handwritten on back: "Alma Plantation, False River, La. July, 1934."
Forms part of: Lomax collection of photographs depicting folk musicians, primarily in the southern United States and the Bahamas.


Abstract In Multi-Channel Multi-Radio Wireless Mesh Networks (MCMR-WMN), finding the optimal routing by satisfying the Quality of Service (QoS) constraints is an ambitious task. Multiple paths are available from the source node to the gateway for reliability, and sometimes it is necessary to deal with failures of the link in WMN. A major challenge in a MCMR-WMN is finding the routing with QoS satisfied and an interference free path from the redundant paths, in order to transmit the packets through this path. The Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is an optimization technique to find the candidate solution in the search space optimally, and it applies artificial intelligence to solve the routing problem. On the other hand, the Genetic Algorithm (GA) is a population based meta-heuristic optimization algorithm inspired by the natural evolution, such as selection, mutation and crossover. PSO can easily fall into a local optimal solution, at the same time GA is not suitable for dynamic data due to the underlying dynamic network. In this paper we propose an optimal intelligent routing, using a Hybrid PSO-GA, which also meets the QoS constraints. Moreover, it integrates the strength of PSO and GA. The QoS constraints, such as bandwidth, delay, jitter and interference are transformed into penalty functions. The simulation results show that the hybrid approach outperforms PSO and GA individually, and it takes less convergence time comparatively, keeping away from converging prematurely.


Purpose
Generally, Internet-of-Things (IoT) is quite small sized with limited resource and low cost that may be vulnerable for physical and cloned attacking. All kind of authentication protocols designed to IoT devices are robust despite which it is prone to attack by hackers. In order to resolve this issue, there are various researches that have introduced the best method for obscuring the cryptographic key. However, the studies have majorly aimed to generate the key dynamically from noise data by Fuzzy Extractor (FE) or Fuzzy Commitment (FC). Hence, these methods have utilized this kind of data with noisy source namely Physical Unclonable Function (PUF) or biometric data. There are several IoT devices that get operated over undermined environment in which biometric data is not available but the technique utilized with biometric data can't be used to undermined IoT devices. Even though, the PUF technique is implemented for the undermined IoT devices this is quite vulnerable over physical attacks inclusive of accidental move and theft.

Design/methodology/approach
This paper has proposed an advanced scheme in fuzzy commitment over IoT devices which is said to be Improved Two Factor Fuzzy Commitment Scheme (ITFFCS) and this proposed ITFFCS has used two kind of noisy factors present inside and outside the IoT devices. Though, an intruder has accomplished the IoT devices with an access to the internal noisy source, the intruder can't select an exact key from the available data which have been compared using comparable module as an interest.

Findings
Moreover, the proposed ITFFC method results are compared with existing Static Random Accessible Memory (SRAM) PUF in enterprises application which illustrated the proposed ITFFC method with PUF has accomplished better results in parameters such as energy consumption, area utilization, False Acceptance Ratio (FAR) and Failure Rejection Ratio (FRR).

Originality/value
Thus, the proposed ITFFCS-PUF is comparatively better than existing method in both FAR and FRR with an average of 0.18% and 0.28%.


Bacteria undergo asexual reproduction, but genetic exchange is common. Current models posit that speciation of sexual bacteria is a gradual and long process, and genetic exchanges decrease but never cease between nascent species. Here, we show that in a panmictic bacterial lineage found in symbiosis with invertebrate hosts across multi-marine ecosystems, a series of speciation events occurred unusually fast with between-species genetic exchange approximating a complete halt. The speciation process is too rapid to sort out ancestral polymorphisms, giving rise to between-species phylogenetic incongruence at a genome-wide scale. This novel bacterial speciation process leads to incomplete lineage sorting, which to date has only been observed in eukaryotes but is 100-1000 times faster. Our finding allows for a more unified understanding of the speciation process across prokaryotes and eukaryotes.


In this collective article, the authors explore constructions of early childhood practitioners and how they disconnect and reconnect in a global neo-liberal education policy context. The contributions to the conversation provide windows into shifting professional identities across five national contexts: New Zealand, the USA, Ireland, Australia and Denmark. The authors ask who benefits from the notion of distinct professional identities, linked to early childhood education as locally and culturally embedded practice. They conceptualize teachers' shifting subjectivities, drawing on Kristeva's philosophical conception of identity as constantly in construction, open and evolving. Arguments for the urgency to counter the global uniformity machine, streamlined curricula, standardized assessment and deprofessionalization are not new. However, the authors wonder whether these arguments are missing something. Does our localized and highly contextualized identity construction enable 'divide and rule' politics by global agents such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, World Bank and international corporations? The authors' (preliminary) answer is to build individual and collective professional identities that are grounded in diverse local contexts and in a broader transnational professional (political) consciousness and collective voice.


Yi Kwangsu's The Heartless (Mujŏng, 1917) is Korea's first mature novel and its most celebrated text, on par with Natsume Soseki's Kokoro (1914) and Lu Xun's The True Story of Ah Q (1922). Its place in world literary studies, however, has often been obscured by the author's later collaboration with the colonial state. This article attempts a new, spatialized reading of the much-studied work to reconsider alterity (Japan-Korea, city-hometown) as a precondition of modernity itself. The ancient seat of the Chosŏn dynasty (1392–1910), Seoul in the 1910s was swiftly transforming into the minjok national capital and, simultaneously, a colonial city-within-empire. Competing identities of nation-versus-empire dominated its surfaces, veiling the processes of "coming up" (sanggyŏng 上京) to the capital from forgotten localities, as many writers associated with Seoul were actually from provinces with regional affinities. The Heartless—a paean to the enlightenment and to the Korean minjok—surprisingly reflects this dynamic, testifying to the "loss of hometown" by northwestern (Sŏbugin 西北人) writers like Yi Kwangsu, who regularly code-switched to their local dialects, as well as to the Japanese language.


Lignin, a by-product of pulping and biorefinery, has great potential to replace petrochemical resources for wastewater purification. However, the defects of lignin, such as severe heterogeneity, inferior reactivity and poor solubility, characterize the production process of lignin-based products by high energy consumption and serious pollution. In this study, several lignin fractions with relatively homogeneous structure were first obtained by organic solvent fractionation, and their structures were fully deciphered by various characterization techniques. Subsequently, each lignin component was custom-valued for wastewater purification based on their structural characteristics. Benefiting from the high reactivity and reaction accessibility, the lignin fraction (lignin-1) refined by dissolving in ethanol and n-butanol could been used as a raw material to produce cationic lignin-based flocculant (LBF) in a copolymerization system using green, cheap and recyclable ethanol as solvent. The lignin fraction (lignin-2) extracted by methanol and dioxane showed low reactivity and high carbon content, which was used to produce lignin-based activated carbon (LAC) with phosphoric acid as activator. Moreover, the influences of synthetic factors on the purification capacity were discussed, and the LBF and LAC produced under the optimal conditions showed distinguished purification effect on kaolin suspension and heavy metal wastewater, respectively. Furthermore, the corresponding purification mechanism and external factors were also elaborated. It is believed that this cleaner production strategy is helpful for the valorization of lignin in wastewater resources.


We report the syntheses, structures, photophysical properties, and redox characteristics of donor-acceptor-fused π-systems, namely π-extended thiadiazoles 1-5 fused with thienopyrrole or indole moieties. They were synthesized by the Stille coupling reactions followed by the PPh(3)-mediated reductive cyclizations as key steps. X-Ray crystallographic studies showed that isomeric 1b and 2b form significantly different packing from each other, and 1a and 4a afford supramolecular networks via multiple hydrogen bonding with water molecules. Thienopyrrole-fused compounds 1b and 2b displayed bathochromically shifted intramolecular charge-transfer (CT) bands and low oxidation potentials as compared to indole-fused analog 3b and showed moderate to good fluorescence quantum yields (Φ(f)) up to 0.73. In 3b-5b, the introduction of electron-donating substituents in the indole moieties substantially shifts the intramolecular CT absorption maxima bathochromically and leads to the elevation of the HOMO levels. The Φ(f) values of 3-5 (0.04-0.50) were found to be significantly dependent on the substituents in the indole moieties. The OFET properties with 1b and 2b as an active layer were also disclosed.


The paper deals with the validity of bottled wine investment commited in the Czech Republic. The Agrarian sector of the Czech Republic went during last 20 years through several key changes. After the transformation process its facing the external competitive condition of the globalizing world, especially the one of the European Union common market. One of the Czech Agrarian branch, its wine sector, might play a positive role for the whole "industry" in future. At presence, there is an increasing trend of the volume of wine investment made not only on local market, but across the whole world as well. All crucial factors such as purchase, storage, ageing a saling process must be properly considered and evaluated. It deals with the principles of wine investment, revenue, risk of purchase and storage of the bottled wine including its liquidity. The process of choice of the appropriate wine for aging is outlined. It shows all possible complications and an approach to the regular investor. This paper using a critical overview on the actual publically spread opinion that the wine investment is a great opportunity compared to the others. The issue is whether to recommend an investment into bottled wine in respect of local market conditions.


Myasthenia gravis historically has been associated with significant morbidity and mortality rates, and most of those afflicted either died of the disease or became greatly disabled. However, modern understanding of the pathogenesis of this disorder has led to several effective treatments which have transformed the prognosis of this disease greatly.


Live video-streaming platforms such as Twitch enable top content creators to reap significant profits and influence.
 To that effect, various behavioral norms are recommended to new entrants and those seeking to increase their popularity and success.
 Chiefly among them are to simply put in the effort and promote on social media outlets such as Twitter, Instagram, and the like.
 But does following these behaviors indeed have a relationship with eventual popularity?

 In this paper, we collect a corpus of Twitch streamer popularity measures---spanning social and financial measures---and their behavior data on Twitch and third party platforms. We also compile a set of community-defined behavioral norms. We then perform temporal analysis to identify the increased predictive value that a streamer's future behavior contributes to predicting future popularity. At the population level, we find that behavioral information improves the prediction of relative growth that exceeds that of the median streamer. At the individual level, we find that although it is difficult to quickly become successful in absolute terms, streamers that put in considerable effort are more successful than the rest. Ultimately, we find that studying the popularity and success of content creators in the long term is a promising and rich research area.


The problem of synthesizing all-optical networks for microwave frequency filtering applications is addressed. Analysis techniques are based upon established discrete time signal theory, but the assumption of incoherent optical interference restricts the time domain output to positive values, thus preventing the reliable application of traditional digital filter design methods. A new approach, based on the application of genetic algorithms, is described and demonstrated. Results show this to be a viable and rugged solution to the problem, which unlike previous approaches, produces filters that meet the design specifications in an optimal fashion.


Purpose of the paper : This empirical research has the aim of verifying the effects of management team replacement on performance in second-generation family businesses. Methodology : Our empirical investigation examines a sample of 992 manufacturing family businesses. These firms are located in Southern Italy and they are second generation family firms. The sample was divided into: 1) a main group composed of 496 firms that replaced management teams after family succession; 2) a control group of 496 firms that did not replace management teams after family succession. The performance indicators were compared using: 1) paired samples t-test; 2) Levene's test; 3) independent samples t-test. Findings : The comparison between the two homogeneous groups points out that there are no significant changes in performance after family succession. Regarding management team replacement, only second-generation family businesses that have changed the management team suffer significant deterioration in performance. Research limitations : The results only concern enterprises in Southern Italy that operate in the manufacturing sector. Research and managerial implications : The research underlines the importance of the involvement of management teams and their business decision-making power in retaining "old" managers in family businesses. Originality/value of paper : Few empirical studies have investigated the effects of management team replacement after family succession. The results of this research could extend the perspective of the emerging Socioemotional Wealth theory.


This is a study of black history and thought, revealing the complex and vital role of African-American intellectuals in the USA. This book illuminates facets of this rich history, such as African tribal institutions, American slavery, and black schools, churches, politics and popular culture in America. The author discusses prominent black figures ranging from pioneers like Frederick Douglass, to intellectuals of the modern age, such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Toni Morrison. Many black scholars and artists people the pages of this imaginative study.


An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses several articles published within issue focuses on what may be missing from today's treatment in Indigenous communities due to COVID-19 pandemic


Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA

Background: Malignant gliomas (MG) or high-grade astrocytomas are highly infiltrative brain tumors. Our previous work has shown that brain fatty acid binding protein (B-FABP) regulates the migratory properties of MG cells. B-FABP expression can be controlled by transcription factors such as NF1 and AP2. AP2 is a family of transcription factors involved in the regulation of genes responsible for cellular growth and differentiation during early development. Five AP2 genes have been identified in mice and humans: AP2α, AP2β, AP2γ, AP2δ and AP2ϵ. AP2 transcription factors are predominantly localized in the nucleus where they bind as homodimers or heterodimers to the consensus sequence GCCNNNGGC. Recent studies have shown that AP2α expression is inversely correlated with astrocytoma grade and that there are higher levels of AP2α in the cytoplasm of high-grade astrocytomas compared to low-grade astrocytomas.

Objective: To study the regulation of B-FABP expression in response to AP2 in MG.

Methodology: A panel of 10 MG cell lines was used to examine AP2α protein levels. Five of these cell lines were B-FABP +ve and five were B-FABP-ve. The effect of AP2 expression on endogenous B-FABP was examined by transfecting AP2 expression constructs into the B-FABP +ve U251 MG cell line. B-FABP levels were examined by western blot analysis and the subcellular localization of AP2 was studied by immunofluorescence analysis.

Results: Western blot analysis indicates that AP2α is expressed in four out of five B-FABP-ve MG cell lines but in only one of the five B-FABP +ve MG cell lines tested. AP2 overexpression studies indicate that B-FABP levels are significantly reduced upon overexpression of AP2α, AP2β or AP2ϵ. Immunofluorescence data suggest preferential localization of AP2β in the cytoplasm of B-FABP +ve U251 MG cells. Our preliminary result shows difference in affinity towards heterodimerization between AP2 family members.

Conclusion and future directions: AP2 is a negative regulator of B-FABP expression. Exclusion of AP2 from the nucleus allows transcription of B-FABP in MG cells, which in turn leads to increased cell migration. Experiments will be carried out to see the effect of AP2 heterodimerization on regulation of B-FABP transcription. Phosphorylation studies will be carried out to see whether AP2 phosphorylation affects its subcellular localization. This study may lead to new approaches to reduce B-FABP expression in MG, thereby reducing or preventing cell migration and tumor infiltration.

Citation Format: Saket Jain, Ho Yin Poon, Roseline Godbout. Role of the activating protein 2 transcription factor in regulating cell invasion and migration in malignant glioma. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3395. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3395


The objective of this study was to assess the effects of age on the hemodynamic response to a change in posture in essential hypertension. Invasive hemodynamic measurements were performed in the supine and sitting position in 110 men, aged 16 to 64 years, in whom cardiovascular complications were virtually excluded. The change of systolic and diastolic intraarterial pressure, from 153/83 mm Hg after 30 min of supine rest to 156 (P < .05)/92 (P < .001) mm Hg after sitting for 10 min, was not significantly (P > .10) related to age. Heart rate (+9 beats/min) and systemic vascular resistance (+4.6 mm Hg/L/min) increased (P < .001) on sitting; cardiac output (-1.7 L/min), stroke volume (-31 mL), and pulmonary capillary wedge pressure (-2.1 mm Hg) fell (P < .001). Whereas the postural changes of heart rate (P < .01), cardiac output (P < .001), stroke volume (P < .001), and wedge pressure (P = .06) were less pronounced in older than in younger patients, the increase of systemic vascular resistance was not related to age (P > .10). The slopes of the postural changes of heart rate and of systemic vascular resistance differed significantly (P = .01). The results were not confounded by the level of blood pressure or weight. In conclusion, the smaller postural falls of cardiac output, stroke volume, and wedge pressure in older patients suggest less thoracic blood volume displacement to the lower parts of the body, possibly resulting from a lesser peripheral venous distensibility. The increase of heart rate in response to the upright posture is less pronounced at older age, whereas the reflex control of the peripheral vasculature is preserved and blood pressure maintained.


The in vivo partitioning behavior of ionogenic organic chemicals (IOCs) is of paramount importance for their toxicokinetics and bioaccumulation. Among other proteins, structural proteins including muscle proteins could be an important sorption phase for IOCs, because of their high quantity in the human and other animals' body and their polar nature. Binding data for IOCs to structural proteins are, however, severely limited. Therefore, in this study muscle protein-water partition coefficients (KMP/w) of 51 systematically selected organic anions and cations were determined experimentally. A comparison of the measured KMP/w with bovine serum albumin (BSA)-water partition coefficients showed that anionic chemicals sorb more strongly to BSA than to muscle protein (by up to 3.5 orders of magnitude), while cations sorb similarly to both proteins. Sorption isotherms of selected IOCs to muscle protein are linear (i.e., KMP/w is concentration independent), and KMP/w is only marginally influenced by pH value and salt concentration. Using the obtained data set of KMP/w a polyparameter linear free energy relationship (PP-LFER) model was established. The derived equation fits the data well (R(2) = 0.89, RMSE = 0.29). Finally, it was demonstrated that the in vitro measured KMP/w values of this study have the potential to be used to evaluate tissue-plasma partitioning of IOCs in vivo.


The objective of this study was to assess cardiovascular response during cardiac stress testing in neurologically asymptomatic individuals who developed motor features of Parkinson's disease several years after the cardiac stress testing. This was a retrospective cohort study of patients who underwent cardiac stress testing between January 2001 and December 2010. Patients were followed until May 2012 to select those who developed Parkinson's disease. Heart rate and blood pressure both at rest and at peak exercise and heart rate variability at rest were recorded. For each patient who developed Parkinson's disease, 2 matched controls who did not develop Parkinson's disease at the end of the follow‐up period were selected. Patients who were diagnosed with Parkinson's disease the same day of cardiac stress testing also were selected for comparison purposes. After excluding participants who were lost to follow‐up, 2739 patients remained. From this cohort, 18 (11 men) had developed Parkinson's disease 4.27 ± 2.56 years after the cardiac stress test. Thirty‐six matched controls were selected. At peak exercise, the maximum heart rate and the percentage of theoretical maximum heart rate were significantly lower in patients who developed Parkinson's disease after cardiac stress testing compared with controls. The sensitivity of a maximum heart rate ≤ 143 beats per minute to predict a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease after a mean of 4.27 years was 83%, and the specificity was 62%. The results from this exploratory study demonstrate that chronotropic insufficiency may constitute an early sign of Parkinson's disease during the premotor phase, serving as potential risk factor for its diagnosis. Further investigations are needed in larger populations. © 2013 Movement Disorder Society


Modeling and control of the extruder temperature field is discussed, a process governed by a nonlinear partial differential equation. Utilizing finite element approximation a discretized input/output representation of the system is created with the inputs being powers of heaters and output the extruder temperature field. Local linearization is applied at the operating point and the controller is designed based on the lumped-input and distributed-parameter-output systems approach, using the time-space decoupling of systems' dynamics. Results are verified experimentally.


Recognition of the fact that bacterial biofilm may play a role in the pathogenesis of disease has led to an increased focus on identifying diseases that may be biofilm-related. Biofilm infections are typically chronic in nature, as biofilm-residing bacteria can be resilient to both the immune system, antibiotics, and other treatments. This is a comprehensive review describing biofilm diseases in the auditory, the cardiovascular, the digestive, the integumentary, the reproductive, the respiratory, and the urinary system. In most cases reviewed, the biofilms were identified through various imaging technics, in addition to other study approaches. The current knowledge on how biofilm may contribute to the pathogenesis of disease indicates a number of different mechanisms. This spans from biofilm being a mere reservoir of pathogenic bacteria, to playing a more active role, e.g., by contributing to inflammation. Observations also indicate that biofilm does not exclusively occur extracellularly, but may also be formed inside living cells. Furthermore, the presence of biofilm may contribute to development of cancer. In conclusion, this review shows that biofilm is part of many, probably most chronic infections. This is important knowledge for development of effective treatment strategies for such infections.


Extensive trawl surveys were conducted in two large estuaries (Grays Harbor and Willapa Bay) on the Washington coast during 1983–1987, and in adjacent areas of the open coast. These surveys have shown that both English sole and Dungeness crab rely heavily on these estuaries as nursery areas, although the pattern of utilization differs substantially. Juvenile migration patterns can show substantial interannual variability and can only be delineated by concurrent surveys in both coastal and estuarine areas, conducted over a period of several years. English sole eggs and Dungeness crab larvae are released in coastal waters. Larvae of both species transform to the benthic stage in both coastal and estuarine areas, but most English sole eventually migrate into the estuaries during the first year of life, even if initial settlement is along the open coast. By the time English sole have attained a length of 55 mm (TL), most of them are found in estuaries. English sole begin emigrating from the estuaries at about 75 mm, and few remain there during the second year of life. In contrast, Dungeness crab appear to remain in the area of initial settlement throughout the first year of life. Growth is substantially faster in estuaries where 0+ crab reach a mean size of about 40 mm carapace width (CW) by September, with those off the coast are only about 14 mm CW. Juveniles remain in the area of settlement over their first winter but, in contrast to English sole, most coastal 1+ crab immigrate to estuaries to join siblings that settled there the previous year. By September of the second year, crab at about 100 mm CW emigrate to the open coast where they reach maturity. Advantages to juvenile stages that reside in estuaries are discussed in terms of accelerated growth at higher temperatures and potentially greater food supplies than found nearshore along the coast.


Abstract Background: Learning from experience and knowledge management described in existing literature evidence that there are different practices that enable these processes, and that a distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge is essential for our analysis. Objectives: The paper investigates through which project management practices organizations manage the two types of knowledge and at what level knowledge sharing and reuse is more commonly adopted. Method/Approach: The research starts with existing research overview and analysis of preliminary results from initial interviews, and then it continues with a survey on selected knowledge management practices in order to identify which of them are mostly used by organizations. Results/Findings: Results show the essential role of the project team; this finding is then further elaborated using knowledge from research presented in existing literature. Conclusion: Project management enhances efficient knowledge management as on one hand, it includes the adoption of standardised and repetitive practises what enables specialization and knowledge consolidation. On the other hand, project management refers to unique initiatives that provide new knowledge and opportunities for learning. The project team in particular results to be a key factor for activating knowledge reuse.


Within the Mesa J pisolite iron ore mine, clay is distributed unevenly and often forms pods and channels less than 10 m in width. The mine resource model, based on 50 m x 50 m spaced drilling, has been unable to accurately delineate the clay for scheduling and mining purposes. Therefore, alternative methods for mapping the clay-contaminated ore were sought. Predictive clay mapping will significantly reduce production costs at Mesa J through improved selective mining practices, more accurate scheduling, reduced wear on mining equipment and minimising the need for maintenance of haul roads and ramps. High lateral resolution electromagnetic (EM) surveying using the Geonics EM31 tool can quickly delineate the extent and orientation of the clays. A block model based on the interpretation of the EM data accurately predicts the volume and tonnage of ore and waste material. While rip-line mapping, infill drilling, ground penetrating radar and gravity can delineate clay to varying degrees of success, none were as efficient as EM31.


Adenylate cyclase (EC 220.127.116.11) activities were examined in membrane preparations from two rat liver cell lines (62 and 3C4) which were grown in monolayer cultures. The cells were epithelial-like in growth character. Adenylate cyclase from the line 62 was stimulated by epinephrine, Gpp(NH)p, and prostaglandins A1,A2,E1,E2, and F2alpha, but not by glucagon. Arrhenius plots of adenylate cylase activity from line 62 gave straight lines, except when epinephrine was present in the assay; epinephrine-stimulated activity gave a distinct break at 20 degrees C. Adenylate cyclase activity in line 3C4 was stimulated by glucagon ten times greater than by epinephrine. It was responsive to Gpp(NH)p and all the prostaglandins. Arrhenius plots of adenylate cyclase activity of line 3C4 always gave straight line curves. Prostaglandins flattened the straight line curves (allowed temperature independence) of adenylate cyclase activity in membranes from both cell lines.


Background and purpose: Nowadays, obesity is known as one of the factors that has a role in the quality of life. The purpose of this study was to determine the consumption pattern of food and obesity of female students at the Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences. Materials and methods: This cross-sectional and analytic study was carried out on 116 female students of Mazandaran University data of Medical Sciences. Subjects were selected with randoml systematic sampling and food frequency was collected with food frequency questionnaire (FFQ) by interviews. Data were analyzed with excel and SPSS software using ANOVA and T-Test. Results: In this study, the average weight and height of students were 60.4 kg and 160 cm, respectively. Based on body mass index (BMI), 21.1% of the subjects were at low weight, 51.7% were at normal range, 29.3% were over weight and 6.9% were obese. The ratio of waist- to- hip circumference demonstrated that 49.1% of students were suffering from abdominal obesity (WHR>0.8) Conclusion: Results demonstrated the prevalence of overweight and obesity as well as energy and carbohydrate intake in studied subjects is relatively high. Therefore, more attention and also resources should be allocated to educate students on proper dietary regimen.


The current ratio method has yielded good results for ground fault location, however, it is dependent on current readings from both ends of a 2-terminal transmission line. The proposed method is operable from current data, namely, the phase and residual currents, from a single terminal. A distinctive ratio curve is obtained for circuits containing series capacitors, and the method provides a means for locating ground faults on 3-terminal circuits.


Summary The problem of absolute interferometric testing of circular, plane surfaces is investigated by separating the measured wavefronts into a pure rotational symmetric part and the remaining rotational non-symmetrical part. It is shown, that the pure rotational symmetric part can be derived absolutely free from the classical three flat test. This is very useful, because now the mean radius of curvature of the entire flat can be computed! In a variation of the classical three flat-test, where one of the mirrors is allowed to rotate during the test either continuously or in several steps for one complete revolution, the other part of the wavefront error, which does not contain the information about the mean radial profile but in contrary the rotational non-symmetric errors, can be derived too. The influence of the number of steps within 2π on the residual error is investigated and it is found, that already a small number of rotation positions leads to reasonable accurate results for the rotationally non-symmetric part. In addition to that, a second procedure is briefly given, which does not need the change in the coordinate systems from the Cartesian measurement grid of the CCD-camera to polar coordinates, but can work purely with the original data set. It is shown heuristically, that the residual error for the rotational non-symmetric part is even smaller by about a factor of 10 with this procedure. Further work will be dedicated to the combination of both procedures.


Congenital optic disc pit is a rare finding that develops from incomplete closure of the embryonic choroid fissure. Maculopathy is a major cause of visual deterioration. The treatment of the macular detachments associated with congenital optic disc pits remains controversial however it is emphasized that rerouting fluid from subretinal space may be efficient method. Main drawback of commonly use surgical methods is slow reabsorption of fluid taking weeks or even months. We report a different surgical approach in 2 patients consisting of vitrectomy, subretinal tissue glue injection followed by gas tamponade that allowed achieving very fast functional and anatomic recovery within 1 month.


Neurotoxic methylmercury (MeHg) is formed by microbial methylation of inorganic divalent Hg (HgII) and constitutes severe environmental and human health risks. The methylation is enabled by hgcA and hgcB genes, but it is not known if the associated molecular-level processes are rate-limiting or enable accurate prediction of MeHg formation in nature. In this study, we investigated the relationships between hgc genes and MeHg across redox-stratified water columns in the brackish Baltic Sea. We showed, for the first time, that hgc transcript abundance and the concentration of dissolved HgII-sulfide species were strong predictors of both the HgII methylation rate and MeHg concentration, implying their roles as principal joint drivers of MeHg formation in these systems. Additionally, we characterized the metabolic capacities of hgc+ microorganisms by reconstructing their genomes from metagenomes (i.e., hgc+ MAGs), which highlighted the versatility of putative HgII methylators in the water column of the Baltic Sea. In establishing relationships between hgc transcripts and the HgII methylation rate, we advance the fundamental understanding of mechanistic principles governing MeHg formation in nature and enable refined predictions of MeHg levels in coastal seas in response to the accelerating spread of oxygen-deficient zones.


This paper presents a solution for gender classification problem using GAL network which is a model of neural networks. This network is trained and tested on a publicly available Stanford dataset including 400 images (200 female and 200 male). Before classification process, primarily Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied on 128×128 pixel face images to reduce dimension and the dimension is reduced by about 99%; then GAL, an incremental neural network for supervised learning, is used to classify the data as male or female. Ten-fold cross validation is used for determining the accuracy rate of the classification. This paper has a novelty in the way of applying GAL to face images for gender classification. Test results show that 96% classification performance is obtained with GAL.


This paper introduces and implements a point-to-point error-resilient image coding and transmission scheme over a CDPD (cellular digital packet data) wireless channel, combining a low-delay UDP (user datagram protocol) transport protocol in conjunction with a channel-optimized wavelet-based image coder. The image coder uses a robust channel-optimized trellis-coded quantization (COTCQ) stage that is designed to optimize the image coding based on the channel characteristics. Packets are formed with the property that image information is spread over different frequency bands. The channel characterization is conducted in such a way so as to minimize the packet loss rate and maximize the net data throughput. Furthermore, a receiver-based rate control mechanism is presented at the application level to reduce significantly the image distortions and packet loss rate. Results are presented to illustrate the performance of the proposed system.


An efficacious tuberculosis (TB) vaccine is critical to reducing the global burden of TB. TB vaccine trials require the identification of multiple sites globally that have both a high incidence of TB and the capacity to conduct a clinical trial. To expand the diversity of potential phase III TB vaccine trial sites to be considered for inclusion, we describe a novel epidemiologic method that incorporates approaches from a variety of public health practices. Our approach incorporates analytic methodology to enable quantification and validation of qualitative information from disparate data sources, and epidemiologic analysis to systematically assess site-specific TB epidemiology. The integration of robust data-driven practices, and more quantitatively focused analysis, allowed for the objective evaluation of sites, which resulted in the identification of sites and catchment areas with high TB burden that may not have been previously considered. This suggests that an integrated epidemiologic methodology, not traditionally utilized for clinical trial site evaluations, could be integrated into site feasibility assessments as it results in more rapid site identification and reduces unintended bias.


Abstract Introduction and Objectives: 3Telsa endorectal coil multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) has been investigated as a new tool for physicians to improve prostate cancer detection. Depending on the number of MR sequences that are suggestive of cancer, MR lesions can be reported as having a low, moderate or high level of suspicion. Biopsy techniques to sample the MR lesions suspicious for cancer include in gantry platforms. While performing a prostate biopsy inside the MR gantry is challenging (long procedure times, expensive, not well tolerated by patients), platforms to perform office based MR / Ultrasound image fused TRUS biopsies have developed. While high suspicion lesions on MRI correlate strongly with the presence of cancer, the importance of low suspicion lesions has not been well characterized. We report the biopsy findings of patients with low suspicion lesions. Methods: We reviewed all patients who underwent a 3 Tesla mpMRI of the prostate with endorectal coil from March 2007 to July 2011. Two radiologists independently reviewed and graded any suspicious lesions into low, moderate, or high risk groups. Lesions were stratified based on T2-weighted, spectroscopic, dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE) and diffusion weighted (DWI) MRI sequences. Low suspicion lesions are defined by a maximum of two positive parameters on mpMRI. Patients with only low suspicion lesions who subsequently underwent a random 12 core US biopsy + mpMRI/US fusion targeted biopsy were selected for and analyzed. Results: Of 800 patients who received a mpMRI of the prostate, 92 patients (12%) had only low suspicion lesions on mpMRI. Mean age and PSA in this cohort were 59.7 years (36-81) and 7.84 ng/ml (0.3-64.7), respectively. All 92 patients underwent a mpMRI/US fusion biopsy plus a 12-core TRUS random biopsy. Sixty-two of these patients (67%) had no cancer detected. Of the remaining thirty patients (33%) who were diagnosed with cancer on biopsy, twenty-two patients had Gleason 6 disease and eight patients had Gleason 7 (3+4) disease. Ten patients went on to radical prostatectomy and no one was pathologically upgraded to high grade cancer. Thus, for low suspicion lesions, 90% had either Gleason 6 or no cancer on biopsy while 100% had no primary Gleason 4 on their biopsy. Conclusions: Prostate MR imaging has improved considerably, as is true for many technology dependant medical devices. Currently 3T mpMRI of the prostate has become the most widely used imaging modality for lesion detection outside of ultrasound. As previously published, our image fusion biopsy platform allows for sampling of MRI suspicious areas. These results demonstrate that low suspicion lesions on mpMRI do not signify high grade cancer. This has implications not only for initial cancer detection and patient selection for treatment options, but may also obviate the need for annual biopsies in men on active surveillance. Larger cohort studies are required. Citation Format: Peter A. Pinto, Jochen Kruecker, Maria Merino, W. Marston Linehan, Ismail Baris Turbey, Peter Choyke, Brad Wood. MRI/Ultrasound image fused guided TRUS prostate biopsy: Multiparametric MRI low suspicion lesions do not correlate with high-grade prostate cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Advances in Prostate Cancer Research; 2012 Feb 6-9; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(4 Suppl):Abstract nr C28.