This work is devoted to solving the Laplace equation with an oblique derivative prescribed as a boundary condition on a non-uniform logically rectangular grids. Laplace equation is solved using a finite volume method and we use new up-wind type discretization for the oblique derivative. In order to approximate Laplace equation on non-uniform 3D meshes,the normal derivative is split into the tangential derivative on finite volume faces and derivative in the direction of the vector connecting representative points of finite volumes. New second order up-wind discretization of the oblique derivative, based on linear reconstruction of solution on 3D grid, is presented. A gradient is used for a better approximation of unknown value on the boundary of finite volume. Since both, up-wind and finite volume method, are second order, the whole scheme is second order.


A commonly held idea regarding the nature of time is that the future is open and the past is fixed or closed. This article investigates the notion that there is an asymmetry in openness between the past and the future. The following questions are considered: How exactly is this asymmetry in openness to be understood? What is the relation between an open future and various ontological views about the future? Is an open future a branching future? What is the relation between an open future and the question of whether contingent statements about the future are true or false? Is an open future compatible with a single determinate future?


Interleukin 4 (IL-4) is critical for optimal B cell activation in T-dependent responses; however, the underlying mechanism remains elusive. In the present study, we demonstrate that IL-4-pretreatment markedly up-regulates STAT6-dependent Igα and Igβ protein expression in a translational manner in primary B cells. Elevated Igα and Igβ protein significantly promotes IgM maturation and IgM surface expression as evidenced by isolated overexpression of Igα and Igβ in a B cell line and this increased surface IgM is associated with augmented BCR-initiated ERK phosphorylation. In vivo, Tfh-derived IL-4 is critical for germinal center B cell expansion as shown by significant reduction of germinal center B cells in SRBC-immunized IL-4 receptor alpha deficient mice relative to wild type control mice. We find that IL-4 facilitates BCR-initiated pre-germinal center B cell activation by up-regulating Igα, Igβ, surface IgM expression and BCR-triggered pERK, all of which were reversed by administration of neutralizing anti-IL-4 antibody. In sum, this study elucidates a novel mechanism for crosstalk between the IL-4 receptor and B cell receptor.


The immunological system of patients with anorexia nervosa seems to react in a non typical and, up to now, obscure way. We do not observe greater ability to catch infectious diseases while damage due to other reasons leads as a rule to breakdown of resistance mechanisms thus giving increased receptivity to infections. The works concerning the immunological functions in anorexia nervosa are not heterogeneous and concern small groups of patients. The research was made upon 29 female patients aged 12 to 20 with the diagnosis of anorexia nervosa due to DSM-IV criteria. The research was made before starting the treatment and 6 weeks after the withdrawal of all anorexia nervosa symptoms. The research results showed that in the female patients there were no essential disturbances in the scope of electrophoresis of serum protein. Testing the protein of acute phase CRP as well as the estimation of their main microheterogeneity did not show significant deviation from the norm, which shows any features of early and later activation of the immunological system. However, a slight decrease of CD3 and low coefficient CD 4/8 during the disease were observed. After the symptoms retreated the coefficient became normal. Summing up we can state that the immunological system in patients with anorexia nervosa, in spite of great cachexia, did not show significant changes. The stated specific dysfunctions may be connected with a subtype of disease and other neurotransmitter mechanisms, which still requires to be confirmed in further research.


This article examines how middle-aged urban men in South Korea relate to age-relevant ideas of beauty in a society in which youthful muscular bodies are increasingly presented as the ideal or, arguably, even as a norm. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 13 male participants aged 36–56 years residing in the Seoul metropolitan area, it seeks to outline what role grooming and aesthetic labor play in their everyday social interactions. The findings suggest that men's aesthetic practices in the workplace are strongly linked to considerations of in-group harmony, competency at work, and maintaining social hierarchies. Rather than being motivated by a desire to emulate hegemonic masculinity embodied by male celebrities of similar age, men in this age group engage with body work primarily for the homosocial gaze of other men in their workplace in order to embody their membership and belonging to it. These micro-contexts of men's aesthetic labor help to illustrate how not all aesthetic labor can be explained in terms of considering the body simply as an object of investment. The participants' reflections also illustrate how men's bodies as neoliberal objects in the contemporary Korean workplace are not interpellated by societal or cultural influences in identical ways. For white collar workers, the role of aesthetic labor was clearly seen as more significant than for those in blue collar roles, suggesting a degree of social stratification of body work. Despite the relatively easy access to affordable technologies of the body in Korea, for workers in lower-middle class jobs where grooming and fitness are not considered an essential part of their job, partaking in aesthetic labor came with the anxiety that it might be encoded as "excessive" by others. This suggests that Korean beauty cultures continue to be highly class- and context-specific rather than relatively uniform as often (mis)understood in existing literature.


A major obstacle to fully integrated deployment of many data mining algorithms is the assumption that data sits in a single table, even though most real-world databases have complex relational structures. We propose an integrated approach to statistical modelling from relational databases. We structure the search space based on "refinement graphs", which are widely used in inductive logic programming for learning logic descriptions. The use of statistics allows us to extend the search space to include richer set of features, including many which are not Boolean. Search and model selection are integrated into a single process, allowing information criteria native to the statistical model, for example logistic regression, to make feature selection decisions in a step-wise manner. We present experimental results for the task of predicting where scientific papers will be published based on relational data taken from CiteSeer. Our approach results in classification accuracies superior to those achieved when using classical "flat" features. The resulting classifier can be used to recommend where to publish articles.


It is commonly believed that futures trading accentuates short-run price fluctuations. Government as well as Forward Markets Commission have often found fault with speculative activity in futures markets for aggravating short-term price movements. At the same time, however, little empirical evidence has been presented in support of such charges against forward trading.


This study examines the policy of teaching science and mathematics in English in the Malaysian educational system by focusing on the attitudes and achievement orientations of secondary school students towards the learning of these two subjects. Attitudes and achievement are two important outcomes of learning that will determine the effectiveness of an education policy. This study is based on a sample of 400 secondary school students selected from four non-premier schools. It looks into the students' general attitudes and achievement orientations towards learning of science and mathematics as well as their variations according to four background variables, i.e., gender, ethnicity, types of feeder school and English achievement grades. It also examines the inter-correlations between the students' attitudes and achievement orientations. Findings from statistical analyses of collected data were supplemented by more in-depth interviews. This study shows that the students' general attitudes and achievement orientations towards learning of science and mathematics in English do not indicate that the policy has achieved its objective. However, their attitudes and achievement motivations vary according to the four background variables. The significant and positive inter-correlations between attitudes and achievement orientations towards learning of science and mathematics further confirm the causal relationship between these two important dimensions of learning.


This study examined the concept of concessioning and container shipping operations in Nigerian Ports and its effect on ports revenue. It analyzed the improvements in container traffic since concession, trend of container traffic after concession, and its influence on ports revenue. The major objectives however are to ascertain if there is a significant difference in the container traffic between the pre-concession era and post-concession era, to examine if there is a significant change in container traffic with respect to years of operations within the confines of the Ports system, and to ascertain if there is any significant influence of container traffic on ports revenue. Secondary data collected from government agencies were employed in this study. The study employed the use of descriptive, inferential statistics and trend analysis were used in analyzing if the container traffic can be predicted based on data from previous years of operations, simple linear regression was employed to ascertain the influence of container traffic on port revenue and T-test was used to find out if there is any significant difference between the pre and post concession era. The results from the findings indicated container traffic improvements after concession, and positive influence of container traffic on ports revenue. Also, the study found that there is no significant change in container traffic with respect to years of operations of the Ports. It was however recommended that the relevant stake holders in the Nigerian maritime industry should make concerted efforts to enhance container traffic to help improve ports revenue. The result of the findings also indicated that, the Container traffic has improved the ports output through the emergence of inland container depots and segmented bonded warehouses across the six geopolitical zones of the nation at the end.


Summary We report five cases where fluvoxamine (FLVX) was added to maintenance treatment with methadone (MTD) in addict patients with affective disorders. In view of the implication of FLVX in several metabolic drug interactions, MTD plasma levels were measured before and after treatment with FLVX. A slight increase (∼20% of the MTD plasma level/dose ratio) occurred in two cases. In the remaining three patients, the interaction was more pronounced (40–100% increase of the MTD plasma level/dose ratio), with clinical manifestations of opiate withdrawal after stopping FLVX therapy in one case. Caution is needed when starting or stopping treatment with FLVX in patients receiving maintenance treatment with methadone.


Conducting polymer composites consisting of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as a conductive filler and polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as a polymer matrix were fabricated to investigate their capacitive and piezoresistive effects as pressure sensors. The pressure-sensing behavior and mechanism of the composites were compared in terms of basic configuration with a parallel plate structure. Various sensing experiments, such as sensitivity, repeatability, hysteresis, and temperature dependence according to the working principle, were conducted with varying filler contents. The hysteresis and repeatability of the pressure-sensing properties were investigated using cyclic tensile tests. In addition, a temperature test was performed at selected temperatures to monitor the change in the resistance/capacitance.


Fast and low-cost DNA sequencing methods would revolutionize medicine: a person could have his/her full genome sequenced so that drugs could be tailored to his/her specific illnesses; doctors could know in advance patients' likelihood to develop a given ailment; cures to major diseases could be found faster [1]. However, this goal of "personalized medicine" is hampered today by the high cost and slow speed of DNA sequencing methods. In this talk, I will discuss the sequencing protocol we suggest which requires the measurement of the distributions of transverse currents during the translocation of single-stranded DNA into nanopores [2-5]. I will support our conclusions with a combination of molecular dynamics simulations coupled to quantum mechanical calculations of electrical current in experimentally realizable systems [2-5]. I will also discuss recent experiments that support these theoretical predictions. In addition, I will show how this relatively unexplored area of research at the interface between solids, liquids, and biomolecules at the nanometer length scale is a fertile ground to study quantum phenomena that have a classical counterpart, such as ionic quasi-particles, ionic "quantized" conductance [6,7] and Coulomb blockade [8]. Work supported in part by NIH.


A53 Initial and downstream steps in leukemogenesis may be elucidated through studying families inheriting a predisposition to a purely haematological malignancy. These families allow the unique opportunity to study the "life" of a cancer stem cell throughout disease formation and shed light on the mechanisms involved in disease progression. To date, only two genes have been shown to be involved in familial AML, transcription factors RUNX1 and CEBPA. Only limited knowledge of the downstream events following these germline mutations has been attained. The study presented here is a comprehensive screen of not only germline RUNX1 and CEBPA mutations in familial AML, but also somatic events occurring downstream of these mutations throughout disease progression.
 We have identified novel mutations in RUNX1 and a previously identified mutation in CEBPA in five pedigrees (four previously unpublished). We have also identified five pedigrees in which neither RUNX1 nor CEBPA are responsible. This finding confirms that genetic heterogeneity exists and additional leukaemia driver genes, that likely play important roles in sporadic leukaemia, await discovery.
 In six pedigrees with germline RUNX1 or CEBPA mutation we further investigated the downstream events occurring during progression of disease, utilising affected tissue from different stages of leukemogenesis. We identified several novel secondary hits, including the first described cases of secondary hits to RUNX1 following germline mutation, and an individual with triallelic RUNX1 aberration. We also observed a marked reduction in expression from two separate RUNX1 alleles with distinct mutations; one nonsense and one missense.
 Finally, using a combination of karyotype and SNP chip analyses, we observed both known and novel genomic copy number variations (CNVs) at several loci in 3 individuals. These loci involved genes such as RUNX1, ATM, FLT3 and the homeobox gene CDX2. However, in the remaining 4 individuals studied, we did not identify any potentially pathogenic CNVs. This implicates the involvement of other unidentified hits, such as epigenetic and/or point mutations, or loss of heterozygosity (LOH) without copy number variation. LOH will soon be addressed utilising SNP chip homozygosity call differences between affected and unaffected DNA samples.
 Familial studies of leukemogenesis, such as presented here, will shed light on the initial steps in malignant transformation, and allow further characterisation of the pathways and mechanisms involved in leukemogenesis. This will aid in the development of novel therapeutic and treatment initiatives.


Pilot study CCQM-P18 was undertaken to assess the current capabilities of interested national metrology institutes (those which are members of the Consultative Committee for Amount of Substance) and selected outside `expert' laboratories to quantitate (C4H9)3Sn+ (tributyltin, TBT) in a prepared marine sediment. This exercise was sanctioned by the 7th Meeting of the CCQM in April 2001 as an activity of the Inorganic Working Group, and was jointly piloted by the Institute for National Measurement Standards of the National Research Council of Canada and the Laboratory of the Government Chemist (LGC, UK). A total of fourteen laboratories initially indicated interest (ten NMIs and four external participants), from which results were submitted by seven of the NMIs and the four external laboratories. Two of the latter utilized a standard calibration approach based on a natural abundance TBT standard, whereas all NMIs relied on isotope dilution mass spectrometry for quantification. For this purpose, a species-specific 117Sn-enriched TBT standard was supplied by the LGC. No sample-preparation methodology was prescribed by the pilot laboratories and thus a variety of approaches was adopted by the participants, including mechanical shaking, sonication, accelerated solvent extraction, microwave-assisted extraction and heating in combination with Grignard derivatization, ethylation and direct sampling. Detection techniques included ICP MS (with GC and HPLC sample introduction), GC-MS, GC-AED and GC-FPD. Recovery of TBT from a control standard (NRCC CRM PACS-2 marine sediment) averaged (93.5 ? 2.4) % (n = 14). Results for the pilot material averaged (0.680 ? 0.015) nmol/g (n = 14) with a median value of 0.676 nmol/g. Overall, performance was comparable to state-of-the-art expectations and the satisfactory agreement among participants allows a follow-up key comparison to be considered.


The prevalence of hazardous alcohol use among people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) is common and related to numerous health problems among individuals in this group. Stigma is associated with hazardous drinking among stigmatized groups, but this relationship has yet to be examined among PLHIV. Moreover, there is a lack of research in identifying the mechanisms underlying this association. Emotion dysregulation is one potential construct that may explain the association between stigma and hazardous alcohol use among PLHIV. The present study examined the indirect effect of HIV stigma and hazardous alcohol use via emotion dysregulation. The sample included 98 PLHIV (60.2% male, M age = 48.40, SD = 7.75). Results indicated significant and medium-sized indirect effects of HIV stigma and its subfacets (enacted stigma and negative self-image) in terms of hazardous alcohol use via emotion dysregulation. Alternative models did not yield significant indirect effects. The results document an indirect association between HIV stigma and hazardous alcohol use via emotion dysregulation. These findings may provide novel, initial empirical insight into the nature of the stigma-hazardous drinking relation among PLHIV.


The challenges associated with building materials in Nigeria have been largely blamed for the high cost of housing delivery in the country. As a result, there has been a clarion call for the introduction of cheaper building materials into the Nigerian building construction market. Consequently, various research and development efforts have resulted in the introduction of alternative building materials and their associated technologies. Building materials are expected to meet stipulated standards which will ensure not only their aesthetics but also their appropriateness for their intended uses including structural stability, safety and health of building occupants. A major criticism of alternative building materials in the country has been their non- compliance to quality management procedures in their production and use. This study explores the extent to which quality control measures have been implemented in the production and use of alternative building materials and challenges encountered. The study has been motivated by series of building collapse in the country. Qualitative research method was adopted for the study and involved interviews with purposively selected persons involved in the production and use of alternative building materials in the Lagos area. Findings indicate a low level adoption of quality management procedures due to insufficient training, non optimum performance of equipment, lack of manuals, time constraints, low education and motivation of workers involved in the production and use of alternative building materials. The paper concludes that in order for the potentials of alternative building materials to be realized in the country, there is a dire need for quality control procedures.


Although smart grids are regarded as the technology to overcome the limits of nowadays power distribution grids, the transition will require much time. Dynamic pricing, a straightforward implementation of demand response, may provide the means to manipulate the grid load thus extending the life expectancy of current technology. However, to integrate a dynamic pricing scheme in the crowded pool of technologies, available at demand side, a proper energy manager with the support of a pricing profile forecaster is mandatory. Although energy management and price forecasting are recurrent topics, in literature they have been addressed separately. On the other hand, in this work, the aim is to investigate how well an energy manager is able to perform in presence of data uncertainty originating from the forecasting process. On purpose, an energy and resource manager has been revised and extended in the current manuscript. Finally, it has been complemented with a price forecasting technique, based on the Extreme Learning Machine paradigm. The proposed forecaster has proven to be better performing and more robust, with respect to the most common forecasting approaches. The energy manager, as well, has proven that the energy efficiency of the residential environment can be improved significantly. Nonetheless, to achieve the theoretical optimum, forecasting techniques tailored for that purpose may be required.


Illegal Leisure, an in-depth study from Britain, and Understanding and Responding to Drug Use, a diverse collection of short pieces describing research across the European Union, present a stark contrast to much of mainstream research on illegal drugs in the United States. Rather than presenting research paradigms that emphasize identification and measurement of risk factors for the use of illegal drugs, these books take a much broader view of the place of drugs in society. These more nuanced views do not minimize the potential harm of drug use, but they do recognize a wide range of behaviors, from minimally to highly risky. This acknowledgement of the diversity of illegal drug use is in tum linked to a very different kind of policy emphasis, an emphasis on harm reduction rather than the emphases on law enforcement and prevention that seem to fit so closely with the risk-factor paradigm.


How can we understand classification decisions made by deep neural networks? Many existing explainability methods rely solely on correlations and fail to account for confounding, which may result in potentially misleading explanations. To overcome this problem, we define the Causal Concept Effect (CaCE) as the causal effect of (the presence or absence of) a human-interpretable concept on a deep neural net's predictions. We show that the CaCE measure can avoid errors stemming from confounding. Estimating CaCE is difficult in situations where we cannot easily simulate the do-operator. To mitigate this problem, we use a generative model, specifically a Variational AutoEncoder (VAE), to measure VAE-CaCE. In an extensive experimental analysis, we show that the VAE-CaCE is able to estimate the true concept causal effect, compared to baselines for a number of datasets including high dimensional images.


Following the Great Depression, colonial Indonesia underwent a shift in societal make-up, which influenced various forms of popular culture. Writers and other creative professionals used popular culture to express their opinions on the cultural shift. The reporter turned screenwriter Saeroen was no exception. Attached to four film production houses in his four-year screenwriting career (1937–1941), Saeroen's oeuvre included some of the biggest commercial successes of the period, and often involved the theme of migration from the villages to the cities. Though the majority of Saeroen's films are now thought lost, enough evidence survives in the form of film reviews, novelizations, and promotional material for a textual analysis of his works and the views contained within. As will be shown, Saeroen's works represent a testament to the experience of abandoning the villages and embracing the cities. Using post-colonial theory and Upstone's concept of space, we argue that Saeroen represented colonial cities as both full of the possibility for further development and replete with dangers not found in the villages, and villages as stagnant and rarely changing with few intrinsic dangers. We further argue that cities and villages in these films become embodiments of the oft-contrasted concepts of modernity and tradition. Ultimately, we conclude that Saeroen's representation of colonial Indonesia is intended as both a warning against embracing modernity at the expense of tradition, as well as a call for further modernization.


Background The effectiveness of education programs for patients with arthritis has been well documented1. Despite this, there has been minimal investigation into patient education specifically for ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and axial spondyloarthritis (SpA). AS patient education programs have demonstrated positive effects with respect to mobility, function, self efficacy, and depression, however many of these effects are not sustained over the long term2,3. Effective patient education programs are built on carefully executed needs assessments4. Objectives To identify what patients with AS and SpA feel their current informational needs are. In addition, the method of preferred information access was also assessed. This information will be used to develop a comprehensive interprofessional patient education program for patients with AS and SpA attending the Toronto Western Hospital Spondylitis Clinic, Toronto, Canada. Methods Patients with AS and SpA were emailed a link with an Informational Needs Assessment Survey. This included five multiple choice sections: 1. Demographics, 2. Disease, Diagnosis and Prognosis, 3. Management, 4. Relationships, 5. Emotions. Descriptive statistics and bivariate analyses were used for data analysis. Qualitative statistical methods were utilized to address the open ended question section. Results The response rate was 32.1%, of which 66.1% were male. The average number of years since diagnosis was 11 years. The Disease, Diagnosis and Prognosis and Management sections were found to be the most important informational needs. Websites, on-line audio/ video and E-learning were cited as the most useful ways to receive information in all sections. Qualitative analysis indicated three major themes concerning patients: medication/pain, fatigue/activity/work and long term prognosis. Conclusions Based on the needs assessment, it was determined to develop an e-learning module for this patient population followed by self-management focused face-to-face sessions. It is anticipated this unique education program for patients with AS and SpA will be a successful model using best practice in patient education. References Riemsma RP, Kirwan JR, Taal E, Rasker JJ. Patient education for adults with rheumatoid arthritis. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2003; 2: CD003688. Kraag G, Stokes B, Groh J et al. The effects of comprehensive home physiotherapy and supervision on patients with ankylosing spondylitis ± a randomized controlled trial. Journal of Rheumatology 1990; 17: 228-33 Barlow JH & Barefoot J. Group education for people with arthritis. Patient Education and Counseling 1996; 27: 257-67. Lorig K. Patient education: a practical approach. Sage Publications Inc: California. 2001. Acknowledgements Funding for this research was made possible by a Canadian Initiative for Outcomes in Rheumatology Care (CIORA) grant received in 2012. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


Objectives: This study investigated if a hearing aid user guide modified using best practice principles for health literacy resulted in superior ability to perform hearing aid management tasks, compared with the user guide in the original form. Design: This research utilized a two-arm study design to compare the original manufacturer's user guide with a modified user guide for the same hearing aid—an Oticon Acto behind-the-ear aid with an open dome. The modified user guide had a lower reading grade level (4.2 versus 10.5), used a larger font size, included more graphics, and had less technical information. Eighty-nine adults ages 55 years and over were included in the study; none had experience with hearing aid use or management. Participants were randomly assigned either the modified guide (n = 47) or the original guide (n = 42). All participants were administered the Hearing Aid Management test, designed for this study, which assessed their ability to perform seven management tasks (e.g., change battery) with their assigned user guide. Results: The regression analysis indicated that the type of user guide was significantly associated with performance on the Hearing Aid Management test, adjusting for 11 potential covariates. In addition, participants assigned the modified guide required significantly fewer prompts to perform tasks and were significantly more likely to perform four of the seven tasks without the need for prompts. The median time taken by those assigned the modified guide was also significantly shorter for three of the tasks. Other variables associated with performance on the Hearing Aid Management test were health literacy level, finger dexterity, and age. Conclusions: Findings indicate that the need to design hearing aid user guides in line with best practice principles of health literacy as a means of facilitating improved hearing aid management in older adults.


In the nine-zinc finger Xenopus transcription factor TFIIIA the central group of fingers, fingers 4 to 7, have been shown to bind to 5 S RNA. In this study, we have attempted to assess the role of this region of the TFIIIA molecule in more detail than hitherto. High-resolution footprinting by RNases A and CV1 has been used to probe the binding to 5 S RNA of three TFIIIA peptides Tf(1-6), Tf(4-6) and Tf(4-7), consisting of fingers 1 to 6, 4 to 6, and 4 to 7, respectively, and of full-length TFIIIA. The results pinpoint the outer margins of binding of the central fingers within helices IV and II of TFIIIA. A comparison of the footprints reveals that the presence of finger 7 affords protection at positions C19 and U55, the distal portion of helix II and the proximal portion of loop B. In addition, our footprints suggest that the central fingers bind in the same manner, whether in an isolated group or in the intact TFIIIA molecule. In a companion study, we have determined the binding affinities of Tf(4-6) and Tf(4-7) for full-length and three truncated 5 S RNA molecules, the latter selected on the basis of the regions of the 5 S RNA molecule known to be important in the binding of TFIIIA. The analysis uses only fully active protein involved in the binding and the results are consistent with the corresponding footprinting results. This is the first time that a detailed study of the binding site of one particular zinc finger to RNA has been reported; the results should be of use in the design of 5 S RNA molecules and TFIIIA peptides for structural studies of the interaction between zinc fingers and RNA.


Erosional features that indicate former sea-level stands on La Orchila Island are wave-cut notches in metamorphic basement rocks, a wave-cut notch just above a low marine terrace, and a relict mangrove swamp. The main limestone terrace consists of a coarse-grained facies (coral and shell rubble) and a fine-grained facies (calcareous and siliceous sand). Other deposits include eolianite (stabilized and cemented calcareous dunes) and salt flats. Beachrock is now forming along the southern and eastern coasts; wave erosion is prominent along the northern and northeastern coasts. Radiocarbon dates for coral, shell, and beachrock from the terrace range between approximately 8,000 and 41,000 yr B.P. X-ray diffraction and petrographic data indicate alteration and recrystallization of the original aragonite, at least in part, thus rendering the radiocarbon ages too young. Two Th 230 /U 238 dates on coral gave an approximate age of 131,000 yr. Thus, the terrace is most probably of Sangamon age. The wave-cut notches were probably cut as the island emerged in early Quaternary (?) time. During the Sangamon inter-glacial stage, coral and shell rubble deposited by storms was cemented into beach-rock along the edges of the island. Planation by waves took place during the highest (late Sangamon) sea-level stand. The terrace was exposed during the Wisconsin Glaciation; postglacial sea-level rise did not reach the terrace level because of island uplift.


The automotive industry has evolved into an industry of complex supply chains and networks, requiring many activities to be aligned and well-managed in order to avoid abnormalities in both the material flow and information flow. The car assembly requires many different components and material, which also in turn require different types of packaging when being transported to the production plants. This thesis has extended the limited research involving packaging operations of an automotive company, using Volvo Cars as an example. The study focuses on revealing possible gaps that could have a bad impact on the packaging operations and its network balance and flow. The coordination of the packaging requires a well-balanced network of suppliers, production plants, transportation and terminals, where also time management is of high significance as the market demand needs to be responded to. The striving towards efficiency in terms of reducing lead time is however not always flawless. By using the SERVQUAL and CATWOE models as well as previous research, it was possible to reveal and conclude gaps within the organization in terms of communication both internally and externally. Also, by using data compiled by the Volvo Cars Packaging Operations, it was possible to further analyze the packaging network and its lead time between the terminals, production plants and suppliers, and reveal gaps within this operational loop. The study further concluded that the most critical problem in terms of time was found on supplier level, among other factors in the loop.


OBJECTIVES
This study evaluates the incidence and clinical features and associated risk factors of delayed gastric emptying (DGE) after pancreaticoduodenectomy, employing the International Study Group of Pancreatic Surgery (ISGPS) consensus definition.

METHODS
Demographic, pathological and surgical details for 260 consecutive patients who underwent pylorus-preserving pancreaticoduodenectomy at a single institution were analysed using univariate and multivariate models.

RESULTS
Postoperative complications occurred in 108 (41.5%) and DGE was diagnosed in 36 (13.8%) of 260 patients. Among the 36 DGE patients, 16 had grade A, 18 grade B and two grade C DGE. Resumption of a solid diet (P < 0.001), time to passage of stool (P= 0.002) and hospital discharge (P < 0.001) occurred later in DGE patients. The need for total parenteral nutrition was significantly higher in DGE grade B/C patients (P < 0.001). In the univariate analysis, abdominal collections (P≤ 0.001), pancreatic fistula (PF) grades B and C (P < 0.001), biliary fistula (P= 0.002), pulmonary complications (P < 0.001) and sepsis (P= 0.002) were associated with DGE. Only abdominal collections (P= 0.009), PF grade B/C (P < 0.001) and sepsis (P= 0.024) were associated with clinically relevant DGE. In the multivariate analysis, PF grade B/C (P= 0.004) and biliary fistula (P= 0.039) were independent risk factors for DGE.

CONCLUSIONS
The ISGPS classification and grading systems correlate well with the clinical course of DGE and are feasible for patient management. The principal risk factors for DGE seem to be pancreatic and biliary fistulas.


Papua New Guinea is the largest, most populous, and most resource-rich island country in the South Pacific and has received technical and financial assistance from Australia; its economic performance, however, has been disappointing to date. Following discussions of Papua New Guinea's history, geography, culture, economy, and government, the climate for entrepreneurship is described.An entrepreneurial class scarcely exists in Papua New Guinea; instead, most people work for the public sector or for large resource development companies.Those who are self-employed generally farm. Outside the rural sector, small businesses struggle to obtain credit from most financial institutions.The country is not devoid of an entrepreneurial spirit: residents fund small commercial enterprises with capital raised through cash crops. The fact that these ventures generally fail further indicates that the climate is not conducive to entrepreneurial behavior.A number of factors have contributed to the country's failure to grow: increasing political instability, an ineffective central government, an under-developed infrastructure, an acute shortage of skilled labor, a lack of foreign investment capital, and a high rate of population growth are all barriers to prosperity.In spite of these barriers, and in spite of the fact that education levels are low and travel difficult, there are areas (such as tourism, fishing, and agriculture) that offer business opportunities to prospective entrepreneurs.Overcoming these obstacles will require an expansion of the modern cash economy, a greater degree of political stability, the participation of national and provincial governments, and a change in the general attitude toward entrepreneurship.(SAA)


QGIS is a free and open-source software that allows viewing, editing, and analyzing georeferenced data. It is a Geographic Information System (GIS) software composed by tools that allow to manipulate geographic information and consequently to create maps which help to get a better understanding and organization of geospatial data. Unfortunately, maps created directly in the GIS desktop software are not automatically transferred to a website. This research aimed to compare publishing capabilities in different QGIS plugins to create Web Maps. This study analyzes four QGIS plugins (QGIS2Web, QGIS Cloud, GIS Cloud Publisher and Mappia Publisher), performing a comparison between them, considering their advantages and disadvantages, the free and subscription plans, the tools offered by each plugin and other generic aspects. The four plugins were tested in a specific case study to automatically obtain different Web Maps. This study could help users to choose the most adequate tools to publish Web Maps under QGIS software.


One-pot cascade reactions over metal-free heterogeneous bifunctional catalysts have been attracting increased attention in green chemistry owing to the advantage of process intensification, as well as the elimination of wastes and metal contamination. In this paper, phosphor-doped hexagonal boron nitride nanosheets (BNP) can act as excellent metal-free acid–base bifunctional catalysts for one-pot deacetalization–Knoevenagel cascade reactions. XRD, FT-IR, XPS, and solid NMR characterizations indicate that phosphor was doped into the framework of h-BN mainly at the corner (N2PO) and bayer (N3P–OH) sites. The CO2-TPD and NH3-TPD characterizations showed that the BNP sample with optimal phosphor-doping amounts simultaneously possessed the highest amount of acid and base sites. When correlated with the catalytic performance, it can be concluded that mainly N3P–OH acts as the Bronsted acid sites and –BNH2 and N2PO as the Lewis and Bronsted base sites, respectively. In addition, the good recycling stability and immobilization feasibility on a monolith support confirm its potential in practical applications.


A vast majority of machine learning algorithms train their models and perform inference by solving optimization problems. In order to capture the learning and prediction problems accurately, structural constraints such as sparsity or low rank are frequently imposed or else the objective itself is designed to be a non-convex function. This is especially true of algorithms that operate in high-dimensional spaces or that train non-linear models such as tensor models and deep networks.  The freedom to express the learning problem as a non-convex optimization problem gives immense modeling power to the algorithm designer, but often such problems are NP-hard to solve.  A popular workaround to this has been to relax non-convex problems to convex ones and use traditional methods to solve the (convex) relaxed optimization problems. However this approach may be lossy and nevertheless presents significant challenges for large scale optimization.  On the other hand, direct approaches to non-convex optimization have met with resounding success in several domains and remain the methods of choice for the practitioner, as they frequently outperform relaxation-based techniques - popular heuristics include projected gradient descent and alternating minimization. However, these are often poorly understood in terms of their convergence and other properties.  This monograph presents a selection of recent advances that bridge a long-standing gap in our understanding of these heuristics. We hope that an insight into the inner workings of these methods will allow the reader to appreciate the unique marriage of task structure and generative models that allow these heuristic techniques to (provably) succeed. The monograph will lead the reader through several widely used non-convex optimization techniques, as well as applications thereof. The goal of this monograph is to both, introduce the rich literature in this area, as well as equip the reader with the tools and techniques needed to analyze these simple procedures for non-convex problems.


Abstract Sudden release of accreted ice in fuel systems could pose a serious challenge in aircraft operation. The resultant snowshower may reach the filter and fuel-oil heat exchanger, causing a restriction in fuel flow to the engine. It is fundamental to have an appreciation of the character and the interface shear strength of the accreted ice in aircraft fuel systems. This helps to recognise factors for the sudden release of the accreted ice and the intensity of the consequential snowshower. An experimental study was carried out to quantify the character and the interface shear strength of accreted ice on subcooled surfaces submerged in jet fuel. Ice was accreted on naked aluminium, painted aluminium and carbon fibre composite surfaces at various subcooled temperatures. The accreted ice was akin to fresh snow and exhibited soft and fluffy attributes. The character may be expressed quantitatively in terms of the porosity and was found to be c. 0·95. The ice weakly adhered to the substrate surfaces, and the interface shear strength was found to be c. 0·36Pa and c. 2·19Pa at the top surface and at the vertical surface of a specimen block, respectively. It was not possible to detect any variation in the porosity and the interface shear strength for different types of surface finishes and differences in water affnity in fuels due to the crude approach in the estimation of these parameters.


Abstract Abstract Abstract Recently, Liu (2005) proposed a special type of weighting function under a given preference index level with the minimal variability similar to the minimal variability OWA operator weights problem proposed by Fuller and Majlender (2003). He solved this problem using a result of classical optimal control theory. In this note, we give a direct elementary proof of this problem without using any known results.


A key feature of advanced brain aging includes structural defects of intracortical myelin that are associated with secondary neuroinflammation. A similar pathology is seen in specific myelin mutant mice that model 'advanced brain aging' and exhibit a range of behavioral abnormalities. However, the cognitive assessment of these mutants is problematic because myelin-dependent motor-sensory functions are required for quantitative behavioral readouts. To better understand the role of cortical myelin integrity for higher brain functions, we generated mice lacking Plp1, encoding the major integral myelin membrane protein, selectively in ventricular zone stem cells of the mouse forebrain. In contrast to conventional Plp1 null mutants, subtle myelin defects were restricted to the cortex, hippocampus and underlying callosal tracts. Moreover, forebrain-specific Plp1 mutants exhibited no defect of basic motor-sensory performance at any age tested. Surprisingly, several behavioral alterations reported for conventional Plp1 null mice (Gould et al., 2018) were absent and even social interactions appeared normal. However, with novel behavioral paradigms, we determined catatonia-like symptoms and isolated executive dysfunction in both genders. This suggests that loss of myelin integrity has an impact on cortical connectivity and underlies specific defects of executive function. These observations are likewise relevant for human neuropsychiatric conditions and other myelin-related diseases.


The maintenance of financial stability is a key objective of monetary policy, but the record of regulators in achieving this has been lamentable in recent years. This failure has been matched by an equivalent inability to establish an appropriate theoretical basis for financial regulation. In this book, the authors demonstrate how to enhance the theory, modelling and practice of such regulation.


Epidemiological evidence so far suggests that multiple sexual partnerships are an important factor driving the HIV epidemic. Recently, there has been renewed emphasis on fidelity and partner-reduction in preventing HIV infections. Like many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Zambia is facing a severe HIV epidemic and young people are heavily affected. This study explores youths' perspectives on multiple sexual partnerships in the context of HIV and AIDS. The study draws on four focus group discussions and 10 in-depth interviews with university students in Lusaka, Zambia, in 2006. While the young people were generally aware of the HIV-related risk associated with multiple sexual partnerships, they felt several obstacles prevented them from changing their sexual behaviour. Of special interest are their perceptions related to socio-economic disadvantages and cultural factors.


Truth discovery is an important technique for enabling reliable crowdsourcing applications. It aims to automatically discover the truths from possibly conflicting crowdsourced claims. Most existing truth discovery approaches focus on categorical applications, such as image classification. They use the accuracy, i.e., rate of exactly correct claims, to capture the reliability of participants. As a consequence, they are not effective for truth discovery in quantitative applications, such as percentage annotation and object counting, where similarity rather than exact matching between crowdsourced claims and latent truths should be considered. In this paper, we propose two unsupervised Quantitative Truth Finders (QTFs) for truth discovery in quantitative crowdsourcing applications. One QTF explores an additive model and the other explores a multiplicative model to capture different relationships between crowdsourced claims and latent truths in different classes of quantitative tasks. These QTFs naturally incorporate the similarity between variables. Moreover, they use the bias and the confidence instead of the accuracy to capture participants' abilities in quantity estimation. These QTFs are thus capable of accurately discovering quantitative truths in particular domains. Through extensive experiments, we demonstrate that these QTFs outperform other state-of-the-art approaches for truth discovery in quantitative crowdsourcing applications and they are also quite efficient.


Purpose: To define the value of repetitive performed exclusive MRI of the breast at intervals of maximum 24 months in asymptomatic women and patients regarding the tumor size and stage at the time of diagnosis. Material and methods: Women with normal MRI of the breast upon initial examination and subsequent breast MRI within intervals of maximum 2 years were included. Benign and malignant lesions as well as the tumor stages were reported and analysed. Results: 8.975 MRI were performed in 2333 women. 6642 exams were subsequent MRI (2.85 follow-up MRI/woman). Within the examination intervals, 290 (4.37% per follow up exam) lesions categorized as MR-BIRADS 4/5 were found in 272 patients. All of these findings were clarified by percutaneous biopsy. Histology revealed benign findings (B1/B2) in 151/290 (52.1%), B3-lesions in 24 (8.3%), and malignant tumors (B5a/B5b) in 115 cases (39.6%). Open biopsy revealed an intraductal carcinoma in 36/115 cases (G1: 11, G2: 16, G3: 9), and an invasive breast cancer in 79/115 cases. Tumor stages of the invasive carcinoma were pT1a (17/79; 21.5%), pT1b (39/79, 49.4%), and pT1c (22/79; 27.8%). Only one invasive cancer was classified as stage pT2. The average size of all invasive tumors was 9.0 mm. Rate of nodal negative invasive cancer was 95.9%. Rate of interval carcinomas was less than 2%. Conclusion: The performance of repetitive MRI of the breast at intervals of maximum 24 months allows the reliable detection of breast cancer at an early stage (pTis, pT1a, pT1b, pN0) with an excellent prognosis.


This paper presents the synthesis and physicochemical characterization of injectable, multi-functional, biodegradable poly (D,L-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA)-loaded micro- and nano-particles. These particles were loaded with an anticancer drug from prodigiosin (PG), which was obtained from bacteria, Serratia marcescens subsp. Marcescens. The release of paclitaxel (PT) was also tested as a control. The PG and PT were encapsulated using a single-emulsion solvent evaporation technique with PLGA as a polymer matrix and poly-(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) as an emulsifier. The dependence of particle size and morphology on processing conditions was also evaluated. In vitro release studies were used to elucidate drug loading efficiency, encapsulation efficiency and microparticle morphology using a combination of UV-visible (UV-Vis) spectrophotometry, optical Microscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The implications of the results are then explored using MDA-MB-231 cells (breast cancer cells) for the development of injectable, multi-functional, polymeric micro- and nano-particles for the controlled release of cancer drugs and the localized treatment of cancer. Citation Format: John D. Obayemi, Karen A. Malatesta, Olushola S. Odusanya, Danyuo Yiporo, Wei Yu, Kathryn E. Uhrich, Winston O. Soboyejo. Injectable, biodegradable micro- and nano-particles loaded with prodigiosin-based drug for localized anticancer drug delivery. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Eighth AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 13-16, 2015; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2016;25(3 Suppl):Abstract nr C60.


PurposeThis study aims to understand the process, structure and determinants of persistent illegal gold mining in Indonesia.Design/methodology/approachAn exploratory study included a literature review, field observations and in-depth interviews. Fieldwork was conducted at two mining locations in Kalimantan, Indonesia. Sixteen respondents representing key stakeholders: government, mining companies, mining associations and community, including illegal miners, were interviewed. The findings of the literature review were categorized as the push or pull factors within the topics, and field observations verified the literature review results regarding Indonesia. Interview data were analyzed using content analysis methods. A structural diagram of the actors and causal loop diagrams among the determinants of illegal gold mining was created and interpreted.FindingsA complex activity process and structure were revealed involving a range of actors. Politicians, government officials and law enforcement authorities added the complexity to the structure. Six main determinants of persistent illegal gold mining emerged: financial, low entry barrier, regulations and policies, supporting resources availability, politics and power and psychosocial factors.Practical implicationsThis study provides a deeper understanding for policymakers to consider when formulating policies on natural resources, and insights for mining companies to minimize conflicts with the community.Originality/valueThe study contributes to our knowledge of the complex structure and main determinants of illegal gold mining in Indonesia, which supports efforts to curtail this illegal activity.


The equilibrium and dynamic surface tensions of the aqueous Tween 80 solutions were measured by the drop volume method at 30℃. The effect of concentration on the dynamic surface tension was discussed. The adsorptive kinetics of Tween 80 at the air-water interface was investigated. The results show that the dynamic surface tension decreases with the increase Tween 80 concentration. The surface adsorption of Tween 80 molecules obeys the pure diffusion at low surfactant concentrations. At higher concentrations, however, the kinetics of adsorption of Tween 80 at the air-water interface is governed by a diffusion-kinetic-controlled mechanism.


SUMMARY Using a level oriented model for verification of asynchronous circuits helps users to easily construct formal models with high readability or to naturally model data-path circuits. On the other hand, in order to use such a model for larger circuit, some technique to avoid the state explosion problem is essential. This paper first defines a level oriented formal model based on time Petri nets, and then proposes a partial order reduction algorithm that prunes unnecessary state generation while guaranteeing the correctness of the verification.


We presented here a case with ALL transplanted with autologous marrow cells cryopreserved after heat treatment. Bone marrow cells from a 17-year-old female patient in first complete remission were cryopreserved after treatment with heat (42 degrees C, 60 min) and interferon-alpha. Three and a half years later, at her 4th remission, she was treated with busulfan (16 mg/kg) and cyclophosphamide (120 mg/kg) followed by autologous marrow infusion. The hemopoietic recovery after marrow infusion was prompt except in thrombopoietic lineage. She was doing well without limitation until leukemic relapse after 6 months. From this experience, marrow cells treated with heat and cryopreservation still include multipotent hemopoietic stem cells.


Six cold-pressed oil samples obtained from the seeds of different grape varieties grown in a Fruska Gora vineyard in the Republic of Serbia were examined for chemical and nutritive quality, as well as antiradical capacity. All the tested samples were of good quality, but the results showed noticeable differences in seed oil properties for red and white grape varieties. The highest content in total tocols, 575.23 ± 4.46 mg/kg, was found in the red grape seed oil of the Merlot variety, but the vitamin E activity of white grape seed oils was significantly higher. Regarding single phenols, the most prevalent fraction in all the oil samples was ursolic acid, up to 336.3 ± 4.8 μg/g in the grape seed oil of the Hamburg variety. The highest content in the total phenolic compounds, 54.92 ± 0.93 μg GAE/g, was detected in the oil of red grape seeds. Although significant differences existed between samples, EC50 values were the lowest for the red grape seed oils, varying from 29.84 ± 1.07 to 65.34 ± 0.32 mg oil/mg DPPH, indicating that these oils had the highest antiradical capacity.


When rare earth doped strontium aluminate micro-crystals are exposed to ultrasonic pulse, then mechanumnescence (ML) is induced. The intensity of ML is proportional to the power of ultrasonic pulse used for ML excitation. The ML in europium doped strontium aluminate micro-crystals can be understood on the basis of the piezoelectrically induced electron detrapping model. On the basis of the piezoelectrically-induced electron detrapping model, expressions are derived for the general kinetics of ML intensity, rise of ML intensity, peak ML intensity and decay of ML intensity, in which good agreement is found between the theoretical and experimental results. A linear relation between the ML intensity and the ultrasonic power can also be understood on the basis of the proposed theory. The present investigation shows that the ML can be used to detecting the presence of ultrasonic waves and also for the measurement of ultrasonic power.


Computational models provide a way to quantitatively explore theories about how brains give rise to cognition and behavior. This chapter introduces some basic approaches to modeling psychological phenomena, focusing on connectionist simulations of perception and memory. First, a rationale for developing computer models of behavior and brain function is presented, along with a brief description of basic computational properties of artificial neural networks. This is followed by a series of illustrative models of object recognition, perceptual learning, episodic memory, and age-related cognitive deficits. Collectively, these modeling efforts demonstrate the utility of emulating neural mechanisms in attempts to understand both observed actions and inferred mental processes. Although much work remains before the gaps between brain and behavior are bridged, the results of computational modeling efforts so far suggest that computer simulations provide a powerful tool that ultimately may help to span this divide.

Keywords:

connectionist models;
computational neuroscience;
neural networks;
neurocomputing


OBJECTIVE
To understand why many Hispanic women begin prenatal care in the later stages of pregnancy.

METHODS
The authors compared the demographic profile, insurance status, and health beliefs--including the perceived benefits of and barriers to initiating prenatal care--of low-income Hispanic women who initiated prenatal care at different times during pregnancy or received no prenatal care.

RESULTS
A perception of many barriers to care was associated with later initiation of care and non-use of care. Perceiving more benefits of care for the baby was associated with earlier initiation of care, as was having an eligibility card for hospital district services. Several barriers to care were mentioned by women on open-ended questioning, including long waiting times, embarrassment the physical examination, and lack of transportation.

CONCLUSIONS
Recommendations for practice included decreasing the number of visits for women at low risk for poor pregnancy outcomes while increasing the time spent with the provider at each visit, decreasing the number of vaginal examinations for low risk women, increasing the use of midwives, training lay workers to do risk assessment, emphasizing specific messages about benefits to the baby, and increasing general health motivation to seek preventive care through community interventions.


ICEBERG is a block cipher that has been recently proposed for security applications requiring efficient FPGA implementations. In this paper, we investigate a compact ASIC implementation of ICEBERG and consider the novel application of concurrent error detection to protect the implementation from fault-based attacks. The compact architecture of ICEBERG requires about 5800 gates with a throughput of 552 Mbps in an ASIC implementation based on 0.18 mum CMOS technology. The addition of an effective multiple parity concurrent error detection scheme to protect the hardware from fault attacks results in a 62% area overhead.


OBJECTIVES
Hispanics appear to live longer compared to other ethnic groups in the United States. Our main objective was to determine whether data quality biases mortality statistics. We calculated the impact of misclassification of ethnicity on death certificates in order to create adjusted mortality estimates.

METHODS
We used the National Mortality Follow-Back Survey of 1993 (NMFS) for our assessment of ethnicity misclassification. We then created misclassification estimates for 10-year age-sex groups, and used these to correct mortality estimates for 1989-1991.

RESULTS
The overall predictive value positive (PV+) and sensitivity were 0.981 and 0.805, respectively, for men; and 0.994 and 0.902, respectively, for women. Age-specific adjustment for misclassification on death rates caused Hispanic male life expectancy to go from a 1.01 year advantage over White non-Hispanics, to a 1.83 year deficit, with a similar pattern found for females.

CONCLUSIONS
The apparent Hispanic advantage in life expectancy is influenced by misclassification of ethnicity. Misclassification of ethnicity on death certificates biases Hispanic mortality downward, thereby falsely inflating life expectancy.


Purpose: To study the features of small choroidal melanoma and choroidal nevi angioarchitectonics using the optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA).Patients and methods. We examined 128 patients with small choroidal neoplasms: 41 — with small choroidal melanoma (group 1), 42 — with suspicious nevi (group 2) and 45 — with benign nevi (group 3). All patients underwent general ophthalmic examinations and special instrumental diagnostic methods (ultrasound examination (US), fluorescence angiography (FA), spectral optical coherence tomography (SOCT), OCTA).Results. OCTA in all patients with small choroidal melanoma showed neovascular network under retinal pigment epithelium. We found a looped, cranked-twisted, heterogeneous vascular network with uneven clearance and with numerous bends and weaves, located under the vessels of retina. The limiting avascular zone corresponding to the tumor slope was determined in 19 (46.3 %) of 41 cases. There was a rim of dilated hyperreflective choriocapillaries on the periphery of the tumor. We identified hyperreflective homogeneous enlarged choriocapillaries in the focus area with a brighter glow than the surrounding choriocapillaries in 39 (92.9 %) of 42 patients with suspicious choroidal nevus. We detected an avascular zone with surrounding extended hyperreflective choriocapillaries in the center of the nevus in 3 (7.1 %) of 42 cases. We diagnosed homogeneous isoreflective choriocapillaries similar in brightness to the surrounding vessels in all 45 patients with benign nevi.Conclusions. Thus, the complex of clinical and instrumental methods, including OCTA, makes it possible to establish the diagnosis of malignant tumor of the choroid in early stages. At the same time, OCTA: 1) allows to visualize of the tumor vessels in the choroidal layer in 100 % of cases of in small choroidal melanoma; 2) makes it possible to distinguish the newly formed tumor vessels from the choriocapillaries in case of small choroidal melanoma; 3) provides an opportunity to establish the correct diagnosis and provide timely assistance to patients with benign and malignant choroidal tumors.


Background: Frontal fibrosing alopecia (FFA) is a disorder characterized by progressive cicatricial alopecia (CA). Its classification as a clinical variant of lichen planopilaris (LPP) or as a unique disorder is controversial. The presence of Langerhans cells within the bulge area and the sebaceous epithelium and the presence of lymphocytic infiltrate in this area in CA have led to a series of hypotheses, although limited, about their development. To our knowledge, scarce is the literature demonstrating immunoanalytical studies comparing both disorders. Objective: The authors sought to describe diagnostic findings, comorbidities, and immunopathological features of female patients with FFA as compared to LPP. Materials and Methods: This retrospective single-center study included patients given the diagnosis of FFA or LPP. The LPP activity index was used to evaluate objective signs and subjective symptoms. Biopsy specimens were obtained from active, inflammatory areas of the scalp, and the inflammatory infiltrate intensity and quality were compared. Direct immunofluorescence for IgA, IgM, and IgG and immunohistochemistry to demonstrate the expression of CD1a, CD3, CD4, CD8, CD68, and 2,3-dioxygenase indoleamine were performed. Results: Twenty female patients (10 patients with FFA and 10 patients with LPP) were included in the study. Histopathological findings evidenced reduced number of hair follicles and perifollicular fibrosis in both disorders. Immunofluorescence findings resulted positive in 50% of FFA cases and 40% of LPP cases. Conclusion: Although clinically different, our findings suggest that there are, to date, no histological or immunological findings that allow us to accurately separate these two forms of scarring alopecia, namely FFA and LPP.


Human urinary extracellular vesicles (uEVs) contain proteins from all nephron segments. An assumption for years has been that uEVs might provide a non-invasive liquid biopsy that reflect physiological regulation of transporter protein expression in human. We hypothesized that protein abundance in human kidney tissue and uEV are directly related and tested this in paired collections of nephrectomy tissue and urine sample from 12 patients. Kidney tissue was fractioned into total kidney protein, crude membrane (plasma membrane and large intracellular vesicles) and intracellular vesicle enriched fractions, as well as sections for immunolabelling. uEVs were isolated from spot urine samples. Antibodies were used to quantify 6 segment-specific proteins (proximal tubular expressed Na/Phosphate cotransporter NaPi-2a, thick ascending limb expressed Tamm-Horsfall protein and renal-outer-medullary K+channel ROMK, distal convoluted tubular expressed NaCl cotransporter NCC, intercalated cell expressed proton-pump subunit ATP6V1G3 and principal cell expressed aquaporin 2 (AQP2)) and 3 uEV markers (exosomal CD63, microvesicle marker VAMP3 and β-actin) in each fractions. By western blotting and immunofluorescence labelling, we found significant positive correlations between abundance of CD63, NCC, AQP2 and ATP6V1G3, respectively, within the different kidney-derived fractions. We detected all 9 proteins in uEVs, but their level did not correlate with kidney tissue protein abundance. The uEV protein levels showed higher inter-patient variability than the kidney-derived fractions, indicating that factors, besides kidney protein abundance, contribute to the uEV protein level. Our data suggest that, in a random sample of nephrectomy patients, uEV protein level is not a predictor of kidney protein abundance.


OBJECTIVE
The lack of consistent findings regarding comparisons of mental health between rural and urban areas has been attributed in part to methodological shortcomings, including poor conceptualization of 'rurality'. To address the diversity of rural and remote communities, an interdisciplinary collaboration sought to establish a database incorporating a range of domains hypothesised to be major influences on the mental health of individuals, families and communities.

DESIGN
The database domains included health (physical and mental), health service utilisation, sociodemographic characteristics, climate patterns, agricultural activity and primary industry. Important steps in the development of the database were addressing issues related to ethics, ownership, accessing data sources, sustainability of the database and integration of differing outcomes sought by the collaborators.

RESULTS
The paper describes the database while an illustrative example of analysis demonstrates its application. The potential for multilevel analyses between the database and other datasets is discussed as well as challenges for the future development of this valuable resource for rural mental health research.

CONCLUSION
The Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health database will be a valuable resource for rural mental health research.


Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is characterized by airflow obstruction that may be emphysematous and non-emphysematous in origin, ultimately complicating diagnosis. We evaluated and established guidelines for the parametric response mapping (PRM), a technique that spatially segments parenchyma as normal (PRMNormal), emphysematous (PRMEmph) and non-emphysematous tissue (PRMfSAD), to monitor longitudinal changes in COPD subtypes in subjects accrued for the SPIROMICS study. PRM was performed on inspiratory/expiratory CT scans acquired from subjects in intervals of 30 day (n=13) and one year (n=76; overall GOLD). Six percent variation in the 30-day data was observed for PRMNormal and PRMfSAD, and less than 2% for PRMEmph. Using cutoffs determined from 30-day data, PRM analysis of serial one-year data showed 11 of 76 subjects had significant changes in PRMfSAD with 7 showing a drop. PRM images at baseline and 1-year follow-up are provided from a representative subject that produced a significant drop in PRMfSAD (yellow voxels), which also had improvement in FEV1 from 1.36L to 1.94L. Mathematical model simulations showed agreement with PRM analysis of CT data, suggesting fSAD (i.e. non-emphysematous tissue) may serve as a transitional phase from normal parenchyma to emphysema. PRM of COPD patients provides an opportunity to more fully characterize patients based on disease subtyping.

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Federal discount rate policies advocate both a high rate representing the marginal productivity of capital and a low rate representing the government borrowing rate. These differential discount rate policies could be inconsistent and biased in favor of projects on which the lower discount rate is applied. This paper shows that the coexistence of different discount rates may be appropriate, depending on the type of project output. When a project's outputs are perfect substitutes for private consumption, both its costs and benefits should be discounted using the marginal productivity of capital. However, if the project's outputs are separable in the utility function, the benefits should be discounted using the net (of tax) rate of return.


: The theoretical applications and advantages of the scanning microscope in peripheral nerve research are presented. The internal anatomy of the peripheral nerve can be distinctly examined, and long segments of axons can be examined without the necessity of tedious study of multiple sections. The SEM should make it possible to more readily study the migration of axon sprouts across a repair site. New concepts in teaching and research may develop from the use of this excellent tool.


Pharmaceutical development is a risky, complex, costly, and time-consuming endeavor. More than half of development duration is spent in clinical trials. Despite the large number of potential candidates available and the lengthy process of clinical development, the success rate is disappointing. Hence, there is an urgent need for new strategies and methodology for efficient and cost-effective designs to screen potential candidates based on the idea of the proof of the concept for efficacy in a rapid and reliable manner to minimize the total sample size and hence to shorten the duration of the trials. In this article, a two-stage screening design based on continuous efficacy endpoints is proposed. The proposed two-stage screening designs minimize the expected sample size if the new candidate has low efficacy activity subject to the constraint upon the type I and type II error rates. In addition, two-stage screening designs that minimize the maximum sample size (minimax) are presented. Tables of two-stage and minimax designs for various combinations of design parameters are also provided. Applications to the phase 1 and 2 stages of clinical development are illustrated.


Analyses of the height variation in a large contemporary British sample found evidence for maternal inheritance of female height, because the mother-daughter correlation coefficient was significantly higher than the father-daughter value. Further evidence for a maternal effect came from the comparison of the daughter's stature with the difference in parental heights. The maternal effect was estimated to be 1%.


. In this work, we first formalize the notion of dynamic group signatures with distributed traceability, where the capability to trace signatures is distributed among n managers without requiring any interaction. This ensures that only the participation of all tracing managers permits tracing a signature, which reduces the trust placed in a single tracing manager. The threshold variant follows easily from our definitions and constructions. Our model offers strong security requirements. Our second contribution is a generic construction for the notion which has a concurrent join protocol, meets strong security requirements, and offers efficient traceability, i.e. without requiring tracing managers to produce expensive zero-knowledge proofs for tracing correctness. To dispense with the expensive zero-knowledge proofs required in the tracing, we deploy a distributed tag-based encryption with public verifiability. Finally, we provide some concrete instantiations, which, to the best of our knowledge, are the first efficient provably secure realizations in the standard model simultaneously offering all the aforementioned properties. To realize our constructions efficiently, we construct an efficient distributed (and threshold) tag-based encryption scheme that works in the efficient Type-III asymmetric bilinear groups. Our distributed tag-based encryption scheme yields short ciphertexts (only 1280 bits at 128-bit security), and is secure under an existing variant of the standard decisional linear assumption. Our tag-based encryption scheme is of independent interest and is useful for many applications beyond the scope of this paper. As a special case of our distributed tag-based encryption scheme, we get an efficient tag-based encryption scheme in Type-III asymmetric bilinear groups that is secure in the standard model.


To the Editor: Toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN) can be considered an extreme and serious form of erythema multifonne. This disease has seldom been reported in children and infants (1). Hawk et al (2) described TEN in a 6-week-oId infant who suffered from Klebsiella pneumoniae sepsis but received antibiotics at the same time. They stated that this disease had not been reported previously in infants younger than 4 months of age. We published a report earlier in 1984, however, concerning an infant of 6 weeks of age (3). It is interesting that the clinical features of our case are similar to Hawk et al's in several aspects. The child was prematurely bom at 26 weeks gestation. He suffered from respiratory distress syndrome and possible septicemia from birth, and was treated with several antibiotics. A patent ductus arteriosus was surgically closed five days after birth. Later, septicemia was suspected again and treated. After that the patient improved and was in fair condition for three weeks. At the age of 5 weeks, bradycardia, apnea, and redness of the skin developed. Thereafter he had epidermolysis of the skin, leading to blistering and erosions; Nikolsky's sign was positive. Klebsiella pneumoniae was cultured from blood, skin lesions, and ear. The isolated organism was classified as type Vc using a biotyping system (4). The diagnosis was confirmed histologically; immunofluorescence studies were not performed. The patient was given no drugs for three weeks before TEN started to develop. No other causes for his symptoms, except K. pneumoniae sepsis, could be found. In addition, we observed another premature child, 1 week of age, who developed TEN together with K. pneumoniae sepsis. The organism was cultured from blood, skin lesions, and the ear during the time the child was treated with antibiotics (cotrimoxazol and cefamandole nafate). Thus the distance could have been drug induced, but an association with K. pneumoniae sepsis was possible. As illustrated by these cases, there is more evidence that TEN associated with K. pneumoniae sepsis should be considered in the differential diagnosis of scalded-skin syndrome in infancy.


Entrepreneurship, over the last 20 years, has been of vital importance throughout the world. Also, many educational institutions have been concerned with creating careers in these areas, especially when a serious research such as the GEM was followed due to several years of entrepreneurship activity. Many countries have sought to promote the entrepreneurial spirit through actions aimed at providing training, incentive for business start-ups, and financing. This, however, is based on the fact that entrepreneurship is considered as the motor of a country's development, especially in times of crisis. In Ecuador, entrepreneurship plays an important role in the generation of employment, investment, production, consumption, and income for the state. These roles are attributable to the fact that Ecuador is a country where entrepreneurship is generated by opportunity and necessity. The present research is of a bibliographical character since it uses documents which were based on statistical information and other sources in which the situation of the enterprise was analyzed. Analytical method was used to obtain real information based on observation and analysis. It is also based on the inductive part of a particular situation. In general, it derives knowledge that are proposed. The deductive method starts from general data and through logical reasoning, it comes to a particular consideration and conclusion. The objective of the research is to analyze the beginning of entrepreneurship in the current situation in Ecuador.


Adenosine transport in cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC) was characterized and shown to be mediated by a single facilitated diffusion mechanism. Initial rates of adenosine influx at 22 degrees C were saturable [apparent Michaelis constant, 69 +/- 10 microM; maximum velocity (Vmax), 600 +/- 70 pmol.10(6) cells-1.s-1] and inhibited by nitrobenzylthioinosine (NBMPR). Formycin B had an unusually high affinity [inhibitory constant (Ki), 18 +/- 4.3 microM], whereas inosine had a low affinity (Ki, 440 +/- 68 microM) and nucleobases were without effect on adenosine influx. The number of transporters (1.2 x 10(6) sites/cell) was estimated by NBMPR equilibrium binding (apparent dissociation constant, 0.11 +/- 0.01 nM; maximum binding, 2.0 +/- 0.15 pmol/10(6) cells). In addition, we compared these endothelial cells with those obtained from cords from pregnancies complicated by diabetes (HUVEC-D), since embriopathy may occur in these conditions. HUVEC-D exhibited a 2.3-fold reduction in both the Vmax for adenosine influx and the maximum number of NBMPR binding sites (260 +/- 40 pmol.10(6) cells-1.s-1 and 0.86 +/- 0.08 pmol/10(6) cells, respectively). However, the turnover number for each nucleoside transporter in normal and diabetic HUVEC was similar (approximately 300 adenosine molecules/s). Adenosine metabolism at 10 microM in HUVEC-D was modified compared with normal cells. Intracellular phosphorylation (> 90%) was the predominant pathway in normal HUVEC, whereas in HUVEC-D, substantial levels of adenine and adenosine were detected. The present results demonstrate therefore the downregulation of the NBMPR-sensitive nucleoside transporter and changes in adenosine metabolism in HUVEC from diabetic pregnancies.


With the rapid proliferation of the Internet and mobile devices, vast amounts of user-generated content has been accumulated through social network services, and massive amounts of news continues to be created and posted online. In this paper, we extract the characteristics of online news and data from social network services, including the differences and similarities between them. We found the following differences: First, the news responds to official events but content on social network services is related to personal interests. Second, the news is continually related to a specific issue or set of issues, whereas topics of conversation change daily in social network services. Third, items from the news can be identified with a single keyword in searches, whereas more keywords are needed to extract the desired information from social network services. At the same time, we found that the words mentioned in both the news and on social network services were similar, and both were used for commercial purposes. Our analysis revealed that the news is related to the keyword generally, uses same words repeatedly, and its range of topics is narrow and public. On the contrary, social network services are not related to the keyword often, and their range of topics is wide and personal. Furthermore our analysis showed that the ranking algorithm improves the topic detection rate and catches the topic quickly. This paper provides useful information to better understand the characteristics of online news and data from social network services.


This paper introduces a joint bit loading and power allocation algorithm for systems combining bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) with multicarrier transmission. The proposed algorithm maximizes the mutual information, so it can be regarded as a generalization of mercury/waterfilling policy that incorporates bit loading. The followed approach relies on irregular modulation and power to cast the problem in the framework of convex optimization. This allows to derive the optimum solution without resorting to greedy algorithms, embedding the bit loading in the definition of an equivalent constellation such that the complexity increase with respect to mercury/waterfilling is negligible. While irregular modulation plays a key role in algorithm definition, it is proved that only a few subcarriers employ it and it is shown that a practical low complexity algorithm can be obtained with minimal losses that does not use irregular modulation.


A reformulated 'virtuals-only' counterpoise procedure for the correction of basis set superposition error is introduced and applied to an examination of the interaction energy of the helium dimer. This method allows a direct calculation of the exchange (Pauli) repulsion at the correlated level. Our findings suggest that at the correlated level the Pauli repulsion may be interpreted as a decrease in the monomer correlation energy calculated using the dimer virtual space relative to that with a monomer-only virtual space. This observation provides further theoretical justification for the Full Counterpoise procedure in preference to any virtuals-only counterpoise procedure.


Myotubular myopathy is a rare genetic disease that was uniformly fatal until recent developments in long-term ventilation. Today, however, it is not unusual for a patient to live into the second decade. The orthopaedic manifestations of the disease have not been reported in the literature. We present our experience with complications related to the spine and extremities in a series of 4 patients with this disease who have survived beyond early childhood.


The Tomochic caldera, located in western Chihuahua, is one of perhaps 350 calderas in the Sierra Madre Occidental volcanic field. Its resurgent dome, sedimentary moat, ring-fracture zone rhyolitic flow domes, and remnants of its structural margin are strikingly well preserved. Four widespread ash-flow formations are exposed around the structural and topographic caldera walls. The caldera appears to have formed ∼31 Ma in response to the eruption of the Rio Verde tuff, the youngest of these formations. An older caldera complex, exposed along the northern rim of the Tomochic caldera, may be the source for both the Vista and Aeropista tuffs, which erupted 33.5 and 34.5 Ma respectively. The source of the remaining formation (San Felipe tuff) is not known. The structure of the Tomochic caldera is similar to that of the Valles caldera, except that the resurgent dome is composed of post-caldera intrusive and extrusive porphyritic quartz latite rather than intracaldera tuff. The Tomochic caldera displays a resurgent style intermediate between that of calderas that resurge by doming of the caldera-fill tuff and those that respond to resurgence by extrusion of copious amounts of lava. Field evidence indicates that the Rio Verde tuff is the result of as many as 15 ash-flow eruptions. The multiple episodes of collapse following these eruptions may have fractured the intracaldera tuff and underlying rocks so extensively that they could not contain the magmatic pressure imposed during resurgence.


Two polymorphs of Cu(25dcp)2Cl2 [Cu(25dcp)2Cl2_p1 and Cu(25dcp)2Cl2_p2] and Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2 [Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2_p1 and Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2_p2] were prepared and characterized by single crystal X-ray diffraction (25dcp = 2,5-dichloropyridine and 5b2cp = 5-bromo-2-chloropyridine). The four structures crystallize in the monoclinic crystal system: three of them (Cu(25dcp)2Cl2_p1, Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2_p2 and Cu(25dcp)2Cl2_p2) crystallize in the C2/c space group and the fourth one (Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2_p1) in the C2/m space group. Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2_p1 and Cu(25dcp)2Cl2_p1 are structurally isomorphous. The formation of two polymorphs for each complex is a result of competition between Cl⋯Cu semi-coordinate bonds and C–X⋯Cl–Cu (X = Cl or Br) halogen bonding interactions. The formation of C–X⋯Cl–Cu halogen bonding alone resulted in crystallization of Cu(25dcp)2Cl2_p1 and Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2_p1, whereas the formation of the Cu⋯Cl semi-coordinate bonds resulted in the formation of Cu(25dcp)2Cl2_p2 and Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2_p2. To our knowledge, these are the first examples in which the competition between the halogen bonding interactions and the semi-coordinate Cu⋯Cl resulted in the formation of different polymorphs. The calculated electrostatic potential was used to rationalize the formation of the different polymorphs. The magnetic properties of Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2_p1 were studied; it is found to obey an antiferromagnetic chain model. This magnetic behavior was rationalized using the two-halide exchange pathway. Structurally, Cu(5b2cp)2Cl2_p1 forms a chain structure based on Cu–Cl⋯Cl–Cu interactions. The mapped electron density with spin density showed the presence of a spin-density-end-cap along the Cu–Cl bond. This spin-density-end-cap corroborates the observed antiferromagnetic interactions.


This document is prepared for navigation and operation of the Gen IV Materials Handbook, with architecture description and new user access initiation instructions. Development rationale and history of the Handbook is summarized. The major development aspects, architecture, and design principles of the Handbook are briefly introduced to provide an overview of its past evolution and future prospects. Detailed instructions are given with examples for navigating the constructed Handbook components and using the main functionalities. Procedures are provided in a step-by-step fashion for Data Upload Managers to upload reports and data files, as well as for new users to initiate Handbook access.


Abstract This paper presents the design, development and construction of a flight test stand for a quadrotor UAV. As opposed to alternate forms of UAV, the power plant in the case of the quadrotor serves a dual purpose of control and propulsion. Since control and propulsion are coupled, the power plant (BLDC motor coupled with propeller) was studied in detail using a black box structure. Extractions of motor parameters in previous studies used traditional BLDC motor equations and propeller theory however the accuracy achievable and confidence in the extracted parameters remained questionable. The developed data acquisition process served to satisfy this need by the construction of a test bench that allows for the extraction of the unknown parameters instilling confidence in the modelling process. The established relationships are then used as inputs into a developed six degree of freedom Euler based mathematical model. A mission profile was constructed with distinct phases of which the mathematical model was used to simulate. Each phase in the mission profile excited different modes of the quadrotor dynamics creating an ideal simulation environment in which changes can be implemented and studied.


Purpose: In spite of curative surgery and early postoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy, the prognosis of patients with gastric cancer involving the serosal surface is poor. The aim of this study was to analyze p53 protein overexpression in these patients and to clarify the usefulness of p53 mutation as a prognostic indicator. Methods: p53 protein overexpression was assessed by immunohistochemistry in 123 gastric cancer specimens. The correlation between p53 protein overexpression and clinicopathologic parameters and prognosis of the patients were analyzed. Results: Overexpression of p53 protein was identified in 67 (54.5%) tumors and was more frequent in differentiated tumors than in undifferentiated tumors (67.4% vs. 46.8%; P=0.026). However, there were no statistically significant differences in the frequency of p53 protein overexpression according to age, sex, depth of invasion, lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis, pathologic stage, and Lauren classification. There was no statistically significant difference in 5-year survival rate according to the p53 protein overexpression (P=0.565). Conclusion: Overexpression of p53 protein could not predict the effectiveness of early postoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy. Therefore, it could not be used as a prognostic indicator in patients with advanced gastric cancer who underwent gastrectomy and early postoperative intraperitoneal chemotherapy.


A criterion is established for the convergence of sequences of a general type of Runge-Kutta method. The criterion is expressed in terms of "weak convergence", a property defined in the paper. 1. Introduction. While much is known about local properties of large classes of numerical methods for ordinary differential equations, attention to global questions is mainly confined to the consideration of the behaviour of the result obtained by iterated applications of a basic numerical method. The main results of this sort can be found in the work of Dahlquist (1) and of Henrici (2). Dahlquist found necessary and sufficient conditions for convergence in the case of linear multi-step methods and Henrici gave an exposition of this theory and also dealt in detail with the case of a general class of one-step method. With a view to generalising and unifying these theories, the present author (3) dealt with a class of methods characterised by a pair of matrices; it was possible to express conditions for convergence of a method in terms of algebraic properties of these matrices. The present paper may be regarded as a sequel to (4). In that paper, certain prop- erties of a generalised type of Runge-Kutta method were investigated. In particular, it was shown that numerical properties of a Runge-Kutta method m are characterised by w(m) G G where G is the set of real valued functions on T, the set of (rooted) trees, and w(m) is defined by w(m)(t) = va(tXni) f°r all r G ^ where m = (H, a, h^. The various notations and the function va are defined in (4). In this paper, a characterisation is given for convergent sequences of the type of generalised Runge-Kutta method described in (4). This formulation is general enough to be applicable not only to the usual sort of global procedure in which a given method is used repeatedly but also to a wider class of methods. 2. Preliminary Remarks. In this section, certain developments of the theory in


: A case of traumatic bronchobiliary fistula is presented. It is a rare complication of liver injuries. The diagnosis can be made on the observation of biliptysis. Technetium 99m EHIDA cholescintigraphy is of great help in demonstrating the fistulous tract in these patients for early diagnosis and planning for surgical approach.


Recommender systems (RSs) play a very important role in web navigation, ensuring that the users easily find the information they are looking for. Today's social networks contain a large amount of information and it is necessary that they employ a mechanism that will guide users to the information they are interested in. However, to be able to recommend content according to user preferences, it is necessary to analyse their profiles and determine their preferences. The present work proposes a job offer RS for a career‐oriented social network. The recommendation system is a hybrid, it consists of a case‐based reasoning (CBR) system and an argumentation framework, based on a multi‐agent system (MAS) architecture. The CBR system uses a series of metrics and similar cases to decide whether a job offer is likely to be recommended to a user. Besides, the argumentation framework extends the system with an argumentation CBR, through which old and similar cases can be obtained from the CBR system. Finally, a discussion process is established amongst the agents who debate using their experience from past cases to take a final decision.


Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most common malignant tumor in digestive system. CircRNAs involve in lots of biological processes through interacting with miRNAs and their targeted mRNA. We obtained the circRNA gene expression profiles from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and identified differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between PDAC samples and paracancerous tissues. Bioinformatics analyses, including GO analysis, KEGG pathway analysis and PPI network analysis, were conducted for further investigation. We also constructed circRNA‑microRNA-mRNA co-expression network. A total 291 differentially expressed circRNAs were screened out. The GO enrichment analysis revealed that up-regulated DEGs were mainly involved metabolic process, biological regulation, and gene expression, and down-regulated DEGs were involved in cell communication, single-organism process, and signal transduction. The KEGG pathway analysis, the upregulated circRNAs were enriched cGMP-PKG signaling pathway, and HTLV-I infection, while the downregulated circRNAs were enriched in protein processing in endoplasmic reticulum, insulin signaling pathway, regulation of actin cytoskeleton, etc. Four genes were identified from PPI network as both hub genes and module genes, and their circRNA‑miRNA-mRNA regulatory network also be constructed. Our study indicated possible involvement of dysregulated circRNAs in the development of PDAC and promoted our understanding of the underlying molecular mechanisms.


Janus microparticles are compartmentalized particles with differing molecular structures and/or functionality on each of their two sides. Because of this unique property, Janus microparticles have been recognized as a new class of materials, thereby attracting a great deal of attention from various research fields. The versatility of these microparticles has been exemplified through their uses as building blocks for self-assembly, electrically responsive actuators, emulsifiers for painting and cosmetics, and carriers for drug delivery. This study introduces a detailed protocol that explicitly describes a synthetic method for designing novel Janus microhydrogels composed of a single base material, poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAAm). Janus microdroplets are firstly generated via a hydrodynamic focusing microfluidic device (HFMD) based on the separation of a supersaturated aqueous NIPAAm monomer solution and subsequently polymerized through exposure to UV irradiation. The resulting Janus microhydrogels were found to be entirely composed of the same base material, featured an easily identifiable compartmentalized morphology, and exhibited anisotropic thermo-responsiveness and organophilic/hydrophilic loading capability. We believe that the proposed method introduces a novel hydrogel platform with the potential for advanced synthesis of multi-functional Janus microhydrogels.


Abstract Aneuroysm of the intrapectous carotis artery is an extremely rare and potentially serious occurence that presents diagnostic and therapeutic difficulties. Such aneurysms may follow trauma, atherosclerosis, mastoid surgery or most commonly can represent a developmental abnormality. We present the case of an 18-year-old female with a short history of recurrent left-sided otalifa and epistaxis who underwent successful endovascular ballon entrapment of a left intrapetrous carotid aneurysm.


Published more than ten years after the fi rst edition of "Handbook of Metathesis" (1) which enjoyed tremendous success, the new edition is a milestone in the development of metathesis chemistry. The three volumes are edited by the Nobel laureate Professor Robert H. Grubbs (California Institute of Technology, USA) in collaboration with an impressive panel of co-editors, all famous experts in the field. 41 comprehensive chapters, superbly written by 86 internationally well-recognised contributors, cover to date the most significant advances in metathesis chemistry and its industrial applications based on more than 2200 literature references. Since the fi rst edition several books, thematic issues and extensive reviews on metathesis reactions have appeared (2–8) and this new edition enormously adds to the present knowledge, representing the most important compendium of the state-of-the-art of alkene, alkane and alkyne metathesis and metathesis polymerisation, with a strong focus on the present research in this fascinating fi eld of chemistry. Metathesis has real potential for large scale valorisation in many industrial areas in the near future.