As the world experiences yet another surge in cases of COVID-19, many organizations and jurisdictions have reinstated or expanded mandates to protect workers, children, older people, and the public at large. Mandates to wear face masks in indoor public areas are often met with confusion, fear, anger, disagreement, and lack of knowledge about risks and benefits of action and inaction. To move towards an evidence-based approach, we propose that when five criteria collectively signal that a communicable disease poses greater harm to society than that of a benchmark, such as that of the average seasonal influenza during years 2010 to 2019, then the local, state, and federal government should introduce an indoor mask-wearing mandate, subject to certain exceptions. We suggest the following five measures and corresponding metrics comprising composite criteria for the requirement to wear a mask: contagiousness (R0), vulnerability of communities to infection (rate of growth in the percentage of the national population that is infected), harm caused by the disease (cumulative deaths per week), severity of harm (infection fatality rate), and direction of harm (percentage change in cumulative deaths per week). Each criterion would be scored. An aggregate score would then signal when the social health risk exceeds that of seasonal influenza as a point of reference, based on methodology. Although additional details would require clarification, attention to validity and timeliness of measurement, and development of appropriate scoring thresholds, the criteria provide a foundation for action that goes beyond rhetoric, politics, impulsiveness, and guesswork. Pursuing measurement of these factors would yield an improvement over the current approach.


This paper introduces a new method that combines the well-known analytical hierarchy process (AHP) with a response latency metric. The response latency is the time taken by respondents to make choices over pairwise comparisons. The analytical calculation of relative importance weights of the alternatives is made by using a response latency model previously validated in several case studies. This combination aims to overcome some drawbacks of the traditional AHP related to the use of a rating scale (the so-called Saaty scale), and it is a natural way to involve response latency in established decision-making methods. This new method can be profitably adopted in web surveys where it is easy to measure and record response latencies. An application to a new service development was used to test the proposed method. Findings show that the respondent effort, fatigue, and time consumption are drastically reduced, making the survey much simpler and faster. The obtained results seem to be very reliable in terms of judgement consistency.


Thiol-containing compounds are central actors in many biochemical and pharmacological reactions. The response of cells to any stress (including cell division and apoptosis) involves changes in thiol content as they are consumed to protect cells via different actions (direct modification/regulation of biomolecules, antioxidativity, detoxification, signal transmission). The story of glutathione, the basic intracellular thiol-containing compound, ranges throughout different scientific fields. The importance of this biomolecule is highly impressive. Reduced glutathione (GSH) is a principal actor in many physiological and pharmacological reactions. There are about 60 000 entries under "glutathione" found in the Medline database. The aim of this short review is to characterize glutathione and show that due to an intriguing and multifaceted biofunctionality in the human body this tripeptide itself, as well as its analogues, belongs to the group of molecules looking for broad clinical use (besides being excellent antioxidants). This information might draw more attention to the discovery and investigation of glutathione system supporting/relating substances with a substantial clinical impact.


In this paper, we determine an optimal range for angle tracking radars (ATRs) based on evaluating the standard deviation of all kinds of errors in a tracking system. In the past, this optimal range has often been computed by the simulation of the total error components; however, we are going to introduce a closed form for this computation which allows us to obtain the optimal range directly. Thus, for this purpose, we firstly solve an optimization problem to achieve the closed form of the optimal range (Ropt.) and then, we compute it by doing a simple simulation. The results show that both theoretical and simulation-based computations are similar to each other.


This article is a multidisciplinary overview of the evolution
of the modern "bureaucratic phenomenon", the classic
organizational model for western industrialized societies.
The author outlines three distinct eras in the development
of organization theory and describes how they evolved.
In the process, he explains how bureaucracy is necessary
for the prevention of political corruption and for the safeguarding
of proper democratic procedures. On the other
hand, democracy generates a dilemma for a bureaucracy:
under the present rather inconsistent democratic rules,
bureaucracy is expected to be both independent and subservient,
both politicized and non-politicized at one and
the same time. While based on Chapter 2 of Public Sector
Management in Canada (Phidd, 2001), this updated text
applies equally as well to countries whose public sector is
built around the classic bureaucratic model.


The main purpose of this study was to assess the differences in the peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer (pRNFL) and ganglion cell-inner plexiform layer (GCIPL) thicknesses between subjects with megalopapilla (MP) and those with large (physiological) cup discs (LCD) measured by spectral-domain optical coherence tomography. The secondary purpose was to determine whether pRNFL and GCIPL thicknesses increase with the optic nerve head (ONH) area. This cross-sectional study included 184 eyes (92 eyes with MP and 92 eyes with LCD). The subjects with LCD were used as sex-and-age-matched controls. All subjects were imaged using the Cirrus HD-OCT system. Macula and pRNFL thickness maps were obtained for all subjects. The inferior quadrant pRNFL thickness was higher in the MP group than in the LCD group (P < 0.05). There were no differences in the GCIPL thickness between the two groups. A positive correlation was found between average, superior, and inferior quadrant pRNFL thicknesses and the ONH area (P < 0.05). The slope of the correlation curve was higher for the inferior quadrant. No correlation was found between the GCIPL thickness and the ONH area. In comparison to patients with LCD, the inferior quadrant pRNFL thickness of patients with MP was higher. As the ONH area increased, the average, superior, and inferior quadrant pRNFL thicknesses also increased. In patients with MP, the assessment of a glaucomatous lesion based on pRNFL thickness measurements may not be reliable. It is recommended that in these patients, the evaluation of glaucomatous damage be based on the GCIPL thickness map analysis rather than on the pRNFL thickness.


Background and Objectives Recently described, the molecule STIM1 (stromal interaction molecule 1) acts as a key mediator of calcium influx by controlling cell proliferation after antigen stimulation, Erk phosphorylation, cytokine production and apoptosis. Although STIM1 mutations have been associated with severe immunodeficiency, no study has focused on the STIM1 molecule in autoimmune diseases. Materials and Methods T and B lymphocytes, purified by negative selection from peripheral blood of patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, n = 11), rheumatoid arthritis (RA, n = 7), primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS, n = 11) and healthy controls (HC, n = 12) were tested by flow cytometry and Western blotting to determine the expression of STIM1. Video microscopy using specific probes has been used to assess intracellular calcium levels. Results T cells from peripheral blood of HC express more STIM1 molecules (mean fluorescence intensity (MFI) 3.42 ± 0.13) than B cells (MFI 2.18 ± 0.20, P < 0.01). In B lymphocyte subpopulations, the expression of STIM1 is 2 times higher in CD24highCD38high transitional B cells (MFI 4.83 ± 0.63) compared with CD24lowCD38low mature B cells (MFI 2.47 ± 0.15, P < 0.01) and CD24highCD38low memory B cells (MFI 3.64 ± 0.42, P < 0.05). The expression of STIM1 in T and B lymphocytes from patients with RA and pSS was similar to HC. An highest calcium influx and a constitutive Erk phosphorylation characterise T and B cells from SLE patients when compared with HC and disease controls. As suspected, STIM1 is over-expressed in SLE, when compared with HC and this expression is similar between T cells (MFI 8.70 ± 0.87) and B cells (MFI 9.00 ± 1.08). Within B cell subsets, STIM1 expression is 3.4 fold highest in transitional SLE B cells (MFI: 16.25 ± 2.18, P < 0.001) than in transitional HC B cells and 2.3 fold highest than in mature SLE B cells (MFI: 7.1 ± 1.53) and memory SLE B cells (MFI: 9.51 ± 2.01). Western blotting results confirm the highest expression of STIM1 in SLE. Transient transfection of STIM1-targeting siRNAs was shown to restore the calcium influx and decrease Erk phosphorylation. Of particular note, the associations of CpG/anti-IgM Ab and CpG/anti-CD40 Ab are effective to induce STIM1 expression. Finally, STIM1 level was not correlated with the SLE disease activity index (SLEDAI) and autoantibodies (ANA, anti-dsDNA, anti-SSA/Ro). Conclusions These results suggest that the differential expression of STIM1 may be an important factor in the process of lymphocyte self-reactivity in SLE, which opens new pathophysiological and therapeutic perspectives.


Levodopa is effective in alleviating the motor symptoms of Parkinson's disease, but a high variability in levodopa absorption from the gastrointestinal tract after oral administration causes fluctuations in the levodopa plasma concentration. Pulmonary administration of levodopa may offer an attractive alternative to oral administration, die to the larger size of the absorption membrane and the relatively low metabolic activity in the lungs. For that reason, we assessed the ability of Parkinson's disease patients to use a dry powder inhaler (Cyclops) suitable for the administration of a high dose of levodopa during an off period. Further, we developed a levodopa inhalation powder with a very low amount of excipient, using the simple particle preparation technique micronization. Next, we performed a pilot study where we assessed the pharmacokinetics and tolerability of the levodopa with 2% l-leucine inhalation powder from the Cyclops inhaler. We performed a single center, single ascending dose response study in eight Parkinson's disease patients. It was observed that, after inhalation, the maximum levodopa blood level occurred between 5 to 15 minutes. After oral administration, the time to maximum levodopa blood level varied considerably more and ranged from 20 to 90 minutes. None of the patients experienced cough or dyspnea and no change in pulmonary function was measured. Additionally, we assessed the user ability and convenience of the Cyclops inhaler in 60 Parkinson's patients. Both correct opening of the pouch the inhaler is stored in and correct opening of the inhaler were assessed.


Does an inflation conservative central bank a la Rogoff (1985) remain desirable in a setting with endogenous fiscal policy? To provide an answer we study monetary and fiscal policy games without commitment in a dynamic stochastic sticky price economy with monopolistic distortions. Monetary policy determines nominal interest rates and fiscal policy provides public goods generating private utility. We find that lack of fiscal commitment gives rise to excessive public spending. The optimal inflation rate internalizing this distortion is positive, but lack of monetary commitment robustly generates too much inflation. A conservative monetary authority thus remains desirable. Exclusive focus on inflation by the central bank recoups large part - in some cases all - of the steady state welfare losses associated with lack of monetary and fiscal commitment. An inflation conservative central bank tends to improve also the conduct of stabilization policy.


: This study aims to analyze the social impacts and resettlement of communities that were affected by the land acquisition for Yogyakarta International Airport, which is considered to have been successful due to the absence of conflicts and disputes between the communities served and investors. Government agencies do not deal with socioeconomic issues such as resistance, conflict, household divisions, or a lack of socioeconomic relations between indigenous people and newcomers to a region. These issues can arise because there are no socio-economic relations between the two groups. On the other hand, the resolution of one of these issues might facilitate the discovery of answers to the remaining issues. The majority of households affected by the implementation of favorable accounting have spent money in both the consumer and productive sectors, proving that the strategy was successful. The purchase of land does, however, come with a number of drawbacks, such as increased competition for available jobs, a general decline in living standards, and other problems.


A Roving Recluse. By Peter F. Anson. Pp. 230. Mercier Press. lOS. 6d. WHE N a boy of twelve Peter Anson bought the piano scores of all the light opera of the day and played them right through at a sitting, 'reading the libretto at the same time so as to create the illusion that I was taking part in an actual performance.' By his eighteenth birthday he had read Victor Hugo, Schiller and Heine in the originals. But he admits to having been a difficult pupil and. remembers many rows with his masters. His conduct reports were headed nearly every term 'frivolous and volatile.' He remained volatile and these Memoirs describe his various attempts to 'reach port'. It must be confessed that the book is on the whole disappointing. It is loosely written and remains on the surface. The thirteen pen sketches by the author are much inferior to his sketches of ships and are particularly weak where vegetation is depicted. But there are lively descriptions of persons and .places (monasteries especially) and an account of Anson's conversion to the Faith as one of the Caldey community. P B.


Alkaline phosphatase, long implicated in biomineralization, is a feature of the osteoblast phenotype. Yet in cultured bone cells, only a fraction stain positive histochemically. To determine whether osteoblast enzyme expression reflects cellular heterogeneity with respect to cell cycle distribution or length of time in culture, the activities of alkaline phosphatase, tartrate‐resistant and ‐sensitive acid phosphatases, and non‐specific esterases were assayed kinetically and histo‐chemically. In asynchronous subconfluent cultures, < 15% of the cells stained positive and assayed activity was 0.04 IU/106 cells/cm2. After 1 week, the percent of alkaline phosphatase positive‐staining cells increased 5‐fold, while activity increased 10‐fold. Non‐specific esterases and tartrate‐sensitive acid phosphatase were constitutive throughout time in culture, whereas tartrate‐resistant acid phos‐phatase activity appeared after 2 weeks. Cell cycle analysis of human bone cells revealed a growth fraction of 80%, an S phase of 8.5 h, G2 + 1/2 M of 4 h, and a G1 of 25–30 h. In synchronous cultures induced by a thymidine‐aphidicolin protocol, alkaline phosphatase activity dropped precipitously at M phase and returned during G1. A majority of the alkaline phosphatase activity lost from the cell surface at mitosis was recovered in the medium. Tartrate‐sensitive acid phos‐phatase and non‐specific esterase levels were relatively stable throughout the cell cycle, while tartrate‐resistant acid phosphatase activity was not assavable at the density used in synchronous cultures. From these data, variations in alkaline phosphatase activity appear to reflect the distribution of cells throughout the cell cycle.


The eight coal seams of Neogene paralic coals from Mukah coalfield, Sarawak, Malaysia, were investigated using petrographical, palynological, and organic geochemical analyses to describe coal-forming vegetation, conditions during peat development and precursor mires, and their associations in a sequence-stratigraphic context. The petrographic data of the coals implies the existence of oxygen-deficient and water-saturated conditions in the precursor mires. The condition of low mire oxidation was followed by biomass loss from the mires. The Mukah coals are suggested to be deposited in freshwater peat swamps, and the rich preservation of angiosperm pollens indicates that the organic matter in dense and lowland forest vegetation was mostly terrigenous. The overwhelming presence of Casuarina and Calamus types, suggesting the paleomires were closely linked to Kerapah/Kerangas peat forest and marginally bordered by rattan and supported by the biomarker data. Rheotrophic–ombrotrophic mires were temporarily formed because of water table fluctuations, which strongly depend on ever-wet climate changes and syn-depositional tectonic during the Neogene, resulting in balanced to high peat accumulation and preservation. A maximum thickness of 35m of peat deposits that formed between 10,000 and 175,000 years ago is suggested. The coals are proposed to be influenced by transgressive to initial highstand cycles within the paralic setting.


in chloroform solution, prepared by cast method was investigated in the temperature range (300-430 K). The dark conductivity was measured in Al/poly (phenyl sulfone)/Al sandwitch structure. The measurements were performed on poly(phenyl sulfone) samples at three different thicknesses. Some temperature dependent anomalies in the electrical conductivity changes of the poly(phenyl sulfone) samples corresponding to the second order transitions were observed.


The article presents data on the study of the content of lithium in the hair of the adult population of the Aktobe region of the Republic of Kazakhstan and the relationship with mental illness. The aim of the study is to assess the content of lithium in the biosubstrates of the adult population and its relationship with the morbidity of the population of the Aktobe region.Materials and methods: A one-stage cross-sectional study was carried out on the territory of the Aktobe region of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The study included 340 residents aged 18-60 years permanently residing in the study area using the method of simple random sampling. The lithium content in hair was determined by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry on a NexION 300D spectrometer (PerkinElmer Inc., USA) equipped with an ESI SC-2 DX4 sampler (Elemental Scientific Inc., USA). The morbidity rates were studied according to the ICD-10 classes per 100 thousand population. To assess the relationship between the Li content in the hair and the morbidity rates, the Spearman rank correlation coefficient was calculated.Results: According to the results of the study, significant deviations from the reference values were observed for the lithium content in the Aktobe region. There is an excess of lithium for 80.59% (CI: 76.38; 84.79) of the subjects, the norm is 19.41% (CI: 15.21; 23.62). Excess lithium is more common in men than in women (χ2  =11.07 df=1; p=0.001). Considering the districts of the Aktobe region, the highest content of Li (Me (q25-q75)) was found in the Aitekebi district (0.084 (0.022 -0.134)) mcg/g, in the Kobda district 0.069 (0.060- 0.076) mcg/g, in the Mugalzhar district 0.046 (0.019-0.066) mcg/g, in the Oiyl district 0.044 (0.021-0.0762) mcg/g, in the Alga district 0.040 (0.024-0.090) mcg/g. Spearman's correlation rank analysis showed a weak positive association of Li content with age (r=0.20, p =0.0001), no association with body mass index was found (r=0.10, p =0.06). The correlation analysis established a direct inverse average relationship between the content of Li and morbidity in the class of diseases "Mental disorders and behavioral disorders" (r=-0.62; p= 0.044).Conclusions: The high prevalence of excess lithium content in the hair of the population and its relationship with mental illness requires further research. The study of the bioelement status of the population can serve as an indicator of environmental pollution, and also aims at monitoring the ecological situation in the region.


During his long career, Minister Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, has built bridges to Libya and the Middle East in an effort to foster solidarity between North American Muslims and those of radical Arab Muslim countries and Iran. On numerous occasions, he has met with a who's who of some of the world's most vilified Muslim leaders, including Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Yasser Arafat, Hafez and Bashar al-Assad, and Hassan al-Turabi. These trips to the Middle East occasioned criticism in America insofar as they involved regimes designated as rogue states and state sponsors of terrorism by the U.S. governmentTo understand Farrakhan's diplomacy, it must be placed in the context of his organization's history. The Nation of Islam had long advocated the establishment of a separate national territory for African-Americans. In a sense, Farrakhan positioned himself as a leader of an aspiring nation, not unlike the late Yasser Arafat who led the Palestine Liberation Organization. Although this goal may seem fanciful, it resonated with his African-American followers, as the history of the Nation of Islam illustrates.Background on the Nation of Islam and Louis FarrakhanThe Nation of Islam is considered heretical by most Islamic denominations, but it nonetheless enjoys considerable respect in anti- Western Muslim countries. For many African-Americans, the Nation of Islam has served as a gateway to Islam. The first major effort to promote Islam in America occurred in 1913 when Noble Drew Ali (1886-1929) founded the Moorish Science Temple in Newark, New Jersey. After his death, in 1929, the organization went into steep decline, but one of his followers, Wallace D. Fard, founded a new sect called the "Lost-Found Tribe of Shabazz," later to be renamed the Nation of Islam, in Detroit in the early 1930s. The sect arose out of a Black nationalist milieu that was heavily influenced by the nineteenth century European, primarily German, discourse on race, in which race was seen not merely as a biological category, but as involving spiritual, psychological and cultural characteristics as well.1For a short time, Fard led the small sect, but eventually came under the scrutiny of law enforcement authorities in Detroit and decided to leave the city. He passed control of the organization over to his most trusted disciple, Elijah Muhammad. Despite numerous setbacks and travails, which included imprisonment for draftevasion, Muhammad built the organization into one of the most powerful African-American institutions, which finally gained prominence in the 1960s, largely due to the efforts of its late firebrand speaker, Malcolm X.There are many tenets to the Nation of Islam that significantly differentiate it from traditional Islam.2 According to the theology of the Nation of Islam, history moves in a cyclical fashion. It claims that the Original Man was Black, and once enjoyed supremacy over the world, but suffered enslavement as a result of moral and religious backsliding. Until recently the Black man had all but lost his collective memory of his true religion, Islam. According to one Nation of Islam commentator, Blacks are descended from the tribe of Shabazz that traveled to the earth from the moon 66 trillion years ago, and Whites, who are frequently vilified as "devils," are portrayed as the descendants of a race concocted by an evil scientist named Yacub to destroy the Black race. The Nation of Islam teaches that Blacks must rediscover their true religion and their place in the cosmos.3Just prior to his death, Elijah Muhammad appointed his son, Wallace Muhammad, to assume leadership of the organization. By the summer of 1975, Wallace Muhammad had altered the Nation's ideology to the point that it was open to all races. In October 1976, he renamed the organization the World Community of Islam in the West, effectively terminating the Nation of Islam.4 Louis Farrakhan, the national representative, stayed with the new organization for about three years, before reconstituting the Nation of Islam along with other disaffected members of the original group. …


Variation in structural composition of Guinea savannah vegetation was investigated in Kpashimi forest reserve, Niger State, Nigeria. Field work inventory was conducted to determine the current status of the vegetation physiognomic characteristics of the six physiographic units in the study area; comprising of Riparian Forest, Savannah Woodland, Degraded forest Scrubland, Grassland, and Bare surface. Parameters measured include tree density, trunk diameter, basal area, tree density, tree species diversity, tree height, crown cover, shrub cover, and grass cover. The aim of the study is to determine and compare the variation in structural characteristics of the vegetation of the study area. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed significant differences amongst virtually all the parameters among the physiographic units. In general, the landscape of the forest reserve has been influenced significantly by anthropogenic disturbance and the resulting landscape vegetation cover is a mixture of natural and human managed mosaics that vary in shape, size, structure and arrangement. Thus, drastic measures need to be taken so as to reverse the trend and to mitigate the far reaching ecological consequences of vegetation degradation as highlighted in this study. Access to UNFCC carbon credit is hereby recommended for the management of the study area.


Cutting out an object and estimating its opacity mask, known as image matting, is a key task in many image editing applications. Deep learning approaches have made significant progress by adapting the encoder-decoder architecture of segmentation networks. However, most of the existing networks only predict the alpha matte and post-processing methods must then be used to recover the original foreground and background colours in the transparent regions. Recently, two methods have shown improved results by also estimating the foreground colours, but at a significant computational and memory cost.
In this paper, we propose a low-cost modification to alpha matting networks to also predict the foreground and background colours. We study variations of the training regime and explore a wide range of existing and novel loss functions for the joint prediction.
Our method achieves the state of the art performance on the Adobe Composition-1k dataset for alpha matte and composite colour quality. It is also the current best performing method on the this http URL online evaluation.


Abstract There has been increasing debate in recent years about the conceptualization of moral distress. Broadly speaking, two groups of scholars have emerged: those who agree with Jameton's 'narrow definition' that focuses on constraint and those who argue that Jameton's definition is insufficient and needs to be broadened. Using feminist empirical bioethics, we interviewed critical care nurses in the United Kingdom about their experiences and conceptualizations of moral distress. We provide our broader definition of moral distress and examples of data that both challenge and support our conceptualization. We pre‐empt and overcome three key challenges that could be levelled at our account and argue that there are good reasons to adopt our broader definition of moral distress when exploring prevalence of, and management strategies for, moral distress.


This paper presents a genetic algorithm (GA) approach to the machine-component grouping problem with multiple objectives: minimizing costs due to intercell and intracell part movements; minimizing the total within cell load variation; and minimizing exceptional elements. Manufacturing cells are formed based on production data, e.g. part routing sequence, production volume and workload. Also, we will discuss the implication of part alternative routings and the method we suggest to deal with it. Special genetic operators are developed and multiple experiments are performed. Finally, the results obtained with the proposed algorithm on the tested problems are compared with those of others.


Background: Among several GATA family transcription factor-associating proteins, zinc finger protein, multitype 1 (ZFPM1), at least that of murine origin, has been shown to modulate the activity of GATA-3. However, the functional role of human ZFPM1 in the immune system has not been elucidated. Therefore, we here investigated the contribution of ZFPM1 to human Th1/Th2 differentiation. Methods: The cDNA of ZFPM1 was cloned and introduced into human cord blood CD4+ T cells by a lentiviral transduction system. Then, the expression of IL-4 and IFN-γ mRNA was determined by quantitative real-time RT-PCR. The effect of ZFPM1 on the promoter activity of IL-4 and IFN-γ in Jurkat cells was also investigated. Results: Stimulation-induced expression of IL-4 and IFN-γ in human CD4+ T cells was suppressed and enhanced, respectively, by the introduction of ZFPM1. The transcriptional activity of IL-4 was also diminished by ZFPM1, whereas that of IFN-γ was not affected. Conclusion: ZFPM1 that facilitates human Th1 differentiation via the downregulation of IL-4 is a potential target for the treatment of allergic diseases.


Purpose

This case study reviews a group coaching and mentoring (GCM) change model and its significance in dissolving barriers and promoting equity in virtual learning environments. The purpose of this paper is to examine the model's approach to shifting instructor mindsets to align with institutional core values and initiatives that best serve a twenty-first century adult learner.

Design/methodology/approach

The change model, grounded in GCM, metacognition, self-regulated learning, and community of practice theory, incorporates participatory action research design focusing on cycles of action, reflection, and evaluation.

Findings

This study illustrates the change model's success in moving educators toward deeper understanding of self and individual student differences. It further showcases how professionals adapt and improve practices using self-regulated learning and metacognition to better serve the population they teach.

Practical implications

The GCM framework improved engagement. The design, while implemented in a higher education arena, is applicable to other entities seeking to bridge gaps using metacognition and self-regulated learning to become adaptable and inclusive.

Originality/value

The change model, recipient of one of this year's Effective Practice Awards from the Online Learning Consortium (2017), is recognized for innovation and replicability in and beyond higher education.


Purpose: Emergency physicians are usually more experienced in emergency situations; therefore, a cardiopulmonary resuscitation team with an emergency physician as a leader would be operated effectively. The aim of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a cardiopulmonary resuscitation that includes an emergency physician. Methods: A retrospective analysis for in-hospital arrests that occurred in the general ward was conducted based on the in-hospital cardiopulmonary resuscitation registry of a tertiary care university hospital in Korea from January 1, 2005 through December 31, 2010. We compared outcomes of cardiopulmonary resuscitation performed by a team that included an emergency physician with those by a cardiopulmonary resuscitation team that included a nonemergency physician. Results: Survival rates at discharge were 29.6% for the emergency physician team and 17.7% for the non-emergency physician team. The good neurologic outcome rates at discharge were 20.6% and 10.6%, respectively. In multivariate analysis with adjustment for pre-arrest patient condition and arrest variables, survival rate did not differ significantly between the two groups. However, the good neuroneurologic outcomes showed an association with the emergency physician team. Conclusion: For in-hospital cardiac arrest, outcomes for patients who were rescued by the emergency physiciandirecting CPR team might be comparable or better, compared with those by the non-emergency physician team.


Emergency medical treatment and intensive care are responsible for the survival of many individuals who
would have otherwise died because of an injury to their brain. Consequently, an increased number of people are in
vegetative and minimally conscious states. Advances in diagnostic methods, prognostic knowledge, neuroimaging,
pharmacology, and proactive treatment approaches necessitate renewed consideration of patient autonomy and
clinical experimentation issues for the interest of the patient and society as a whole. Care guidelines for minimally
conscious states should be established and guidelines for vegetative states should be redesigned to reflect the
advances in this clinical area. Furthermore, methods for accurately educating the public about disorders of
consciousness and informing surrogate decision-makers need to be addressed.


10 People suffering with neurological diseases are at risk of committing suicide. A case-control study found increased risk of attempted suicide in patients with nine chronic neurological diseases [1]. Similarly, people diagnosed with neurological disorders were twice as likely to die of suicide than people not diagnosed with such disorders [2]. This increased risk could be caused by psychiatric comorbidities that are quite common in people with neurological diseases [3] but could be also caused by fear of prolonged suffering. This fear is especially common in people diagnosed with a progressive degenerative dementia [4].


Weak lensing data follow a naturally skewed distribution, implying the data vector most likely yielded from a survey will systematically fall below its mean. Although this effect is qualitatively known from CMB-analyses, correctly accounting for it in weak lensing is challenging, as a direct transfer of the CMB results is quantitatively incorrect. While a previous study (Sellentin et al. 2018) focused on the magnitude of this bias, we here focus on the frequency of this bias, its scaling with redshift, and its impact on the signal-to-noise of a survey. Filtering weak lensing data with COSEBIs, we show that weak lensing likelihoods are skewed up until $\ell \approx 100$, whereas CMB-likelihoods Gaussianize already at $\ell \approx 20$. While COSEBI-compressed data on KiDS- and DES-like redshift- and angular ranges follow Gaussian distributions, we detect skewness at 6$\sigma$ significance for half of a Euclid- or LSST-like data set, caused by the wider coverage and deeper reach of these surveys. Computing the signal-to-noise ratio per data point, we show that precisely the data points of highest signal-to-noise are the most biased. Over all redshifts, this bias affects at least 10% of a survey's total signal-to-noise, at high redshifts up to 25%. The bias is accordingly expected to impact parameter inference. The bias can be handled by developing non-Gaussian likelihoods. Otherwise, it could be reduced by removing the data points of highest signal-to-noise.


The study investigated the acknowledgement levels, attitudes and perceptions of people with regard to the impact of land redistribution on female farm workers on society and focused on the respondents that were drawn from Nyabira farming community in Mashonaland West Province. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. Data was collected by means of interviews, documentary analysis procedures, focus group discussions and questionnaires from a total of 106 respondents out of a total population of 212. The sampling procedures used were the purposive sampling and simple random techniques. The study found out that social, political and economic barriers influenced the impact of land redistribution programmes. The study concludes that the endeavour to involve female farm workers in land redistribution programme is constrained by a number of challenges which range from poverty, effects of patriarchy, cultural, political to economic factors. However, the Zimbabwean people are aware of the detrimental effects associated with the exclusion of females in land redistribution programme. The study recommends that there is need for a collaborated approach from government and other stakeholders to actively engage in some strategies to help females meaningfully participate in these programmes. Further research in this area is highly recommended to continue advancing scholarship in this seemingly grey area.


Atmospheric circulations influence local and regional weather conditions and, thus, tree growth. To identify summer weather types relevant for tree growth, and their associated synoptic-scale circulation patterns, an atmospheric circulation tree ring index (ACTI) dataset, derived from 414 tree-ring sites across Asia spanning the period 1871–2010, was created. Modes of common variability in the ACTI dataset were compared with leading modes of observed summertime 500-hPa geopotential height. The first four ACTI modes (explaining 88% of the total variance) were associated with pressure centers over Eurasia, the tropics, and the Pacific Ocean. The high spatiotemporal resemblance between the leading circulation modes, derived from both tree rings and 500-hPa geopotential height fields, indicates a strong potential for reconstructing large-scale circulation patterns from tree rings in Asia. This would allow investigations of natural atmospheric circulation variability prior to anthropogenic climate change and provide a means to validate model simulations of climate predictions.


A re-discovered member of the layered material family, Titanium Trisulfide (TiS3), has attracted intense research interest recently for the possibility of realizing an exciton insulator in the monolayer limit. However, due to their quasi-one-dimensional nature, thin TiS3 flakes are typically in the form of nanoribbons that are challenging to characterize by optical absorption spectra, due to their small cross section. Here, we employ a sensitive photocurrent spectroscopy technique to probe the absorption of a thin TiS3 nanoribbon in a field-effect transistor configuration. We have found a significant modification of the band structure of the thin TiS3 nanoribbon, compared to its bulk counterpart. In addition, the polarization-dependent photocurrent spectra of thin TiS3 nanoribbons exhibit greatly enhanced anisotropy compared to that of a thick TiS3 device. The atomically thin TiS3 flake, thus, not only provides an exciting platform for investigating many-body physics but also enables anisotropic quantum optoelectronics.


In the business novels of the early twenty-first century, Savkina sees links to the socialist realist production novels. Although contemporary authors attempt to portray business people as heroes, their novels apply the same codes and themes as those used in Soviet times, in which the pursuit of money cannot be heroic and honor and friendship eventually prove more important. Sometimes the effect is parodic, but at other times it merely emphasizes the gap between literature and post-Soviet daily life.


PURPOSE
Ultrasound image segmentation is a challenging task due to a low signal-to-noise ratio and poor image quality. Although several approaches based on the convolutional neural network (CNN) have been applied to ultrasound image segmentation, they have weak generalization ability. We propose an end-to-end, multiple-channel and atrous CNN designed to extract a greater amount of semantic information for segmentation of ultrasound images.

METHOD
A multiple-channel and atrous convolution network is developed, referred to as MA-Net. Similar to U-Net, MA-Net is based on an encoder-decoder architecture and includes five modules: the encoder, atrous convolution, pyramid pooling, decoder and residual skip pathway modules. In the encoder module, we aim to capture more information with multiple-channel convolution and use large kernel convolution instead of small filters in each convolution operation. In the last layer, atrous convolution and pyramid pooling are used to extract multi-scale features. The architecture of the decoder is similar to that of the encoder module, except that up-sampling is used instead of down-sampling. Furthermore, the residual skip pathway module connects the sub-networks of the encoder and decoder to optimize learning from the deeper layer and improve the accuracy of segmentation. During the learning process, we adopt multi-task learning to enhance segmentation performance. Five types of datasets are used in our experiments. Because the original training data are limited, we apply data augmentation (e.g., horizontal and vertical flipping, random rotations and random scaling) to our training data. We use the Dice score, precision, recall, Hausdorff distance (HD), average symmetric surface distance (ASD) and root mean square symmetric surface distance (RMSD) as the metrics for segmentation evaluation. Meanwhile, Friedman test was performed as the nonparametric statistical analysis to evaluate the algorithms.

RESULTS
For the datasets of brachia plexus (BP), foetal head and lymph node segmentations, MA-Net achieved average Dice scores of 0.776, 0.973 and 0.858, respectively; with average precisions of 0.787, 0.968 and 0.854, respectively; average recalls of 0.788, 0.978 and 0.885, respectively; average HDs (mm) of 13.591, 10.924 and 19.245, respectively; average ASDs (mm) of 4.822, 4.152 and 4.312, respectively; and average RMSDs (mm) of 4.979, 4.161 and 4.930, respectively. Compared with U-Net, U-Net++, M-Net, and Dilated U-Net, the average performance of the MA-Net increased by approximately 5.68%, 2.85%, 6.59%, 36.03%, 23.64% and 31.71% for Dice, precision, recall, HD, ASD, and RMSD, respectively. Moreover, we verified the generalization of MA-Net segmentation to lower-grade brain glioma MRI and lung CT images. In addition, the MA-Net achieved the highest mean rank in the Friedman test.

CONCLUSION
The proposed MA-Net accurately segments ultrasound images with high generalization, and therefore, it offers a useful tool for diagnostic application in ultrasound images.


Plastids are semiautonomous organelles derived from cyanobacterial ancestors. Following endosymbiosis, plastids have evolved to optimize their functions, thereby limiting metabolic redundancy with other cell compartments. Contemporary plastids have also recruited proteins produced by the nuclear genome of the host cell. In addition, many genes acquired from the cyanobacterial ancestor evolved to code for proteins that are targeted to cell compartments other than the plastid. Consequently, metabolic pathways are now a patchwork of enzymes of diverse origins, located in various cell compartments. Because of this, a wide range of metabolites and ions traffic between the plastids and other cell compartments. In this review, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the well-known, and of the as yet uncharacterized, chloroplast/cytosol exchange processes, which can be deduced from what is currently known about compartmentation of plant-cell metabolism.


BACKGROUND
For small gastric subepithelial tumours originating from the muscularis propria, there is no uniform standard for selecting the best endoscopic resection method.

OBJECTIVE
To compare the efficacy and safety of endoscopic snare resection with a transparent cap (ESR-C) and endoscopic snare resection with an elastic band (ESR-EB) for small gastric subepithelial tumours originating from the muscularis propria to determine which method is more suitable for these tumours.

METHODS
The data from small gastric subepithelial tumours originating from the muscularis propria treated from Jan 2020 to Dec 2022 were collected. A total of 34 eligible patients were enrolled. Sixteen of these patients were treated with ESR-C, and eighteen were treated with ESR-EB. The general clinical characteristics, tumour location, tumour size,growth pattern,operation time, complete resection rate, and complication rate were compared between the two groups.

RESULTS
There was no difference in age, sex, tumour location, tumour size, growth pattern, or histological diagnosis after resection (p > 0.05). There was no significant difference in operation time, complete resection rate, or follow-up time (p > 0.05). Eight patients (50.5%) in the ESR-C group had complications (6 perforations and 2 bleeding), and 2 (11.11%) in the ESR-EB group had complications (2 perforations). There were significant differences between the two groups (p = 0.037). All perforations were successfully treated. No recurrence or metastasis was observed in either group during the follow-up period.

CONCLUSION
Both ESR-C and ESR-EB are effective and safe in treating small gastric subepithelial tumours originating from the muscularis propria. However, ESR-EB can significantly reduce the incidence of complications. ESR-EB is likely a better option for small gastric subepithelial tumours originating from the muscularis propria.


Exact solutions of the Deser-Jackiw-Templeton field equations including a cosmological constant are presented. They generalize the finite-action homogeneous, anisotropic vacuum solutions of topologically massive gravity. We find that only Vuorio-type solutions, where any two of the constant scale factors coincide, admit a cosmological constant. One of these solutions can be dressed up to yield a two parameter black hole solution of topologically massive gravity.


Aeolus is a prototype implementation of a topology optimizer on top of the distributed streaming system Storm. Aeolus extends Storm with a batching layer which can increase the topology's throughput by more than one order of magnitude. Furthermore, Aeolus implements an optimization algorithm that computes the optimal batch size and degree of parallelism for each node in the topology automatically. Even if Aeolus is built on top of Storm, the developed concepts are not limited to Storm and can be applied to any distributed intra-node-parallel streaming system. We propose to demo Aeolus using an interactive Web UI. One part of the Web UI is a topology builder allowing the user to interact with the system. Topologies can be created from scratch and their structure and/or parameters can be modified. Furthermore, the user is able to observe the impact of the changes on the optimization decisions and runtime behavior. Additionally, the Web UI gives a deep insight in the optimization process by visualizing it. The user can interactively step through the optimization process while the UI shows the optimizer's state, computations, and decisions. The Web UI is also able to monitor the execution of a non-optimized and optimized topology simultaneously showing the advantage of using Aeolus.


The decomposition of depleted uranium (DU) alloy in the presence of microorganisms characteristic of clay-rich soils has been studied using microcosm experiments. To assess the possible roles of specific groups of soil microorganisms, enrichment culture experiments were undertaken where the indigenous microbes were isolated from the soil and selectively cultured by adding growth medium supplemented with a specific terminal electron acceptor and electron donor, producing an inoculum to which a DU "coupon" was added. Experiments were conducted using microcosms with enriched consortia of either aerobic or anaerobic bacteria, including fermentative organisms and those that respire Fe(III), sulfate or nitrate. In a series of experiments, the rate and extent of DU breakdown was determined for each of the consortia. Changes in solution chemistry (pH, Eh, total Fe, Fe(II), nitrate, sulfate, glucose) were monitored and the proportions of dissolved uranium and solid breakdown products determined. The latter were characterized using environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM), X-ray powder diffractometry (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The microbial communities in the microcosms exposed to the DU were studied using PCR-based 16SrRNA profiling techniques. In the aerobic microcosms, significant DU corrosion as determined by mass loss (of ∼1.8%) occurred over 40 days; however, within experimental error, as much or more DU was consumed (∼3% weight loss) in an abiotic control experiment. The slower rate in the biotic experiment may reflect formation of a passivating film at the surface. Under anaerobic conditions, DU corrosion was less extensive than under aerobic conditions, with abiotic control experiments again showing comparable or greater mass loss. The order of decreasing corrosion rates under abiotic anaerobic conditions was: Fe (III)-reducing conditions (∼3% mass loss) > fermenting conditions (∼1% mass loss) > nitrate-reducing conditions (∼0.2% mass loss) > sulfate-reducing conditions (∼0.1% mass loss). In the equivalent biotic systems, corrosion was only significantly different to the abiotic treatments under Fe(III)-reducing conditions (∼2% mass loss), fermenting conditions (∼0.1% mass loss) and under nitrate-reducing conditions where biotic corrosion was so slow that mass loss was only measurable after extending the experiment to 300 days (after which there was 0.2% mass loss). The microbial communities in the different enrichment cultures were distinct with no evidence of differences between the microbial communities sampled from the DU coupon surface and those from the 'planktonic' population. After 40 days of corrosion in the aerobic systems, pale yellow, black and bright yellow alteration products had formed. These products were identified as chernikovite, uraninite and schoepite, respectively. The limited extent of alteration in the anaerobic systems did not yield identifiable mineral alteration products. Overall, these experiments show that microbes are surprisingly ineffective at promoting the breakdown of DU, which is dominated by chemical corrosion and leads to end-products that reflect the geochemical environment in which the corrosion has occurred, and that may include relatively stable mineral phases. Supplemental materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Geomicrobiology Journal to view the free supplemental file.


ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to determine the clinical safety and efficacy of preoperative embolization of meningiomas with low-concentration n-butyl cyanoacrylate (NBCA). Nineteen cases of hypervascular intracranial meningiomas were treated by preoperative embolization with 14% NBCA, using a wedged superselective catheterization of feeding arteries and reflux-hold-reinjection technique. Clinical data of the patients and radiological and intra-surgical findings were reviewed. All tumors were successfully devascularized without any neurological complications. Marked reduction of tumor staining with extensive NBCA penetration was achieved in 13 cases. Perioperative blood transfusion was only required in two cases. These results indicate that preoperative embolization of meningiomas with low-concentration NBCA is both safe and effective.


Josamycin is an antibiotic macrolide similar to erythromycin, with some differences in its biologic behaviour. There have been no reports of ototoxic effects caused by this drug, but its similitudes with erythromycin have prompted us to undertake a study about its possible cochleo-toxicity. Most trials of this kind have been carried out using conventional audiometry (up to 8,000 Hz), thus not being able to detect threshold shifts above this frequency. Ototoxic lesions usually begin in the upper frequency limit. Twenty-eight patients without previous auditory impairment were studied with conventional (up to 8,000 Hz) and high-frequency audiometry (up to 20,000 Hz) before and after oral treatment with josamycin during eight days. No significant differences were found in auditory thresholds registered before and after treatment in any of the patients. These results suggest that josamycin is devoid of any cochleo-toxic effect in all the frequencies that a normal subject can hear.


The paper presents results of the bridge crane rail (CR) geometry determination with automated measurement system. The system consists of geodetic (robot station) and nongeodetic (electronic measurement systems) technologies. The robot station Leica TCA1101 (equipped with function  LOCK and ATR), the three standard prisms for orientation and notebook are located on the floor and create the static part of the measurement system. Nongeodetic technologies amplifier HBM Spider8, inductive transducers HBM WA100, terminal and connecting cables and 360° prism are attached to the moved part of the measurement system, which is drifted by a crane. Position of the 360° prism is determined by the 3D polar method from one or several instrument positions. All measured data from robot station are registered to the notebook. Two electronic (inductive) transducers are fixed to the moved part of the measurement system and determine the relative position of the rail to the prism centre in both vertical and transverse direction. The accuracy of the rail position depends on the accuracy of the prism position, of the system geometry and determination of electronic sensor position changes. The paper included the development of the system and the results of first application at 240 m long bridge crane which is situated in Power Station Gabčíkovo (Slovakia)


Formaldehyde (FA) is an environmental chemical classified as a human carcinogen. It is highly reactive and can bind covalently with hemoglobin (Hb) to produce Hb adducts. Measurement of these Hb adducts provides valuable information about exposure to this chemical. We developed a robust, ultraperformance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (UPLC-MS/MS) method for quantifying FA-Hb adducts in red blood cells. The method measures the FA-VHLTPEEK peptide after trypic digestion. The peptide is a FA adduct at the N-terminus of the beta chain of human Hb. Method mean (±SD) accuracy, determined by recovery in quality control and blank material was 103.2% ± 8.11. The mean among-day and within-day coefficients of variation determined at three concentration levels (%CV) were 9.2% (range: 7.2-10.2%) and 4.9% (range 3.1-7.3%), respectively. The limit of detection was 3.4 nmol/g Hb. This method was applied to the analysis of 135 human blood samples, and FA-VHLTPEEK was detected in all study samples. FA-VHLTPEEK concentrations were not significantly different between smokers and nonsmokers. This work is the first validated UPLC-MS/MS method in which a FA peptide derived from a FA-Hb adduct could be used to monitor exposure to FA in population studies.


and statement reordering. This framework also includes more general classes of loop transformaThis paper presents a formal mathematical tions which can extract more parallelism from a framework which unifies the existing loop transclass of programs than the existing techniques. formations. This framework also includes more The particular class of programs are those that general classes of loop transformations, which consist of perfectly nested loops possibly with can extract more parallelism from a class of proconditional statements where the guards as well grams than the existing techniques. We classify as the array index expression are affine expresschedules into three classes: uniform, subdomainsions of the loop indices. variant, and statement-variant. Viewing from In the next section, we describe the notations the degree of parallelism to be gained by loop and terminologies used in the paper. We then transformation, the schedules can also be classipresent a formal mathematical framework which fled as single-sequential level, multiple-sequential unifies the existing loop transformation techlevel, and mixed schedules. We also illustrate the niques, and sets the stage for discussing the more usefulness of the more general loop transformageneral classes of loop transformers in Section 3. tion with an example program. A loop transformer is a function that relates a given loop nest with its transformed version, and


Infrastructure system in the U.S. have been shown to be linked to social and health inequities. We calculated driving distance to the closest health care facility for a representative sample of the U.S. population using ArcGIS Network Analyst and a national transportation dataset, and identified areas where Black residents have a longer driving distance to the closest facility than White residents. Our data demonstrated that racial disparities in access to health care facilities presented large geographic variation. Counties with significant racial disparities were concentrated in the Southeast and did not correspond to counties with a greater proportion of the overall population >5 miles to the closest facility, which were concentrated in the Midwest. This geographic variation demonstrates the need to adopt a spatially explicit data driven approach in the design of equitable health care facility establishment that address the specific limitations of the local infrastructure.


Image features from a small local region often give strong evidence in the classification task. However, CNN suffers from paying too much attention only on these local areas, thus ignoring other discriminative regions. This paper deals with this issue by performing the attentive feature cutmix in a progressive manner, among the multi-branch classifier trained on the same task. Specifically, we build the several sequential head branches, with the first global branch fed the original features without any constrains, and other following branches given the attentive cutmix features. The grad-CAM is employed to guide input features of them, so that discriminative region blocks in the current branch are intentionally cut and replaced by those from other images, hence preventing the model from relying on only the small regions and forcing it to gradually focus on large areas. Extensive experiments have been carried out on reID datasets such as the Market1501, DukeMTMC and CUHK03, showing that the proposed algorithm can boost the classification performance significantly.


Abstract We compared winter (December, January, and February) and early spring (March and April) bird communities among 4 successional stages that included grassland, shrubsteppe, juniper-shrubsteppe, and old-growth juniper woodland in central Oregon. Birds were surveyed monthly from December through April in 1998/1999 and 1999/2000 using the point count method to estimate relative abundance of birds (individuals · transect−1year−1). We used distance sampling to correct for potential bias in estimating abundance and density among successional stages. A total of 4513 birds (32 species) were detected. Relative abundance of total birds (all species combined) was similar in the juniper-shrubsteppe and old-growth woodland (48.7 and 48.9 individuals · transect−1, respectively) but 6 times greater than in the grassland and shrubsteppe (8.0 and 7.7 individuals · transect−1, respectively) during the 5-month period. Total density of birds was greater in old-growth juniper woodland and juniper-shrubsteppe than in grassland or shrub-steppe. However, median bird species richness in 1998/1999 was highest in grassland and lowest both in shrubsteppe and juniper-shrubsteppe, and in 1999/2000 it was highest in shrubsteppe and lowest in juniper-shrubsteppe and old-growth juniper woodland. American Robins and Townsend's Solitaires were the most abundant species in juniper-shrubsteppe and old-growth juniper woodland during the winter months. Sage Sparrows and Horned Larks were the most abundant species in shrubsteppe during winter, and Horned Larks were most abundant in grasslands during the early spring transition period prior to nesting. Our results indicate that a different suite of species use these successional stages during the nonbreeding season. If avifauna conservation is a part of long-term management goals, a broad range of successional stages should be maintained on the landscape to provide habitat for a variety of avian species throughout the year.


In this paper the Unified Power Quality conditioner is studied with conventional operation mode (UPQC) and with its dual topology (iUPQC). The iUPQC is presented as solution to improve the dynamic response in power quality disturbance mitigation. Comparisons in steady-state and dynamic response are provided. Simulations and experimental results are shown to verify the iUPQC behavior for power quality safety and several load change issues.


The use of hashing schemes for storing extendible arrays is investigated. It is shown that extendible hashing schemes whose worst-case access behavior is close to optimal must utilize storage inefficiently; conversely, hashing schemes that utilize storage too conservatively are inevitably poor in expected access time. If requirements on the utilization of storage are relaxed slightly, then one can find rather efficient extendible hashing schemes. Specifically, for any dimensionality of arrays, one can find extendible hashing schemes which at once utilize storage well [fewer than 2p storage locations need be set aside for storing arrays having p or fewer positions] and enjoy good access characteristics [expected access time is 0(1), and worst-case access time is 0(log log p) for p- or fewer-position arrays]. Moreover, at the cost of only an additive increase in access time, storage demands can be decreased to (l+&egr;)p locations for arbitrary &egr;>0. In fact, if one will abide a more drastic degradation of access efficiency, one can lower storage demands to p+o(p) locations.


I nnovation plays a significant role in the field of surgery. Surgeons perform situational assessment, decision analysis, and improvisation to tailor therapy to the individual disease characteristics of each patient. With incentives to improve quality of care, attract new patients, and progress academically, advancing technology allows for the opportunity to innovate. Formal monitoring and outcome assessment are often lacking for modifications to standard surgical technique. These shortcomings risk exposing patients to procedures that are expensive, harmful, or less efficacious. The Society of University Surgeons (SUS) aimed to clarify the distinction between ''variations,'' ''innovations,'' and ''research,'' and to develop guidelines for the surveillance of surgical innovation by surgeons and hospitals. A Position Statement was published in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons in June 2008, urging institutions to create surgical innovation committees (SICs) to ensure appropriate oversight and disclosure of innovations, and to develop a corresponding national registry. The authors sought to determine the level of awareness of the SUS Position Statement among leaders of academic departments of surgery, and to assess the existence and functionality of SICs. A cross-sectional study was performed by inviting members of the Society of Surgical Chairs to participate in a Web-based tool SurveyMonkey through an electronic mailing list. With a response rate of 43%, the majority of respondents were surgery department Chairs from a variety of fields at large, high-volume institutions in the United States and Canada. Eighty-four percent of respondents indicated that their institution promotes innovative procedures. However, only 23% had read the SUS Position Statement with the majority (55%) unaware of the document. Although 23% reported that their institutions have an SIC, the majority (38%) have never considered forming an SIC. Respondents indicated that the use of an Institutional Review Board or hospital ethics committee for oversight of innovation diminished the need for an additional SIC. Of those 14 institutions that had an SIC, the number of reviewed procedures was only at an estimated 0.012% to 0.1% of annual operations, questioning the accurate identification of ''innovative'' procedures. The presence of an SIC was directly related to the number of surgical procedures, and whether innovative or minimally invasive surgery was promoted as a strength of the institution. An apparent relationship existed between awareness of the Position Statement, formal discussions about surgical innovation and research, and the formation of an SIC. In conclusion, the results of the survey demonstrate the lack of awareness of these recommendations by the majority of surgery department Chairs. Despite the existence of SICs at some institutions, a minimal number of procedures were reviewed annually, calling into question the true efficacy of these committees in providing patient protection. Looking forward, education on clinical research and ethics is required for surgeons to accurately identify their engagement in nonstandard treatment, which may demand additional SIC review. The confusion of ''innovative surgery'' with ''cutting edge'' techniques calls for an increase in awareness and training about surgical innovation and appropriate oversight to improve the protection and safety of patients.


Early marine invertebrates like the Branchiopoda began their sojourn into dilute media some 500 million years ago in the Middle Cambrian. Others like the Mollusca, Annelida and many crustacean taxa have followed, accompanying major marine transgressions and regressions, shifting landmasses, orogenies and glaciations. In adapting to these events and new habitats such invertebrates acquired novel physiological abilities that attenuate the ion loss and water gain that constitute severe challenges to life in dilute media. Among these taxon-specific adaptations, selected from the subcellular to organismal levels of organization, are reduced body permeability and surface (S) to volume (V) ratios, lowered osmotic gradients, increased surface areas of interface epithelia, relocation of membrane proteins in ion-transporting cells and augmented transport enzyme abundance, activity and affinity. We examine adaptations in taxa that have penetrated into fresh water, revealing diversified modifications, a consequence of distinct body plans, morpho-physiological resources and occupation routes. Contingent on life history and reproductive strategy, numerous patterns of osmotic regulation have emerged, including intracellular isosmotic regulation in weak hyper-regulators and well-developed anisosmotic extracellular regulation in strong hyper-regulators, likely reflecting inertial adaptations to early life in an estuarine environment. Our analyses show that across sixty-four freshwater invertebrate species from six phyla/classes, hemolymph osmolalities decrease logarithmically with increasing S: V ratios. The arthropods have the highest osmolalities, from 300 to 650 mOsmoles/kg H2O in the Decapoda with 220 to 320 mOsmoles/kg H2O in the Insecta; osmolalities in the Annelida range from 150 to 200 mOsmoles/kg H2O, the Mollusca showing the lowest osmolalities at 40 to 120 mOsmoles/kg H2O. Overall, osmolalities reach a cut-off at ≈200 mOsmoles/kg H2O, independently of increasing S: V ratio. The ability of species with small S: V ratios to maintain large osmotic gradients is mirrored in their putatively higher Na+/K+-ATPase activities that drive ion uptake processes. Selection pressures on these morpho-physiological characteristics have led to differential osmoregulatory abilities, rendering possible the conquest of fresh water while retaining some tolerance of the ancestral medium.


Unusual deformation structures, similar to those observed in rocks from known and suspected meteorite impact craters, are observed in inclusions of basement rock in the Onaping formation at Sudbury, Ontario. These features, which include planar sets in quartz parallel to the (0001) and (10ī3) planes, suggest that the Onaping formation consists of shocked and melted material deposited immediately after a meteorite impact which formed the Sudbury basin.


To evaluate the impact of emerging myopathies on meat quality and microbial shelf life, 48 normal, 48 white striped (WS), and 48 wooden breasts (WB) were stored for 11 d at 4°C aerobically and analyzed at 24, 72, 120, 168, 216, and 264 h post-mortem. Normal breasts showed lower (P < 0.001) redness index (-0.88 vs. -0.41 and -0.43) and cooking losses (22.0 vs. 23.8 vs. 26.9%) than those of WS and WB meat. Normal and WS breasts exhibited higher protein content than that in WB meat (23.9 and 23.2 vs. 21.4%; P < 0.001). Normal meat also had a lower ether extract content than that in WB meat (1.09 vs. 1.88%; P < 0.001), with intermediate values for WS meat. Normal breasts exhibited higher saturated fatty acid (FA) rate (31.3 vs. 28.0% of total FA on average) and lower unsaturated FA rate (68.7 vs. 72.0%) than those in WS and WB meat (P < 0.001). Differences were mainly due to polyunsaturated FA (30.5% in normal vs. 35.3 and 35.4% in WS and WB meat; P < 0.001). Normal breasts had higher initial total viable count (TVC) and a shorter TVC lag phase than those of WS and WB meat (46.3 vs. 85.2 and 77.8 h). The microbial shelf life threshold (7 log10 CFU TVC/g) was achieved first in normal (130 h) and then in WS (149 h) and WB (192 h) meat. TVC and Pseudomonas spp. counts were significantly higher in normal than those in the affected breasts between 72 and 216 h of storage. Enterobacteriaceae spp. and lactic acid bacteria counts were significantly higher in normal meat, lower in WB meat, and intermediate in WS meat until 216 h. All differences in microbial targets across meat types disappeared by 264 h of storage. Further studies are necessary to elucidate the factors and the mechanisms that may modulate microbial growth and composition during storage in broiler breast meat affected by myopathies.


Joanna Zylinska proposes a "feminist counterapocalypse," which would resist the anthropocentric, technicist perspectives that shape apocalyptic narratives of climate crisis. Like Anna Tsing's exploration of collaborative survival, Zylinska's counterapocalypse is founded on the notion of precarity as a shared condition of life in the postindustrial world. This article focuses on art-science projects by Joaquín Fargas (Argentina) and Paul Rosero Contreras (Ecuador) that imagine environmental futures. In contrasting their projects the author asks how they endorse or subvert the anthropocentrism that often motivates the representation of climate change as reversible (humans save the planet) or, indeed, as irreversible (humans destroy the planet). Drawing on the work of Andreas Weber and several Latin American scholars, including Eduardo Gudynas and Raquel Gutiérrez Aguilar, the author suggests ways in which biosemiotic and biocentric perspectives may make a valuable contribution to the counterapocalypse Zylinska proposes. The analysis of Rosero's work in particular opens up ways in which one might consider other paradigms rather than precarity as the basis for a postanthropocentric counterapocalypse, including abundance, reciprocity, collaboration, and coevolution. These are found everywhere in complex ecosystems and relate closely to the principles on which theories and practices of the commons are founded, both in Latin America and beyond.


This thesis explores the atmosphere of Uranus using microwave observations at wavelengths from 1 to 20 cm, with primary emphasis on high resolution VLA data at wavelengths
of 2 and 6 cm. While radio maps of Uranus have been published previously, this is the first detailed analysis and interpretation of such observations. Atmospheric
structures are mapped to depths greater than has been seen on any giant planet. Several features of the data are immediately clear. First, there are strong horizontal and vertical gradients in the atmospheric properties that control the radio brightness. Polar regions are much brighter than lower latitudes, and the deep troposphere (pressures greater than a few tens of bars) appears much dimmer than would be expected based on the upper troposphere.
(Both these results had been postulated in previous works, but older observations lacked the resolution to confirm them.) A second important feature of the data is that the
intrinsic latitudinal brightness variations determined in this work at 2 cm and 6 cm are highly correlated with each other and with Voyager infrared measurements, suggesting a
common cause. Because these data sets probe different altitudes between 50 and 0.1 bar, the cause must be acting over this altitude range of about 250 km. Another immediate
result, independent of atmospheric modeling, is that the radio brightness features have not changed significantly in the 8 years between 1981 and 1989. Since radio brightness is a function of temperature and composition, the observations can be used to map these properties as a function of latitude and height. Arguments are presented that indicate compositional gradients are the dominant factor controlling the brightness variations, and these compositional changes are used as a tracer to infer the general circulation and some of the chemical processes of the atmosphere. The most likely interpretation of the data is that the Southern Hemisphere is dominated by a single meridional circulation cell, with an upwelling centered near -25° latitude that brings absorber rich air parcels from 50 bars up to the 0.1 bar region. As parcels rise, the absorber mixing ratio drops by a factor of about 100 between 25 and 10 bars, and then a further factor of 2 at higher altitudes. These depletions are probably due to condensation. The absorber depleted parcels then move poleward and descend, dominating the atmospheric
composition over the pole down to 50 bars, but not deeper. This circulation is consistent with the zonal winds and upper atmospheric temperatures observed by Voyager in the
context of a simple, linear, dynamical model. The model suggests that the forcing driving these motions occurs within the upper few hundred bars of the atmosphere. The species most likely to be responsible for microwave absorption in the atmosphere is NH_3, and at depth it appears to have a molar mixing ratio within an order of magnitude of 1.4 x 10^(-4), the solar value. The formation of an NH_4SH cloud above 30 bars can account for the
primary depletion of NH_3, while NH_3 ice condensation at 5 bars accounts for the rest. Most of the results discussed here, however, are independent of what the absorbing
species actually is. Superimposed on the large scale brightness pattern are smaller brightness oscillations, less than about 15° wide in latitude. These long lasting features are reminiscent of the zones and belts of Jupiter, and could be the result of variations in either cloud altitudes or the depth of penetration of subsiding air parcels. A more extensive analysis is needed, however, to understand these small scale structures. The final point addressed in this
work is the seasonal variability of the atmosphere. While no variations exist in the current high resolution data set, which covers about 10 years of the mid-summer season,
it is expected that detectable changes will occur over 20 to 40 year time scales (each season on Uranus lasts 21 years). The magnitude of the variations, however, cannot be
determined from the available data.


The aims of the current paper are to contribute to theorizing in the field of collective action and also to bring this body of research closer with the literature on climate change. We suggest integrating the concept of social norms into the social identity model of collective action, to investigate the determinants of individuals' collective climate action intention. We argue that perceived social norms will be helpful in understanding the social identity-collective action link. Consistent with the proposed model, participants' (N = 538) intention to take part in a neighborhood-based climate protection initiative was predicted via all of the model constructs (social identity, perceived collective efficacy, and group-based emotions) but most strongly so by the perceived participation norm, which also fully mediated the effect of social identity on participation intention. Further analyses suggested that the emotional motivation to engage in collective climate action was based on group-based guilty conscience rather than anger. Discussion focuses on the importance of social context in understanding and combating climatic change, the emotionally flexible motivations behind different forms of collective action, and the role of group identification in interventions aimed at promoting pro-environmental behavior. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Recently, we reported that the activation of A(3) adenosine receptor (A(3)R) in newborn cultured cardiomyocytes by highly selective agonist Cl-IB-MECA (2-chloro-N(6)-(3-iodobenzyl)adenosine-5'-N-methyluronamide) induces protection against the anthracycline antibiotic doxorubicin (DOX) cardiotoxicity. The present study was undertaken to further characterize the cardioprotective action of A(3)R activation by revealing the structural changes in cardiomyocytes elicited upon exposure to DOX. Morphological observations (ultrastructural and immunocytochemical) indicate that after DOX treatment, the cardiomyocytes undergo destructive alterations, and protective action of A(3)R is not connected with its anti-apoptotic activity. A(3)R activation appeared to prevent destructive alterations of cardiomyocyte mitochondria and dissipation of mitochondrial membrane potential. In DOX-treated cardiomyocytes, appearance of disorganized desmin and contractile filaments was related to detrimental alterations in the mitochondrial structure, in particular their position and transmembrane potential. In intact cardiomyocytes, diazoxide, a selective mitochondrial K(ATP) channel opener, induced an increase in ATP synthesis within 15 min of application. Similar effect was obtained by activation of adenosine A(1)R. However, A(3)R agonist Cl-IB-MECA did not affect ATP synthesis. Neither A(1)R agonist CCPA (2-chloro-N(6)-cyclopentyladenosine) nor diazoxide protected cardiomyocytes from the detrimental effects of DOX. Thus, the opening of mitochondrial K(ATP) channels does not seem to be effective during the slow development of anthracycline cytotoxicity. Our results indicate that DOX increases the activity of lysosomes, which may contribute to cell injury in an "oncotic" manner and also demonstrate the proinflammatory potency of the drug. Furthermore, the decreased acidification of cytoplasm upon activation of A(3)R may attenuate the ongoing inflammatory response. The present study identifies a novel role for A(3)R selective agonist Cl-IB-MECA and suggests its importance in regulating cardiac cellular function.


Purpose: to evaluate the prognostic potential of a multiparametric renal MRI protocol (perfusion, diffusion and T1) for the assessment of the allograft in the very early stages after transplantation. Methods: 18 transplanted patients were imaged 6 days after the transplantation with ASL, IVIM and T1 mapping sequences. 2 groups were made depending on the allograft evolution (group A: no adverse events and group B: any adverse event). Results: eGFR, album-creatinine ratio and cortical and medullary RBF were significantly higher in allografts of group A than in group B. Significant correlations between eGFR and RBF were found.


This paper describes the isolation and primary structure analysis of a new phospholipase A2 with platelet-aggregation-inhibiting activity from the venom of Bothrops jararaca. The protein, named BJ-PLA2, was isolated by means of ammonium sulfate precipitation and anion-exchange and reversed-phase chromatographies and behaved as a homogeneous single-chain protein on SDS-PAGE. Its amino acid sequence was determined by N-terminal sequencing and analysis of overlapped chemical and proteolytic fragments by automated Edman degradation and mass spectometry determination. BJ-PLA2 consists of 124 amino acid residues and has the structural features of snake venom class II phospholipases A2. Chemical modification with p-bromophenacylbromide caused complete loss of enzymatic activity and partially affected the platelet-aggregation-inhibiting activity of BJ-PLA2.


Rab5 GTPase modulates the trafficking of the cell surface receptors, including G protein-coupled β-adrenergic receptors (β-ARs). Here, we have determined the role of Rab5 in regulating the internalization of β-ARs in lung microvascular endothelial cells (LMECs) and in maintaining the integrity and permeability of endothelial cell barrier. Our data demonstrate that lipopolysaccharide (LPS) treatment disrupts LMEC barrier function and reduces the cell surface expression of β-ARs. Furthermore, the activation of β-ARs, particularly β2-AR, is able to protect the LMEC permeability from LPS injury. Moreover, siRNA-mediated knockdown of Rab5 inhibits both the basal and agonist-provoked internalization of β-ARs, therefore, enhancing the cell surface expression of the receptors and receptor-mediated ERK1/2 activation. Importantly, knockdown of Rab5 not only inhibits the LPS-induced effects on β-ARs but also protects the LMEC monolayer permeability. All together, these data provide strong evidence indicating a crucial role of Rab5-mediated internalization of β-ARs in functional regulation of LMECs.


An electron spin resonance (ESR) study of phosphorus centered electron capture radicals trapped in single crystals of substituted diphosphine disulfides [R2P(S)P(S)R2, R=Me, Et, Ph] irradiated with x rays at 77 K is reported. The principal values and direction cosines of the hyperfine and g tensors were determined. It is shown that in all three compounds a three‐electron P–P bond radical is formed. The unpaired electron is found to be symmetrically distributed over the two phosphorus atoms. The direction of the phosphorus hyperfine coupling makes an angle of 20°–30° with the P–P bond. The alkyl substituted diphosphine disulfides reveal furthermore a radical in which the unpaired electron is asymmetrically distributed over the two phosphorus atoms. The electronic configuration of these radicals is best described as trigonal bipyramidal (TBP) with a central phosphorus atom and the unpaired electron in an equatorial position (TBP‐e). The second phosphorus atom and a sulfur substituent are located on the apic...


To explore highly active and robust self-supporting air electrode is the key for flexible Zn-air batteries (FZABs). Therefore, we report a novel 3D structural bimetal-based self-supporting electrode consisting of hybrid Cu, Co nanoparticles co-modified nitrogen-doped carbon nanosheets on carbon cloth (Cu, Co NPs@NCNSs/CC), which displays excellent electrochemical activity and durability of oxygen reduction/evolution reaction (ORR/OER). The Cu, Co NPs@NCNSs/CC exhibits a half-wave potential of 0.863 V toward ORR and an overpotential of 225 mV at 10 mA cm-2 toward OER, owing to its exposed bimetallic sites accelerating kinetic reaction. In addition, the density functional theory calculation proves that the synergistic effect of CuCo sites favors ORR and OER. Hence, the FZABs based on Cu, Co NPs@NCNSs/CC achieve a larger open-circuit potential (1.45 V), higher energy density (130.10 mW cm-2), and outstandingly cycling stability. All remarkable results demonstrate valuable enlightenment for seeking advanced energy materials of portable and wearable electronics.


While dozens of stellar-mass black holes (BHs) have been discovered in binary systems, isolated BHs have eluded detection. Their presence can be inferred when they lens light from a background star. We attempt to detect the astrometric lensing signatures of three photometrically identified microlensing events, OGLE-2011-BLG-0022, OGLE-2011-BLG-0125, and OGLE-2012-BLG-0169 (OB110022, OB110125, and OB120169), located toward the Galactic Bulge. These events were selected because of their long durations, which statistically favors more massive lenses. Astrometric measurements were made over one to two years using laser-guided adaptive optics observations from the W. M. Keck Observatory. Lens model parameters were first constrained by the photometric light curves. The OB120169 light curve is well fit by a single-lens model, while both OB110022 and OB110125 light curves favor binary lens models. Using the photometric fits as prior information, no significant astrometric lensing signal was detected and all targets were consistent with linear motion. The significant lack of astrometric signal constrains the lens mass of OB110022 to 0.05–1.79 M⊙ in a 99.7% confidence interval, which disfavors a BH lens. Fits to OB110125 yielded a reduced Einstein crossing time and insufficient observations during the peak, so no mass limits were obtained. Two degenerate solutions exist for OB120169, which have a lens mass between 0.2–38.8 M⊙ and 0.4–39.8 M⊙ for a 99.7% confidence interval. Follow-up observations of OB120169 will further constrain the lens mass. Based on our experience, we use simulations to design optimal astrometric observing strategies and show that with more typical observing conditions the detection of BHs is feasible.


We report the correlated d(0) ferromagnetism and photoluminescence in undoped single-crystalline ZnO nanowires synthesized by using a vapor transport method. We systematically tune the oxygen deficiency in the ZnO nanowires from 4% to 20% by adjusting the growth conditions, i.e., selecting different catalyst (Au or Ag) and varying the growth temperature. Our study suggests that oxygen vacancies induce characteristic photoluminescence and significantly boost the room-temperature ferromagnetism. Such undoped ZnO nanowires with tunable magnetic and optical properties are promising to find applications in multifunctional spintronic and photonic nanodevices.


To investigate the potential role of cysteine in the increased parasite susceptibility of sheep selected for increased wool production, ten sheep from both fleece-weight-selected (FW) and randomly-selected (C) Romney lines received either 2g of supplemental cysteine per day, or saline, via abomasal infusion. Following drenching to remove any pre-existing parasites, all sheep were dosed with Haemonchus contortus and Trichostrongylus colubriformis infective larvae. Cysteine infusion elevated plasma cysteine levels by an average of 65% (P<0.0001). Off-pasture faecal egg counts (FEC) were higher in FW than C sheep (645 versus 200 eggs/g, P<0.01). No significant effects of line or infusion treatment on FEC were observed following the trial infection, though on days 52, 57 and 58, FEC in sheep receiving saline were at least twice those of sheep receiving cysteine. Total H. contortus counts were greater in FW than C lines of sheep (1208 versus 1055, P<0.05), while total numbers of T. colubriformis did not differ between lines or infusions. This study confirms the greater susceptibility of FW sheep to internal parasites, and suggests cysteine may influence certain aspects of immunocompetency in sheep.


In this study new realized volatility measures based on Multi-Scale regression and Discrete Sine Transform (DST) approaches are presented. We show that Multi-Scales estimators similar to that recently proposed by Zhang (2004) can be constructed within a simple regression based approach by exploiting the linear relation existing between the market microstructure bias and the realized volatilities computed at different frequencies. These regression based estimators can be further improved and robustified by using the DST approach to prefilter market microstructure noise. The motivation for the DST approach rests on its ability to diagonalize MA type of process which arises naturally in discrete time models of tick-by-tick returns with market microstructure noise. Hence, the DST provides a natural orthonormal basis decomposition of observed returns which permits to optimally disentangle the volatility signal of the underlying price process from the market microstructure noise. Robustness of the DST approach with respect to more general dependent structure of the microstructure noise is also analytically shown. Then, the combination of such Multi-Scale regression approach with the DST gives us a Multi-Scales DST realized volatility estimator which is robust against a wide class of noise contaminations and model misspecifications. Thanks to the DST orthogonalization which also allows us to analytically derive closed form expressions for the Cramer-Rao bounds of MA(1) processes, an evaluation of the absolute efficiency of volatility estimators under the i.i.d. noise assumption becomes available, indicating that the Multi-Scales DST estimator posses a finite sample variance very close to the optimal Cramer-Rao bounds. Monte Carlo simulations based on realistic models for price dynamics and market microstructure effects, show the superiority of DST estimators, compared to alternative volatility proxies for a wide range of noise to signal ratios and different types of noise contaminations. Empirical analysis based on six years of tick-by-tick data for S&P 500 index-future, FIB 30, and 30 years U.S. Treasury Bond future, confirms the accuracy and robustness of DST estimators on different types of real data. JEL classification: C13; C22; C50; C80


The purpose of this research were: 1) analyzing the leadership style, pay fairness, job satisfaction and organizational commitment of Nizar Bordir Company. 2) analyzing and examining the impact of leadership style and pay fairness on job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The research type is explanatory research. The sampling technique used in this study was a proportionate random sampling. Participants in research included 120 employees selected from all departments in the company. The study adopted the descriptive method using the survey and information from the company and analyzing the impact of leadership style and pay fairness on job satisfaction and organizational commitment by using path analysis. The results of this research showed that: firstly, leadership style, pay fairness, job satisfaction and organizational commitment in the company were evaluated and described. Secondly leadership style has negative impact on both job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Thirdly, pay fairness has positive and direct effect on job satisfaction and indirect effect on organizational commitment. Lastly, job satisfaction has positive and direct effect on organizational commitment.


Lawvere's algebraic theories, or Lawvere theories, underpin a categorical approach to general algebra, and Lawvere's adjunction between semantics and algebraic structure leads to an equivalence between Lawvere theories and finitary monads on the category of sets. Several authors have transported these ideas to a variety of settings, including contexts of category theory enriched in a symmetric monoidal closed category. In this paper, we develop a general axiomatic framework for enriched structure-semantics adjunctions and monad-theory equivalences for subcategories of arities. Not only do we establish a simultaneous generalization of the monad-theory equivalences previously developed in the settings of Lawvere (1963), Linton (1966), Dubuc (1970), Borceux-Day (1980), Power (1999), Nishizawa-Power (2009), Lack-Rosick\'y (2011), Lucyshyn-Wright (2016), and Bourke-Garner (2019), but also we establish a structure-semantics theorem that generalizes those given in the first four of these works while applying also to the remaining five, for which such a result has not previously been developed. Furthermore, we employ our axiomatic framework to establish broad new classes of examples of enriched monad-theory equivalences and structure-semantics adjunctions for subcategories of arities enriched in locally bounded closed categories, including various convenient closed categories that are relevant in topology and analysis and need not be locally presentable.


Erosive processes of soil by water have always showed serious problems, mainly in those areas such as the Mediterranean environment, where the vigour of the surface, frequently low resistence of materials, little vegetation cover or bare ground, hard rainfalls and deficient management of resources, have led to favourable conditions for soil degradation. In the Mediterranean area of Spain agricultural andforest soil erosion is one ofthe most serious environmental problems.
The erosivity of Mediterranean rainfalls highly depends both on the intensity and on the volume of precipitations. Rainfalls in the Mediterranean area are characterized by their fortuitousness and their concentration in a few days, particularly in Autum. Rainfalls of 100, 200 and even 300 mm, registered by pluviometers in a few hours period, release high amounts of energy whose consequencies are visible everywhere: heavy soillosses, gullying, undermining, landsliding, piping, bulky sedimentations, flooding ... The evaluation of erosion rates generated by rainfalls, which constitutes the basisfor the determination offactor R of the U.S.L.E., presents some problems. However, the results of the erosive elficacy of heavy rainjaUs are evident all over the Mediterranean area.


A 45-year-old Japanese woman with multiple sclerosis (MS) manifested hypersomnia in a relapse of MS. Magnetic resonance imaging revealed new bilateral hypothalamic lesions, and the hypocretin-1 level in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) was significantly low. Methylprednisolone pulse treatment successfully resolved the hypersomnia and the left hypothalamic lesion, and it normalized the hypocretin-1 level in the CSF. These findings suggest that the hypothalamic hypocretin (orexin) system may be crucial to maintaining the arousal level and that lesions in the system can cause hypersomnia in MS.


The material for this work is taken from the social histories of 10,000 families which we have gathered in the course of ten years. The social status represented is that usually seen in a large city such as New York, in families in which the earning capacity in prewar times was from ten to eighteen dollars a week, a bare living wage. The nationalities included are approximately: We were fortunate in having, during the period covered, the same social worker, a woman versed in the various languages, so that the data may be considered fairly even and accurate. The social histories were obtained on special cards, 1 on which were noted income, nationality, pregnancies, miscarriages, etc. Of the 10,000 charts of social histories thus obtained, we have analyzed only the first 7,000, partly on account of the stupendous amount of work involved, and also because we believe that the present


Understanding Anticipatory Grief: Relationship to Coping Style, Attachment Style, Caregiver Strain, Gender Role Identification, and Spirituality. (August 2005) Brent Nathan Lane, B.S., University of North Texas; M.S., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Donna S. Davenport This study investigated predictors of anticipatory grief among 70 caregivers using hospice services to care for a dying individual. Anticipatory grief (AG) was positively associated with disengagement coping; more specifically, it was negatively associated with problem avoidance and positively associated with wishful thinking and social withdrawal. Additionally, attachment anxiety was positively associated with anticipatory grief, while attachment avoidance was negatively related. Lastly, spirituality was found to be negatively associated with anticipatory grief. Engagement coping, caregiver strain, and masculine and feminine gender role identification did not significantly predict AG. Implications for clinical practice with caregivers as well as recommendations for future research are offered.


The purpose of this study was to find out the indigenous number and number sense of people in Kafa and to explore its level of integration to school curriculum. To this end, the study followed a qualitative research method which utilized ethnographic case study (embedded) design. Data were collected from 22 key participants through interview, observation, and focus group discussion. In addition, content analysis was used to investigate the level of integration of number and number sense to school curriculum. Accordingly, the study found that base six (maqoo) and base sixty (uddoo) counting systems, fractions and measurement related mathematical systems are found embedded in Kafa agricultural setting. The study further found that indigenous number and number sense of Kafa people were partially integrated in school curriculum. The implication of the finding is that there is a need to improve the existing school curriculum in a way it covers indigenous number and number sense of the people in Kafa.


This article investigates childlessness in Italy. Trends in childlessness are presented and compared with trends elsewhere in Europe. Different paths to childlessness are outlined, using data from a survey carried out among childless women aged 40-44 in five Italian cities in 2002. Individual characteristics of the childless and reasons for childlessness are investigated. As many as one-third of the interviewees who live with a partner and do not suffer from any physical impediment are voluntarily childless. These women, in contrast to mothers, appear to be less religious and to have partners who are less religious; they tend to come from smaller families; to have been in a nonmarital cohabitation at least once in life; to have entered their first union later; and to have had, in the initial period of their union, temporary work and flexible work schedules and limited leisure time. In other cases, childlessness is the unintended outcome of a decision to delay having a child or the result of adverse external circumstances, particularly dissolution of partnership. Copyright (c) 2008 The Population Council, Inc..