ABSTRACT This mixed-methods study examined variables associated with use of experience-based (i.e., anecdotal) decisional strategies among 85 undergraduate students presented with 2 hypothetical lung cancer scenarios. Participants were asked to think aloud while they made their treatment choice. Eleven decisional strategies were identified and grouped into either data or experience-based strategies. Approximately, 25% of participants used experience-based strategies. Use of experience-based strategies was more likely if the participant reported involvement in the life of someone going through cancer treatment, and if they rated print-based media sources as less important. Use of experience-based strategies was associated with choosing surgery instead of radiation for lung cancer treatment.


Glucagon release from isolated islets (collagenase digestion) in control and streptozotocin-treated diabetic rats was measured in varying glucose concentrations and in the presence or absence of added insulin. High glucagon release from diabetic islets was noted, and this glucagon release could not be suppressed by glucose. Incubation of diabetic islets with insulin, 1,000 μU./1 ml., suppressed glucagon release at high glucose concentrations. Addition of insulin to control islets had no effect, nor had the administration of insulin to diabetic animals before decapitation. It is concluded that insulin deficiency removes the normal glucose suppression of glucagon release and that the effect can be reversed by high concentrations of insulin.


The pursuit of 'effectiveness' is a predominant theme in contemporary probation and, increasingly, in all forms of social work. Even if it were accepted that empirical research studies have identified some principles of effective programmes, there would still be room for differing organisational and educational approaches to fostering effectiveness. This article explores the contributions and limitations of different forms of managerialism to this purpose, as well as the potential contribution that a renewed professionalism might offer. In addition, the author reports some of the findings of an in-depth qualitative research study which explored frontline workers' perspectives on the definition and delivery as well as the development of effective probation. Focussing mainly on findings concerning workers' views about factors which might have been expected to influence the development of their effectiveness, the author notes that workers had mixed views about the contributions of education, training and supervision, and stressed the significance of local peer influences. They also reported a disjunction between education and research on the one hand, and practice on the other. It is argued that, although this disjunction is consistent with managerialism in some senses, it will undermine efforts to develop effectiveness. Therefore in the concluding discussion, the author explores the roles that academics as researchers and educators might usefully play in fostering effectiveness.


This article presents an econometric analysis of the maintenance costs for the Austrian railway system. The data contain observations of track maintenance costs from 1998 to 2000. Our analysis identifies the cost driving factors in order to determine estimates of marginal costs, as required by the infrastructure provision principles of the European Union. The analysis identifies the variables "track length" and "transported gross-tons" as the principal cost determinants. Furthermore, we observe that total costs as well as marginal costs increase with (i) a high proportion of the track occupied by train stations, (ii) the number of switches within a track, (iii) narrow bends, and (iv) considerable slopes. Moreover average as well as marginal costs for secondary lines are significantly higher than for main lines. (author's abstract)


Emily sits hunched over her computer, rapidly typing commands. She checks and double-checks the code. Then she executes the program, smiling gleefully as zombies scatter across the screen, growing in number as the population of humans dwindles. "See how quickly the zombie infestation spreads?" she asks excitedly. "That's what happens in real life with a contagious disease. And I can simulate it with a set of simple commands." She turns back to the computer to modify the program before running it again. Meanwhile, Alex rolls a regular pair of dice, identifies the direction and distance of his move, and places a marker on a space on a paper "chessboard." He records the steps and the position in his laboratory notebook, repeats the process, and continues like this until all of the spaces are covered. He is attempting to model with a few simple rules the spread of a population, analogous to an invasive species or a bacterial colony expanding into new territory. What is going on? Is this biology? Mathematics? Computer science? In fact, these students are exploring the emerging field of computational biomodeling. Biomodeling is the study of the structures and behaviors of interacting biological entities such as molecules, cells, or organisms. While physical and chemical processes give rise to various spatial and temporal structures, even the simplest biological phenomenon is infinitely more complex (Kling 2004). Over the past decade, much of biomodeling research has focused on developing mathematical and computer models that replicate the characteristics of a cell or other biological organism (Anderson, Chaplain, and Rejniak 2007; Chauviere and Preziosi 2010). At colleges and universities, mathematicians, biologists, physicists, biochemists, and computer scientists are developing ways to study biological problems using mathematical methods, probability theory, and stochastic (randomly determined but statistically analyzable) processes coupled with computer modeling. Several universities have created multidisciplinary programs that examine this growing field, including the University of Notre Dame, Indiana University, and Ohio State University. Computer modeling programs that simulate biological processes are found online (see "On the web"). This article describes hands-on activities that introduce teachers and students to biomodeling. The activities align with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS Lead States 2013; see box, p. 51). Emergent behavior A key concept in computational biomodeling is emergent behavior, in which individual agents work together, and larger patterns arise through interactions among simpler entities that do not exhibit such properties themselves. (An example is a flock of birds moving together without any apparent central coordination or leadership.) With biomodeling, scientists can show that a few simple rules can achieve order from chaos. To develop these models, step-by-step stochastic, probabilistic processes are used to predict long-term behavior. The three activities below are classroom-tested examples of biomodeling concepts that demonstrate simple stochastic processes. Each can be completed in a single class period and requires minimal equipment. All are appropriate for all high school grade levels and biology courses, from introductory biology to AP Environmental Science to AP Biology. (Note: It is not necessary to introduce students to myxobacteria to complete these exercises. They can be performed as inquiry-based exercises with a follow-up classroom discussion of the behavior of Myxococcus xanthus.) [FIGURE 1 OMITTED] [FIGURE 2 OMITTED] Activity 1: Random walk and simulating the movement of myxobacteria in one dimension. Background: M. xanthus are aerobic, rod-shaped bacteria that move across surfaces via gliding motility, i.e., by sliding along a surface using pulling and pushing. …


In this article we reviewed the experimental results of self-assembled and patterned Fe and Fe3O4 dots on GaAs(100) and InAs(100) surfaces. Superparamagnetic nanoclusters were formed during the Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) growth of the Fe on both GaAs(100) and InAs(100) substrates within 2.5 to 4.8 ML coverage. STM, MOKE and XMCD measurements were performed to characterize the structural and magnetic properties of these nanoclusters. These nanoclusters exhibit strong uniaxial anisotropy of the order of 6.0 X 105 erg/cm3. Magnetic domain structures and coersivities of the epitaxial Fe films grown on GaAs(100) and patterned into arrays of circular dot were also investigated. MOKE and MFM studies revealed that the 1 µm diameter single domain dot arrays showed direct evidence of strong interdot dipolar coupling when the separation is reduced to 0.1 µm. The coercivities of the dots were also observed to be dependent on the separation and size of the dots indicating that interdot dipolar coupling affects the magnetization processes in these dots. Fe3O4 films grown on deformed GaAs(100) substrate formed nanostripes following the topography of the substrate. MOKE measurements showed that these nanostipes have uniaxial magnetic anisotropy with easy axis perpendicular to the length of the nanostripes. This suggests that the magnto-elastic coupling plays more dominant role than that of the shape anisotropy in determining the magnetic properties of these nanostripes.


This article examines continental, sub-regional and national initiatives in the formulation of intellectual property policy Africa. The article is divided into seven parts. The first looks at the relationship between IP and economic development. The second part examines the role of IP regional integration and trade. The third part looks at African regional trade agreements. Next, the article surveys the activities of sub-regional IP systems in Africa: the African Regional Intellectual Property Organization (ARIPO) and the Organisation Africaine de la Propriété (OAPI). The fifth part looks at the recent formation of the Pan African Intellectual Property Organization (PAIPO) and its relationship with ARIPO and OAPI. The sixth part gives a brief overview of the efforts made in designing national IP polices. The concluding section summarizes the IP policy-making process in Africa.


Date Presented 04/06/19
 A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of public space interventions promoting community engagement for families with children with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Findings suggest a dearth of research and limited evidence supporting current effectiveness. Further research and collaboration among OTs, stakeholders, and public institutions are needed to increase opportunities for families' meaningful participation in the community.
 Primary Author and Speaker: Holly Romaniak
 Additional Authors and Speakers: Elisabeth Hladik, Karla Ausderau


A detailed study has been made of the mixed cryoglobulins (MCs) occurring in four patients with different disease states. These included (1) macroglobulinemia of Waldenström with an IgM(K)/IgG cryocomplex containing Clq, free DNA, rheumatoid factor, anti-ssDNA and VDRL activity; (2) Peetom-Meltzer syndrome with an IgM(K)/IgG cryocomplex containing free DNA, Clq, Cls, fibrinogen, alpha2-macroglobulin and beta-lipoprotein; (3) rheumatoid arthritis with an IgM(K)/IgG cryocomplex containing rheumatoid factor, free DNA and anti-ssDNA activity; and (4) angioimmunoblastic lymphadenopathy with an IgM(K)/IgG cryocomplex containing rheumatoid factor, free DNA and anti-I cold agglutinin activity. All of these patients exhibited multisystem involvement with evidence of vascular injury. A review of the MCs found in various clinical states, reveals that whereas in systemic lupus erythematosus MCs almost invariably possess antinuclear factor activity and contain DNA as well as some components of complement, in Peetom-Meltzer syndrome MCs do not have these characteristics, but invariably have strong rheumatoid factor activity, usually absent in MCs from systemic lupus erythematosus. MCs in lymphoproliferative disorders have strong rheumatoid factor activity but not ANF activity. In infectious diseases, MCs usually exhibit strong rheumatoid factor, VDRL and cold agglutinin activity, and co-precipitate with alpha2-macroglobulin. While there is some overlap in the characteristics of MCs from various clinical diseases, the above mentioned differences are probably of some biological importance and require further investigation.


There are many real-life processes whose smart control requires processing context information. Though processing time-varied context information is addressed in the literature, domain-independent solutions for reasoning about time-varying process scenarios are scarce. This paper proposes a method for dynamic context computation concerning spatial and attributive information. Context is interpreted as a body of information dynamically created by a pattern of entities and relationships over a history of situations. Time is conceived as a causative force capable of changing situations and acting on people and objects. The invariant and variant spatial information is captured by a two-dimensional spatial feature representation matrix (SFR-matrix). The time-dependent changes in the context information are computed based on a dynamic context information (DCI) management hyper-matrix. This humble but powerful representation lends itself to a quasi-real time computing and is able to provide information about foreseeable happenings over multiple situations. Based on this, the reasoning mechanism proposed in this paper is able to provide informative instructions for users who needed to be informed in a dynamically changing situation. This paper uses the practical case of evacuation of a building in fire both as an explorative case for conceptualization of the functionality of the computational mechanism and as a demonstrative and testing application. Our intention is to use the dynamic context computation mechanism as a kernel component of a reasoning platform for informing cyber-physical systems (I-CPSs). Our future research will address the issue of context information management for multiple interrelated spaces.


Author(s): Unger, Elizabeth Kaye | Advisor(s): Shah, Nirao M | Abstract: All sexually reproducing animals display sex differences in social behaviors. These dimorphic behaviors are a consequence of molecular, cellular and circuit-level sex differences in the brain. In mice, these differences arise as a result of masculinization (or not) during the perinatal critical period. My lab has shown explicitly that perinatal exposure to estrogen is the key to masculinization of the brain. A male-specific surge of testosterone is then converted to estrogen by the enzyme aromatase, which is expressed locally in the brain. Estrogen then initiates a cascade of events that permanently alter the brain and prime it for male-typical behaviors. Females, in contrast, have no perinatal sex hormone surge. Estrogen, however, also acts in the adult brain, in both males and females, though its actions have not yet been delineated. My thesis addresses both the developmental and adult roles for estrogen and aromatase, as well as the neurons within the brain that express aromatase. I first examine the role of aromatase in the process of feminization of the brain. I find that absence of aromatase is both necessary and sufficient to produce a feminized brain and that feminization does appear to be the default state of the brain. I then examine the role of estrogen in adulthood and show that loss of aromatase function in males has no behavioral consequences for any of the behaviors I assayed. Because aromatase appears to be playing a minimal role in adulthood, its continued expression within the adult brain remains a mystery. I next explored the role of the neurons expressing aromatase, specifically within the medial amygdala (MeA), because the MeA has been shown to be important for sex-specific behaviors. Using an aromatase-Cre mouse, I show that ablation or inactivation of aromatase-expressing neurons in the MeA results in a mild deficit in aggression, but has no effect on mating behavior. All together, my findings show that presence or absence of aromatase dictates masculinization or feminization of the brain, and in adulthood, marks neurons within the brain that are necessary for sex-specific behaviors.


To prevent the global transmission of mutant viruses and minimize the damage caused by mutant virus infection, the accurate identification of newly emerged mutant viruses should be a priority. The key problem in mutant virus identification is that the selective detection of a mutant virus in the biological environment, where small amounts of mutant virus and copious amounts of wild-type virus coexist, is difficult. Herein, we report specific and ultrasensitive detection of oseltamivir-resistant (pH1N1/H275Y mutant) virus using functional Au nanoparticles (NPs). The functional Au NPs were prepared by modifying the surfaces of Au NPs with oseltamivir hexylthiol (OHT) and malachite green isothiocyanate (MGITC) simultaneously. OHT is an excellent receptor for the pH1N1/H275Y mutant virus because it has a 250-fold higher binding affinity for the pH1N1/H275Y mutant virus than for the wild-type virus. MGITC is a Raman reporter that provides a distinctive surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) signal. The SERS signal of MGITC on Au NPs allows us to detect pH1N1/H275Y mutant viruses sensitively and quantitatively. The functional Au NPs enable naked-eye and SERS dual-mode detection of mutant viruses. Only in the presence of the pH1N1/H275Y mutant virus, the functional Au NPs aggregate, and the color of the NPs changes from red to purple. This allows us to detect mutant viruses with the naked eye. Furthermore, the aggregated Au NPs can provide strong SERS signals of MGITC. By measuring the SERS signals, we could detect the pH1N1/H275Y mutant virus with a detection limit of 10 PFU. Importantly, the pH1N1/H275Y mutant virus could be detected by using the functional Au NPs even in a mixture of mutant and wild-type viruses with a ratio of 1/100. This result suggests that the present method might be employed for the diagnosis of oseltamivir-resistant virus and for further research, including mutant virus analysis and drug development.


We describe here a new method for the direct measurement of the conversion rate of T4 to T3 in man. The metabolic study was performed in 23 subjects: 13 healthy controls, 7 T4-treated hypothyroids, and 3 sick euthyroid patients. The experimental protocol involved the simultaneous iv bolus injection of [125I]T4 and [131I]T3, and the use of Sephadex G-25 column chromatography to determine the plasma concentrations of [125I]T4, [131I]T3, and [125I]T3 newly formed through 5'-monodeiodination of labeled T4 in the peripheral tissues. The T4 and T3 kinetic parameters were determined by noncompartmental analysis. The conversion rate of T4 to T3 was computed by a method based on the precursor-product relationship, using the [131I]T3 disappearance curve for correcting the concentrations of newly formed [125I]T3 (convolution method). The conversion rate of T4 to T3 was 0.2541 +/- 0.0125 (mean +/- SEM) in the control group and was significantly reduced (0.1283 +/- 0.0204; P less than 0.001) in the sick euthyroid patients, while it was slightly, though not significantly, increased in the T4-treated patients (0.2932 +/- 0.0220). A close agreement was found between the values for the conversion rate obtained by the convolution approach and those derived from the ratio between the serum concentrations of [125I]T3 and [125I]T4 at equilibrium. The conversion rates obtained by the convolution approach were also in good agreement with the values estimated from the molar ratio between the turnover rates of T3 and T4. In the control group, 72.0 +/- 3.6% of the circulating T3 was produced by 5'-monodeiodination of T4 in the peripheral tissues, and 28.0 +/- 3.6% of the circulating T3 derived from direct thyroidal secretion. The sick euthyroid patients showed a significantly smaller proportion of circulating T3 deriving from peripheral conversion of T4 (52.5 +/- 3.9%; P less than 0.025).


The purpose of this submission is two-fold. Firstly, it undertakes a socio-legal analysis of child sexuality and sexual behaviour. The goal of the analysis is to confront, albeit synoptically, common-held misperceptions, both legally and socially, on the subject of childhood sexuality. Secondly, the submission considers how legislation and judicial interpretation has responded to the expression of a child's sexuality in South Africa. The legal and judicial analysis is centred on the categorization of age, and queries the wisdom of confining normal, non-deviant sexual development in terms of disparate age classifications as expressed in South African Legislation.


Image classification technology and performance based on Deep Learning have already achieved high standards. Nevertheless, many efforts have conducted to improve the stability of classification via ensembling. However, the existing ensemble method has a limitation in that it requires extra effort including time consumption to find the weight for each model output. In this paper, we propose a simple but improved ensemble method, naming with Self-Weighted Ensemble (SWE), that places the weight of each model via its verification reliability. The proposed ensemble method, SWE, reduces overall efforts for constructing a classification system with varied classifiers. The performance using SWE is 0.033% higher than the conventional ensemble method. Also, the percent of performance superiority to the previous model is up to 73.333% (ratio of 8:22).


Paraguay: Addressing the Stagnation and Instability Trap provides an overview of the analytical insights and policy challenges that a country faces while on the path to sustained growth with stability. It covers a wide range of themes, including improving macroeconomic assessments and policy implementation, eliminating turbulence and deepening financial reforms, and, most important of all, enhancing growth performance and reducing poverty. This book provides useful guidance for policymakers by examining the improvements in policy implementation in Paraguay since the regional crisis of 2002. The chapters discuss how to correct economic imbalances and institutional shortcomings in the context of an economic reform program. The results have been impressive with the Paraguayan economy experiencing the highest growth in a quarter of a century and the strongest financial system in decades.


This paper describes a low complexity strategy for detecting and recognizing text signs automatically. Traditional approaches use large image algorithms for detecting the text sign, followed by the application of an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) algorithm in the previously identified areas. This paper proposes a new architecture that applies the OCR to a whole lightly treated image and then carries out the text detection process of the OCR output. The strategy presented in this paper significantly reduces the processing time required for text localization in an image, while guaranteeing a high recognition rate. This strategy will facilitate the incorporation of video processing-based applications into the automatic detection of text sign similar to that of a smartphone. These applications will increase the autonomy of visually impaired people in their daily life.


Purpose

Innovations provide a vital stimulus for economic growth. Through innovations, public sector organisations (PSOs) need to grow the economy to provide for the needs of their citizens. The purpose of this study is to identify innovation drivers and barriers in PSOs in Kenya. The paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the antecedents of innovations and to offer insight to PSOs to foster such innovations.

Design/methodology/approach

This research was conducted in two PSOs in Kenya. The participants of the present study consisted of a sample of 186 managerial and non-managerial employees. Empirical data were analysed using descriptive statistics, factor analysis and multiple regression analysis.

Findings

First, the results indicate that drivers of innovation in PSOs are: leadership practices, social factors, technological factors and management practices. Second, the results reveal that poor management practices and over-reliance on existing resources, among others, are barriers to public sector innovation. Third, the study indicates that management practices and leadership practices are factors to consider in overcoming barriers.

Research limitations/implications

As the present study was conducted with a convenience sample of 186 respondents from 2 purposively selected PSOs in Kenya, the extent to which the results could be generalized may be in doubt. However, as the aim of the study was theory testing, the study makes a contribution in this regard rather than doing a representative survey.

Practical implications

The study offers a first-hand insight into public sector innovation from the perspective of a developing country, Kenya, an area that has been neglected by researchers. The present study has implications for theory, practice, research and policy development, mainly in Kenya, but also for comparable situations worldwide.

Originality/value

The present study represents a first attempt to investigate the drivers, barriers, overcoming barriers and outcomes to innovations in a single study of PSOs from a developing nation. The present study provokes both academics and policy makers to rethink approaches to nurture innovations in the public sector.


Introduction: Burn mass casualty incident (BMCI) response planning includes involving relevant stakeholders, assessing regional burn care capacity, and addressing the specialized needs of burn patients. An essential component of these processes is an evaluation of existing resources and plans. In this study, a province with three important elements—a singular health authority to plan for, two burn centres, and updated health technology—was selected for evaluation. Aim: What are the current policies, protocols, and practices that address a provincial response to a BMCI? Methods: In this ethics approved case study, qualitative description methodology was used for data analysis. Data were gathered from documents outlining the health system response to a mass casualty incident from the health system internal emergency response plans. Health care professionals directly involved in the response were recruited for interviews. Participants were recruited from prehospital emergency management services, hospital emergency departments, inpatient burn units, and a provincial patient transport department. Interviews were conducted online, recorded, and transcribed. Qualitative description was used to code common themes across documents and transcripts. Results: Thirteen documents and nine participant interviews were included. Only two documents included burn-specific considerations. Current policies and protocols were limited to all-hazards mass casualty incident planning and did not address specialized needs of burn care. Current plans were based on assumptions that all burn patients would be triaged and transported to burn centres and that surge capacity would be adequate to accommodate for increased demands. Prehospital participants (n=3) felt that existing plans would adequately manage a BMCI. Six participants stated the current plans were not sufficient to manage a BMCI. A comprehensive description of the complex health system response to a potential BMCI was obtained. Some major deficiencies identified included a lack of strategies to bolster burn care staffing capacity such as just-in-time training resources for non-burn trained staff or utilization of outpatient burn clinic staff. Considerations for increased operating room and wound care resources were absent. Conclusions: Current provincial all hazards response plans are not sufficient to support adequate response to a BMCI and need to be amended to address the specialized needs of burn patients. Strategies for expanding capacity such as care of burn patients at non burn facilities and utilization of outpatient clinics must be integrated into future plans. Applicability of Research to Practice: The provincial health authority needs to support BMCI response planning efforts to better address this unique hazard prior to an incident occurring for best patient outcomes. Abstract citation ID: irad045.199


The band texture of a thermotropic cellulose derivative, trifluoroacetoxypropylcellulose, was studied by optical microscopy. The texture consists of parallel, long, thin, black lines when viewed between crossed polarizers with one polarizer parallel to the shear direction. These lines are perpendicular to the shear direction. Their optical properties indicate that the molecules are cooperatively oriented and this orientation director alternates from 0° to ±45° from the shear direction, with most of them at ±45°. This band phenomenon is identical to that observed with thermotropic nematic copolyesters.


The interstitial cells in bladder lamina propria (LP-ICs) are believed to be involved in sensing/afferent signaling in bladder mucosa. Transient receptor potential (TRP) cation channels act as mechano- or chemo-sensors and may underlie some of the sensing function of bladder LP-ICs. We aimed to investigate the molecular and functional expression of TRP channels implicated in bladder sensory function and Piezo1/Piezo2 channels in cultured LP-ICs of the human bladder. Bladder tissues were obtained from patients undergoing cystectomy. LP-ICs were isolated and cultured, and used for real-time reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction, immunocytochemistry, and calcium-imaging experiments. At the mRNA level, TRPA1, TRPV2, and Piezo1 were expressed most abundantly. Immunocytochemical staining showed protein expression of TRPA1, TRPV1, TRPV2, TRPV4, TRPM8, as well as Piezo1 and Piezo2. Calcium imaging using channel agonists/antagonists provided evidence for functional expression of TRPA1, TRPV2, TRPV4, Piezo1, but not of TRPV1 or TRPM8. Activation of these channels with their agonist resulted in release of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) from LP-ICs. Inhibition of TRPV2, TRPV4 and Piezo1 blocked the stretch induced intracellular Ca2+ increase. Whereas inhibition of TRPA1 blocked H2O2 evoked response in LP-ICs. Our results suggest LP-ICs of the bladder can perceive stretch or chemical stimuli via activation of TRPV2, TRPV4, Piezo1 and TRPA1 channels. LP-ICs may work together with urothelial cells for perception and transduction of mechanical or chemical signals in human-bladder mucosa.


Gathering large collections of images is quite easy nowadays with the advent of image sharing Web sites, such as flickr.com. However, such collections inevitably contain duplicates and highly similar images, what we refer to as image families. Automatic discovery and cataloguing of such similar images in large collections is important for many applications, e.g. image search, image collection visualization, and research purposes among others. In this work, we investigate this problem by thoroughly comparing two broad approaches for measuring image similarity: global vs. local features. We assess their performance as the image collection scales up to over 11,000 images with over 6,300 families. We present our results on three datasets with different statistics, including two new challenging datasets. Moreover, we present a new algorithm to automatically determine the number of families in the collection with promising results.


Purpose
Research on workaholism distinguishes between enthusiastic and non-enthusiastic workaholics, a typology used in many studies. Yet, the methodical foundation on which the derivation of the types is based lacks robust statistical evidence. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to replicate the often-cited typology of enthusiastic and non-enthusiastic workaholics (and non-workaholic subtypes), based on model-based clustering as a robust statistical technique; and second, to validate the class solution based on affective, cognitive and behavioral measures.

Design/methodology/approach
The study followed a cross-sectional design, targeting a sample of people from various fields of industries. An online questionnaire was distributed; workaholism was assessed with McMillan et al.'s (2002) Work-BAT-R scales. A total of 537 respondents' data were analyzed.

Findings
Latent profile analysis extracted four classes, namely, enthusiastic and non-enthusiastic workaholics and relaxed and uninvolved non-workaholics. As expected, workers characterized by high enjoyment (enthusiasts and relaxed) showed higher job satisfaction and occupational self-efficacy than workers with low enjoyment (non-enthusiasts and uninvolved). Relaxed workers reported higher life satisfaction than all other classes.

Originality/value
The robust methodology applied establishes a good starting point for future studies investigating workers subtypes: the replication suggests that the workaholic subtypes might be core profiles that occur in different populations with regularity. As a next step, the replication of the typology based on alternative operationalizations of workaholism is proposed for future studies.


Flow cytometric DNA studies were performed on cell suspensions of biopsy specimens from gastric tumors and neutral gastric mucosa in 18 patients with gastric cancer and 9 patients with gastric polyps. In cancer, aneuploidy was found in two tumors in the antral and five in the body part of the stomach (39%). The mean DNA index for aneuploid cancers was 1.57. In patients with aneuploid carcinomas three biopsy specimens from uninvolved mucosa also showed aneuploidy. In diploid carcinomas in the antral part of the stomach, the proliferative index (PI) was increased when compared with that of antral mucosa in controls (p less than 0.05). Increased PI was found in uninvolved mucosa in aneuploid carcinomas of the body part of the stomach when compared with that in diploid carcinomas (p less than 0.001). In uninvolved body mucosa in aneuploid carcinomas of the body part significantly reduced levels of acid-beta-glucuronidase (p less than 0.0001) were found when compared with diploid carcinomas. No polyps showed aneuploidy, and the PI in biopsy specimens from patients with gastric polyps did not differ from that in controls.


Background : Severe pulmonary hypertension (PH) due to COPD has dismal prognosis. PH-target-therapy may worsen ventilation-perfusion mismatch and is insufficiently studied.

Method : For COPD-PH-patients, PH-target-therapy, NYHA, 6MWD, SpO2 and QoL were noted at baseline,3,6,12&24 months.

Results : Data from 27 patients were analysed (7 females, 21 smokers, 23 emphysema) baseline median(quartiles):age 70(60;76), FEV1 60(46;78)%, FEV1/FVC 57(51;64)%, DLCO 42(36;59)%, mPAP 39(32;44)mmHg. Therapies included inhaled-iloprost(10), sc-treprostinil(2), iv-prostanoids(3), endothelin-receptor antagonists(15) and PDE-5-inhibitors(25). Under therapy, NYHA improved from 3.5(3;4) to 3(2;4) and 3(2;3.5) at 3&6 months (p= 0.02&0.008), the 6MWD from 373(236;452) to 395(339;472), 414(285;492)& 396(308;497)m at 3,6&12 months(p= 0.005,0.006&0.011) with unchanged resting-SpO2 of 92(86;94)% but decreased SpO2 after 6MW to 87(79;92) to 81(76;87), 83(76;88)& 80(82;89)% (p=0.014, 0.014&0.116). During median follow-up of 5.9(2.3;8.4)years, 10 died (after 3.1(2.3;4.3)years, 2 were transplanted (after 2.7(1.7;3.6)years) and 2 lost-to-follow-up after 3.3(2.2;4.4)years. Transplant-free-survival at 1,2,3 years was 92,69 and 54% and was similar for GOLD-stages 1-4, but worse for patients with mPAP≥40mmHg (p= 0.026), 6MWD<370m (p= 0.008), resting SpO2<92% (p= 0.02) and post-walk SpO2<87% (p= 0.012).

Conclusion : PH-target-therapy improved NYHA and 6MWD in selected COPD patients with severe PH with worsening resting SpO2. Poor exercise capacity, low SpO2 and high mPAP but not airflow obstruction were associated with unfavourable outcome.


How teachers conceive of the nature and purpose of assessment matters to the implementation of classroom assessment and the preparation of students for high-stakes external examinations or qualifications. It is highly likely that teacher beliefs arise from the historical, cultural, social, and policy contexts within which teachers operate. Hence, it may be that there is not a globally homogeneous construct of teacher conceptions of assessment. Instead, it is possible that a statistical model of teacher conceptions of assessment will always be a local expression. Thus, the objective of this study was to determine whether any of the published models of teacher assessment conceptions could be generalised across data sets from multiple jurisdictions. Research originating in New Zealand with the Teacher Conceptions of Assessment self-report inventory has been replicated in multiple locations and languages (i.e., English in New Zealand, Queensland, Hong Kong, and India; Greek in Cyprus; Arabic in Egypt; Spanish in Spain, Ecuador) and at different levels of instructional contexts (Primary, Secondary, Senior Secondary, and Teacher Education). This study conducts secondary data analyses in which eight previously published models of teacher conceptions of assessment were systematically compared across 11 available data sets. Nested multi-group confirmatory factor analysis (using Amos v25) was carried out to establish sequentially configural, metric, and scalar equivalence between models. Results indicate that only one model (i.e., India) had configural invariance across all 11 data sets and this did not achieve metric equivalence. These results indicate that while the inventory can be used cross-culturally after localized adaptations, there is indeed no single global model. Context, culture, and local factors shape teacher conceptions of assessment.


The National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRP) is a plan approved in 2021 to relaunch the economy after the COVID-19 pandemic and provides for an investment and reform package divided into six Missions, including Health. The recent pandemic has clearly demonstrated how the Hospital/Territory axis has not been able to withstand the impact of an event such as the COVID pandemic. With a view to an overall improvement of the system, the PNRR gives us the opportunity to intervene by completely redesigning the territorial health and the goal is to compensate for the current territorial care inequalities and bridge the distance between the traditional places of care and the daily life of the patient, strengthening the health and social health network in the territory with better primary care services.In this context, Home Radiology, a branch of radiology, is inserted, which deals with all procedures aimed at performing traditional radiographic examinations at the home of the non-ambulatory and / or non-transportable patient on the basis of clinical evaluations.To validate the activity of Home Radiology, in this experimental study, radiographic examinations performed at home were compared with radiographic examinations performed in the hospital with the aim of highlighting that this method is desirable and mature to be spread and used in the Territory.Through a blind analysis by some hospital Radiologists, in fact, it is shown that the examinations performed at the patient's home are, practically, superimposable to those performed in an outpatient setting.


Intrinsic biodegradation of benzene and toluene in a heavily contaminated aquifer at the site of a former hydrogenation plant was investigated by means of isotope fractionation processes. The carbon isotope compositions of benzene and toluene were monitored in two campaigns within a time period of 12 months to assess the extent of the in situ biodegradation and the stability of the plume over time. The Rayleigh model, applied to calculate the extent of biodegradation and residual theoretical concentrations of toluene, showed that in situ biodegradation was a relevant attenuation process. The biodegradation rate constant for toluene was estimated to be k = 5.7 ± 0.5 μM/d in the groundwater flow path downstream of the source area. The spatial distribution of the carbon isotope composition of benzene indicated that in situ biodegradation occurred at marginal zones of the plume where concentrations were lower than 30 mg/L. The vertical structure of the benzene plume provided evidence for in situ degradation processes at the upper and lower fringes of the plume. The results show that isotope fractionation can be used to quantify the extent of microbial in situ degradation in contaminated aquifers and to develop conceptual models for natural attenuation approaches.


Reliability is one of the main concerns in the design of network on chips due to the use of deep-sub micron technologies in fabrication of such products. This paper proposes a fault-tolerant routing algorithm called XYX which is based on sending redundant packets through the paths with lower traffic loads. The XYX routing algorithm makes a redundant copy of each packet at the source node and exploits two different routing algorithms to route the original and the redundant packets. Since two copies of each packet reach the destination node, the erroneous packet is detected and replaced with the correct one. Due to the use of paths with lower traffic rates for sending redundant packets and minimizing the number of sent redundant packets, the XYX routing algorithm provides lower performance and power overheads as compared to flood-based routing algorithms. Experimental results show that the XYX routing algorithm imposes negligible performance and power consumption overheads while providing almost the same reliability in comparison with flood-based routing algorithms.


The L1 family of cell adhesion molecules (L1CAMs) in vertebrates has long been studied for its roles in nervous system development and function. Members of this family have been associated with distinct neurological disorders that include CRASH, autism, 3p syndrome, and schizophrenia. The conservation of L1CAMs in Drosophila and Caenorhabditis elegans allows the opportunity to take advantage of these simple model organisms and their accessible genetic manipulations to dissect L1CAM functions and mechanisms of action. This review summarizes the discoveries of L1CAMs made in C. elegans, showcasing this simple model organism as a powerful system to uncover L1CAM mechanisms and roles in healthy and diseased states. Developmental Dynamics 239:1490–1501, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


MRI for evaluating CNS anomalies detected on antenatal sonography has not become standard practice in our unit. This pilot study was carried out to determine the frequency at which MRI provides additional information in this setting. Going back from August 2010 a retrospective review of available case notes of 16 consecutive patients who attended our unit with fetal CNS abnormalities diagnosed on ultrasonography and then went on to have an MRI was done. The most common abnormality on sonography was ventriculomegaly (10 out the 16 cases) followed by cerebellar abnormality and suspected corpus callosum agenesis in 2 cases each. There was one case each of cortical cyst and megacisterna. Analysis of findings revealed that the MRI findings concurred with ultrasound findings in 10 of the 16 cases (62.5%) although additional information which did not influence counselling was obtained in 6 out of these 10 patients. In 6 of the 16 patients (37.5%) the MRI findings yielded information altered the counselling patients received. Magnetic resonance imaging findings not found by ultrasound included periventricular cavitation with subcortical white matter injury, agenesis of the corpus callosum, septum pellucidum agenesis, fine intraventricular adhesions suggestive of congenital CMV infection and cortical gyral abnormality. In conclusion when a CNS anomaly is detected by sonography, MRI findings might lead to altered diagnosis and patient counselling. Larger studies are needed to justify additional funding for fetal MRI examination to be made part of standard examination on sonographic diagnosis of a CNS abnormality.


GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT Abstract Kinetic studies on the Cu(II) catalyzed oxidation of mercaptoacetic acid (thioglycolic acid, TGA) by the model electron receptor methylene blue in acidic medium show that the reaction follows a second order kinetics in TGA. The order in methylene blue is unity but at higher [TGA], the order is 3/4. The rate shows an inverse relationship with [H+] and a second order dependence on [Cu(II)]. The reaction conforms to Arrhenius behavior in aqueous medium but resorts to anti-Arrhenius behavior in aqueous methanol and in aqueous acetone media. The reaction involves the in situ participation of nanoparticles which has been confirmed by SEM, XRD, and FTIR techniques. In aqueous medium, cauliflower shaped nanoparticles (44.21–74.33 nm) are obtained but in the presence of acetone and methanol, nanogranules (38.96–70.73 nm) and nanodisks (47.30–72.16 nm), respectively, are produced at 35°C as revealed by SEM images and XRD data. The reaction is characterized by the participation of two transition states in aqueous acetone medium and the kinetics of the reaction, especially the temperature dependence, is governed by the adsorption of methylene blue on copper nanoparticles as influenced by morphology inter alia dielectric constant of the reaction medium.


This paper presents the KAOS2RBAC approach for Security Requirements Engineering. Starting from functional requirements, linked to a data model, the approach first identifies high level security goals. It then refines these security goals into security requirements linked to the functional model. Finally, these security requirements lead to the design of access control rules. An informal verification step checks that the rules give enough permission to enable all functional requirements. The approach takes benefit of the KAOS notations to link functional and non-functional goals, agents, data, and access control rules in a single requirements model. This enables traceability between security goals and the resulting access control rules. The approach is illustrated by a case study: an information system for medical urgency, taken from a real project.


Background & aims: Food coloring is being done commercially in the food products industry these days which include large number of food dyes including caramel colors. 4-Methylimidazole (4-MEI) is a component of various caramel colored food products such as bakery products, beer, soy sauces, gravy, colas and other soft drinks which are consumed daily. Humans can be exposed to 4-MEI by ingestion, inhalation and dermal contact. Ingestion is the most common route of exposure. Methods: The present study was conducted to evaluate the effects of 4-MEI consumption on liver in albino rats. Adult male Wistar albino rats weighing 150-200 grams were procured for the study and were divided into control and experimental groups. The experimental animals were given 4-MEI orally by gavage at a dose of 250mg/kg body weight daily for a period of one month while the control animals received distilled water. The animals were euthanized under ether anesthesia at the end of experiment within 24 hours of last dose by perfusion with formal saline. The liver was dissected out and processed for histopathological examination. Results: The histopathological observations of liver in experimental rats showed features of focal hepatocellular degeneration with mononuclear cell infiltration, kupffer cell hyperplasia, increased polyploidy and hepatocytic vacuolation. The findings in the present study strongly suggest hepatocellular damage caused by ingestion of 4-methylimidazole which is found in caramel colorants used routinely in food industry.


Potential effect of physical activity on therapy and prevention of carpal tunnel syndrome. The carpal tunnel syndrome (CTS) is the most frequent work-related overuse disease, having its incidence increased exponentially in the last twenty years (28). The illness symptoms, reaching people with varied occupations and professions, are extremely limitative with a negative influence in professional and personal life (117). On the other hand, this musculoskeletal disorder treatment is, frequently, slow, onerous and incompatible with professional obligations (27). Thus, CTS prevention seems to be a priority measure to fight this disease and the associated inconveniences. The main aim of this work consists in accomplish a bibliographical revision concerning CTS and obtain data that allow clarification about the role of physical activity (PA) in its primary and secondary prevention. In this way, the main risk factors for the appearance and development of CTS have been reviewed (being distinguished, among others, the high body mass index - BMI -, the age above 30 years, the repetitive hand activities and the diabetes mellitus - DM) as well as the main preventive interventions, suggested by literature. It was verified that i) the main prevention measures are based on the minimization of the illness risk factors and ii) the PA was little investigated as a preventive potential strategy for the manifestation of CTS. In fact, studies that intended to clarify the relation between PA and the prevention of CTS are very few and have been, in most cases, developed with insufficient samples. However, according to the bibliography, it seems justified a more deepened experimental investigation about the potential effects of PA on CTS prevention.


The application of minimum norm principle, similar to the principle of minimum potential energy, is presented for the general synthesis of cam motion. The approach involves the use of piecewise cubic spline functions for representing the follower displacement. The cubic splines are more convenient and simpler to use compared to general spline functions and also result in smaller peak acceleration and jerk due to the application of the minimum norm principle. A general procedure is presented for application to any cam-follower system. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated by comparing the results given by the present method with those given by other approaches for a disk cam-translating follower.


BACKGROUND
The clinical experience and preferred learning style of U.S. Air Force flight nurses and aeromedical evacuation technicians are unknown.

METHODS
Using a cross-sectional survey design, we gathered data regarding the clinical experience, level of comfort providing clinical care, and preferred learning style of 77 active duty (AD), Air Force Reserve (AFR), and Air National Guard (ANG) nurses enrolled in the U.S. Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine Flight Nurse course, and 121 AD, AFR, and ANG medical technicians enrolled in the Aeromedical Evacuation Technician course.

RESULTS
Nurses and medical technicians reported 7.6 ± 5.5 and 3.9 ± 4.5 yr of experience, respectively. AD, AFR, and ANG nurses had comparable years of experience: 5.8 ± 3.2, 8.3 ± 6.6, and 7.9 ± 4.2 yr, respectively; however, AD medical technicians had more years of experience (5.6 ± 4.4 yr) than AFR (3.1 ± 4.8 yr) and ANG (1.9 ± 2.8 yr) medical technicians. Both nurses and medical technicians reported infrequently caring for patients with various disease processes and managing equipment or devices that they will routinely encounter when transporting patients as an aeromedical evacuation clinician. Nurses and medical technicians preferred a kinesthetic learning style or a multimodal learning style that included kinesthetic learning. Nearly all (99%) nurses and 97% of medical technicians identified simulation as their preferred teaching method.

DISCUSSION
These findings confirm faculty concerns regarding the clinical experience of flight nurse and aerospace evacuation technician students.De Jong MJ, Dukes SF, Dufour KM, Mortimer DL. Clinical experience and learning style of flight nurse and aeromedical evacuation technician students. Aerosp Med Hum Perform. 2017; 88(1):23-29.


Using the Navier-Stokes equation and assuming a viscosity radially modulated for a quasi-Newtonian fluid, we obtain the impedance of a fluid through microchannels and their corresponding electrical analogs. To solve the Navier-Stokes equation will use the Laplace transform, the Bromwich integral, the residue theorem and Bessel functions. This will give a formula for the impedance in terms of Bessel functions and from these equations to be constructed equivalent electrical circuits. These solutions correspond to the case of quasi-Newtonian fluid it is to say a fluid that does not stagnate in the channel wall as is the case if the fluid is Newtonian. The formulas obtained may have applications in the general theory of microfluidics and microscopic systems design for drug delivery.


ABSTRACT The goal of this article is to investigate factors affecting the entrepreneurial intentions of women in Pakistan. In doing so, the article also seeks to understand the relation between family support and the entrepreneurial intentions of women. Data was collected through a survey questionnaire of 498 women in Karachi, Pakistan, through the convenience sampling technique. The study applied structural equation modeling to analyze proposed hypotheses. It is argued that attitude, subjective norms, and work role identity positively influence the entrepreneurial intentions of women, while perceived behavioral control and opportunity identification have a smaller influence, and family role identity has a negative influence. Family support positively moderates the relationship between attitude, opportunity identification, work role identity, and entrepreneurial intent. These findings suggest more effective policies and programs promoting entrepreneurship are needed. Furthermore, the study incorporates the theory of planned behavior and several other variables to better understand the factors affecting the entrepreneurial intent of women, who have never been studied under this model. Keywords: Theory of planned behavior, Opportunity identification, Role identity, Family support, Female entrepreneurship, Pakistan.


Sulfate attack tests were performed on concrete samples with three water-to-cement ratios, and micro-crack growth patterns on concrete surfaces were recorded. The expansive stress and crack nucleation caused by delayed ettringite formation (DEF) were studied using X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. By means of a digital image processing technology, fractal dimensions of surface cracking patterns were determined, which monotonously increase during corrosion. Moreover, it is shown that the change of fractal dimensions is directly proportional to accumulation of DEF, and therefore, a simple theoretical model could be proposed to describe the micro-crack evolution in concretes under sulfate attack.


Aims: Dengue virus is a mosquito-born viral disease that infects about 390 million people each year. The clinical manifestations are fever, arthralgia and myalgia. Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) caused by dengue fever has been rarely reported. Presentation of Case: A 46-year-old man with no relevant medical history was seen because of progressive quadriparesis, dysautonomia, dysphagia and facial paresia. Ten days before seeking medical care the patient had fever, myalgia, arthralgia, rash, thrombocytopenia, and a positive NS1 dengue antigen. GBS was suspected and immunoglobulin was started while nerve conduction studies confirmed an acute motor axonal polyradiculoneuropathy. According to Brighton criteria, the patient was classified with a level 2 diagnostic certainty, since it was decided to not perform Case Study lumbar puncture for CSF analysis. The patient had a good clinical response and was subsequently discharged. Discussion: Dengue virus is arthropod-borne. It presents with high fever, rash, arthralgia, myalgia, and in rare cases, neurological complications such as GBS. In Mexico, there were 14,112 confirmed cases of non-severe dengue and 3,683 cases of severe dengue or with warning signs in 2016. There are no reported cases of GBS secondary to dengue infection in this country. Conclusion: GBS following dengue fever should be considered in countries with a high incidence of dengue infection such as Mexico even if there are no previous manifestations of dengue fever.


The dog is the main domestic reservoir of Leishmania and font of infection for the vector, constituting an important host for the transmission of the parasite to humans. Non-invasive collection of swab samples for leishmaniasis diagnosis has been a promising alternative. This study analyzed the positivity of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the diagnosis of canine leishmaniasis in conjunctiva samples. DNA extraction was performed using SDS 20% and PCR was performed using 13A/13B primers that amplify 120-bp of Leishmania kDNA. Of the 77 dogs analyzed, 50 (64.93%) had ocular changes: 25 (32.47%) dogs had periocular lesion, 41 (53.25%) dogs had purulent eye discharge, and 17 (22.08%) dogs had both signals. PCR was positive in 35 dogs (45.45%), and there was no significant difference between dogs with and without ocular signals (p=0.4074). PCR positivity was significant higher in dogs without periocular injury (p=0.0018). Conjunctive PCR, a less invasive, fast, and painless collection technique, is indicated to complement the diagnosis, especially in dogs without periocular injury, independent of the presence of purulent eye discharge.


Listeners' skill at identifying five target languages from short samples and discriminating the targets among a set of other languages was tested. Subjects in two groups, US and French, were generally quite successful in identification. Individual variation is poorly explained by degree of prior casual exposure to the target languages or academic linguistic training. Linguistic training does predict some greater success in discrimination. The implied language groupings which emerge from identification errors and in the discrimination phase are more informative from the largely linguist US subjects.


The tropical Atlantic Ocean hosts a "meridional mode", which is accompanied by cross-equatorial sea surface temperature (SST) anomaly gradient. It is thought that this mode is destabilized due to thermodynamic coupling between the wind speed, evaporation, and SST (WES feedback). Using a simple linear coupled model, we show that two additional ocean-atmosphere coupled feedback, which contribute to a cross-equatorial SST anomaly gradient, are possible in the tropical Atlantic, by taking mixed layer depth (MLD) variations into account. It is found that those feedback processes are stronger than the canonical WES feedback in our simple model framework. In the presence of damping effects, however, they exist either as a weakly unstable mode or a least damped mode. The SST and MLD structures in the simple model bear a resemblance to those of observed Atlantic meridional modes. AOS17-01 JpGU-AGU Joint Meeting 2017


[1] We thank Lester et al. [2013] for their thoughtprovoking comment on our recent work on plume spreading by chaotic advection [Mays and Neupauer, 2012]. We agree completely with their opinion that chaotic advection provides a framework for deepened understanding of fluid mixing and transport processes in porous media, and that stretching and folding via engineered injection and extraction shows promise for improved groundwater remediation. In this commentary, we address two questions posed by their comment. [2] The first question is the following. Does relaxing the assumption of reinjection at a deterministic angle remove chaos from periodic injection and extraction schemes, such as the pulsed dipole [e.g., Jones and Aref, 1988] and the periodically reoriented dipole [e.g., Lester et al., 2009]? Here we agree with the comment that the answer is no: relaxing the assumption of reinjection at a deterministic angle does not remove chaos from the system but instead produces stochastic chaos rather than deterministic chaos in the region of enhanced mixing. As a technical point, the analysis we presented in Mays and Neupauer [2012] to confirm the presence of deterministic chaos (finding periodic points, classifying them as elliptic or hyperbolic, plotting stable and unstable manifolds, and then identifying heteroclinic points) would not apply to the case of stochastic chaos, in which periodic points are absent. But we agree that adopting realistic assumptions about the nature of reinjection, specifically with regard to reinjection angle, would not change the chaotic nature of the underlying dynamics of the pulsed dipole and related approaches. This point has been made clearly by the comment and previous works cited therein. [3] The second question is the following. Are injection and extraction schemes requiring reinjection practical and feasible groundwater intervention and engineering tools? Here we disagree with the comment because in our opinion reinjection presents a number of practical and theoretical concerns in the context of groundwater remediation. Turning first to the practical concerns, reinjection demands attention from a regulatory perspective, at least in cases where the reinjection fluid has the potential to endanger drinking water, because injection of the contaminated water into aquifers is regulated for the purposes of environmental protection. In the United States, for example, the Safe Drinking Water Act establishes the state-administered underground injection control programs that regulate injection of contaminants into aquifers [42 U.S.C. 300f–300j–9, 2002, }1421 et seq], and the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) prohibits the injection of hazardous waste by underground injection into or within 0.4 km (1/4 mile) of an underground source of drinking water or above such a formation. The RCRA provides an exception for reinjection during groundwater remediation, but only when the remediation is part of a response action under the RCRA [42 U.S.C. 6901–6992k, 2002, }3020] or the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act [42 U.S.C. 9601–9675, 2002, }104 or }106], and only when a treatment solution is added to the groundwater prior to reinjection. In the context of in situ remediation, the requirement to add treatment solution presents a hydraulic concern, because the treatment solution will trigger the in situ remediation reactions that may result in chemical or biological byproducts that clog the aquifer in the vicinity of the injection wells [Bagtzoglou and Oates, 2007; Li et al., 2009, 2010; MacDonald et al., 1999]. Clogging would also be a concern near extraction wells in cases where the reinjection scheme extracts the interface between the treatment solution and the contaminated groundwater because that interface is where the in situ remediation reactions take place and their byproducts accumulate. These regulatory and hydraulic concerns were raised in our paper [Mays and Neupauer, 2012]. [4] A more theoretical concern is that the stochastic chaotic flows may be equivalent, in a statistical sense, to stochastic noise superposed on a regular flow, i.e., the opposite of a chaotic flow. To illustrate this point, consider the four examples of dipole flow in Figure 1. Each panel shows the dipole flow from an injection well at ( 1, 0) to an extraction well at (1, 0), assuming passive scalar transport without dispersion in a confined, homogeneous, isotropic aquifer of infinite extent, such that the resulting flow is symmetric about the x axis. Starting with a cross formation, comprising 16 red particles vertically from (0, 1/16) to (0, 1) and 16 blue particles horizontally from ( 1/2, 1/2) to (1/2, 1/2), each panel shows the particle positions after injection of the first pore volume, the second pore volume, and so on for the first 1000 pore volumes, where a pore Department of Civil Engineering, University of Colorado Denver, Denver, Colorado, USA. Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, Colorado, USA.


Summary Objective The aim of this study is to demonstrate from actual projects that ICT can contribute to the balance of health systems in developing countries and to equitable access to human resources and quality health care service. Our study is focused on two essential elements which are: i) Capacity building and support of health professionals, especially those in isolated areas using telemedicine tools; ii) Strengthening of hospital information systems by taking advantage of full potential offered by open-source software. Methods Our research was performed on the activities carried out in Mali and in part through the RAFT (Réseau en Afrique Francophone pour la Télémédecine) Network. We focused mainly on the activities of e-learning, telemedicine, and hospital information systems. These include the use of platforms that work with low Internet connection bandwidth. With regard to information systems, our strategy is mainly focused on the improvement and implementation of opensource tools. Results Several telemedicine application projects were reviewed including continuing online medical education and the support of isolated health professionals through the usage of innovative tools. This review covers the RAFT project for continuing medical education in French-speaking Africa, the tele-radiology project in Mali, the "EQUI-ResHuS" project for equal access to health over ICT in Mali, The "Pact-e.Santé" project for community health workers in Mali.We also detailed a large-scale experience of an open-source hospital information system implemented in Mali: "Cinz@n". Conclusion We report on successful experiences in the field of telemedicine and on the evaluation by the end-users of the Cinz@n project, a pilot hospital information system in Mali. These reflect the potential of healthcare-ICT for Sub-Saharan African countries.


Objective To determine the effect of a specialist nurse on the management outcome of patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Design Audit of the management of a cohort of patients in the year prior to the employment of the specialist nurse and the year immediately after. Subjects 339 patients, both male and female, with either Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis, resident in the Cambridge health district. Setting Addenbrooke's Hospital NHS Trust Outpatient Centre. Main outcome measures Health status was measured by blood tests (C‐reactive protein, albumin and haemoglobin) throughout the year, symptom indices, number of clinic attendances, admissions to hospital and length of stay. Quality of life was measured via a postal questionnaire. Results Hospital visits were reduced from 1377 to 853 (38% reduction) and in‐patient length of stay measured in bed‐days from 516 to 417 (19% reduction). The number of patients in remission increased from 63 to 69%. Patient satisfaction improved in key areas, in particular, access to information on IBD and advice on avoidance of illness and maintaining health. Of a total of 251 calls to the telephone helpline, only 19 patients were referred for a medical opinion and five patients required hospital admission. Conclusion The IBD nurse specialist is a valuable and cost‐effective member of the gastroenterology team. Eur J Gastroenterol Hepatol 12:967‐973


Philip Morris Companies, the world's largest and most profitable tobacco seller, has changed its corporate name to The Altria Group. The company has also embarked on a plan to improve its corporate image. Examination of internal company documents reveals that these changes have been planned for over a decade and that the company expects to reap specific and substantial rewards from them. Tobacco control advocates should be alert to the threat Philip Morris's plans pose to industry focused tobacco control campaigns. Company documents also suggest what the vulnerabilities of those plans are and how advocates might best exploit them.


Background: COVID-19 is a new pandemic disease with severe respiratory outcome. However, there is little evidence of this condition during pregnancy based on small case series reports. Objective: to perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of proportions of case series focused on maternal and perinatal outcomes of COVID-19 during pregnancy. Search strategy: LILACS and Medline were searched from inception until April 24th, 2020. Selection criteria: all case series or case control studies involving SARS-CoV2 infection during pregnancy and neonatal period were identified. Excluded were duplicated data, case reports of individual patients or without clinical data. Data collection and analysis: a total of 14 studies were included. When possible, pooled proportions with 95% confidence interval through a random effect model were estimated. Heterogeneity was estimated with the use of I2 statistics and Tau2 test. Main results: Most common symptoms were fever (58%; I2= 69%) and cough (33%; I2= 65%). A pathognomonic CT-Scan was observed in 92% of patients (I2= 0%). Lymphopenia and increased D-dimer were observed in 50% (I2= 82%), and 80% (I2= 0%) of patients at admission, respectively. There were no maternal deaths, with 2 cases of neonatal death, both with negative SARS-CoV2 PCR. Vertical transmission was observed in 5 neonates. Conclusions: This systematic review and meta-analysis confirms that COVID-19 during pregnancy is associated with good maternal and perinatal outcome. Evidence of vertical transmission should be confirmed with larger cohorts. Funding: none. Key words: meta-analysis, COVID-19, vertical transmission, perinatal outcome, pregnancy.


Human adenovirus (HAdV) is a common virus, but the infections it causes are relatively uncommon. At the same time, the methods for the detection of HAdV are varied, among which viral culture is still the gold standard. HAdV infection is usually self-limited but can also cause clinically symptomatic in lots of organs and tissues, of which human adenovirus pneumonia is the most common. In contrast, human adenovirus hepatitis is rarely reported. However, HAdV hepatitis has a high fatality rate once it occurs, especially in immunocompromised patients. Although human adenovirus hepatitis has some pathological and imaging features, its clinical symptoms are not typical. Therefore, HAdV hepatitis is not easy to be found in the clinic. There are kinds of treatments to treat this disease, but few are absolutely effective. In view of the above reasons, HAdV hepatitis is a disease that is difficult to be found in time. We reviewed and summarized the previously reported cases, hoping to bring some relatively common characteristics to clinicians, so as to facilitate early detection, early diagnosis, and early treatment of patients.


This project addresses the relationship between institutional design and cooperation in international bargaining. In particular, it addresses the question of how the institutional structure within which states bargain impacts states' decisions to adopt cooperative, rather than non-cooperative, bargaining strategies. The project draws on the issue linkage literature to analyze one central feature of institutional bargaining structure, "offsetting distributional patterns." When states place importance on different issues included in a bargain and their relative valuation of these issues becomes more disparate, distributional patterns are said to be more "offsetting." In such circumstances, states are more likely to adopt cooperative, rather than zero-sum, bargaining strategies. This relationship exists even if, on each issue, states have antithetical interests. The linkage of issues with more offsetting distributional patterns serves to transform the zero-sum game on each issue into a positive-sum game of linked issues. To build this theoretical argument, the project draws on an abstract, formalized logic analyzing two players bargaining over two issues. It demonstrates that the more offsetting are the distributional patterns of the linked issues, the more likely players are to truthfully reveal their interests - an important step which facilitates the adoption of cooperative bargaining strategies in the incomplete information setting that characterizes much international bargaining. Combined with the incentives created by the issue linkage structure, truthful revelation leads states to adopt cooperative, rather than non-cooperative, bargaining strategies. To empirically test this argument, the project first presents empirical measurement rules for the central variables of interest. Interview evidence with state representatives in the European Union is coded using these rules to construct a large-N dataset on which MLE analyses are conducted to test the central hypothesis relating issue linkage and offsetting distributional patterns to states' adoption of cooperative bargaining strategies. The interview evidence is then employed to construct in-depth case studies to highlight the hypothesized causal mechanisms and observable implications of the theoretical argument. Both the statistical results from the MLE analysis and empirical evidence from the case studies serve to support the project's central hypothesis.


This paper develops preconditioners for singular black box matrix problems. We introduce networks of arbitrary radix switches for matrices of any square dimension, and we show random full Toeplitz matrices are adequate switches for these networks. We also show a random full Toeplitz matrix to satisfy all requirements of the Kaltofen-Saunders black box matrix rank algorithm without requiring a diagonal multiplier.


Essential oils (EOs) have been considered as a potential alternative to antibiotics in the treatment of several diseases, due to its antimicrobial properties. For instance, the tea tree essential oil (TTO), extracted from the Melaleuca alternifolia, has been reported to exhibit analgesic, antiviral, antibacterial, antifungal, antiprotozoal and anti-inflammatory properties. Likewise, the cinnamon leaf essential oil (CLO), has exhibited excellent antioxidant and antibacterial properties. However, one of the major drawbacks associated with the use of EOs in biomedical applications is their toxicity and the difficult control of EOs degradation and loss during manufacturing of the substrate. For this reason, recently, alternatives for the controlled release of EOs have been proposed, being the manufacturing of polymeric films loaded with nanocapsules highlighted. In this work, we report the nanoencapsulation of TTO and CLO using chitosan (CS), which is a polysaccharide that exhibits exceptional antibacterial features and is sensitive to the environment pH, for the subsequent functionalization of polymeric films. Cellulose acetate (CA) and polycaprolactone (PCL) at different ratios were processed in the form of wet-spun fibers, using acetone/acetic acid as solvent and ethanol as coagulation bath. TTO and CLO were diluted in etanol and presented to the fibers during production at the coagulation baths. The EOs presence in the fibers was detected visually by changes in the fibers' coloration. EO-loaded and unloaded fibers were characterized according to their chemical, mechanical and thermal properties and their degradation profile was followed in physiological media. The minimum inhibitory concentration of EOs and the antimicrobial action of the CA/PCL films were determined against Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermidis, Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Data reported the EOs-modified fibers to be successfully prepared and that the addition of the TTO and CLO to increase significantly the antimicrobial action of the polymers.


Milky spots are submesothelial lymphoid structures, essential for the maturation of resident peritoneal macrophages, for peritoneal defense, and for all peritoneal inflammatory and immune processes. We evaluated the number and size of milky spots in omentum of rats subjected to dialysis for 15, 30, and 60 days and in omentum of non dialyzed control rats (5 rats per group). After 15 days of dialysis, the number (4.2 +/- 1.5/cm2) and mean size (0.13 +/- 0.04 mm2) of milky spots were significantly lower than in the control group (7.6 +/- 2.3/cm2, p < 0.03; 0.25 +/- 0.04 mm2, p < 0.01). After 30 days of dialysis, values returned to a level similar to that in controls (6.8 +/- 1.9/cm2 and 0.20 +/- 0.04 mm2). After 60 days of dialysis, values were significantly greater than in all other groups (11.8 +/- 2.2/cm2 and 0.41 +/- 0.07 mm2, p < 0.03). The early decrease in milky spots seems to be due to washing of the peritoneum and replacement of resident white cells at the expense of the white cell population in the milky spots. At 30 days, a process of adaptation seems to establish functional equilibrium. The increase in milky spots after 60 days of dialysis may be due to the chronic inflammatory stimulus of dialysis solutions with poor biocompatibility.


The U.S. Department of Defense has adopted the single fuel for the battlefield concept. Diesel fuel will be replace by JP-8/Jet A-1, which has both lower lubricity and viscosity. Currently, the tribological requirements of fuel-lubricated components in the injection system are unknown. As a result, no widely approved lubricity test or standard exists. Similar problems are currently faced in commercial applications where low-sulfur/aromatic fuels are being introduced. The present study details the wear mechanisms likely to exist with low lubricity fuels, with particular reference to injection equipment known to be fuel sensitive. The wear mechanism was found to ba a function of contact severity and may not be uniquely defined by a single test. A number of potentially viable lubricity tests is suggested, and fuel/additive components are recommended for wear reduction.


Background: This study investigates the effect of classical music, music of patients' own choice, or no music on pain reduction during elective cystoscopy. Objectives: The aim of the study was to describe the effect of listening to classical music, music of patients' own choice, or no music on patient's pain and satisfaction rates when carrying out an elective cystoscopy and the effect on the assessment capability of the performing urologist. Design, Setting, and Participants: This randomized trial included 127 patients undergoing elective cystoscopy at the Urological Department of the University Clinic of Munich between June 2019 and March 2020. Outcome Measurements and Statistical Analysis: Patients were assigned randomly to 3 groups: group I: listening to standardized classical music (n = 35), group II: listening to music according to the patients' choice (n = 34), and control group III: no music (n = 44). Prior to cystoscopy, anxiety levels were assessed by the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI). The Visual Analog Scale (VAS, range 1–100) was used for a self-assessment of pain, discomfort, and satisfaction. Statistical analysis was done with Spearman's rank correlation and t-tests. Results and Limitations: The median age was 63 (range 27–91) years. The duration of cystoscopy was 5.7 (1–30) min. Patients had undergone a median of 2.3 cystoscopies in the past. Between giving informed consent and cystoscopy, patients had to wait for a median of 64 (0–260) min. The median VAS pain score was significantly lower in group I at 1.7 and group II at 2.3 versus 5.2 in the control group III (p < 0.001). The control group III had significantly worse pain and patient satisfaction rates compared with groups I and II. Group I had a significant lower VAS pain score than groups II and III (p < 0.001). Classical music also increased the assessment capability of the preforming urologist. Conclusions: Listening to music during elective cystoscopy significantly reduces pain and distress and leads to higher patient and surgeon satisfaction. We recommend listening to classical music or music chosen by the patients during outpatient flexible/rigid cystoscopy in daily clinical routine. Patient Summary: In this study, we found that patients who listened to classical music or music of their own choice while undergoing a cystoscopy showed significant reduction of pain and distress.


In the present paper, we propose a new theory named "Theory of indeterminate natural transformation (TINT)" to investigate the dynamical creation of meanings as association relationships between images, focusing on the metaphor comprehension as an example. TINT models the meaning creation as a kind of stochastic processes based on the mathematical structure defined by association relationships as morphisms in category theory, so as to represent the indeterminate nature of structure-structure interactions between the systems of the meanings of images. Such interactions are formulated in terms of so-called coslice categories and functors as structure-preserving correspondence between them. The relationship between such functors is "indeterminate natural transformation", the central notion in TINT, which models the creation of meanings in a precise manner. For instance, the process of metaphor comprehension is modeled by the construction of indeterminate natural transformation from a canonically defined functor which we call the base-of-metaphor functor.


ABSTRACT Attachment of Mycobacterium avium subsp. paratuberculosis to soil particles could increase their availability to farm animals, as well as influence the transportation of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis to water sources. To investigate the possibility of such attachment, we passed a known quantity of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis through chromatography columns packed with clay soil, sandy soil, pure silica, clay-silica mixture, or clay-silica complexes and measured the organisms recovered in the eluent using culture or quantitative PCR. Experiments were repeated using buffer at a range of pH levels with pure silica to investigate the effect of pH on M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis attachment. Linear mixed-model analyses were conducted to compare the proportional recovery of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis in the eluent between different substrates and pH levels. Of the organisms added to the columns, 83 to 100% were estimated to be retained in the columns after adjustment for those retained in empty control columns. The proportions recovered were significantly different across different substrates, with the retention being significantly greater (P < 0.05) in pure substrates (silica and clay-silica complexes) than in soil substrates (clay soil and sandy soil). However, there were no significant differences in the retention of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis between silica and clay-silica complexes or between clay soil and sandy soil. The proportion retained decreased with increasing pH in one of the experiments, indicating greater adsorption of M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis to soil particles at an acidic pH (P < 0.05). The results suggest that under experimental conditions M. avium subsp. paratuberculosis adsorbs to a range of soil particles, and this attachment is influenced by soil pH.


The exponentially weighted moving average (EWMA) filter is commonly used for state estimation of run-to-run controllers in semiconductor manufacturing. It is widely known that, when at steady state, the EWMA filter provides the minimum mean square error (MSE) forecast for an integrated moving average (IMA) process. The forecast, however, is optimal if and only if every output of the IMA process is measured. If an EWMA controller is implemented utilizing sampled process data, then it is necessary to retune the controller to maintain optimal performance. Furthermore, in practice, the complex interacting selection criteria of advanced sampling applications often cause measurement frequency to be highly irregular. In this paper, a sampling compensation algorithm (SCA) is derived based on the minimum-norm IMA (MNIMA) forecast. The algorithm provides the minimum mean-square-error (MMSE) forecast of an IMA process for irregularly sampled processes and is robust to initialization.


Completion of a trunk-line network of transportation will naturally bring changes in comparative locational advantages and have impacts on economic structure of regions. The present paper attempts to analize these effects quantitatively and to present some simulations.First, we, assuming the standpoint of national economy, built an econometric model for estimation of the trade co-efficients and tried to clarify the effects of the interregional trade structure. Then, we used the regional input-output tables to see its end-effects on various industrial sectors, because changes in final demand of the region and of the total economy induces the expansion of outputs through the interregional trade structure and also through the input-output structure of industrial sectors.Finally, we estimated final demand without the new transportation network, and we compared the results.The outline of the apparatus of our analysis is as follows:


The widely varying different approaches to the total synthesis of the indoloquinoline alkaloid neocryptolepine are discussed. Aspects relating to the isolation of the natural product from Cryptolepis sanguinolenta, as well as its performance in various biological tests and spectroscopic studies involving the natural product, are also reviewed.


The past decade has seen impressive gains for human rights activists desiring greater protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons. However, it has also seen regression: concerted attempts by leaders, particularly in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia, to further criminalize sexual orientation and same-sex sexual activity while vilifying and marginalizing LGBT citizens. This Article explores the recent attempt by the United States and United Kingdom to effectuate a possible solution to the rapid proliferation of these antigay statutes – threats to tie portions of foreign aid disbursements to the ways in which countries treat their LGBT citizens. After examining recent attempts at antigay legislation in a number of nations, most notably Malawi and Uganda, this Article discusses the fundamental differences between the newly proposed American and British foreign aid policies, and critiques the theories underlying their development and implementation. Ultimately, this Article concludes that the American and British attempts to protect LGBT persons through aid conditionality serves as a powerful signaling effect, but will ultimately fail to convince antigay leaders and legislators from further passing these dangerous laws.


Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by an expansion of CAG triplets in the huntingtin gene, leading to severe neuropathological changes that result in a devasting and lethal phenotype. Neurodegeneration in HD begins in the striatum and spreads to other brain regions such as cortex and hippocampus, causing motor and cognitive dysfunctions. To understand the signaling pathways involved in HD, animal models that mimic the human pathology are used. The R6/2 mouse as model of HD was already shown to present major neuropathological changes in the caudate putamen and other brain regions, but recently established biomarkers in HD patients were yet not analyzed in these mice. We therefore performed an in-depth analysis of R6/2 mice to establish new and highly translational readouts focusing on Ctip2 as biological marker for motor system-related neurons and translocator protein (TSPO) as a promising readout for early neuroinflammation. Our results validate already shown pathologies like mutant huntingtin aggregates, ubiquitination, and brain atrophy, but also provide evidence for decreased tyrosine hydroxylase and Ctip2 levels as indicators of a disturbed motor system, while vesicular acetyl choline transporter levels as marker for the cholinergic system barely change. Additionally, increased astrocytosis and activated microglia were observed by GFAP, Iba1 and TSPO labeling, illustrating, that TSPO is a more sensitive marker for early neuroinflammation compared to GFAP and Iba1. Our results thus demonstrate a high sensitivity and translational value of Ctip2 and TSPO as new marker for the preclinical evaluation of new compounds in the R6/2 mouse model of HD.


Altruism is very important because it can establish stronger communication between individuals, which can then produce stronger relationships with others. Previous research on altruism has found that individuals who have experienced more trauma participate in more helping behaviors (behaviors that bring help to those in need, such as, holding the door open for someone or volunteering at a soup kitchen). Other studies have found that there was not a significant relationship between viewing natural disaster footage and helping people. The objective of this research study was to determine if watching a video of the trauma a natural disaster caused would cause altruism in the viewers. In order to test this hypothesis, we used an experimental group, a control group and an independent and dependent variable. The scores on the dependent variable were compared between the experimental and control groups, and we found no significant difference in between the two groups.


This research aims to identify types and causes of code switching and code mixing that are applied  at Aerotravel Denpasar. This research is analyzed with "Agih and Padan" method in two different languages , Japan and Indonesian. On each of the language, it's connected therefore found type and cause of factor code switching and code mixing. The theories used are code switching (Wardhaugh, 2006), code mixing (Hoffman, 1991) , and cause code mixing factor (Weinrich, 1979). From 20 data that is analyzed at Aerotravel, it resulted 6 type switching code: 1 methaporical code switching, 5 situational code switching. In addition there are 14 data of switching code consists of 10 lexical code mixing in lexical, 3 phonologic code mixing, and 1 sentence code mixing. The cause factors of switching codes are, topic, solidarity with communicator, social art distance, and motivation. The cause factor of code mixing are low frequency of word, need for synonym, social value, familiarity with another culture, and sufficiency differentiated. This research concludes that the situational code switching is the most used in code switching. Education background is the cause of code mixing existence.


OsloMet Oslo Metropolitan University receives thousands of students and visitors annually. Its main campus consists of many buildings in which students, staff and visitors navigate. Unfortunately, navigating around the campus can be challenging, as the existing wayfinding system is complex and not straightforward. This paper presents a problem-based approach to address the wayfinding challenges around the campus. A group of European Project Semester students followed a user-centred design approach to involve participants throughout the four main phases of the study—understanding, envisionment, design and evaluation. Interviews and scenario-based user testing were conducted to identify the underlying problems. The findings indicated that the numbering system for rooms was inconsistent, and the signage was not clear, visible and coherent for all the buildings on the campus. Using graphic design principles and wayfinding guidelines, a new consistent room numbering, a signage system and a mobile navigation app were proposed, developed and evaluated. The results showed that the new wayfinding system was clear and easy to understand, and it can be applied in all buildings. We observed a shorter time spent navigating to a specific room, and no mistakes was made. The app was found to be a useful and helpful tool for wayfinding. As a result of this study, the authors highlight the importance of involving users throughout the entire research process, which is our most significant learning experience as a group.


Objective: To investigate the interventional effect of Dan-fang capsule on liver fibrosis in rats. Methods: Sixty one-week aged male healthy SD rats [weight (180±20) g] were randomly divided into normal control group (group A), hepatic fibrosis model group (group B), Fu-Fang-Bie-Jia-Ruan-Gan tablet group (group C), Dan-fang capsule groups at high, middle and low dose group (group D, E, F, respectively). Except for the normal control group, hepatic fibrosis was induced in other groups by intraperitoneal injection of porcine serum.Simultaneously, rats in Dan-fang capsule groups were administered by gavage with Dan-fang capsule at doses of 4.32, 2.16, 0.54 g/kg, respectively.Rats in Fu-Fang-Bie-Jia-Ruan-Gan tablet group were orally administered by gavage with Fu-Fang-Bie-Jia-Ruan-Gan tablet (0.54 g/kg) every day and the normal control group received saline alone.All rats were killed at the end of the 12th week. Serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and PⅢnp clia (PⅢNP) were measured in the groups.Pathology changes of hepatic tissue were evaluated by hematoxylin-eosin (HE) and Masson staining.The proteinic expressions of alpha-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA), collagen-Ⅰ (COL-Ⅰ) and collagen-Ⅲ (COL-Ⅲ) were observed with the method of immunohistochemistry.Analysis of variance was applied when data were compared among groups. Results: Compared with those in the group A, the levels of ALT, AST and PⅢNP in serum and the expressions of α-SMA, COL-Ⅰ and COL-Ⅲ in liver tissues were significantly higher in group B [(68.3±3.4) vs (51.5±6.3) U/L, (205±52) vs (135±24) U/L, (3.1±1.4) vs (1.6±0.6) μg/L and 0.35±0.02 vs 0.13±0.02, 0.37±0.02 vs 0.13±0.02, 0.43±0.13 vs 0.13±0.01, t=17.020, 71.053, 1.552, 0.214, 0.241, 0.292, all P<0.01], and the degree of liver fibrosis significantly increased in group B than that in group A. Compared with those in group B, the levels of ALT, AST, PⅢNP and the expressions of α-SMA, COL-Ⅰ, COL-Ⅲ were all significantly lower in group D, E and F (t=-58.232--0.104, all P<0.01). The degree of liver fibrosis significantly reduced in group D, E and F than that in group B (Z=3.82, 3.76, 3.90, all P<0.05). Conclusion: Dan-fang capsule has certain preventive effect on liver fibrosis that caused by porcine serum in rats.


This article examines the myth of the supposed superiority of the desert noble savage over civilized man. With the Bedouin of Arabia and the Aborigines of Australia as its two prime examples, the article argues that two versions of this myth can be traced: one in which the desert noble savage is valorized due to his valour, physical prowess and martial skill (Bedouin); and another, later version, where the desert noble savage is valorized as a pacifist, an ecologist and a mythmaker/storyteller (Aborigines). The article concludes by examining the way in which this turn from one type of desert noble savage to another reflects the manner in which western modernity has shifted its values from Cartesian dualities and Enlightenment rationalism to that of networks, potentialities, ecology and myth.


As a constructive alternative to the exclusionary binaries of Cartesian philosophy, Genevieve Lloyd and Moira Gatens turn to Spinoza. Spinoza's understanding of the body as "in relation" takes the focus of philosophical thought from the homo-geneous subject to the heterogeneity of the social, and the focus of politics from individual rights to collective responsibility. The implications for feminism are radical; Spinoza enables a reconceptualization of the imaginary and the possibility of a sociability of inclusion.


The effects of oral co- and pre-administration of Sho-seiryu-to extract powder (TJ-19, 1 g/kg), a widely used Kampo (traditional Chinese herbal) medicine, on the pharmacokinetics of an anti-epileptic drug, carbamazepine (CBZ), and its active metabolite (carbamazepine-10,11-epoxide, CBZ-E) after oral administration of CBZ (50 mg/kg) were examined in male rats. The simultaneous administration of TJ-19 significantly lengthened the time to reach the peak plasma concentration (Tmax), but did not influence the peak plasma concentration, area under the plasma concentration-time curve or terminal elimination half-life (t1/2). Each parameter for CBZ or CBZ-E with a single pretreatment with TJ-19 was not significantly different from that with the vehicle. Tmax and the elimination rate constant for CBZ were significantly increased by 1-week repeated pretreatment with TJ-19, by 83% (p<0.01) and 88% (p<0.001), respectively. t1/2 and the mean residence time from zero to infinity (MRT0-infinity) in the TJ-19 pretreatment group were significantly shortened, by 52 and 34% (p<0.005), respectively. No significant difference in the bound fraction of each drug at two concentrations (1 and 10 microg/ml) was observed between the control and TJ-19 pretreatment groups. These results indicate that simultaneous oral administration of TJ-19 delays the oral absorption of CBZ, while 1-week repeated pretreatment with TJ-19 accelerates the metabolism of CBZ in rats, without affecting the protein binding of CBZ.


The growing number of medical procedures performed in children that require cooperation of patients, lack of movement, anxiolysis or/and analgesia triggers the increased need for procedural sedation. This document presents the consensus statement of the European Society for Paediatric Anaesthesiology about the principles connected with the safe management of procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) by anaesthesiologists for elective procedures in children. It does not aim to provide a legal statement on how and by whom PSA should be performed. The document highlights that any staff taking part in sedation of children must be appropriately trained with the required competencies and must be able to demonstrate regularly that they have maintained their knowledge, skills and clinical experience. The main goal of creating this document was to reflect the opinions of the community of the paediatric anaesthesiologists in Europe regarding how PSA for paediatric patients should be organized to make it safe.


The beneficial effect of progesterone on blastocyst survival in the uterus was shown in rats hypophysectomized on Day 1 of pregnancy. Treatment with progesterone (2 mg/day) on Day 1, Day 1 and Day 6, or Days 1 to 5 could maintain most blastocysts for only 5 days following the last injection; during the next 5 days, many disintegrated in the uterus. Daily injections of 2 mg progesterone, however, could maintain most blastocysts for as long as Day 53. In hypophysectomized rats, the developmental potential of blastocysts deteriorated rapidly even though the rats received 2 mg progesterone daily. By Day 20, only 23% of blastocysts were capable of developing into full-term fetuses compared with 52% in rats ovariectomized on Day 4 and injected daily with 2 mg progesterone. By Day 52, none of the blastocysts from either group of animals developed to term although many still retained the ability to implant.