Summary:  Purpose: The management of epilepsy during pregnancy entails a number of concerns. While seizures may affect adversely maternal and fetal outcome, antiepileptic drugs (AEDs) may increase the incidence of congenital abnormalities and possibly affect postnatal cognitive development in the offspring. Experimental animal studies can aid in assessing teratogenic features associated with individual AEDs and/or with seizures, and to identify the mechanisms involved. The purpose of this study was to investigate the consequences of prenatal exposure to (a) different AEDs and (b) maternal seizures on brain maturational processes in rats.


Devising a scheme for allocation of research grant is a challenging task. In this paper, we discuss how one can compute the research grant to be allocated to either a faculty member or a research student. Our scheme makes weighted incentives to compute the meritocratic portion of the research grant. The weights are computed using the number of earned points of a contender which are based on the impact factors of the journals where the research papers of the contender are published. Our scheme adopts an approach which is a combination of equitable and meritocratic schemes.


ABSTRACT While the challenges represented by biodiversity offsets in terms of biodiversity outcomes have been scrutinised in the scientific literature, less attention has been paid to the equity challenges they represent, particularly with regard to landholders' individual ability to participate in biodiversity offsets. We address this knowledge gap by providing insights into the factors that enable some landholders and prevent others to participate in the biodiversity offset scheme operating in New South Wales (NSW, Australia). To do so, we build on the literature on Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES), which addresses a range of equity challenges related to PES, albeit with a specific focus on developing countries. Our results show that experience, access to resources and information, support through formal and informal networks and land size explain why some landholders manage to participate in the biodiversity offset scheme in NSW, while others do not. In the discussion, we focus on identifying the support non-participating landholders would need in order to participate in the scheme and we provide recommendations to improve the equity in landholders' access to biodiversity offsets in New South Wales. We also discuss the specificity of equity dimensions in a developed country context.


The sequence-tagged site (STS) D10S170, also referred to as H4, is a gene of unknown function. Its 5' end was found fused to the catalytic domain of the RET protooncogene to generate RET/PTC 1, the most common form of PTC oncogenes in human papillary thyroid carcinoma. This gene has previously been assigned to a very large genomic region, 10q11.22-->q22.1. Here, we describe the application of a novel hybridization scheme to the physical and genetic mapping of D10S170. First, we selected a homologous large-insert DNA clone from a human P1 library by filter hybridization and confirmed its authenticity by Southern blot analysis. Triple-color fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) experiments mapped this clone to l0q21.2-->q21.3. "Binning" experiments were performed using a quadruple-color FISH approach aimed toward placing the gene in a genetic interval defined by differentially labeled P1 DNA probes containing known polymorphic markers. We found that multicolor FISH greatly expedites chromosomal mapping. Finally, we applied our FISH approach to determine the extent of deletion involving this locus (D10S170) in a papillary thyroid cancer cell line, TPC-1.


The human tear film is a multilayer structure in which the dynamics are often strongly affected by a floating lipid layer. That layer has liquid crystalline characteristics and plays important roles in the health of the tear film. Previous models have treated the lipid layer as a Newtonian fluid in extensional flow. Motivated to develop a more realistic treatment, we present a model for the extensional flow of thin sheets of nematic liquid crystal. The rod-like molecules of these substances impart an elastic contribution to the rheology. We rescale a weakly elastic model due to Cummings et al. ["Extensional flow of nematic liquid crystal with an applied electric field," Eur. J. Appl. Math. 25, 397–423 (2014).] to describe a lipid layer of moderate elasticity. The resulting system of two nonlinear partial differential equations for sheet thickness and axial velocity is fourth order in space, but still represents a significant reduction of the full system. We analyze solutions arising from several different boundary conditions, motivated by the underlying application, with particular focus on dynamics and underlying mechanisms under stretching. We solve the system numerically, via collocation with either finite difference or Chebyshev spectral discretization in space, together with implicit time stepping. At early times, depending on the initial film shape, pressure either aids or opposes extensional flow, which changes the free surface dynamics of the sheet and can lead to patterns reminiscent of those observed in tear films. We contrast this finding with the cases of weak elasticity and Newtonian flow, where the sheet retains the same qualitative shape throughout time.


This study aims to develop a semianalytical model to calculate the productivity index (PI) of a horizontal well with pressure drop along the wellbore. It has been indicated that by introducing novel definitions of horizontal-well permeability and conductivity, the equation of fluid flow along a horizontal well with pressure drop has the same form as the one for fluid flow in a varying-conductivity fracture. Thus, the varying-conductivity-fracture model and PI model can be used to obtain the PI of a horizontal well. Results indicate that the PI of a horizontal well depends on the interaction between horizontal-well conductivity, penetration ratio, and Reynolds number. New type curves of the penetration ratios with various combinations of parameters have been presented. A complete-penetration zone and a partial-penetration zone can be identified on the type curves. Based on the type curves, two examples have also been presented to illustrate the advantages of this work in optimizing parameters of horizontal wells.


Abstract Recent production and consumption activities impose a heavy burden on the Earth's current and future capacity. Therefore, it is inevitable to deal with the impacts of the economic activities on the natural resources which determine our future well-being and the survival by itself. The indicators reflecting impacts of regions and countries on the available resources are used in this Paper to operationalize the sustainable development concept. The Ecological Footprint, Total Biocapacity and their components are investigated in the European Union (EU) and its countries and the EU region is compared with the other regions of the world. The additional three developed countries – Norway, Switzerland and the United States (US), were included in the sample together with the EU countries to enable extended comparisons. The aim of the Paper is to evaluate sustainability in the EU and its countries by means of the Ecological Footprint and the available biocapacity and to detect the relations between the countries' EF and their standard of living and human development level. Concerning the regions, the highest Ecological Footprint per capita is typical of North America followed by the EU region. The Northern countries show largest biocapacities and are thus the largest resource creditors. The worst results in the Ecological Footprint – biocapacity relations analysis are typical of Cyprus, Belgium, Netherlands and Italy. The cross-section regression models confirmed that, at least, in the sample of the developed countries the positive relations between the Ecological Footprint on the one hand and the standard of living / state of the human development on the other hand exist.


The paper examines the main trends in the state of the world's foreign exchange reserves, as well as the peculiarities and problems of management at the present stage. Purpose: To research tendencies and characteristics of the current stage of foreign exchange reserves. Methodology: Scientific methods: comparison, compilation, analysis and synthesis, by combining the analysis of the logical and historical principles. In the investigation of the actual material used methods of economic and statistical analysis. Results: The main factors, trends, identify problems foreign exchange reserves in the world. Practical implications: The results can be used in the following fields of scientific knowledge: the bank management, international financial.


This PhD dissertation deals with the development and testing of methods able to evaluate internal rotor and rotational vibrational partition functions of molecules with two torsional modes. The main method discussed in the Dissertation includes both the kinetic and potential couplings and is called Two- Dimensional Non Separable (2D-NS). Chapter 1 considers two molecular systems, one with weak coupling between rotors and the other with strong coupling. The 2D-NS partition function and several monodimensional and bidimensional partition functions were calculated and compared. The main idea was to test if the other methods are able to handle both situations as the 2D-NS does. Chapter 2 explores the possibilities that the method provides by studying three molecules presenting two hindered internal rotors for which experimental tunneling splittings have been reported. The analysis of the wavefunctions were important tools to get insight into the tunneling mechanism. Furthermore, the calculation of the ground vibrational state energy levels by the 2D-NS method allowed us to test its accuracy for the prediction of this kind of phenomena. The Third Chapter includes an extensive study of twenty molecules with two hindered internal rotations. The 2D-NS method is used to calculate the hindered rotation partition functions and the results are compared with several of the most popular monodimensional and bidimensional methods. During this chapter the 2D-NS method is extended to obtain the rovibrational partition function, and this leads to two different methods, which differ in the global sep- arability assumption of the torsional degrees of freedom. In the same manner, and as for the bidimensional partition functions, a comparison between several methods was also included. In order to evaluate the accuracy of the methods, rovibrational partition functions were used to calculate ideal-gas standard-state thermodynamic functions. The calculated values were compared to experimen- tal data available in the scientific literature. Chapter 4 comprises a study of the kinetic isotope effects (KIEs) for the hydrogen abstraction reaction from ethanol by atomic hydrogen in aqueous so- lution at room temperature. Multipath canonical variational transition state theory accounted for tunneling and variational effects. The anarmonicity due to the torsions was incorporated through the 2D-NS method. All possible tran- sition states were incorporated to the study and their contribution to the tor- sional, rovibrational, translational, and tunneling KIEs factors was individually analyzed. The results were compared to the available experimental data.


We present a case of spontaneous bacterial peritonitis (SBP) caused by Listeria monocytogenes in a patient previously diagnosed as alcoholic liver cirrhosis. The clinical presentation, biochemical data and outcome of the patient are compared with those of cases of SBP caused by Listeria monocytogenes in patients with cirrhosis published in the Spanish and English literature. Twelve out of 20 cases described in the literature were published by Spanish authors. This greater proportion could be related to dietary habits (greater consumption of fruits and vegetables), climatic or demographic factors. We underline the importance of pursuing a microbiological diagnosis since Listeria monocytogenes is intrinsically resistant to cefotaxime, the antimicrobial often selected to empirically treat SBP episodes.


The role of the human capital in the economy is highlighted in several studies of human capital, endonegneous growth and macroeconomic literature. A special part of this literature is dedicated to the mechanism and the various channels through wich human capital influences economic growth. As expression of the macroeconomic performance, the labour productivity depends on the accumulation of human capital in the economy. To analyze and discuss this dependency is essential for appropriate human capital policies aiming to stimulate the human capital accumulation in the economy and the enhancement of the labour productivity. The paper explores the link between labour productivity and the estimates of the human capital stock in the EU countries. Human capital theory explains the labour productivity level by the workers' level of educational attainment level. Four different effects of human capital on labour productivity can be found in economic literature: worker, allocative, difusion and research. Other researchers used a production function to estimate the productivity impact of changes in educational attainment. Research on the impact of human capital on productivity at the country level encountered many difficulties over the years. The main methodological issue is how to measure skills and human capital investment and to model possible channels of skills of influence the economic performance. The UNESCO attainment levels and enrollment series and other data sets, constructed by researchers, have been used in a large number of empirical studies of the link between education and productivity. What is innovative in the present study is the estimation of human capital stock based on educational costs by level(primary, secondary, tertiary) weighted by the proportion of labour force with corresponding educational attainment and the testing of linear regression model for the dependency of labour productivity on human capital stock. The assumption of the study is that the labour productivity is strongly and positively correlated with the human capital stock in the european economies. In order to confirm this, the following steps were completed: First, the appropriate method to estimate the human capital stock in the economy was identified and then, the estimations were calculated for the EU's countries, based on EUROSTAT data. Second, the correlations between statistical indicators of labour productivity and estimates of human capital stock, for each european countries were identified and discussed. Third, a regression linear model was tested for each of 22 european countries included in the study. A strong correlation between labour productivity and human capital stock, statistically tested through regression equations with data from EUROSTAT, was found. The variation of labour productivity can be explained in proportion of 85-95% by the variation of human capital stock, considering all other factors as constant. The added value of the paper consists of: (i) the estimation of human capital stock using the educational costs method for the european countries; (ii) the use of these estimates to show the correlation with the labour productivity levels and (iii) testing econometrical models of the dependency between labour productivity and human capital stock in 22 european countries. An interesting and useful task for future research is to explore the details of the institutional and incentive structure that best allocates a fixed amount of educational expenditures.


Goethe once said that everyone could see materials, but connotation was only found by those who dealt with it, and form was a secret to the majority of people. This article is aim to discuss the currently situation of contemporary easel painting and its De‐ interpretation, from the development of easel painting, i present the irreplaceable visual sense, and therefore ,to offer a referent direction about the easel painting's future.


Gravitomagnetism is a fundamental, weak-field, prediction of Einstein's theory of general relativity, is generated by currents of mass and owes its name to its formal analogies with magnetism, generated by currents of electric charge. Then, according to general relativity, Earth's spin should influence the motion of its orbiting satellites. Indeed, we analysed the laser ranging observations of the orbits of the satellites LAGEOS and LAGEOS II and obtained the first direct measurement of the gravitomagnetic orbital perturbation due to the Earth's spin, known as the Lense-Thirring effect.


In order to operate trains efficiently at high speeds regardless of their length, control systems that can provide stable braking forces must be developed. In the designing brake control systems, it is essential to consider the robustness because there are model uncertainties that result from nonlinear characteristics for adhesion and the brake material friction coefficient. This paper presents an innovative new wheel slip prevention control system that utilizes sliding mode control. Simulations for the proposed wheel slip prevention control system are performed and compared with some conventional control laws. The results of simulation prove the effectiveness of the proposed control system as compared with conventional types, and show the high brake performance under non-linearity of brake dynamics.


The genetic factors that contribute to the development of coronary artery disease (CAD) are poorly understood. It is likely that multiple genes that act independently or synergistically contribute to the development of CAD and the outcome. Recently, an insertion/deletion (I/D) polymorphism of the human angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE) gene, a major component of the reninangiotensin system (RAS), was identified. The association of the ACE gene D allele with essential hypertension and CAD has been reported in the African-American, Chinese, and Japanese populations. However, other studies have failed to detect such an association. It has been suggested that these inconsistencies may be due to the difference in backgrounds of the population characteristics. In the present study, we investigated the I/D polymorphism of the ACE gene in 103 subjects of both sexes, consisting of 59 normal controls and 44 patients with hypertension. The allele and genotype frequency were significantly different between the hypertensive and control groups (p < 0.01). Among the three ACE I/D variants, the DD genotype was associated with the highest value of the mean systolic blood pressure [SBP] and mean diastolic blood pressure [DBP] (p = < 0.05) in men, but not in women. In the overall population, the mean SBP and DBP was highest in DD subjects, intermediate in I/D subjects, and the least in II subjects


Methane and hydrogen emission rates and the δ13C of CH4 were observed for various termites in Australia, Thailand and Japan. Combined with the already reported emission rates of CH4 in the literature, the phylogenetic trend was examined. Emission rates of the observed termites were categorized into five groups: group I with high CH4 and low H2 emission rates with a CH4/H2 ratio of typically 10/1; group II with high CH4 and high H2 emissions with a CH4/H2 ratio of 4/1–1/2; group III with low emission rates of CH4 and H2; group IV with high H2 and insignificant CH4 emissions; and group V with insignificant emissions for both CH4 and H2. In lower termites, there are both colonies infected and uninfected with methanogens even in the same species, and no specific trend in CH4 and H2 emissions was observed within a genus. Whether protozoa in the hindgut of termites are infected with methanogens or not and the differences in species compositions of protozoa are possibly responsible for the inter-colonial variations. The proportions of infected colonies were possibly small for the family Kalotermitidae (dry wood feeders), and relatively large for families of wet or damp wood feeders. The hydrogen emission rate possibly depends on the locality of methanogens: namely, whether they are intracellular symbionts of protozoa or whether they are attached to the hindgut wall. Emission rates of higher termites were classified into groups according to genera and the diet. Most species of soil or wood/soil interface feeders classified into group I, while the soil feeders Dicuspiditermes in Thailand and Amitermes in Australia were classified into groups with high H2 emission rates. Typical wood-feeding termites and fungus-growing termites were classified into group III. The results indicate that higher termites tend to increase the CH4 emission rate during dietary evolution from wood- to soil-feeding, and two types of the system with different efficiencies of interspecies transfer of H2 have been formed. The δ13C of CH4 was discernible with a difference in the decomposition process in the termite–symbiont system among lower termites, fungus-growing termites and other higher termites.


Design with CAD systems is a process based on user's knowledge, CAD models and man-machine interfaces. Knowledge acquisition by CAD systems is an important feature in order to facilitate the design process. This is done using interactive, graphically based systems. The main problem is that CAD systems are developed by computer scientists. In order to match the needs of end users the author tried to give them tools to define their own man-machine interface and in some way "architecture" their software using a single dialog primitive (the interaction). The author is now working on a new generation (REGAIN) implementing the results of the previous project (single dialog primitive and multi-modellers approach) and aiming to acquire knowledge in order to enrich the models and the man-machine interface. Giving an end user or an interface programmer interactive easy to use tools to define man machine interfaces and overall architecture of its CAD system, in a multi-model environment, is a first step the author achieved. The author presents some other ideas to take into account in the design process, in particular to describe models, compare them and deduct, as automatically as possible, applications models.


Digital Imaging Applications.- Densification of Digital Terrain Elevations Using Shape from Shading with Single Satellite Imagery.- PC-Based System for Calibration, Reconstruction, Processing, and Visualization of 3D Ultrasound Data Based on a Magnetic-Field Position and Orientation Sensing System.- Automatic Real-Time XRII Local Distortion Correction Method for Digital Linear Tomography.- Meeting the Computational Demands of Nuclear Medical Imaging Using Commodity Clusters.- An Image Registration Algorithm Based on Cylindrical Prototype Model.- An Area-Based Stereo Matching Using Adaptive Search Range and Window Size.- Environmental Modeling.- Methods of Sensitivity Theory and Inverse Modeling for Estimation of Source Term and Risk/Vulnerability Areas.- The Simulation of Photochemical Smog Episodes in Hungary and Central Europe Using Adaptive Gridding Models.- Numerical Solution of the Aerosol Condensation/Evaporation Equation.- Efficient Treatment of Large-Scale Air Pollution Models on Supercomputers.- High Performance Computational Tools and Environments.- Pattern Search Methods for Use-Provided Points.- In-situ Bioremediation: Advantages of Parallel Computing and Graphical Investigating Techniques.- Adaptive Load Balancing for MPI Programs.- Performance and Irregular Behavior of Adaptive Task Partitioning.- Optimizing Register Spills for Eager Functional Languages.- A Protocol for Multi-threaded Processes with Choice in ?-Calculus.- Mapping Parallel Programs onto Distributed Computer Systems with Faulty Elements.- Enabling Interoperation of High Performance, Scientific Computing Applications: Modeling Scientific Data with the Sets and Fields (SAF) Modeling System.- Intelligent Systems Design and Applications.- ALEC: An Adaptive Learning Framework for Optimizing Artificial Neural Networks.- Solving Nonlinear Differential Equations by a Neural Network Method.- Fuzzy Object Blending in 2D.- An Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Approach for Modeling and Control of Nonlinear Systems.- The Match Fit Algorithm - A Testbed for Computational Motivation of Attention.- Automatic Implementation and Simulation of Qualitative Cognitive Maps.- Inclusion-Based Approximate Reasoning.- Attractor Density Models with Application to Analyzing the Stability of Biological Neural Networks.- MARS: Still an Alien Planet in Soft Computing?.- Data Reduction Based on Spatial Partitioning.- Alternate Methods in Reservoir Simulation.- Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets in Intelligent Data Analysis for Medical Diagnosis.- Design of a Fuzzy Controller Using a Genetic Algorithm for Stator Flux Estimation.- Object Based Image Ranking Using Neural Networks.- A Genetic Approach for Two Dimensional Packing with Constraints.- Task Environments for the Dynamic Development of Behavior.- Wavelet Packet Multi-layer Perceptron for Chaotic Time Series Prediction: Effects of Weight Initialization.- Genetic Line Search.- HARPIC, an Hybrid Architecture Based on Representations, Perceptions, and Intelligent Control: A Way to Provide Autonomy to Robots.- Hybrid Intelligent Systems for Stock Market Analysis.- On the Emulation of Kohonen's Self-Organization via Single-Map Metropolis-Hastings Algorithms.- Quasi Analog Formal Neuron and Its Learning Algorithm Hardware.- Producing Non-verbal Output for an Embodied Agent in an Intelligent Tutoring System.- Co-evolving a Neural-Net Evaluation Function for Othello by Combining Genetic Algorithms and Reinforcement Learning.- Modeling the Effect of Premium Changes on Motor Insurance Customer Retention Rates Using Neural Networks.- On the Predictability of Rainfall in Kerala - An Application of ABF Neural Network.- A Job-Shop Scheduling Problem with Fuzzy Processing Times.- Speech Synthesis Using Neural Networks Trained by an Evolutionary Algorithm.- A Two-Phase Fuzzy Mining and Learning Algorithm for Adaptive Learning Environment.- Applying Genetic Algorithms and Other Heuristic Methods to Handle PC Configuration Problems.- Forecasting Stock Market Performance Using Hybrid Intelligent System.- Multimedia.- The MultiMedia Maintenance Management (M4) System.- Visualisations Functionality and Interaction.- DMEFS Web Portal: A METOC Application.- The Validation Web Site: A Combustion Collaboratory over the Internet.- The Policy Machine for Security Policy Management.- Multi-spectral Scene Generation and Projection.- The Javelin Integrated Flight Simulation.- A Multi-spectral Test and Simulation Facility to Support Missile Development, Production, and Surveillance Programs.- Correlated, Real Time Multi-spectral Sensor Test and Evaluation (T&E) in an Installed Systems Test Facility (ISTF) Using High Performance Computing.- Infrared Scene Projector Digital Model Development.- Infrared Scene Projector Digital Model Mathematical Description.- Distributed Test Capability Using Infrared Scene Projector Technology.- Development of Infrared and Millimeter Wave Scene Generators for the P3I BAT High Fidelity Flight Simulation.- Novel Models for Parallel Computation.- A Cache Simulator for Shared Memory Systems.- On the Effectiveness of D-BSP as a Bridging Model of Parallel Computation.- Coarse Grained Parallel On-Line Analytical Processing (OLAP) for Data Mining.- Architecture Independent Analysis of Parallel Programs.- Strong Fault-Tolerance: Parallel Routing in Networks with Faults.- Parallel Algorithm Design with Coarse-Grained Synchronization.- Parallel Bridging Models and Their Impact on Algorithm Design.- A Coarse-Grained Parallel Algorithm for Maximal Cliques in Circle Graphs.- Parallel Models and Job Characterization for System Scheduling.- Optimization.- Heuristic Solutions for the Multiple-Choice Multi-dimension Knapsack Problem.- Tuned Annealing for Optimization.- A Hybrid Global Optimization Algorithm Involving Simplex and Inductive Search.- Applying Evolutionary Algorithms to Combinatorial Optimization Problems.- Program and Visualization.- Exploratory Study of Scientific Visualization Techniques for Program Visualization.- Immersive Visualization Using AVS/Express.- VisBench: A Framework for Remote Data Visualization and Analysis.- The Problem of Time Scales in Computer Visualization.- Making Movies: Watching Software Evolve through Visualisation.- Tools and Environments for Parallel and Distributed Programming.- Performance Optimization for Large Scale Computing: The Scalable VAMPIR Approach.- TRaDe: Data Race Detection for Java.- Automation of Data Traffic Control on DSM Architectures.- The Monitoring and Steering Environment.- Token Finding Using Mobile Agents.- Load Balancing for the Electronic Structure Program GREMLIN in a Very Heterogenous SSH-Connected WAN-Cluster of UNIX-Type Hosts.- DeWiz - Modular Debugging for Supercomputers and Computational Grids.- Fiddle: A Flexible Distributed Debugger Architecture.- Visualization of Distributed Applications for Performance Debugging.- Achieving Performance Portability with SKaMPI for High-Performance MPI Programs.- Cyclic Debugging Using Execution Replay.- Visualizing the Memory Access Behavior of Shared Memory Applications on NUMA Architectures.- CUMULVS Viewers for the ImmersaDesk.- Simulation.- N-Body Simulation on Hybrid Architectures.- Quantum Mechanical Simulation of Vibration-Torsion-Rotation Levels of Methanol.- Simulation-Visualization Complexes as Generic Exploration Environment.- Efficient Random Process Generation for Reliable Simulation of Complex Systems.- Replicators & Complementarity: Solving the Simplest Complex System without Simulation.- Soft Computing: Systems and Applications.- More Autonomous Hybrid Models in Bang2.- Model Generation of Neural Network Ensembles Using Two-Level Cross-Validation.- A Comparison of Neural Networks and Classical Discriminant Analysis in Predicting Students' Mathematics Placement Examination Scores.- Neural Belief Propagation without Multiplication.- Fuzzy Logic Basis in High Performance Decision Support Systems.- Scaling of Knowledge in Random Conceptual Networks.- Implementation of Kolmogorov Learning Algorithm for Feedforward Neural Networks.- Noise-Induced Signal Enhancement in Heterogeneous Neural Networks.- Phylogenetic Inference for Genome Rearrangement Data.- Evolutionary Puzzles: An Introduction to Genome Rearrangement.- High-Performance Algorithmic Engineering for Computationa Phylogenetics.- Phylogenetic Inference from Mitochondrial Genome Arrangement Data.- Late Submissions.- Genetic Programming: A Review of Some Concerns.- Numerical Simulation of Quantum Distributions: Instability and Quantum Chaos.- Identification of MIMO Systems by Input-Output Takagi-Sugeno Fuzzy Models.- Control of Black Carbon, the Most Effective Means of Slowing Global Warming.- Comparison of Two Schemes for the Redistribution of Moments for Modal Aerosol Model Application.- A Scale-Dependent Dynamic Model for Scalar Transport in the Atmospheric Boundary Layer.- Advances in Molecular Algorithms.- MDT - The Molecular Dynamics Test Set.- Numerical Methods for the Approximation of Path Integrals Arising in Quantum Statistical Mechanics.- The Multigrid N-Body Solver.- Do Your Hard-Spheres Have Tails? A Molecular Dynamics Integration Algorithm for Systems with Mixed Hard-Core/Continuous Potentials.- An Improved Dynamical Formulation for Constant Temperature and Pressure Dynamics, with Application to Particle Fluid Models.


Aim: To perform a systematic review and meta-analysis of published data on the prevalence and risk of malignancy of prostatic incidental uptake (PIU) detected by fluorine-18-fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG) positron emission tomography (PET) or PET/computed tomography (PET/CT). Patients, material, methods: A comprehensive literature search of studies published up to February 2014 was performed. Pooled prevalence and malignancy risk of PIU were calculated on a per patient-based analysis including 95% confidence interval (95%CI). Furthermore, we assessed some parameters as potential predictors of malignant PIU. Results: Six studies including 47925 patients who underwent 18F-FDG PET/CT were selected. Pooled prevalence of PIU was 1.8% (95%CI: 1.3–2.3%). Overall, 444 patients with PIU were further evaluated and 121 underwent biopsy. The pooled risk of malignancy in patients with PIU further evaluated or verified by biopsy were 17% (95%CI: 12–23%) and 62% (95%CI: 54–71%), respectively. A higher mean age was observed in the group of malignant PIUs compared to benign PIUs. There was a trend towards a higher mean SUVmax in the group of malignant PIUs but without a statistically significant difference compared to benign PIUs. Peripheric site of PIU but not presence or absence of calcification was a predictor of malignancy. Conclusions: PIU is observed in about 1.8% of 18F-FDG PET/CT scans performed in male patients carrying a significant risk of malignancy. Therefore, whenever a PIU is detected further investigation is warranted to exclude malignancy, in particular when PIU is located in the peripheric site of prostate gland.


Groundwater is a crucial source of water supply due to its continuous availability, reasonable natural quality, and being easily diverted directly to the poor community more cheaply and quickly. The West Arsi Zone residents remain surface water dependent due to traditional exploration of groundwater, which is a tedious approach in terms of resources and time. This study uses remote sensing data and geographic information system techniques to evaluate the groundwater potential of the study area. This technique is a fast, accurate, and feasible technique. Groundwater potential and recharge zone influencing parameters were derived from Operational Land Imager 8, digital elevation models, soil data, lithological data, and rainfall data. Borehole data were used for results validation. With spatial analysis tools, the parameters affecting groundwater potential (LULC, soil, lithology, rainfall, drainage density, lineament density, slope, and elevation) were mapped and organized. The weight of the parameters according to percent of influence on groundwater potential and recharge was determined by Analytical Hierarchy Process according to their relative influence. For weights allocated to each parameter, the consistency ratio obtained was 0.033, which is less than 0.1, showing the weight allocated to each parameter is acceptable. In the weighted overlay analysis, from a percent influence point of view, slope, land use/cover, and lithology are equally important and account for 24% each, while the soil group has the lowest percent of influence, which accounts only 2% according to this study. The generated groundwater potential map has four ranks, 2, 3, 4, and 5, in which its classes are Low, Moderate, High, and Very High, respectively, based on its groundwater potential availability rank and class. The area coverage is 9825.84 ha (0.79%), 440,726.49 ha (35.46%), 761,438.61 ha (61.27%), and 30,748.68 ha (2.47%) of the study area, respectively. Accordingly, the western part of district is expected to have very high groundwater potential. High groundwater potential is concentrated in the central and western parts whereas moderate groundwater potential distribution is dominant in the eastern part of the area. The validation result of 87.61% confirms the very good agreement among the groundwater record data and groundwater potential classes delineated.


Recent behavioral studies indicate that emotion counter-regulation automatically allocates attention to events that are opposite in the valence to the experienced emotional state. The present study explored the effect of emotion counter-regulation on response inhibition by using ERPs in a go/no-go paradigm. We recruited 58 subjects and randomly assigned them to either the angry priming group (watching Nanjing Massacre movie clips) or the neutral priming group (watching "mending a computer" movie clips). The behavioral results revealed that participants in the angry priming group responded significantly more accurately to go happy and no-go angry faces than go angry and no-go happy faces. The analyses of ERPs revealed that the amplitudes of the no-go N2 and no-go P3 were significantly larger for the happy faces than for the angry faces in the angry priming group. However, no such effects were found in the neutral priming group. These results suggest that highly aroused angry emotion could prompt a priority response to happy emotion stimuli and restrict the responses to angry emotion stimuli through emotion counter-regulation.


Behind every artist there is a handful of people that work day and night to make sure the artists career keeps going steady forward. In this machine consisting of record labels and managements, there is one profession that works in-between these to make sure everyone is happy. This paper aims to get a deeper understanding of the a&r profession and the importance this person actually has in the music industry. The background for this thesis lies in that a&r is a topic that not so many know too much about, and neither speaks of. In this paper, I will go deeper in to the world of the a&r and their working methods. The foundation for this thesis will be the a&r and the importance of their role before and after the digitalization. The A&R role will be set up against the changes the digitalization has applied to the music industry, to see if a&r role has been sustainable through the transition from analog to digital.


The experiment we conducted included glucose, which is one of the most common sources of energy for many organisms. We decided to analyze whether glucose had a positive impact on the growth rate of Picochlorum oklahomensis over a span of one week . For our experiment, we set up four photobioreactors with the same amount of H2O, growth media, NaHCO3, and salt. Two of the photobioreactors were used as the control and glucose was added to the remaining photobioreactors as the experimental. All four photobioreactors were left under T5 growth lights with approximately 50% of the sun's intensity for one week.


Aiming at reducing hardware complexity and power consumption of multicarrier-based broadband transceivers, this contribution discusses and analyzes the implementation of clustered-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based transceiver in a field programmable gate array (FPGA) device. In this sense, several OFDM schemes covering baseband and passband data communications are implemented. The hardware resource utilization and power consumption related to each scheme, after being implemented in the FPGA device, are discussed and compared. Numerical results show that the OFDM scheme based on  ( ⋅ )-II and  ( ⋅ )-III, which is a modified version of the hermitian symmetric (HS)-OFDM scheme, which performs both baseband and passband data communications, demands the lowest hardware resource utilization and power consumption, reducing to 1/3 the hardware resource utilization. As a result,  ( ⋅ )-II and  ( ⋅ )-III constitute an interesting candidate for implementing new generations of high data rate, low hardware resource utilization, and low-power consumption clustered-OFDM-based transceivers for broadband data communication. Last but not least, numerical results show that the controllers used to integrate all components of a clustered-OFDM-based transceiver can demand sizeable hardware resource utilization and power consumption and, therefore, they have


We present a mix network that achieves efficient integration of public-key and symmetric-key operations. This hybrid mix network is capable of natural processing of arbitrarily long input elements, and is fast in both practical and asymptotic senses. While the overhead in the size of input elements is linear in the number of mix servers, it is quite small in practice. In contrast to previous hybrid constructions, ours has optimal robustness, that is, robustness against any minority coalition of malicious servers.


Using histological and ultrastructural techniques the aims of this study were to investigate whether the mineralization pattern and surface microanatomy of the caries–susceptible fissure enamel were different from those on the caries–inactive lingual surface. The material consisted of 31 unerupted third mandibular molars. The specimens were initially grouped into four categories: (1) without, (2) with initial, (3) with almost completed and (4) with completed root formation. One ground section with fissure–like morphology was selected from each tooth. Using water as a medium the observed birefringence was negative along the lingual and fissure transverses in specimens with almost completed and with completed root formation, while the observed birefringence was positive at different distances in the enamel in sections representing less maturation stages. Qualitative imbibition studies revealed hypomineralized enamel in the lower part of the fissures in specimens representing almost and completed root formation. Imbibed in quinoline, parts of the hypomineralized enamel behaved like a molecular sieve due to the presence of micropores, indicating that the structural arrangement is different from that in the enamel adjacent to this areas. After division of the sections into a lingual and a buccal part, SEM features were described from lower and upper parts of the buccal fissure wall and on lingual enamel in the area corresponding to the bottom part of the fissure. The surface microanatomy varied greatly. Negative developmental irregularities such as fissures and holes were associated with the immature enamel, while matured enamel – particularly fissures – housed many positive developmental irregularities such as enamel caps and protrusions. The crystal size in the mature specimens appeared smaller and more uniform than the crystals from the immature specimens. Apart from the occurrence of hypomineralized enamel in fissures and numerous positive developmental irregularities on the fissure surface, no major differences between fissure and lingual enamel were noticed, neither with respect to mineralization pattern during final stages of tooth development nor to the degree of surface porosity prior to tooth emergence.


Abstract Background: The results of cohort and twins studies suggest that stroke risk has a genetic component. To prepare for a multicenter linkage study of sibling pairs, we conducted a pilot study in a small number of subjects. Methods: At 3 centers, we tested a strategy for collecting sibling pairs concordant and discordant for ischemic stroke. Local investigators enrolled probands and obtained family histories. Primary proband inclusion criteria were age 18 to 80 years, ischemic stroke within 180 days, and proband report of at least 1 living sibling with a history of stroke. A central office verified sibling concordance by a medical record review and sibling discordance by a structured telephone interview. Results: Nine consecutive probands (median age, 74 years; age range, 57 to 79 years; male, 67%) were enrolled. Requests for medical records forms were sent to 10 potentially concordant siblings; signed forms were returned by 10 siblings (100%). Ten potentially discordant siblings were contacted by telephone; 9 (90%) agreed to a structured telephone interview. For 6 probands (67%), we verified concordance in at least 1 sibling. For all probands, discordance was verified in at least 1 sibling. None of the potentially concordant siblings lived in the same city as the related proband; 6 (67%) lived in the same state. Conclusion: Our procedure for enrolling siblings was widely accepted by nonpatient family members. The Siblings With Ischemic Stroke Study (SWISS) can enroll sibling pairs with ischemic stroke even when siblings are geographically dispersed.


Abstract In the Gulf of California, marine organisms can be exposed to great fluctuations of environmental parameters that regulate their metabolism and survival. We evaluated over a two-year period the photosynthetic characteristics, growth rates and nitrate uptake rates as a function of irradiance and temperature in two rhodophytes, Chondracanthus squarrulosus and Eucheuma uncinatum, endemic to the Gulf of California. In the field, plants were exposed to an annual temperature and irradiance variation of more than 14 °C and 30 mol quanta m−2 d−1, respectively. Maximum cover of C. squarrulosus in the field occurred during the winter-spring while maximum values for E. uncinatum occurred during the summer-fall. Maximum photosynthesis (Pmax) values were approximately two- to three-fold greater in C. squarrulosus than in E. uncinatum, and were out of phase in the two species by approximately three months. The greater Pmax values found for C. squarrulosus than E. uncinatum are consistent with its two-fold greater cover and growth rates in the field. Photosynthetic efficiency of C. squarrulosus decreased as temperature increased, while it remained relatively constant in E. uncinatum throughout a wide range of assayed temperature suggesting a photosynthetic advantage for C. squarrulosus over E. uncinatum during the colder/less illuminated months of the year.


In the following paper we will seek to understand what Edmund Husserl, in his second Logical Investigation , refers to as "idealism", against the backdrop of Rudolf Hermann Lotze's interpretation of Plato's doctrine of Ideas in the third book of his Logic . This will raise not only the question of Husserl's indebtedness to Lotze with respect to the Ideenhlehre in terms of Geltung , but first and foremost that of the "Platonism" of the idealism defended in his first masterpiece.


Azathioprine is currently of considerable importance in the treatment of vasculitis. It is relatively often used, mainly to maintain remission in generalised vasculitis. However, the evidence level for this indication is only D. The reason is that only a few study results exist. The impact of azathioprine 1. for the induction of remission in vasculitis or 2. to act as a glucocorticoid-sparing agent or in cases of refractory vasculitis is undetermined, since the evidence level for such uses is also only D.


In a 4-year clinical trial in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D), uncontrolled by metformin alone, limepiride showed a higher occurrence of cardiovascular death, non-fatal myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke compared to empagliflozin. The current modelling study aimed to extrapolate lifelong the results of the 4-year study and to assess the cost-effectiveness of empagliflozin versus glimepiride in China. The IQVIA Core Diabetes Model, a well-established model, was calibrated to reproduce the 4-year outcomes of the trial for both arms. Baseline characteristics and observed effects on physiological parameters (HbA1c, BMI, blood pressure, lipids) were used as inputs. The effects of the trial were applied up until treatment switch (reaching HbA1c of 8.5%) after which the UKPDS82 risk equations predicted events based on physiological parameters. Insulin-glimepiride was the next line therapy after reaching an HbA1c of 8.5%. The Chinese payer's perspective was taken. Discounting of 3% was applied. CDM projected 11.414 and 11.137 quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) and 42,802 USD and 42,620 USD total lifetime costs for empagliflozin and glimepiride, respectively. The incremental cost-effectiveness ratio of empagliflozin versus glimepiride was 659 USD/QALY. On average 8% of cardiovascular events can be avoided. In patients with T2D, uncontrolled with metformin, empagliflozin has the potential to reduce the risk of cardiovascular events for a good cost-effectiveness versus glimepiride. Disclosure M. Lamotte: Employee; Self; IQVIA. Employee; Spouse/Partner; Janssen Research & Development. A. Salem: None. S.R. Mettam: Employee; Self; Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH. A.V. Ustyugova: Employee; Self; Boehringer Ingelheim International GmbH. E. Zhang: Employee; Self; Boehringer Ingelheim China. M. Ramos: Employee; Self; IQVIA. Funding Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH


This book explores the origins, process, and consequences of forty years of nearly continual political violence in southeastern Mexico. Rather than recounting the well-worn narrative of the Caste War, it focuses instead on how four decades of violence helped shape social and political institutions of the Mexican southeast. Rebellion Now and Forever looks at Yucatan's famous Caste War from the perspective of the vast majority of Hispanics and Maya peasants who did not join in the great ethnic rebellion of 1847. It shows how the history of nonrebel territory was as dramatic and as violent as the front lines of the Caste War, and of greater significance for the larger evolution of Mexican society. The work explores political violence not merely as a method and process, but also as a molder of subsequent institutions and practices.


This document describes a SAML entity attribute which can be used to
assign category membership semantics to an entity, and a second
attribute for use in claiming interoperation with or support for
entities in such categories. This document is a product of the
Research and Education Federations (REFEDS) Working Group process.


This article engages the university library with live debates concerning the transformation of higher education. Focused within the British context, the article draws together previously distinct literatures from sociology, studies in higher education, and library and information studies to argue that the library represents an untapped lens through which to understand the university, its interface with civil society, and efforts to retain and reenergise its civic role. Beyond being solely diagnostic, the library is introduced as a bellwether—an institution that can also incubate trends towards privatisation and against publicness in higher education. Through exploration of an unusual joint-use public-academic library in Britain which combines academic and public collections, staff, and communities, the article's analysis highlights both the opportunities that this "disruptive" shared space provides and the challenges posed by such an arrangement. Examples explored include the encroachment of private academic institutions in public spaces, the increasing asymmetry of fortunes between public and academic bodies, and the consequences of new library management technologies on the temporality and integrity of the library, and by consequence, the university.


In order to estimate the risk of contracting Lyme disease in the forest areas of north-western Poland, PCR-based studies were carried out on 6,817 Ixodes ricinus ticks for infection by the spirochaete B. burgdorferi sensu lato (s.l.). The studies were performed using the primers for the fla gene, conserved for all European genospecies of B. burgdorferi s.l. Based on the incidence of B. burgdorferi s.l. DNA in I. ricinus ticks at eight sampling sites during 1998-2001, it may be concluded that a risk of contracting Lyme disease is present in the forest areas of north-western Poland. The highest risk of infection (9.4 % of infected ticks) is posed by human contact with female I. ricinus, and the risk is higher in late spring and early summer than in late summer and early autumn. The north-western part of Poland is an endemic region for B. burgdorferi s.l.


Purpose: Development of autophagy inhibitors has important clinical significance in cancer therapies. We and others demonstrated that over-expression of Caveolin-1 (Cav1), which was the major scaffolding protein of caveolae, was associated with higher tumor stage, metastasis and worse prognosis in various carcinomas, particularly in breast cancer. Furthermore, we identified critical role of Cav1 in breast cancer metastasis via modulation of lysosomal function and autophagy. Based on the above, we screened a series of 2, 645 kinds of small-molecule drugs to find out certain cav1 inhibitors which could suppress autophagy and breast cancer metastasis. Experimental Design: We conducted the 1st high-throughput screening based on surface plasmon resonance (SPR) analysis of cav-1 interaction with 2, 645 kinds of small-molecule drugs. Secondly, we launched the 2nd high-throughput screening based on CCK8 analysis to validate the anti-cancer potential of the selected compounds. We also carried out the final high-throughput screening to investigate their autophagic effects with high content image cytometry assay. The anti-cancer and anti-metastasis effects of the final drug candidate was investigated using invasive breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231 and BT-549, and its role on autophagy was further investigated by transfection of mRFP-GFP-LC3 adenoviral vector and western blot analysis of autophagic proteins. Results: 2, 645 kinds of small-molecule drugs were screened based on a series of high-throughput screening. The compound gallic acid was identified as the candidate drug owing to its strong interaction and competitive inhibition with cav1, its potent anti-proliferation potential on both invasive breast cancer cells MDA-MB-231 and BT-549, as well as its potent autophagic inhibition compared with the other 2, 644 drugs. Further experimental validation revealed that gallic acid was a potent late-stage autophagy inhibitor via inhibiting autophagosome-lysosome fusion. Conclusions: Collectively, these results demonstrated that the cav1 inhibitor gallic acid was a novel late-stage autophagy suppressor with potential clinical application for invasive breast cancer therapy. Citation Format: Neng Wang, Fengxue Zhang, Zhiyu Wang, Yifeng Zheng, Shengqi Wang, Bowen Yang. Critical role of cav1 in high-throughput identification of gallic acid as a novel late-stage autophagy suppresser against invasive breast cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research 2020; 2020 Apr 27-28 and Jun 22-24. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2020;80(16 Suppl):Abstract nr 1230.


The synthesis of 4-(phenylsulfonyl) aminoacetophenone which involve the base catalyzed sulfonylation of 4aminoacetophenone using benzene sulfonyl chloride is reported. The chemical structure of the synthesized compound was elucidated using FT-IR, UV, HNMR and CNMR characterization. The compound was screened for its antibacterial activities against gram positive and gram negative bacterial strains namely: Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Salmonella typhi and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. The antibacterial activity was determined by measuring inhibition zone diameter. It was found that the compound has potent antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus areus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa with IZD of 18 mm and 17 mm respectively.


AIM
At our institution there has been a long-standing early operative approach to large bowel volvulus as well as initial decompression with rigid sigmoidoscopy. The primary aim of this study was to investigate the safety and efficacy of this approach on reducing readmissions and complications. Secondary aims were to investigate the safety and efficacy of bedside rigid sigmoidoscopy in decompression of sigmoid volvulus and investigate the sensitivity of abdominal x-ray in the diagnosis of acute large bowel volvulus.

METHOD
A retrospective study was conducted on all patients presenting with acute obstruction due to large bowel volvulus between 1 January 1998-1 January 2018.

RESULTS
Thirty-four patients with acute sigmoid volvulus were identified that met the inclusion criteria with a median age of 81 years. The majority of patients 27/34 (79%) were booked for surgery on the first admission. Readmissions were reduced in the index operative group 1/20 (5%) vs the non-operative decompression group 3/4 (75%) RR 0.07 (CI 0.01-0.49 P=0.01).

CONCLUSION
Early sigmoid colectomy was associated with low morbidity and found to be safe in the elderly, and the results suggest that early surgery is associated with reduced readmissions and a low complication rate, with index surgery preferable to urgent elective surgery. Rigid sigmoidoscopy is a safe method of decompression as a bridge to index surgery and was not associated with any complications in this series.


We report an experimental and theoretical investigation of a 4-port resonant switch patterned in a two-dimensional (2-D) metallic photonic lattice. Four-port measurements of scattering parameters are carried on in the 22-40-GHz frequency band. They show quasi-full lateral transfers, with or without reversal of propagation direction of electromagnetic wave, which are interpreted in terms of multimode propagation phenomena within the coupling region. Experimental data are explained by the solution of a suitable form of the 2-D Helmholtz equation for metallic propagation media.


PURPOSE Blinatumomab, a bispecific T-cell engager immunotherapy, is efficacious in relapsed/refractory B-cell ALL (B-ALL) and has a favorable toxicity profile. One aim of the Children's Oncology Group AALL1331 study was to compare survival of patients with low-risk (LR) first relapse of B-ALL treated with chemotherapy alone or chemotherapy plus blinatumomab. PATIENTS AND METHODS After block 1 reinduction, patients age 1-30 years with LR first relapse of B-ALL were randomly assigned to block 2/block 3/two continuation chemotherapy cycles/maintenance (arm C) or block 2/two cycles of continuation chemotherapy intercalated with three blinatumomab blocks/maintenance (arm D). Patients with CNS leukemia received 18 Gy cranial radiation during maintenance and intensified intrathecal chemotherapy. The primary and secondary end points were disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). RESULTS The 4-year DFS/OS for the 255 LR patients accrued between December 2014 and September 2019 were 61.2% ± 5.0%/90.4% ± 3.0% for blinatumomab versus 49.5% ± 5.2%/79.6% ± 4.3% for chemotherapy (P = .089/P = .11). For bone marrow (BM) ± extramedullary (EM) (BM ± EM; n = 174) relapses, 4-year DFS/OS were 72.7% ± 5.8%/97.1% ± 2.1% for blinatumomab versus 53.7% ± 6.7%/84.8% ± 4.8% for chemotherapy (P = .015/P = .020). For isolated EM (IEM; n = 81) relapses, 4-year DFS/OS were 36.6% ± 8.2%/76.5% ± 7.5% for blinatumomab versus 38.8% ± 8.0%/68.8% ± 8.6% for chemotherapy (P = .62/P = .53). Blinatumomab was well tolerated and patients had low adverse event rates. CONCLUSION For children, adolescents, and young adults with B-ALL in LR first relapse, there was no statistically significant difference in DFS or OS between the blinatumomab and standard chemotherapy arms overall. However, blinatumomab significantly improved DFS and OS for the two thirds of patients with BM ± EM relapse, establishing a new standard of care for this population. By contrast, similar outcomes and poor DFS for both arms were observed in the one third of patients with IEM; new treatment approaches are needed for these patients (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02101853).


Background: Lung cancer is the most frequent cause of death in both men and women. Smoking is the greatest risk factor for lung cancer and the relation of human papillomavirus (HPV) infection with lung cancer has been reported. HPV can be detected in small cell lung cancer samples with the methods like in situ hybridization, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), Southern blotting, dot blotting. Objective: We aimed to detect and type HPV infection in non-small cell lung carcinoma tissue samples. Methods: Tumor samples from 40 patients were collected during surgery and PCR and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) were used in order to detect HPV infection in the samples. Results: Two HPV DNA were detected among 40 of the patients, revealing a low frequency of HPV in the samples. Conclusions: HPV can be regarded as an environmental factor in tumor development. There might be a relationship between HPV infection and some non-small cell lung cancers, especially in the smoking group.


Most currently implemented production scheduling technologies are fully automated in powerful intelligent computer systems, controlled and operated by highly skilled planning staff. In this paper we present an alternative solution to scheduling, which involves the people that are usually being scheduled. The model we present, allows teams of production workers to schedule their own work. This scheduling activity is still supported by intelligent systems that consider all possible constraints and suggest alternatives to the teams, but the teams take the final scheduling decisions themselves.


Software Defined Networks (SDNs), constitute an approach of high interest for researchers, because they offer agility and flexibility in design, deployment and management of communications networks. Thanks to their centralized and holistic control, it is possible to establish and offer traffic flows with guaranteed quality of service (QoS). Thus, SDNs allow network operators to have certainty about assurance performance levels offered to users, with infrastructure-independent central configuration mechanisms. In this article, we analyze the performance of a controlled experiment comparing implementation of QoS policies in traditional networks and SDNs. In particular, there is a statistically significant improvement in performance metrics when QoS policies are applied in SDNs.


When human erythroleukemia cells (K562) were exposed to phorbol-12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), phosphorylation of transferrin receptors was enhanced 5-fold with 10(-7) M PMA and 7-fold with 10(-6) M PMA, but not with 4 alpha-phorbol (5 X 10(-7) M). Stimulation took place in serine residues in the cytoplasmic domain of the receptor. Although phosphorylation in the control cells took place in both cell-surface and intracellular receptors, phosphorylation in PMA-treated cells increased only in the cell-surface receptors, not in the intracellular receptors. The number of receptors on the cell surface increased slightly with the increase in phosphorylation at the cell surface, in the PMA-treated cells. No difference in transferrin binding was found for the control and PMA-treated cells. These results indicate that enhanced phosphorylation of the transferrin receptor takes place on the cell surface only and that it presumably is mediated by protein kinase C.


INTRODUCTION
Urodynamic pressure flow studies (PFS) are increasingly utilised in assessing patients with lower urinary tract (LUT) dysfunction. Although minimally invasive, there is theoretical risk of morbidity and infection. This paper looks at the morbidity, the incidence and natural history of significant bacteriuria (SBU) occurring after PFS.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Patients undergoing PFS in a General Hospital and meeting entry criteria were enrolled with informed consent. Each had urine culture specimens collected at the time of PFS (D0), 3 (D3) and 7 (D7) days after PFS and a 7-day symptom log.

RESULTS
Ninety-three patients (44 males and 49 females), with a mean age of 52.2 years (range, 17 to 89) were evaluated. Twenty-five per cent (23/93) developed irritative LUT symptoms after PFS, but only 2/23 had a positive urine culture. All symptoms in culture-negative patients resolved within 5 days and none had sought medical treatment. The overall incidence of SBU was 13.9% (13/93) of whom 11/13 (95.7%) were asymptomatic. Majority of SBUs were detected on D3 but 30% developed late (D7). All asymptomatic SBUs were treated expectantly and 70% (7/11) resolved spontaneously by D14. 81.8% of organisms cultured were coliforms, and 18.2% enterococcus. There was no statistically significant correlation between age, sex, post-void residual and bladder outlet obstruction (diagnosed by PFS) and post-PFS morbidity or SBU.

CONCLUSION
Symptoms occurring after PFS are mild, transient and rarely associated with infection. SBU after PFS is largely asymptomatic and self-resolving. Given the extremely low rate of symptomatic infection, antibiotic prophylaxis is not necessary.


The major benefit of a disclosed low-hardware-complexity pipelined rank filter is reduction in hardware complexity and increase in processing speed, due to identical pipelined stages and the absence of mask bits. Field-programmable-gate-array realization of this filter significantly reduces the number of used logic elements and registers, in comparison with the best prior art methods, and, at the same time, increases the maximum operating frequency. One rank-sample result is available at the output on each clock cycle, thus enabling real-time nonlinear image processing.


ABSTRACT The use of protein antigens able to protect against the majority of Streptococcus pneumoniae serotypes is envisaged as stand-alone and/or complement to the current capsular polysaccharide-based pneumococcal vaccines. Pneumolysin (Ply) is a key virulence factor that is highly conserved in amino acid sequence across pneumococcal serotypes, and therefore may be considered as a vaccine target. However, native Ply cannot be used in vaccines due to its intrinsic cytolytic activity. In the present work a completely, irreversibly detoxified pneumolysin (dPly) has been generated using an optimized formaldehyde treatment. Detoxi-fication was confirmed by dPly challenge in mice and histological analysis of the injection site in rats. Immunization with dPly elicited Ply-specific functional antibodies that were able to inhibit Ply activity in a hemolysis assay. In addition, immunization with dPly protected mice against lethal intranasal challenge with Ply, and intranasal immunization inhibited nasopharyngeal colonization after intranasal challenge with homologous or heterologous pneumococcal strain. Our findings supported dPly as a valid candidate antigen for further pneumococcal vaccine development.


Whenever a visual scene is cast onto the retina, much of it will appear degraded due to poor resolution in the periphery; moreover, optical defocus can cause blur in central vision. However, the pervasiveness of blurry or degraded input is typically overlooked in the training of convolutional neural networks (CNNs). We hypothesized that the absence of blurry training inputs may cause CNNs to rely excessively on high spatial frequency information for object recognition, thereby causing systematic deviations from biological vision. We evaluated this hypothesis by comparing standard CNNs with CNNs trained on a combination of clear and blurry images. We show that blur-trained CNNs outperform standard CNNs at predicting neural responses to objects across a variety of viewing conditions. Moreover, blur-trained CNNs acquire increased sensitivity to shape information and greater robustness to multiple forms of visual noise, leading to improved correspondence with human perception. Our results provide novel neurocomputational evidence that blurry visual experiences are very important for conferring robustness to biological visual systems.


We present an analysis of an unusual pattern of water vapor emission from the ∼2 Myr old low-mass binary system VV CrA, as observed in IR spectra obtained with VLT-CRIRES, VLT-VISIR, and Spitzer-IRS. Each component of the binary shows emission from water vapor in both the L (∼3 μm) and N (∼12 μm) bands. The N-band and Spitzer spectra are similar to those previously observed from young stars with disks and are consistent with emission from an extended protoplanetary disk. Conversely, the CRIRES L-band data of VV CrA A show an unusual spectrum, which requires the presence of a water reservoir with high temperature (T ≳ 1500 K), column density (N H2O ∼ 3 × 1020 cm−2), and turbulent broadening (v ∼ 10 km s−1) but very small emitting area (A ≲ 0.005 au2). Similarity to previously observed water emission from V1331 Cyg and SVS 13 suggests that the presence of such a reservoir may be linked to evolutionary state, perhaps related to the presence of high accretion rates or winds. While the inner disk may harbor such a reservoir, simple Keplerian models do not match well with emitting line shapes, and alternative velocity fields must be considered. We also present a new idea, that the unusual emission could arise in a circumplanetary disk, embedded within the larger VV CrA A protoplanetary disk. Additional data are likely required to determine the true physical origin of this unusual spectral pattern.


Purpose The aims of this study were to examine the salivary microbiota in conditions of periodontal health and disease and to explore microbial changes following nonsurgical periodontal treatment. Methods Non-stimulated saliva samples were collected from 4 periodontally healthy participants at baseline and from 8 patients with chronic periodontitis at baseline and 3 months following nonsurgical periodontal therapy. The V3 and V4 regions of the 16S rRNA gene from the DNA of saliva samples were amplified and sequenced. The salivary microbial compositions of the healthy participants and patients with periodontitis prior to and following nonsurgical treatment of periodontitis were compared based on the relative abundance of various taxa. Results On average, 299 operational taxonomic units were identified in each sample. The phylogenetic diversity in patients with periodontitis was higher than that in healthy participants and decreased following treatment. The abundance of the phylum Spirochaetes and the genus Treponema in patients with periodontitis was 143- and 134-fold higher than in the healthy control group, respectively, but decreased significantly following treatment. The species that were overabundant in the saliva of patients with periodontitis included the Peptostreptococcus stomatis group, Porphyromonas gingivalis, the Fusobacterium nucleatum group, Parvimonas micra, Porphyromonas endodontalis, Filifactor alocis, and Tannerella forsythia. The phylum Actinobacteria, the genus Streptococcaceae_uc, and the species Streptococcus salivarius group were more abundant in healthy participants than in those with periodontitis. There was a trend toward a decrease in disease-associated taxa and an increase in health-associated taxa following treatment. Conclusions Our results revealed differences in the taxa of salivary microbiota between conditions of periodontal health and disease. The taxa found to be associated with health or disease have potential for use as salivary biomarkers for periodontal health or disease.


Introduction:

 p22
 phox

 forms a complex with NADPH oxidases, major sources of O
 2
 -
 and H
 2
 O
 2
 . However, the role of

 p22
 phox

 during stress remains to be elucidated.

 Purpose:
 To investigate the role of endogenous

 p22
 phox

 during pressure overload (PO).

 Methods and Results:
 The level of

 p22
 phox

 protein in isolated cardiomyocytes after 4 weeks of transverse aortic constriction (TAC) was significantly higher than after sham operation (1.7-fold, p<0.05). The cardiac phenotype of cardiac-specific

 p22
 phox

 knockout (

 p22
 phox

 cKO) mice was normal at baseline. However, four weeks after TAC,

 p22
 phox

 cKO mice exhibited a lower left ventricular ejection fraction (32.0±10.0 vs 53.2±8.4%, p<0.05), a higher lung weight to tibial length ratio (23.0±6.0 vs 13.1±6.6, p<0.05), and more interstitial fibrosis (6.1±1.0 vs 4.4±1.1%, p<0.05) than control mice, indicating that the loss of

 p22
 phox

 exacerbates TAC-induced cardiac dysfunction. The level of oxidative stress in the heart, evaluated by dityrosine immunoblot, was significantly lower in

 p22
 phox

 cKO mice than in control mice (0.71±0.04 vs 1.00±0.04, p<0.01). The peak Ca
 2+
 amplitude in isolated cardiomyocytes was lower in

 p22
 phox

 cKO mice than in control mice at baseline (2.4±0.1 vs 3.0±0.2, p<0.01). Although mRNA expression of SERCA2a did not differ, there was significantly less SERCA2a protein in

 p22
 phox

 cKO mice than in control mice (0.62±0.10 vs 1.00±0.23, p<0.01) at baseline. The amount of biotinylated iodoacetamide labeled SERCA2a was significantly smaller in

 p22
 phox

 cKO hearts than in control mouse hearts (0.4-fold, p<0.01), indicating that cysteine residues in SERCA2a are oxidized to a greater extent in

 p22
 phox

 cKO hearts than in control mouse hearts. Since cysteine oxidation decreases the stability of SERCA2a, our results suggest that

 p22
 phox

 stabilizes SERCA2a by preventing cysteine oxidation.

 Conclusions:
 Endogenous

 p22
 phox

 is protective against PO, possibly by maintaining SERCA2a stability.


The goal of the Human Power Team from the TU Delft and the Free University of Amsterdam is to break the world speed record in unpaced cycling (Sam Whittingham, 133.28 km/h). The design of such a faired recumbent bicycle is a challenge. The Delft design, called VeloX (Human Power Team (2013)), is a fully-faired monocoque front-driven recumbent bicycle, with minimized air drag and maximized space for a big and strong athlete. However, front driven bicycles have the disadvantage that the front driving induces unwanted steering and that the frontal area of the bicycle cannot be reduced any further. A solution would be rear-wheel steering. A common thought is that a rear-wheel steered bicycle cannot be laterally self-stable, and therefore hard to control. However, recent research (Knoll et al. (2012)) has shown that one can design a rear-wheel steered bicycle which shows a stable forward speed range. Based on these results a rear-wheel steered recumbent bicycle has been designed, within the existing design constraints. Although not self-stable, this design shows a mildly lateral unstable behavior in the desired forward speed range of 0 to 40 m/s (0 to 144 km/h). Computer simulations demonstrate that the bicycle can be stabilized by adding a human controller model (Schwab et al. (2013)) to the bicycle model. For a set of expected lateral perturbations (side wind perturbations) it is shown that rider steer torque stays within human bounds, both in magnitude and in frequency. Future work is dedicated to building and testing a prototype of the design. © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the Centre for Sports Engineering Research, Sheffield Hallam University.


In this paper, we propose a rate-constrained object-based hierarchical motion compensation technique, by-extending the hierarchical grid interpolation (HGI)[4]. First, we propose an object-based HGI (OHGI) technique, which is an extended version of HGI, to employ for the object-based video coding. In order to achieve the rate-distortion trade-off, inherent in the quadtree segmentation, we employ the greedy algorithm, modified for the OHGI technique, to exploit the rate-distortion trade-off effectively. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated through the simulation, and it is shown that the proposed technique provides better performance than the conventional object-based motion compensation techniques.


The use of discursive analysis in appliedanthropo-sociological research with the help ofthe statistical programs Hamlet 2.0 andTextSTAT-2.9c This contribution will provide information about the possibilities and limitations of theuse of discursive analysis of textual data with thehelp of the statistical program Hamlet 2.0. It consists of two mutually interconnected parts. In thefirst part of the contribution, the theory of themethod of discursive analysis will be discussed.The second part will be focused on the applicationof the statistical program Hamlet 2.0 in practice.This will be shown using the example of a partialdiscursive analysis of state administration and self-government relating to Islam in the Czech Republic, which was part of the project "Islam in CZ: Theestablishment of Muslims in Czech public spaces".Readers will be apprised of all steps in the analysisusing the program Hamlet 2.0, which include se-lection of the texts, their preparation for analysis,the data analysis itself and possibilities for the finalinterpretation of results. On the basis of this practical example, the advantages and disadvantagesof this program for applied anthropo-sociologicalresearch will also be presented.


After the 1980s, chronic inflation in Turkey has shaken confidence in the domestic currency, and thus operating debit-credit transactions through dollars. The aim of this paper is to analyse the impact of exchange rate pass-through into inflation in both Turkey and emerging market economies that were highly dollarized and shifted to a flexible exchange rate regime, together with inflation targeting policy in an attempt to switch to the advanced economy. This paper also studies whether stabilization programs under flexible exchange rate regimes and particularly inflation targeting policy may have eliminated dollarization in the periods 1995-2001 and 2002-2010. .


An optimized isomerization method was developed by heating all-E-astaxanthin in ethyl acetate (70 °C) with I-TiO2 catalyst, yielding 22.7% and 16.9% of 9Z- and 13Z-astaxanthin, respectively, in 2 h, with 92-95% purity after semipreparative HPLC purification. 13Z-Astaxanthin had higher antioxidant activity than all-E- and 9Z-astaxanthins in oxygen radical absorbing capacity assay for lipophilic compounds, photochemiluminescence, and cellular antioxidant activity (CAA) assays, and 9Z-astaxanthin was higher in DPPH radical-scavenging activity assay and lower in CAA assay. All isomers were relatively stable between pH 2.0 and 11.6, except 13Z- and 9Z-astaxanthins at pH 2.0, suggesting they may be converted after passing the gastric phase in vivo. Metal ions did not significantly (p < 0.05) affect the stability. Results of the current study provides a means for further study into the mechanisms related to in vivo transformation and bioavailability of Z-astaxanthins, and their application in the development of functional foods and nutraceutical products.


The Japanese military presence in Vietnam during the Second World War is well known among academia and has left traces in the history of Vietnam, however, the impacts of the remaining Japanese in Vietnam since the war ended has been somewhat forgotten on an individual and collective level. It is a common thought that there was only a Chinese presence in Vietnam during the 1950s and 1960s, but the real picture was immensely more complex than that. During the First Indochina War, many Japanese and Westerners (German, Austrian, French, Greek, etc.) defected and stood in the same line with the Vietnamese people during the struggle against the French invaders. These people became known as "new Vietnamese citizens" and joined hands with the Vietnamese people to build and defend the newly established Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). After the end of the First Indochina War in 1954, according to the wishes of these Japanese, the Vietnamese government created policies for favourable conditions for them to be repatriated to their fatherland. Drawing on untapped documents at the Vietnamese National Archives Center III, this article contributes to clarifying the history of the Japanese soldiers that remained in Vietnam after the end of the Second World War.


Abstract A program package for the management and analysis of spectral ultraviolet radiation (UV) data on an IBM-compatible PC is described. The present version can accommodate data from UV spectroradiometers operating in Russia, the U.S. National Science Foundation Polar Programs UV Spectroradiometer Network, and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Ozone and UV Data Center, located in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The package manages compact databases of measured UV spectra and supporting meteorological information and has tools for visualization, statistical analysis, calculation of biologically effective doses, and a simple built-in radiative transfer model. In this paper, the program structure and the user interface are discussed. Examples of the program's operation using spectral data from three spectroradiometers (SUVS-M, Central Aerological Observatory, Russia; Meteorological Observatory of Moscow State University, Russia; NSF Network, United States) illustrate the program's capabilities. Compa...


The design of dendrimers with various chromophores has attracted significant attention in light of the dual effect of the luminescence of the chromophores and the morphology of the synthesized dendrimers. Recent developments in this field stem from their wide potential applications, including organic light-emitting diodes, photonic switches and upconversion lasers, as well as sensors and electronic devices. The focus of this comprehensive review is on the design and properties of various classes of light-harvesting dendrimeric materials.


Exterior sheathing insulation is an effective strategy in increasing the overall R-value of wall assemblies; other benefits include decreasing the effects of thermal bridging and increasing the moisture durability of the built assembly. Vapor-permeable exterior insulation, such as mineral board or expanded polystyrene foam, are one such product that may be used to achieve these benefits. However, uncertainty exists on the effects of inward driven moisture and the interaction of increased sheathing temperatures on the moisture durability of the edifice. To address these concerns, Building Science Corporation (BSC) conducted a series of hygrothermal models for cities representing a range of different climate zones. This report describes the research project, key research questions, and the procedures utilized to analyse the problems.


A comparative analysis of well renowned "Shooting Method" with another numerical method "Complementary Functions Method" (CFM) is presented for calculating eigenvalue (λ). Contrary to the shooting method hit and trial approach, CFM exploits the properties of linear ordinary differential equation (LODE). In the case of linear eigenvalue Boundary value Problem (BVP), CFM generates an algebraic equation system with one unknown "λ" and, alone root finding method is sufficient to give required eigenvalue. However, the Shooting Method create a system of algebraic equations containing two unknowns "λ" and "missing initial conditions", that demands an additional numerical technique along with root finding method. These radical differences between two approaches, sets the basis for this comparative investigation. As a case study in Linear Elastic Stability, different cases of Euler columns are investigated by finding eigenvalues for each case numerically, under both methods. Comparison is performed on the basis of results accuracy and cost effectiveness for both numerical techniques while solving linear stability problems.


Significance Exposure to extreme temperatures and high levels of the pollutants ozone and particulate matter poses a major threat to human health. Heat waves and pollution episodes share common underlying meteorological drivers and thus often coincide, which can synergistically worsen their health impacts beyond the sum of their individual effects. Furthermore, there is evidence that pollution episodes and heat waves will worsen under future climate change, making it imperative to understand the nature of their co-occurrence. In this paper, using 15 years of surface observations over the eastern United States and Canada, we show that the extremes cluster together in often overlapping large-scale episodes, and that the largest episodes have the hottest temperatures and highest levels of pollution. Heat waves and air pollution episodes pose a serious threat to human health and may worsen under future climate change. In this paper, we use 15 years (1999–2013) of commensurately gridded (1° x 1°) surface observations of extended summer (April–September) surface ozone (O3), fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and maximum temperature (TX) over the eastern United States and Canada to construct a climatology of the coincidence, overlap, and lag in space and time of their extremes. Extremes of each quantity are defined climatologically at each grid cell as the 50 d with the highest values in three 5-y windows (∼95th percentile). Any two extremes occur on the same day in the same grid cell more than 50% of the time in the northeastern United States, but on a domain average, co-occurrence is approximately 30%. Although not exactly co-occurring, many of these extremes show connectedness with consistent offsets in space and in time, which often defy traditional mechanistic explanations. All three extremes occur primarily in large-scale, multiday, spatially connected episodes with scales of >1,000 km and clearly coincide with large-scale meteorological features. The largest, longest-lived episodes have the highest incidence of co-occurrence and contain extreme values well above their local 95th percentile threshold, by +7 ppb for O3, +6 µg m−3 for PM2.5, and +1.7 °C for TX. Our results demonstrate the need to evaluate these extremes as synergistic costressors to accurately quantify their impacts on human health.


Many poverty−alleviation−relocation projects in China resort to tourism to sustain immigrants' livelihood in new communities. However, how tourism contributes to poverty elimination and maintaining gains is yet to be discovered. Based on the sustainable livelihood concept, this study constructs a three-dimensional index system to evaluate livelihood sustainability and identify potential factors in three relocated tourism communities. Results show that most resettled residents have median-level livelihood sustainability. Livelihood capital, strategies, and environment contribute to livelihood sustainability in decreasing order. Regarding livelihood modes, tourism−led livelihood takes the first position in terms of supporting livelihood sustainability, followed by outside−work−led, local−work−led, and government subsidy−led livelihoods. Regarding obstacle factors, annual household income, number of household workers, and education levels are shared by relocated households across different livelihood modes. Aside from policy suggestions on survey sites, this study provides a holistic framework and enlightens the generalizable paradigm to the analysis of sustained livelihood via tourism development in relocated communities.


I. Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations of Countertransference in Post-Traumatic Therapies 1. Empathic Strain and Countertransference, John P. Wilson and Jacob D. Lindy 2. Empathic Strain and Therapist Defense: Type I and II CTRs, John P. Wilson, Jacob D. Lindy, and Beverley Raphael 3. Empathic Strain and Countertransference Roles: Case Illustrations, Jacob D. Lindy and John P. Wilson II. Countertransference in the Treatment of Victims of Sexual, Physical, and Emotional Abuse 4. The Dance of Empathy: A Hermeneutic Formulation of Countertransference, Empathy, and Understanding in the Treatment of Individuals Who Have Experienced Early Childhood Trauma, I. Lisa McCann and Joseph Colletti 5. Countertransference in the Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder, Richard P. Kluft 6. Inner City Children of Trauma: Urban Violence Traumatic Stress Response Syndrome (U-VTS) and Therapists' Responses, Erwin Randolph Parson 7. Countertransference in the Treatment of Acutely Traumatized Children, Kathleen Nader 8. Rape and the Phenomena of Countertransference, Carol R. Hartman and Helene Jackson III. Countertransference Reactions in Work with Victims of War Trauma, Civil Violence, and Political Oppression 9. Countertransference in the Treatment of Southeast Asian Refugees, J. David Kinzie 10. Determinant Factors for Countertransference Reactions under State Terrorism, Inger Agger and Soren Buus Jensen 11. Countertransference in the Treatment of War Veterans, Michael J. Maxwell and Cynthia Sturm 12. Countertransference and World War II Resistance Fighters: Issues in Diagnosis and Assessment, Wybrand Op den Velde, G. Frank Koerselman, and Petra G. H. Aarts IV. Countertransference in "At-Risk" Professionals: Rescue Workers, Mental Health Providers, and Persons at the Workplace 13. When Disaster Strikes: Managing Emotional Reactions in Rescue Workers, Beverley Raphael and John P. Wilson 14. Trauma and Countertransference in the Workplace, Christine Dunning 15. Countertransference, Trauma, and Training, Yael Danieli 16. Beyond Empathy: New Directions for the Future, Jacob D. Lindy and John P. Wilson Index


Recently, several video coding solutions based on the distributed source coding paradigm have appeared in the literature. Among them, Wyner-Ziv video coding schemes enable to achieve a flexible distribution of the computational complexity between the encoder and decoder, promising to fulfill requirements of emerging applications such as visual sensor networks and wireless surveillance. To achieve a performance comparable to the predictive video coding solutions, it is necessary to increase the quality of the side information, this means the estimation of the original frame created at the decoder. In this paper, a hierarchical motion estimation (HME) technique using different scales and increasingly smaller block sizes is proposed to generate a more reliable estimation of the motion field. The HME technique is integrated in a well known motion compensated frame interpolation framework responsible for the creation of the side information in a Wyner-Ziv video decoder. The proposed technique enables to achieve improvements in the rate-distortion (RD) performance up to 7 dB when compared to H.263+ Intra and 3 dB when compared to H.264/AVC Intra.


: The paper is concerned with interaction of the immune, endocrine and nervous systems in patients with multiple sclerosis. Dexamethasone and vasopressine tests were made. Lymphocyte sensitivity to hydrocortisone and thymalin, the main protein of myelin, was detected. It is advisable that arginine-vasopressine combined with thymalin be used for correction of homeostatic abnormalities and secondary disease prophylaxis.


A DNA fragment containing the deletion junction region from a Japanese individual with homozygous delta beta-thalassemia has been cloned. A clone containing the normal DNA surrounding the 3' breakpoint of this deletion and a clone carrying the G gamma- and A gamma-globin genes of this patient were also isolated. Sequences of the deletion junction and both gamma-globin genes were determined. A comparison of these sequences with previously determined sequences of the normal counterparts revealed that the 5' breakpoint is located between 2,134 and 2,137 base pairs (bp) 3' to the polyA site of the A gamma-globin gene, the 5' breakpoint is located just downstream of the 3' border of the fetal gamma-globin duplication unit, and no molecular defects are evident within the gamma-globin gene region. A comparison between the sequences of the normal DNA surrounding the 3' breakpoint and the normal DNA surrounding the 5' breakpoint shows that deletion is the result of a nonhomologous recombination event. There are A+T-rich stretches near the 5' and 3' breakpoints in the normal DNA, and a portion of an Aly repeat is located in the region 3' to the 3' breakpoint. Southern blot analysis using probes 3' to the beta-globin gene showed that the deletion extends in the 3' direction further than any other deletions associated with delta beta-thalassemia and hereditary persistence of fetal hemoglobin (HPFH) heretofore reported. These results are discussed in terms of the mechanism generating large deletions in mammalian cells and three models for the regulation of gamma-globin and beta-globin gene expression in humans.


For a few decades, genotoxic aquatic environmental pollutants have been detected in vivo using mainly vertebrates like fish and amphibians. The chapter tells the story of the use of two non-model urodele amphibians, Pleurodeles waltl and Ambystoma mexicanum, for the design and development of a sensitive method for the detection of genotoxic effects in ecotoxicology. Since its inception in the late 1980s in Toulouse, France, the testing method has provided an internationally standardized protocol and has been used in various fields of research as diverse as public health, wastewater treatment, ecotoxicology and environmental genotoxicology, and more recently in functional ecology.


Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women worldwide. Human papillomavirus (HPV) is considered as the main cause of invasive cervical cancer and cervical intra-epithelial neoplasia. High risk HPV DNA has been shown to be present in 99.7% of cervical cancers. So HPV DNA testing for screening of cervical cancers may play a potential role in early detection and management of cervical cancer. With above background a cross sectional study was undertaken to estimate the prevalence and to identify the associated risk factors of human Papillomavirus infection among Visual Inspection with Acetic acid (VIA) positive women attending at colposcopy clinic of Mymensingh Medical College Hospital (MMCH), Mymensingh, Bangladesh from July 2013 to December 2014. One hundred and forty three cervical swabs for nested PCR were collected from the patients attending colposcopy clinic of MMCH, for detecting target gene of L1 region of the HPV genome. Among the 143 VIA positive patient nested PCR showed 49.6% (71/143) positive. Biopsy of 54 colposcopy positive women revealed that 16 (29.6%) cases were chronic cervicitis, 33 (61.1%) cases were mild dysplasia (C1NI), 01 (1.9%) were having moderate dysplasia (C1NII) and 04(7.4%) patients were diagnosed as invasive squamous cell carcinoma. So, high grade cervical lesions were 100% positive by nested PCR for HPV.


SUMMARY We present the case of a young female who suffered a massive intracerebral bleed following the ingestion of a small quantity of amphetamine (speed). Physicians should be aware that amphetamine abuse can lead to cerebrovascular events in young adults.


The new conception of seismic data analysis is proposed. It is based on preliminary studying of seismic background. Its characteristics are a base for using mathematical models of non realizable seismic signals. The specific mathematical model of the seismic signal is proposed as well. The peculiarity of the model is that it allows you to simulate the flow of seismic waves of different classes each of them appears in the stream with specific time delay. This process takes place against the micro-seismic background noise. It is natural to model the flow of signals by the physically realizable signal. It means those signals which do not have a trace in prehistory. But this representation of the signal is unacceptable for two reasons. The first one is related to the smoothness of the signal at the time of its appearance on the seismic record. The second one is related to the fact that the fade of the signal in the noise does not allow us to determine the time of its appearance on the record accurately. The latter circumstance does not leave us the possibility to simulate the time of the signal occurrence by using the determined value. Therefore, the time of occurrence of the signal is simulated by random variable with variance depending on the level of micro-seismic background. We introduce the notion of generalized seismic signal as a function of time and of the vector of parameters, which  determine its shape, the energy, the place in flow of the other signals, spectral characteristics, and in general behavior in the entire history of its existence. Any widely spread seismic signal models used in practice are a particular case of this one. Or in a more rigorous approach to the definition the different  particular cases of the signals classes are transformed into the different hyper-planes into space of parameters.


Objective To observe the correlation between blood glucose fluctuation in type 2 dia- betes mellitus ( T2DM) patients and vascular endothelial injury/platelet activation/protein kinase Cβ1 (PKCpβ1). Methods Capillary blood was collected from finger tips of 38 T2DM patients at 7 time points, i.e., before 3 meals, 2 h after 3 meals, 21:00 pm before sleep. The mean amplitude of plasma glucose excursions (MAGE) was calculated. The peripheral blood platelet aggregation rate (PAG) induced by a- denosine diphosphate (ADP) and platelet membrane protein level of CD62p were determined by platelet fluorescent aggregometer and flow cytometry respectively. HbAlc was measured by ion-exchange high- performance liquid chromatography. Serum levels of E-selectin, von Willebrand factor ( vWF), and PKCβ1 were detected by ELISA. Meanwhile, liver and renal functions, blood lipids were also measured. Their blood pressure was measured and body mass index (BMI) calculated. By taking HbA1c as a moni- tored index for assessing long-term glucose control, MAGE as an indicator for assessing glucose fluctua- tion, the correlations between serum markers for vascular endothelial injury (levels of E-selectin and vWF)/platelet activation indices (PAG and CD62p expression) and PKCβ1 level/MAGE respectively were analyzed using Pearson correlation analysis and multivariant Logistic regression. The correlations be- tween PKCβ1 level and MAGE/HbA1 c were also analyzed. Results In simple correlation analysis, there were no significant correlations between age/BMI/course of disease/medical history/serum levels of E-se- lectin/vWF/PKCβ1/PAG/CD62p expression and MAGE (P >0. 05). There were significant correlations be- tween vascular endothelial injury markers ( E-selectin and vWF)/platelet activation indicators ( PAG, CD62p expression) and MAGE (r =0. 468, 0. 609, 0. 451 , 0. 674; P <0. 01). There were significant corre- lations between PKCβ1 and glucose assessment indicators (MAGE and HbA1c)/vascular endothelial inju- ry markers ( E-selectin and vWF) , platelet activation indicators ( PAG and CD62p expression) (r = 0. 643, 0. 705, 0. 394, 0. 665, 0. 441 , 0. 577; P <0. 01). Conclusion PKCβ1 , the key regulatory gene of coronary artery disease with blood stasis syndrome, was closely related with the degree of vascular en- dothelial injury and aggregation level of platelet activation in T2DM patients with blood glucose fluctuation.


Holdeman, David. Much Labouring: The Texts and Authors ofYeats's First Mod ernist Books. (Editorial Theory and Literary Criticism.) Ann Arbor: The Univ. of Michigan Press, 1997. xiii, 255 pp. $44.50. (isbn 0-472-10851-4) Kline, Mary-Jo. A Guide to Documentary Editing. 2nd ed. Prepared for the As sociation for Documentary Editing, Linda Johanson, Project Director. Bal timore and London: The Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998. xix, 300 pp. Pa per. $25.95. (isbn 0-8018-5686-8)