ABSTRACT On the journey to wintering sites, most migratory birds alternate between flights and stopovers, where they rest and refuel. In contrast to the time-minimization strategy commonly assumed to drive the pre-breeding migration, birds are rather expected to follow an energy minimization during post-breeding migration. It is the cumulative duration of flights and stopovers that determines the total energy requirements and duration of the journey. Since migrating birds actually spend most of the time at stopovers sites, selection to minimize the amount of energy or time spent on migration is likely to operate on the effectiveness of stopover rest and refueling. Here, we address the relative contribution of factors acting on departure decisions from a stopover site during the post-breeding migration in a long-distance migratory songbird. When capture probability is low, it is impossible to measure fattening over the entire duration of the stopover. To get around this limitation, we use time since arrival (TSA) as a proxy for the progressive temporal change occurring in the internal state of an individual (i.e. rest, physiological recovery, and fuel loading) during the stopover. We develop a capture–recapture model to address the respective effects of estimated TSA and of weather conditions on departure probability. Using a 20-year dataset for Sedge Warblers (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus), we show that TSA served as a surrogate of the most important information that birds use when deciding to depart from a stopover site, while low humidity and rising atmospheric pressure only slightly increase daily departure probability. Hence, a bird would resume migration mainly according to the time it had to rest and refuel, and then fine-tuning departure decision according to weather conditions. The generality of these results needs to be assessed by applying this modeling framework to other migratory species and at sites or times with greater weather variability. LAY SUMMARY During their migratory journey, most migratory birds need to stop at places where they can rest and refuel. For migratory birds, most of the time spent in migration is spent at stopover sites. Understanding when and why they decide to leave a stopover site is key to better understanding birds' decisions during migration. With 20 years of capture data on the Sedge Warbler (Acrocephalus schoenobaenus) at a stopover site in western Brittany (France), we used capture–recapture models to investigate and quantify the relative influence of time since arrival and weather conditions on departure decision. We found that the departure decision is mainly driven by the time an individual has already spent at the stopover site and that humidity and atmospheric pressure variations only have secondary effects on the decision to leave the stopover site. Such an approach could be applied to many existing multidecadal datasets to help refining our understanding of birds' stopover ecology.


This paper reviews the recent progresses of the depth map generation for dynamic scene and its corresponding computational models. This paper mainly covers the homogeneous ambiguity models in depth sensing, resolution models in depth processing, and consistency models in depth optimization. We also summarize the future work in the depth map generation.


We present a new perfect simulation algorithm for stationary chains having unbounded variable length memory. This is the class of infinite memory chains for which the family of transition probabilities is represented by a probabilistic context tree. We do not assume any continuity condition: our condition is expressed in terms of the structure of the context tree. More precisely, the length of the contexts is a deterministic function of the distance to the last occurrence of some determined string of symbols. It turns out that the resulting class of chains can be seen as a natural extension of the class of chains having a renewal string. In particular, our chains exhibit a visible regeneration scheme.


Spoken language translation (SLT) has become very important in an increasingly globalized world. Machine translation (MT) for automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems is a major challenge of great interest. This research investigates that automatic sentence segmentation of speech that is important for enriching speech recognition output and for aiding downstream language processing. This article focuses on the automatic sentence segmentation of speech and improving MT results. We explore the problem of identifying sentence boundaries in the transcriptions produced by automatic speech recognition systems in the Polish language. We also experiment with reverse normalization of the recognized speech samples.


Seventy consecutive operations involving the renal arteries were reviewed to identify factors linked to perioperative mortality. Aortorenal bypass (n = 29), endarterectomy (n = 12), extraanatomic bypass (n = 12), thrombectomy (n = 4), and reimplantation (n = 13) were associated with a 16% perioperative mortality that was often secondary to multisystem organ failure. Patients who died exhibited a higher serum creatinine (3.4 vs 2.1 mg/dL; P < 0.05). Stratification of patients by risk revealed higher American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) (P < 0.005) and modified Acute Physiology Score, and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE II) (P < 0.02) score among patients who died. Higher mortality was also observed after bilateral renal artery operations (31% vs 5%; P < 0.005) or concomitant mesenteric revascularization (37% vs 12%; P < 0.05), but not simultaneous aortic procedures (18% vs 11%; P = NS). Bilateral operation (P < 0.0001), age (P < 0.001), and ASA class (P < 0.01) were independent predictors of mortality according to multivariate analysis. Because of higher mortality in these specific situations, modification or limitation of operative scope may be appropriate.


Conodonts from carbonate slope sediments of the Ronde Member at Cinquefoil Mountain near Jasper, Alberta, have constrained the Frasnian–Famennian boundary in the Upper Devonian for the first time in Canada. Based on conodont Palmatolepis species, the Frasnian–Famennian boundary has been precisely identified in this section at the base of a tempestite bed (20 cm thick), 14 m above the base of the Ronde Member and directly below a prominent oncolite bed (65 cm thick). Recognized standard conodont zones are the Upper rhenana–linguiformis (or Montagne Noire Zone 13), the Lower triangularis, and the Middle triangularis zones. Conodonts exhibit a mixed Palmatolepis–Polygnathus–Icriodus biofacies, supporting the paleogeographic interpretation of this site as an upperslope depositional setting along the southeastern margin of the paleo-Jasper Basin.


We have investigated the nonequilibrium transport of a two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) in an InAs/GaAs(111)A heterostructure coupled with superconducting Nb electrodes. In the superconductor (S)/normal conductor (N) hybrid system, the transport properties of the N are affected by the superconducting proximity effect. According to the updated theory, this proximity correction to the conductance (PCC) shows the reentrant behaviour to be a function of energy. We observed reentrant behaviour in the voltage and temperature dependences of the conductance of the 2DEG. The conductance peak is observed at Tcmax ~ 6 K and the PCC reaches ~20% of the normal-state conductance and almost disappears at low energies. These values are one order of magnitude higher than those obtained in the previous works. These results are most likely achieved by diminishing the length of the N channel L because the PCC as well as the correlation energy (Thouless energy) is proportional to 1/L2. The measured conductance showed a very good agreement with that of the theory.


This article describes and analyzes the motives for using Dumolid among Indonesian artists. The National Narcotics Agency (BNN) classifies Dumolid as Group IV Psychotropic substances containing nitrazepam. This type of sedative hypnotic drug is commonly used as a medication for depression or mild stress or to be a sedative. Because of that Dumolid is included as a substance that was forbidden to use. The research method used is an observation technique on online media that reports the arrest of Indonesian artists for their involvement in drug abuse. The analysis technique used is discourse analysis which focuses on statements, acknowledgments, and evidence published in text form. In conclusion, the main motive of Indonesian artists to use Dumolid is achievement motives, namely the drive to be able to have all job opportunities. Continuous work demands result in decreased stamina. To overcome this decreased stamina, they use Dumolid. Initially this drug was used by doctors to treat insomnia. The second motive is an affiliate motive, which is to use Dumolid to be accepted in their environment. This study also found motives for power by artists whose position as dealers (asides being users). The artist gets information about Dumolid from their association and gets their items from their association. The three motives above are interrelated to encourage the artist to consume Dumolid


In this study, a receiver initiated cooperative medium access control (RIC-MAC) protocol is proposed for cooperative communications to reduce the energy consumption of wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Considering a real WSN platform, the simulation results show that using the proposed RIC-MAC protocol in cooperative communications provides latency and energy gains as compared to multi-hop communications. However, the energy gain is shown to be reduced when the network traffic load increases. Finally, considering the impact of traffic load on energy consumption and latency, RIC-MAC is illustrated to be robust to traffic load variations in terms of latency.


The reactions of C2(a3Piu) radicals with a series of alkanes have been studied at room temperature and 6.5 torr total pressure using the pulsed laser photolysis/laser-induced fluorescence technique. C2(a3Piu) radicals were generated by photolysis of C2Cl4 with the focused output from the fourth harmonic of a Nd: YAG laser at 266 nm. The relative concentration of C2(a3Piu) radicals was monitored on the (0,0) band of the C2(d3Pig <-- a3Piu) transition at 516.5 nm by laser-induced fluorescence. From the analysis of the relative concentration-time behavior of C2(a3Piu) under pseudofirst-order conditions, the rate constants for the reactions of C2(a3Piu) with alkanes (C1-C8) were determined. The rate constant increases linearly with the increasing of the number of CH2 groups in the alkanes. The experimental results indicate that the reaction of C2(a3Piu) with small alkanes (C1-C8) follows the typical hydrogen abstraction process. Based on the correlation of the experimental results with the bond dissociation energy of the alkanes, the reactions of C2(a3Piu) with small alkanes likely proceed via the mechanism of hydrogen abstraction.


One-year outcomes of older adults referred for community aging and mental health services through the Gatekeeper Model were examined in this study. Outcomes included level of social, physical, psychological, and economic isolation, physical health problems, service need, and service utilization. Findings indicate that individuals referred by gatekeepers were more likely to live alone and to be socially isolated but less likely to have physical health problems. They were also less likely to have a physician at referral, but at 1 year this difference was not found. Cognitive problems had a significant impact on the lives of clients referred by gatekeepers at referral but not after one year. At referral, those referred by gatekeepers had greater service needs, but after 1 year they did not use more services than those referred by other sources. Implications of these findings are discussed. The findings from this study indicate that the adoption of the Gatekeepers model does not result in high service utilization. The Gatekeeper model is inexpensive to implement and can benefit communities through increased collaboration among service providers.


Cardiovascular diseases are the major cause of death worldwide, emphasizing the necessity to better understand adult human cardiac cell biology and development. Although the adult heart was considered as a terminally differentiated organ, rare populations of cardiac stem cells (CSCs) have been described so far, with their developmental origin and endogenous function still being a matter of debate. Here, we identified a Nestin+/S100+/CD105+/Sca1+/cKit- population of CSCs in the myocardium of the adult human heart auricle. Isolated cells showed expression of characteristic neural crest-derived stem cell (NCSC) markers and kept their genetic stability during cultivation in vitro. Cultivated hCSCs efficiently gave rise to functional, beating cardiomyocytes, osteoblasts, adipocytes and neurons. Global transcriptome analysis via RNAseq showed a high similarity between the expression profiles of Nestin+/S100+/CD105+/Sca1+/cKit- hCSCs and adult human NCSCs from the nasal cavity (inferior turbinate stem cells, ITSCs). In detail, 88.1 % of all genes were significantly expressed in both stem cell populations particularly including common NCSC-markers. Based on these observations, we suggest a similar developmental origin of both stem cell populations. In summary, we identified a human adult cardiac stem cell population with neural crest-origin, which may also contribute to endogenous cardiac tissue homeostasis and tissue repair in vivo.


. Data collection and semantic annotation is often the basic of information processing such as semantic relation analysis of data, big data mining and semantic information search et.al. A method which collects data from tourism web site and annotates these data with semantic tags automatically is promoted in this paper. The crawler which collects data from web site automatically is introduced firstly. Then the Chinese word segmentation tool and a classic key word extraction algorithm TF/IDF are introduced. With the help of a crawler, we collection tourism information about 247 sight spots in Beijing and 4198 sight spots in other area of China from the web sites of elong and ctrip. Then with the help of the ICTCLAS and TF/IDF, we abstract keywords from the information as semantic tags to annotate the sight spots .


In this paper, we investigate the locomotor behaviors of a biped robot on a splitbelt treadmill using a locomotion-control system composed of nonlinear oscillators with phase resetting. Our results show that the robot establishes stable walking on the treadmill at various speeds of the belts due to modulation of the rhythm and phase by phase resetting. In addition, the phase differences between the leg movements shifted from out of phase, and duty factors were autonomously modulated depending on the speed discrepancy between the belts occurring through dynamic interactions among the robot's mechanical system, the oscillator control system, and the environment. Such shifts of phase differences between the leg movements and modulations of duty factors are observed during human splitbelt treadmill walking, and our results suggest that our dynamic model using the robot and oscillator control system reflects a certain essence of the ability to produce adaptive locomotor behaviors.


Researching hidden communities often takes us to places which are unpredictable, unimaginable and unknowable. Whether researching in a rural village in Africa for a year or across the other side of town for a couple of hours at a time, fieldwork requires that we step out of our usual milieu, put on the guise of an academic (for many of us for the first time) and 'travel' to unknown territory. This 'travelling' is explicitly intellectual, professional and academic but it may also be physical, personal and sometimes emotional.

In this paper I offer an 'anatomy' (Mintz 1989) of the personal and emotional aspects of my doctoral fieldwork in prisons in Ecuador. Examining the messy realities of emotions in my fieldwork speaks back to contemporary debates about the role of emotions in research. As well as gathering legitimate, intellectual knowledge in the form interview data, fieldnotes and budding theoretical ideas, I left the field with a collection of other knowledges which were personal, emotional, unexpected and sometimes uncomfortable. This paper is a product of the ambiguous knowledge that emerged from my fieldwork.


In this paper, we analyze that the best mode for intra-prediction can be changed by the RD cost related with the bit to signal the prediction mode according to whether the most probable mode (MPM) and the prediction mode are same or not. With this understanding, we propose a fast 4 × 4 intra-prediction based on the MPM in the H.264/AVC. This algorithm uses a defined RD cost including the minimum bit to signal the prediction modes excluded the MPM as a threshold. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of reducing the overall encoding time by 36% and the overall intra-prediction time by 47% compared to the full search, with negligible loss of quality.


We study one-dimensional potentials in q space and the new features that arise. In particular, we show that the probability of tunnelling of a particle through a barrier or potential step is less than that of the same particle with the same energy in ordinary space which is somehow unexpected. We also show that the tunnelling time for a particle in q space is less than that of the same particle in ordinary space.


The small eye suggests an apparently robust anatomy with a more resistant sclera, good trabecular function, good uvea trophicity, a healthy retina, with a full papilla. The volume of these eyes is small. Usually, the volume of the eye is related to the sagittal diameter of the eye. However, the volume of a sphere varies with the third power of the radius of the sphere. These small eyes have a volume smaller than their sagittal diameter suggests. In this volume, highly decreased develop certain anatomical components without having to keep proportions (lens, choroid), and some have a continuous growing volume (lens). On long term, there is a balance inside these eyes despite a disproportion between their components. This internal disproportion inside the small eye can erupt through pressure differences between its structures: pupillary block, angle closure or a disproportionate response in case of typically uncomplicated surgery, which alters the apparent internal balance of these eyes. Seemingly simple surgeries, such as phacoemulsification or filtering surgery can trigger storm (storms occur by differences in atmospheric pressure) with the following characteristics: - intraocular "precipitation" in the form of uveal effusions, massive choroidal hemorrhage exudative retinal detachment, CME - breaks in anatomical barriers, lens posterior capsular tear - deviations courses: aqueous misdirection Surgical operations on these eyes are like a dangerous storm surfing, with risks, incidents, with unpredictable but great experience and courage request.


Background: Standard therapy of acute promyelocytic leukemia has long relied on the combination of All-trans-retinoic acid (ATRA) and chemotherapy. The introduction of arsenic trioxide (ATO) in APL treatment has allowed achievement of similarly high remission and survival rates coupled with significantly reduced myelosuppression. Recent results of the APL0406 trial by the GIMEMA-AMLSG-SAL study groups showed that the combination of ATRA and arsenic trioxide (ATO) is superior to standard ATRA and chemotherapy (CHT) in front-line therapy of low/intermediate risk acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL). The implications of these results for the clinical practice of APL patients in Germany have been uncertain given the fact that ATO is not formally licensed for front-line therapy of APL. Aim:In order to provide evidence and a reflection of the clinical reality of APL patient care in Germany an intergroup APL registry (National acute promyelocytic leukemia (APL) observational study, NAPOLEON) was recently initiated by several AML study groups. Methods:Eligible patients are adults at least 18 years of age with newly diagnosed or relapsed APL not beyond the first year of diagnosis. Here we report the first analysis on the series of patients prospectively enrolled into this registry. The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki, received IRB approval by all participating centers and was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02192619). Results: As of August 1st 2016, 88 patients have been included into the study with a median age of 57 years (range 22-87). All had newly diagnosed APL (100%) with 66% (n=58) being of low/intermediate risk according to the Sanz score. Out of those patients 76% (n=44) received an ATO-ATRA based induction regimen followed by a median of 4 courses of consolidation (according to the APL 0406 study).Of 41 patients evaluable for response to induction, 40/41 (98%) patients achieved complete remission (CR) with the ATRA-ATO arms. Early death rate within 30 days of therapy was 2% (1/44). After a median follow-up of 12 months, the event-free survival, cumulative incidence of relapse and overall survival at 12 months for these patients were 97%, 0% and 97%, respectively. Therapy was well tolerated and no new safety signals have been obtained. Conclusion:These real life data from a prospective German registry provide further evidence for the safety and sustained anti-leukemic efficacy of ATRA-ATO in low/intermediate risk APL. These results further support ATRA-ATO as the new standard of care in this clinical setting. Disclosures Platzbecker:TEVA: Honoraria, Research Funding. Greiner:BMS: Research Funding. Thiede:AgenDix: Employment, Other: Ownership. Hochhaus:BMS: Honoraria, Research Funding; Novartis: Honoraria, Research Funding; Pfizer: Honoraria, Research Funding; ARIAD: Honoraria, Research Funding.


The spectral efficiency of MIMO (multiple input multiple output) channels is limited by both the spatial correlation and rank deficiency of the channel. Precedent studies have focused less attention in how the frequency band affects these channel properties. In this paper, the results derived from an extensive measurement campaign performed between 2 and 12 GHz in an office scenario, show frequency band dependence on the MIMO channel capacity. Increasing the number of antenna elements under these correlated channels for different frequencies, we found frequency band dependence on both the ergodic and the 10% outage capacities. Taking into account the isolation of the path loss, a high SNR regime, equal electric separation between array elements, and the WSS (wide sense stationary) channel condition, remarkable changes on the magnitude spatial correlation coefficients and on the MIMO system eigenvalues were observed for different frequencies in line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS).


Extraction process forms the first basic step in medicinal plant research because the preparation of crude extracts from plants is the starting point for the isolation and purification of chemical constituents present in plants. Yet the extraction step remains often a neglected area, which over the years has received much less attention and research. Traditional methods of extraction and processing of herbs and medicinal plants such as solid liquid extraction (Soxhlet), steam distillation or cold press are still used in Egypt. These methods of extraction lack selectivity, give lower yields and because it uses large volume of organic solvents it present safety concern and environmental risk. Several new extraction techniques for improving efficiency and selectivity are now replacing the old methods of extraction. However, recently exports of medicinal and aromatic plants products from Egypt to other countries are becoming more and more restricted due to the presence of unacceptable levels of contaminants and occasionally the occurrences of heavy metals and pesticides that attributed to the drawbacks of traditional extraction methods. The fact that one single plant can contain several secondary metabolites makes the need for the development of high performance and rapid extraction methods an absolute necessity. Keeping in pace with such requirements, recent times has witnessed the use and growth of new extraction techniques with shortened extraction time, reduced solvent consumption, increased pollution prevention concern and with special care for thermolabile constituents. Novel extraction methods including Microwave Assisted Extraction (MAE), Supercritical Fluid Extraction (SCFE), Accelerated Solvent Extraction (ASE), Subcritical Water Extraction (SWE) and Ultrasound Assisted Extraction (USE) have drawn significant research attention in the last decade. In this review, we discussed the principles, affecting factors, advantages and disadvantages of traditional and innovative extraction techniques. We also suggested some ideas to establish these innovative technologies for extraction in Egypt.


In recent years, biological web resources such as databases and tools have become more complex because of the enormous amounts of data generated in the field of life sciences. Traditional methods of distributing tutorials include publishing textbooks and posting web documents, but these static contents cannot adequately describe recent dynamic web services. Due to improvements in computer technology, it is now possible to create dynamic content such as video with minimal effort and low cost on most modern computers. The ease of creating and distributing video tutorials instead of static content improves accessibility for researchers, annotators and curators. This article focuses on online video repositories for educational and tutorial videos provided by resource developers and users. It also describes a project in Japan named TogoTV (http://togotv.dbcls.jp/en/) and discusses the production and distribution of high-quality tutorial videos, which would be useful to viewer, with examples. This article intends to stimulate and encourage researchers who develop and use databases and tools to distribute how-to videos as a tool to enhance product usability.


In Saudi Arabia, there are several school types where children go and learn both English and Arabic: (i) Public (government) and Quranic schools; (ii) private schools where Arabic is the medium of instruction with an intensive English course; (iii) international schools where English is the medium of instruction, and one course is allocated to Arabic and Islamic Studies.  This study surveyed a sample of parents to find out the number of hours allocated to English; kinds of textbooks used and whether parents consider them sufficient; parents' views of their children's proficiency level in the different English language skills;  which language is stronger in children: English or Arabic; which language children use in communicating with their siblings, parents and relatives; the effects of learning English (L2) on Arabic (L1); and the optimal age for starting to learn English.  Results showed that at government and Quranic schools, students take 1-2 hours of English a week which parents think are insufficient. At private schools, hours allocated to English vary (between 5-10). At international schools, English is the medium of instruction in all courses. Most parents prefer that children start learning English in kindergarten or first grade. English is the stronger and preferred language for international school students. Private School students have a good command of English and Arabic. Arabic is the stronger and preferred language for Government and Quranic School children. Some parents think that the textbook used at Government School are good, but some teachers are incompetent in their instructional techniques. Some Public Schools (in remote areas or small towns) are understaffed which results in reducing the teaching hours from 2 to 1 hour per week. Parents' views on the status and quality of foreign/second language education in each type of elementary school in Saudi Arabia are reported in detail.


New polypyridine-macrocyclic receptors for glucopyranosides were designed and synthesized. The artificial receptors possess a terpyridine skeleton as a hydrogen-bonding site and a flexible polyoxyethylene chain as a bridge for the macrocyclic structure, in which the cavity of the receptors is large enough to incorporate pyranosides. The receptors showed high affinities for n-octyl beta-(D)-glucopyranoside, and selective binding of the receptors was observed between epimeric pyranosides. The results obtained in this paper demonstrated versatility of the terpyridine skeleton as a hydrogen-bonding site for saccharides.


This is the second of two articles dealing with the epistemology of the analysis of Spanish in the Southwest of the United States of America. The content of this part is basically linguistic, with social implications, and mostly synchronic. The historical references, however, are never set aside. In the first place, it is important to make a distinction between the real melting languages and theoretical misinterpretations. English and Spanish are combined with social and literary implications in the diverse slang forms of the area: pachuco, calo, among others. Spurious interests, however, have given force to fantastic hypotheses brought to a climax by the invention of an allegedly "new" language, called Spanglish. This lexical choice is unfortunate, because it takes advantage of the existence of a more innocuous use of the word, simply referring to all forms of contact between the two languages. Four aspects are therefore mixed up and mistaken: the invention of an allegedly "new" language, in spite of a total lack of unification; the constant code-switching with different modalities and extent; the bad quality of certain translations; and the cultural relegation of Hispanics to speakers of a ghetto language. The set of two articles ends with a graphical presentation of a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats). The conclusion refers to Judeo-Spanish and the dangers of ghetto languages, as well as to the role of education.


The goal of prospective ergonomics is to anticipate human needs and activities with the aim of creating new artefacts and services. It completes the concepts, methods and tools of corrective ergonomics and preventive ergonomics to deal with the current stakes of innovative artefacts and new uses. We investigate prospective ergonomics, initially elaborated for innovative products, in order to adapt it to long life systems. We articulate prospective ergonomics with a traditional point of view on prospective by using the methods of scenarios, watching activity and by implementing personas. We integrate them into the appropriation process in order to implement an iterative design approach that corresponds to design for and by appropriation. Design for appropriation consists in offering a set of possibilities to operators so that they adapt and adopt the technological artefacts to perform their missions and activities. It leans on the experience feedback of the routine use of technologies after adaptation and appropriation by the operators. It is completed by the results of the watch activity. This approach allows the ergonomists' activities and methods to evolve. Ergonomists contribute to watch activity, to build scenario in a prospective approach, to identify operators' characteristics which evolve in time. This approach has also some impacts on system architecture. Sensors are inserted to collect information on the operational environment that the system encounters. This approach has also some impacts on engineering processes because the process of operation includes the experience feedback which supports design by appropriation.


This rather inclusive text presents a step-wise approach to the differential diagnosis of musculoskeletal disease. According to the author of chapter 1, the two parts of examination consist of observation of the whole patient and inspection of the musculoskeletal system. In a sense, the book follows this format. The initial five chapters address certain components essential to examining any patient. The remaining sections portray a method of diagnosing regional musculoskeletal diseases and disorders. The various authors adhere to a common format, which takes up in turn anatomy, regional examination, and differential diagnosis. Profuse illustrations and photographic and roentgenographic reproductions provide a valuable counterpart to a well-written, concise text. Chapter 1, on general diagnosis, contains a useful entry on common laboratory values and their alterations in various disorders. Likewise, the chart and discussion on synovial fluid alterations are useful in treating patients with joint diseases. The section on x-ray film interpretation


The effect of craniotomy on cell mediated immunity was studied by using monoclonal antibodies and flow cytometry. Twelve patients undergoing craniotomy were investigated. Six patients had malignant brain tumor, four benign tumor, one AVM and one aneurysm. Examined lymphocyte monoclonal antibodies were Leu4, Leu2a and Leu3a. In addition, two color analysis using two monoclonal antibodies, Leu3a and Leu8, or Leu2a and Leu15, was performed. This technique can classify Leu3a positive cell into helper T cell and inducer T cell and Leu2a positive cell into suppressor T cell and cytotoxic T cell. The number of Leu4 positive cell (T cell) decreased during operation. The number of Leu3a positive cell (OKT4) also decreased at 30 minutes after incision and moderately recovered during operation. Leu2a positive cell (OKT8) did not show significant change. As the result, the decline of Leu3a/Leu2a ratio (OKT4/OKT8 ratio) was found after incision and this ratio gradually returned to preoperative level during operation. By two color analysis, decrease of inducer and helper T cell in Leu3a positive cell, and increase of suppressor T cell, and decrease of cytotoxic T cell in Leu2a positive cell were observed. The results of this study show that stress of craniotomy affected the immunological state.


Choosing a university is a crucial decision in a person's life because, most of the time, the acquisition of a university degree allows him access to better working conditions. Universities are interested in knowing the factors that students cite as impacting their choice of university. This study aims to classify future university students according to different evaluation criteria that could help university administrators to improve their recruitment and positioning strategies. Building on the growing body of knowledge related to the marketing of Higher Education Institutions, the current study seeks to further explore the existence of segments featuring different selection patterns. The main goal of this study was tested by applying Latent Class Analysis as a segmentation method, also referred to as Latent Class Cluster Analysis. This study found that students have different sets of motivations for their choice of Higher Education Institutions, and also found significant differences in the motivations of males and females with regard to university selection. All of these findings are of great importance to the managers of university brands, particularly at the university under study.


Recycling of many polymers has gained a spectacular importance mainly because of its environmental and economical benefits. Ethylene vinyl acetate is one of the thermoplastics used directly as a final product and indirectly as an additive within many other polymeric materials. There has been limited research work on recycling of polymers even though recycling in industry has shown a spectacular growth in the last decade. It is the aim of this study to investigate and to evaluate the rheological behaviour of an ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer resin upon recycling. For this purpose, original ethylene vinyl acetate granules were processed five cycles by using a twinscrew extruder and their rheological analysis was performed by means of an AR-G2 rheometer (TA Instruments), with a parallel-plate geometry, under a steady state condition. It was found that the rheological measurements of copolymer ethylene vinyl acetate exhibited a shear thinning constitutive behavior, obeying Carreau-Yasuda rheological constitutive model. The changes in flow and oscillatory shear measurements under different processing conditions were also determined in detail and results are reported in the paper.


The mathematical model of computer Malware remains a challenging research area for modeling and simulation in an attempt to devise policies and guidelines to curb the impact and transmission of malware in computer networks. The Susceptible high risk, Susceptible low risk, Exposed class, Infectious due to virus, Infectious due to worms and Recovered (ShSlEIvIwR) model was formed. Basic reproduction number, the equilibrium point of the virus and worm free computers and the endemic equilibrium state are discussed. For locally and globally asymptotically stability of the infection free equilibrium state, the next generation matrix was applied. Numerical solution was carried out to solve and simulate the system with the view to understand the prevalence behavior, transmission dynamics and the control of computer viruses and worms in computer network and also the efficiency of antivirus software.
Keywords: Malware, Computer virus, susceptible, expose, infectious, recovered.


Received: 9 March 2020 Accepted: 16 July 2020 Resource optimization is cost effective process in cloud. The efficiency of load balancing completely depends on how the infrastructure is utilizing. As per the current study, the resource optimization techniques are very costly and taking more convergence time to execute the task and load distribution among different virtual machines (VM). The objective of this paper is to develop a hybrid optimization algorithm to find the best virtual machine based on their fitness values and schedule different task to the fittest VM so that each task should get complete on time, and system can utilize the VM as well. The proposed algorithm is hybrid version of genetic (GA), ant-colony (Aco), and particle-swarm (Pso) algorithms, which is implemented and tested in amazon web service and compared with existing algorithms based on VM utilization, completion time, and cost. The proposed hybrid system genetic-aco-pso based algorithm (GAP) perform utmost while comparing with the existing systems.


The use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) hold promise for sustainable human, social and economic development particularly for the marginalized in the Global South. This paper employs qualitative methods to assess the implications of ICTs for socio-economic development, by exploring the ways in which online social network services (SNSs) or social media such as WhatsApp and Facebook influence indigenous savings and credit associations (SCAs), commonly known as stokvels in South Africa. Fourteen members belonging to 14 different online stokvels participated in semi-structured interviews. The data reveals how members of stokvels use WhatsApp and Facebook to develop new forms of socio-cultural ties that extend the traditional meaning of stokvels. The study proposes the concept of fictive kinship from anthropology, underpinned by the sub-Saharan humanist ethic of ubuntu ("being human") – as a lens for understanding the emergence of previously non-existent social bonds due to a sense of collective identity facilitated and mediated by online social network services. This work contributes to a better conception of the processes that help shape the daily use of technology by marginalized communities.


On April 12, 1990, an international agreement between the United States, Canada, and Japan was signed that, among other things, requires real-time automatic satellite position fixing devices (transmitters) to be deployed on 100% of the Japanese squid and large-mesh driftnet fishing vessels operating in the North Pacific in 1990. These transmitters must allow automatic, real-time monitoring of the location and identity of each vessel by Japanese, Canadian, and U.S. officials. Japan had approximately 350 vessels conducting driftnet operations in the North Pacific Ocean in 1990. Similar agreements were reached between the U.S. and Korea and the U.S. and Taiwan in 1989. Taiwan agreed to equip 100% of its 135 North Pacific driftnet vessels with transmitters in 1990. South Korea agreed to equip 100% of its 188 driftnet vessels with transmitters in 1990. All countries agreed to fund the purchase, installation, maintenance, and data processing costs involved in this program. All countries agreed to provide U.S. authorities with real-time access to the satellite-generated position data. In July 1990, U.S. officials began monitoring the locations of approximately 700 foreign driftnet vessels operating in the North Pacific. Tests were conducted of two position fixing transmitter systems using National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) satellites while the negotiations, which took over two years to complete, were ongoing. An overview of the systems tested and the results of those tests were provided to Japan, Taiwan, and Korea to assist them in choosing a transmitter best suited to their program requirements. Each country chose to use the Argos Location and Data Collection Satellite System. The Argos system is packaged on a NOAA Tiros-N satellite. This paper describes the need for a foreign fishing vessel tracking system, the results of the satellite transmitter test program, and the successful implementation of this program in 1990.


Authors Whip spiders belong to a small arachnid order (Amblypygi) Dr. RAINER F. FOELIX, Naturama, Postfach, CH-5001 Aarau. that is not well known. Their most conspicuous feature are Switzerland; email@example.com: the elongated, extremely thin front legs ("whips", or antenniDr. EILEEN A. HEBETS, Deptartment of Ecology and Evolutinary form legs). These are no longer used for walking but are moBiology, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721 USA. dified extremities carrying various sense organs very much like the antennae of insects. Whereas hundreds of olfactory ~ e y words hairs are concentrated near the tip of each antenniform leg, Arachnids, Amblypygi, sensory biology, behavior large bristles (contact chemoreceptors) are evenly distributed over the entire antenniform leg. The sensory hairs of each antenniform leg contribute about 30,000 small sensory axons which proceed toward the central nervous system Introduction (CNS). The sensory fibers originating from the mechanoreceptive bristles make chemical synapses with a few giant Whip spiders even most zoologists have not heard interneurons in the periphery. The giant axons (10-20 pm in of these animals, and even fewer have ever seen one diameter) of these large interneurons transmit nerve impulses in nature. They are 6Lexotic" indeed: although whip spiwith a high velocity (6 to the CNS. The Purpose of this ders are true arachnids (Order Amblypygi) and closely 'fast pathway still needs to be determined. Originally it was thought that the fast giant axons would trigger quick escape related to web spiders (Araneae), they differ in several reactions, but this was not confirmed in physiological experiaspectsUnlike "true" spiders do not possess silk ments. However, other possible behaviors that may be aided glands or poison glands. Most unusual is the fact that by the giant interneurons are prey capture, fighting, and whip spiders walk only on six legs, not on eight as orientation. most other arachnids do. This is because their first what makes whip spiders unique is that both synapses and pair of legs are very thin (< 0.5 mm) and long (up to 30 giant neurons are located far out in the peripheral nervous cm!) and are held out above the ground. These elonsystem. In all other arthropods except for some arachnids synapses and giant fiber systems are always found inside the gated legs greatly insect CNS. never in the ~er i~hew. nae and correspondingly are equipped with thousands . . . Kurzfassung GeiOelspinnen gehBren zu einer klelnen, wenig bekannten Ordnung der Spinnentiere, den Amblypygi. Ihr auffallendstes Merkmal sind die stark verlangerten, extrem dunnen Vorderbeine ("GeiOeln"). Diese werden nicht mehr zum Laufen benutzt, sondern dienen Bhnlich wie die Antennen der lnsekten als Trager verschiedener Sinnesorgane. Wtihrend die GeiReispitze Hunderte von Geruchshaaren aufweist, ist die abrige GeiOel ziemlich gleichmassig mit Borstenhaaren (Kontaktchemorezeptoren) bestilckt. In jeder GeiBel ziehen ca 30.000 kleine sensorische NeWenfaSem zum Zentralnelvensystem (ZNS). Dabei werden die mechanorezeptiven Newenfasern uber chemische Synapsen auf einlge periphere Riesenlnterneurone aufgeschaltet; deren Riesenaxone (10-20 prn 0) leiten Nervenimpulse mlt groRer Geschwindigkeit (6 mls) zum ZNS. Wofur dieses Schnellleitsystem im Verhalten der Tiere einaesetzt wird, ist noch nicht aeklart die urs~riinaof sensory organs that perceive a variety of mechanical and chemical stimuli from their environment (BECK 1968, BECK et al. 1977, HOFER & BECK 1995). The six walking legs also possess sensory hairs (mechanoreceptors for touch and vibrations), but the antenniform first legs provide the main sensory input. Whip spiders deprived of those important first extremities can no longer locate or catch any prey, nor can they orient themselves in their environment (BECK & G ~ R K E 1974;


In the last few years, new disputes have erupted over the use of group averages from census areas or voting districts to draw inferences about individual social behaviour. Social scientists, policy analysts and historians often have little choice about using this kind of data, but statistical analysis of them is fraught with pitfalls. The recent debates have led to a new menu of choices for the applied researcher. This volume explains why older methods like ecological regression so often fail, and it examines the promising new techniques for cross-level inference. Experts in statistical analysis of aggregate data, Christopher H. Achen and W. Phillips Shively, contend that cross-level inference makes unusually strong demands on substantive knowledge, so that no one method, such as Goodman's ecological regression, will fit all situations. Criticizing Goodman's model and some recent attempts to replace it, the authors argue for a range of alternate techniques, including extensions of cross-tabular, regression analysis and unobservable variable estimators.


Although tuberculosis preventive therapy is one of the cornerstones for eliminating the disease, many barriers exist in the cascade of care for latent tuberculosis infection, including the need to certify healthcare professionals for reading tuberculin skin tests (TST). This paper proposes and evaluates a simple protocol for TST reading training. Primary care workers from different backgrounds received a 2-hour theoretical course, followed by a practical course on bleb reading. Blebs were obtained by injecting saline into sausages and then in volunteers. A certified trainer then evaluated the effectiveness of this protocol by analyzing the trainees' ability to read TST induration in clinical routine, blinded to each other's readings. Interobserver agreement was analyzed using the Bland-Altman test. The trainees' reading accuracy was calculated using two cut-off points - 5 and 10mm - and the effect of the number of readings was analyzed using a linear mixed model. Eleven healthcare workers read 53 saline blebs and 88 TST indurations, with high agreement for TST reading (0.07mm average bias). Sensitivity was 100% (94.6; 100.0) at 5mm cut-off and 87.3% (75.5; 94.7) at 10mm cut-off. The regression model found no effect of the number of readings [coefficient: -0.007 (-0.055; 0.040)]. A simple training protocol for reading TST with saline blebs simulations in sausages and volunteers was sufficient to achieve accurate TST induration readings, with no effect observed for the number of readings. Training with saline blebs injected into voluntary individuals is safer and easier than the traditional method.


Previous, and more recent, comparisons of electronmicroscopic and conventional nuclei counts show that the Aitken counts are deficient. Special experiments revealed that the cause for this deficiency lies in the rapid decay of nuclei in the time lapse between sampling and counting nuclei. It was found that a lapse of 30 seconds reduces the nuclei concentration in the counter by roughly 50%. When this decay is considered, the Aitken and electron microscopic counts can be brought into good agreement.


Author(s): Roth-Johnson, Elizabeth Anne | Advisor(s): Quinlan, Margot E | Abstract: Coordination of actin and microtubule cytoskeletal networks is required for a number of fundamental cellular processes. Formin family actin nucleators are emerging coordinators of the actin and microtubule cytoskeletons, as they can both nucleate actin filaments and bind microtubules in vitro. To gain a more detailed mechanistic understanding of formin-microtubule interactions and formin-mediated actin-microtubule crosstalk, we studied microtubule binding by Cappuccino (Capu), a formin involved in regulating actin and microtubule organization during Drosophila oogenesis. We report that two distinct domains within Capu, FH2 and tail, work together to promote high-affinity microtubule binding. Microtubules potently inhibit Capu's actin nucleation activity but have little effect on Capu once bound to the barbed end of an elongating actin filament, supporting a model in which Capu does not simultaneously bind microtubules and assemble actin in vivo. After characterizing Capu-microtubule binding in vitro, we examined the localization of Capu and microtubules in S2 cells. We did not observe any obvious colocalization and conclude that S2 cells are not an ideal system for visualizing in vivo formin-microtubule interactions. To better understand Capu's mechanisms of action during oogenesis, we then systematically characterized several classical capu alleles. While all of these capu mutants exhibit severe developmental defects, they variably affect Capu's actin assembly activity in vitro. Together with our microtubule binding data, this indicates that Capu's physiological role extends beyond its ability to nucleate actin filaments. We therefore performed tandem affinity purification experiments to identify novel Capu binding partners and gain additional insight into Capu's role during oogenesis. We report several candidate binding partners involved in such diverse cellular processes as mitochondrial fission, endocytosis, and nuclear import. Though preliminary, these results suggest that Capu has additional uncharacterized functions in development; further investigation may help us uncover the physiological role of Capu-microtubule binding. Ultimately, our findings expand our understanding of Capu's role in Drosophila oogenesis and provide mechanistic insight into formins as coordinators of the actin and microtubule cytoskeletons.


In the electromagnetics literature, significant attention has been paid to the problem of low-frequency breakdown in the electric field integral equation. By contrast, the magnetic field integral equation is well-conditioned (in simply connected domains) and can be used in the low frequency limit without modification or preconditioning. Reconstruction of the electric field, however, is subject to catastrophic cancellation unless appropriate measure are taken. In this paper, we show that solving an auxiliary (scalar) integral equation for the charge overcomes this form of low frequency breakdown, both in the near and far fields. Moreover, both the current and charge can be discretized using simple piecewise polynomial basis functions on triangulated surfaces. We also analyze an alternative formulation involving magnetic current and charge and illustrate the performance of the methods with several numerical examples.


Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is popular in Germany. In a consecutive survey the experiences with CAM and the need for a CAM consultation among inpatients of the departments of cardiology (CL), gastroenterology (GE), oncology (OL) and psychosomatics (PS) of the University Hospital Freiburg (FUH) were questionned. Exclusion criteria were inability to understand the questions or a Karnofsky Index < 30%. Four hundred thirty-five patients were included. Three hundred and fifty patients, 100 each in the departments of CL, GE and OL, and 50 in PS answered the questionnaires. Eighty-five patients (20%) refused. Among the 350 patients 26% had previously visited a CAM physician and 19% had visited a CAM therapist (Heilpraktiker). Information about CAM was obtained mainly by television, radio and family members. Frequently used therapies for the current disease were physical training (21%), diet (19%), massage (19%), vitamins/trace elements (19%), herbs (13%), acupuncture (10%) and homeopathy (7%). The highest frequency of CAM use had PS patients, followed by GE, OL and CL patients. High effectivity (> or = 70%) for the current disease, rated on a scale of 4 degrees, had for CL patients physical exercise and massage, for GE patients herbal treatment and for OL patients diet. Physical exercise, diet, massage and herbal treatment generally had better ratings than homeopathy, acupuncture and vitamins. 65% would welcome a CAM center and 53% asked for a consultation about CAM at FUH. OL and GE patients had the strongest (58%), PS patients a lower (52%) and patients with cardiovascular diseases the lowest (43%) interest in a CAM consultation. Twenty-five percent believed, that CAM can help to cope better with their disease. Predictors for a positive attitude towards CAM were young age, aversion to chemical medications (Spearman correlation r = 0.22), desire to participate in therapeutic decisions (r = 0.29), motivation to change, if recommended, the life style (r = 0.31) and desire for a holistic treatment (r = 0.37).


On October 2, 2011, Assembly Bill 109, the 2011 Public Safety Realignment, went into effect and comprehensively changed the way California manages its criminal justice system. AB 109 shifted the primary responsibility for managing non-serious, non-sexual, non-violent offenses to the counties, meaning that thousands of offenders are now serving their time in county jail rather than state prison. Nearly every county and state level criminal justice agency was involved in the design and implementation of Realignment, in order to ensure that every need was met. Victims, however, were not at the table. This article attempts to bring victim service providers back into the conversation surrounding Realignment. We conducted interviews with victim service providers on the ground to find out how Realignment has affected their jobs, and we got two resounding answers. First, Realignment has muddled the collection of restitution. It's unclear who is responsible for collecting the money when, and many jails do not have the infrastructure required to collect from individuals it has incarcerated. Second, the victim notification required under Marsy's Law is not being provided, again because of confusion about responsibilities and a lack of the necessary infrastructure.We present a series of suggestions put forth by our interviewees to bring Realignment into compliance with the requirements of Marsy's Law. In the end, these suggestions boil down to two basic recommendations: 1) victim service providers should be granted a voting seat on the Community Corrections Partnership in every county, and 2) the legislature needs to clarify which county actor is responsible for the implementation of which victim services in a post-Realignment world.


Aim of study was to isolate and identify fungal pathogens associated with raisins (Vitis vinifera L.) collected from Punjab, Sindh, Baluchistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces of Pakistan. Around 25 fungal species belonging to 15 genera were isolated from the fifteen samples by using ISTA (International Seed Testing Association) techniques. Of these, 19 species belonging to 11 genera were isolated by deep freezing method, agar plate method yielded 16 species belonging to 9 genera and 16 species belonging to 11 genera were isolated by blotter method. Deep freezing method was found best for isolation of fungi followed by standard blotter method. Species of Aspergillus and Penicillium were the most dominant fungi. Samples of raisins from the areas of Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi, respectively were found to be highly infected with fungi. These samples were treated with Ultra Violet (UV-C) radiations which significantly affected the pathogenic profile, but the conidia of Aspergillus niger were appeared to be more persistent that colonized the raisins within the storage time of zero day. However, infection by other storage fungus like Aspergillus oryzae (Ahlburg) Cohn. was observed after the storage time of 30 and 60 days.


A method is described for evaluating the minimum distance parameters of trellis-phase codes, including continuous phase frequency shift keying (CPFSK), partial-response FM, and, more importantly, coded continuous-phase modulation (CPM) schemes. The algorithm provides dramatically faster execution times and smaller memory requirements than previous algorithms. Results of sample calculations and timing comparisons are included.


A study of pregnancy outcome was performed using a 1982-1985 regional network database of 60,456 infants. The perinatal mortality rate was 15.6 deaths per 1,000 births (total, 942), while the antepartum, intrapartum and neonatal mortality rates were 5.3, 1.6 and 8.7, respectively. Seven hundred forty-three multiple gestation pregnancies (1.2%) and 1,632 major congenital anomalies (2.7%) were identified. The corrected perinatal mortality rate was 13.8 deaths per 1,000 births. This study revealed that prematurity, postdatism, congenital anomalies, low Apgar scores and neonatal complications, including respiratory distress syndrome, pneumothorax, persistent fetal circulation, intracerebral hemorrhage and seizure activity, were major factors contributing to mortality. This analysis suggests that a further reduction in mortality should follow a reduction in preterm deliveries and their sequelae and the early identification and management of maternal and fetal antenatal complications.


The genus Cephalaspis (Agassiz) was originally established to include four species of Devonian fishes,—C. Lyellii, C. rostratus, C. Lloydii, and C. Lewisii; but the differences between the first and the last of these species were so great, that the founder of the genus himself suggested the probability of their future separation. The two groups of species are said by Prof. Agassiz to be contrasted not only by their forms, but also by their minute structure. In regard to form, the cephalic disc of Cephalaspis Lyellii is stated to possess an almost semicircular anterior outline, while its posterolateral angles are greatly prolonged backwards. The middle part of the occipital region. Prof. Agassiz adds, is cut off almost square (coupeé presque carrément). As regards this last point, however, my own observations are at variance with his description. Several specimens in the museum of this Society show that the middle of the occipital margin is not truncated, but is greatly produced backwards, the margins of the produced portion being concave. The same peculiarity is clearly distinguishable in the specimen of C. Lyellii now in the British Museum, and figured by M. Agassiz, pl. 1. a. 2 : indeed the artist has faithfully depicted the real contour of the occipital margin in the figure cited. The well-known occipital spine is supported by this produced portion of the disk. The discoid bodies, corresponding to all appearance with the cephalic disc of C. Lyellii, upon which alone the species C. Lewisii being oval in contour and


There is little doubt that consumers and manufacturers are becoming more environmentally conscious about packaging. An overview is provided of recent trends in packaging from the points of view of the consumer, the legislators, and the manufacturers. The opportunities open to the marketer are highlighted as this new consumer group emerges and discusses the need for the companies involved to address the whole issue of their own ethical standards within the company.


1. The effects of salicylate on the membrane currents in the frog node of Ranvier were investigated. 2. External salicylate slows the falling phase of the action potential, with little effect on the action potential amplitude. 3. External salicylate has no effect on the leak current. 4. Most of the actions of external salicylate can be attributed to a simple incorporation of negative charge into the membrane surface. The h infinity, tau h, tau m and m infinity curves for the sodium current are shifted to more negative potentials, as are the n infinity and k infinity curves for the potassium current. Potassium ion accumulation prevented analysis of the action of salicylate on the time constant of the potassium current kinetics. 5. In addition to the h infinity and tau h curves being shifted to more negative potentials, the shapes of the curves are also changed by salicylate. These shape changes cannot be explained by conventional homogeneous surface charge theory. Possible explanations for these changes are discussed. 6. Internal salicylate has similar effects to external salicylate: the gating variable curves for the sodium current are shifted in the negative direction on the voltage axis, rather than in the positive direction expected if negative charge were added to the inner surface of the nodal membrane. This may be due to salicylate crossing the membrane and binding preferentially to a receptor at the external surface, or might be due to a rise in intracellular calcium concentration following inhibition of oxidative phosphorylation.


In 1786, Virginia and Maryland invited delegates from the other eleven states to meet in Annapolis, Maryland, for the purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation. However, only five states sent representatives. Because all thirteen states had to agree to any alteration of the Articles, the convention in Annapolis could not accomplish its goal. Two of the delegates, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison, requested that all states send delegates to a convention in Philadelphia the following year to attempt once again to revise the Articles of Confederation. All the states except Rhode Island chose delegates to send to the meeting, a total of seventy men in all, but many did not attend. Among those not in attendance were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, both of whom were overseas representing the country as diplomats. Because the shortcomings of the Articles of Confederation proved impossible to overcome, the convention that met in Philadelphia in 1787 decided to create an entirely new government.


Existing image enhancement methods fall short of expectations because with them it is difficult to improve global and local image contrast simultaneously. To address this problem, we propose a histogram equalization-based method that adapts to the data-dependent requirements of brightness enhancement and improves the visibility of details without losing the global contrast. This method incorporates the spatial information provided by image context in density estimation for discriminative histogram equalization. To minimize the adverse effect of non-uniform illumination, we propose defining spatial information on the basis of image reflectance estimated with edge preserving smoothing. Our method works particularly well for determining how the background brightness should be adaptively adjusted and for revealing useful image details hidden in the dark.


Background and Purpose—In acute stroke patients treated with intravenous tissue plasminogen activator (t-PA), early recanalization of occluded arteries can improve the clinical outcome. The magnetic susceptibility effect of deoxygenated hemoglobin in red thrombi can present as hypointense signals on T2*-weighted gradient echo imaging. We investigated whether the gradient echo imaging M1 susceptibility vessel sign (M1 SVS) can predict no early recanalization after t-PA infusion. Methods—Patients with internal carotid artery and M1 occlusion were prospectively studied. MRI studies, including DWI, T2*, and MRA, were performed before and within 30 minutes and 24 hours after t-PA infusion. The NIHSS score was obtained before and 7 days after t-PA administration. The relationship between the presence of the M1 SVS and no early recanalization and patient outcome was examined. Results—A total of 48 patients (29 men; mean age, 74.6 11.2 years) were enrolled. M1 SVS was present in 13 (27.1%) patients and absent in 35 (72.9%) patients. There were no significant differences in clinical characteristics between the 2 groups. Follow-up MRA within 30 minutes after t-PA infusion revealed that 20 (57.1%) of the 35 patients without the M1 SVS had early recanalization, but that none of the 13 patients with the M1 SVS had early recanalization (P 0.0002). Seven days after t-PA infusion, dramatic improvement was more frequently observed in patients without the M1 SVS (51.4%) than in those with the M1 SVS (0%, P 0.0007). Conclusion—The M1 SVS on T2* appears to be a strong predictor for no early recanalization after t-PA therapy. (Stroke. 2009;40:3130-3132.)


Advanced ceramics are widely used in industry due to their unique properties. However, the machining of ceramic components by conventional methods is difficult due to their high level of hardness and brittleness. In this sense, laser beam machining (LBM) is presented as an alternative to conventional methods, enabling the machining of workpieces through more accurate and less invasive techniques. Despite the advantages of laser machining, the process still needs to be studied in detail, as advanced ceramic machining is considered a stochastic process. Thus, real-time monitoring systems are required in order to optimize the ceramic laser machining. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel method for monitoring the cutting kerf in the laser cutting process of ceramic components using a low-cost piezoelectric transducer (PZT) and digital signal processing. Tests were performed on the surface of an alumina ceramic workpiece under different machining conditions. The cutting kerf was measured by a digital microscope and the raw signals from the PZT transducer were collected at a sampling rate of 2 MHz. Time domain and frequency domain analyses were performed in order to find a frequency band that best correlates with the process conditions. Finally, a linear regression was calculated in order to correlate the PZT signal and the measured kerf. The results showed that the piezoelectric transducer was sensitive to the acoustic activity generated during the process, allowing the real-time monitoring of the cutting kerf. Thus, the approach proposed in this paper can be used efficiently in the monitoring of the laser cutting process.


The article reflects the retrospective review of Ukrainian legislation and an analysis of the prospects of the lawmaking process on countering hate speech, including in the media space. Criteria for the hate speech and other non-criminal criminal qualification, which entail legal liability or without one, are presented. The conclusions are drawn from the European practice of classifying hate crimes. It has been established that the basis of legislation to combat hate speech should be recognition of the highest social value of a person, regardless of those features that make him or her unlike any other. The problems of new draft laws aimed at counteracting hate speech in the media space have been identified.


A phylogenetic analysis is presented of the African genus group Prosmidiites, with a discussion of its position within Luperini and a zoogeographic survey. Zinjotella Silfv. is reduced to a subgenus of Laetiacantha Lab., and Neolaetana Lab. to a subgenus of Prosmidia Wse. Trichacanthina Silfv. is described within Prosmidia for P. maculosa Wse. The female genitalia of Shungwayana trifasciata (All.) are described.


Context. This paper presents a method for solving the problem of detecting and taking into account the influence of various (external and/or internal) factors on extreme and risky values of the multivariate observed parameters (covariates) of technological and/or diagnostic processes. Taking into account external and internal influence factors on covariates, by analogy with critical process parameters, is a significant addition to the extreme values statistics and the estimations the influence of the variability of process's covariates on the expected losses, i.e. value at risk. Risk-oriented analysis is an actual tool for the data behavior investigation of the multivariate observations of process's parameters.  Objective. To disclose a method for detecting and taking into account the factors influence on the distribution functions parameters of the observed extreme values of process's covariates and determine the influence of these distribution functions parameters on estimates of risks values.  Method. The method consistently uses: the procedures of multivariate statistical cluster analysis, transformation the matrix of observed extreme values of process's covariates into data frame with factor variables, estimation the extremal index and distribution functions parameters of nonclustered and clustered the observed extreme data of covariates and estimation the risk values on the calculated values of distribution functions parameters. The proposed sequence of actions is aimed at implementing the information technology of statistical causal analysis of the influence of factors on the variability of process's covariates and their risk values due to the application of the clustering procedure for observed multivariate extreme values of covariates. The method is implementing the R-language packages software.  Results. Clustering of the multivariate observed extreme values of process's covariates allows to identifying the influence of environmental (manufacturing) factors and estimates the covariates' risky values taking into account of this influence. Conclusions. The method is an information technology of statistical causal analysis of factors influence on the variability of process's covariates and theirs risk values due to the application of the clustering procedure of covariates' multivariate values. The prospect of further research is to improve the methods of causal multivariate statistical analysis of the various factors influence on the exogenous and endogenous parameters of manufacturing and other processes in order to reduce the variability of these parameters and, as a result, minimize the risks.


This paper proposes a method for extracting tissue cells from an organism image by an electron microscope and getting the whole cell number and the area from the cell. In general, the difference between the cell color and the background is used to extract tissue cell. However, there may be a problem when overlapped cells are seen as a single cell. To solve the problem, we split them by using cell size and curvature. This method has a 99% accuracy rate. To measure the cell area, we compute two areas, the inside and boundary of the cell. The inside is simply calculated by the number of pixels. The cell boundary is obtained by applying super sampling, linear interpolation, and cubic spline interpolation. It improves the error rate, 18%, 19%, and 120% respectively, in comparison to the counting method that counts a pixel area as 1.


The multi-phase field method and CALPHAD (calculation of phase diagram) are applied to the study of the equiaxed solidifications in the Al-Ti-B and Al-Si-Ti-B systems by coupled with thermodynamic and diffusion databases. In these calculations, recalescence phenomenon is considered on the basis of the latent heat, and a plot of the seed density-radius distribution is obtained by calibration with experimental data. The calculated solidified-grain sizes are in quantitative agreement with the experimental measurements for various hypoperitectic compositions.


Cognitive scientists have attributed the ubiquity of religious narratives partly to the favored recall of minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts within those narratives. Yet, this memory bias is inconsistent, sometimes absent, and without a functional rationale. Here, we asked if MCI concepts are more fitness relevant than intuitive concepts, and if fitness relevance can explain the existence and variability of the observed memory bias. In three studies, participants rated the potential threat and potential opportunity (i.e., fitness relevance) afforded by agents with abilities that violated folk psychology, physics, or biology (i.e., MCI abilities). As in previous work, agents with MCI abilities were recalled better than those with intuitive abilities. Additionally, agents with MCI abilities were perceived as greater threats, and as providing greater opportunities, than agents with intuitive abilities, but this perceived fitness relevance only mediated the memory bias when MCI abilities were used to accomplish disproportionally consequential outcomes. Minimally counterintuitive abilities that violated folk psychology were rated more intuitive and more of an opportunity than violations of folk physics or biology, while folk physics violations were recalled best. Explanations for these effects and their relevance to the cognitive science of religion are discussed.


Among all the groups and occupations that have been affected by the global pandemic, nursing professionals stand out as having been particularly hard-pressed due to the dramatic increase in the need for their services. Given the rising tide of coronavirus disease 2019 patients who require specialized medical treatment as well as the millions of others that are lining up for vaccinations, it can be assumed that many nursing professionals have had to endure such things as longer working hours, tighter schedules, and the intensity of a work environment in which failure of care and multiple deaths are the daily fare. This article proposes that nurses can avoid such severe consequences by taking up a regime of enhanced self-care management that enables them to achieve psychophysical balance and wellness. Three practices are highlighted in this regard: prayer, meditative walking, and the mindfulness practice of body scanning. Our suggestion is that these coping strategies will be both beneficial and healthful for nursing professionals in terms of enhancing their spiritual/existential resilience and meeting their own need for consolation as they navigate in an extremely difficult and demanding work environment.


Nitta, T., 1970: On the role of transient eddies in the tropical troposphere. J. Meteor. Sot. Japan, 48, 348-359. Parker, D. E., and T. M. Kaneshige, 1971: The GATE satellite operations plan. Part IV of the GATE International Operations Plan, within GATE Report No. 9, Geneva, ICSU/WMO. 47 pp. Wallace, J. M., and V. E. Kousky, 1968: Observational evidence of Kelvin waves in the tropical stratosphere. 1. '4tmos. sci., 25, 900-907. Yanai, M., T. Maruyama, T. Nitta, and Y. Hayashi, 1968: Power spectra of large-scale disturbances over the tropical Pacific. J. Meteor. Sot. Japan, 46, 308-323.


The use of plasmas as a reactive mixture of ions, electrons and neutrals is at the core of numerous technologies in industry, enabling applications in microelectronics, automotives, packaging, environment and medicine. Recently, even the use of plasmas in medical applications has made great progress. The dominant character of a plasma is often its non equilibrium nature with different temperatures for the individual species in a plasma, the ions, electrons and neutrals. This opens up a multitude of reaction pathways which are inaccessible to conventional methods in chemistry, for example. The understanding of plasmas requires expertise in plasma physics, plasma chemistry and in electrical engineering. This first paper in a series of foundation papers on low temperature plasma science is intended to provide the very basics of plasmas as a common starting point for the more in-depth discussion of particular plasma generation methods, plasma modeling and diagnostics in the other foundation papers. In this first paper of the series, the common terminology, definitions and main concepts are introduced. The covered aspects start with the basic definitions and include further plasma equilibria, particle collisions and transport, sheaths and discharge breakdowns.


Asynchronous events on the continuous time domain, e.g., social media actions and stock transactions, occur frequently in the world. The ability to recognize occurrence patterns of event sequences is crucial to predict which typeof events will happen next and when. A de facto standard mathematical framework to do this is the Hawkes process. In order to enhance expressivity of multivariate Hawkes processes, conventional statistical methods and deep recurrent networks have been employed to modify its intensity function. The former is highly interpretable and requires small size of training data but relies on correct model design while the latter has less dependency on prior knowledge and is more powerful in capturing complicated patterns. We leverage pros and cons of these models and propose a self-attentive Hawkes process(SAHP). The proposed method adapts self-attention to fit the intensity function of Hawkes processes. This design has two benefits:(1) compared with conventional statistical methods, the SAHP is more powerful to identify complicated dependency relationships between temporal events; (2)compared with deep recurrent networks, the self-attention mechanism is able to capture longer historical information, and is more interpretable because the learnt attention weight tensor shows contributions of each historical event. Experiments on four real-world datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.


We investigate four-quark systems consisting of two heavy anti-bottom quarks and two light up/down quarks. We propose to solve a coupled Schr\"odinger equation for the anti-bottom-anti-bottom separation using potentials computed via lattice QCD in the limit of static anti-bottom quarks. This coupled Schr\"odinger equation allows to incorporate effects due to the heavy anti-bottom spins. First exploratory numerical tests are discussed.


Subject-specific search facilities on health sites are usually built using manual inclusion and exclusion rules. These can be expensive to maintain and often provide incomplete coverage of Web resources. On the other hand, health information obtained through whole-of-Web search may not be scientifically based and can be potentially harmful. To address problems of cost, coverage and quality, we built a focused crawler for the mental health topic of depression, which was able to selectively fetch higher quality relevant information. We found that the relevance of unfetched pages can be predicted based on link anchor context, but the quality cannot. We therefore estimated quality of the entire linking page, using a learned IR-style query of weighted single words and word pairs, and used this to predict the quality of its links. The overall crawler priority was determined by the product of link relevance and source quality. We evaluated our crawler against baseline crawls using both relevance judgments and objective site quality scores obtained using an evidence-based rating scale. Both a relevance focused crawler and the quality focused crawler retrieved twice as many relevant pages as a breadth-first control. The quality focused crawler was quite effective in reducing the amount of low quality material fetched while crawling more high quality content, relative to the relevance focused crawler. Analysis suggests that quality of content might be improved by post-filtering a very big breadth-first crawl, at the cost of substantially increased network traffic.


Speaker change detection or speaker-based segmentation is useful and important in many applications, such as transcribing broadcast news or telephone conversations. It usually serves as a preliminary step prior to speech/speaker recognition. Among various methods proposed in the literature, Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC) based method has been widely used. In this paper, we propose to use a different criterion, Minimum Message Length criterion (MML), which is also well known in the statistical community, on speaker change detection problems. MML is an information theoretic criterion that aims to minimize the message length for the description of both model parameters and the data. Previous studies [6] by Oliver etc. in the area other than speech, showed that MML might be a better criterion than BIC on segmentation problems. We extended their work and applied MML criterion to speaker change detection problems. Experiments were carried out on two different types of speech data, and so far, comparable results between BIC and MML have been obtained.


In his essay "externalist theories of empirical knowledge," Lawrence Bonjour argues that foundationalism cannot solve the epistemic regress problem because so called basic beliefs are not really basic. He argues that the very concept of justification is an obstacle to the idea of basic beliefs. He argues further that externalist theories cannot support a foundationalism that solves the regress problem. This is because they are ill equipped to do so. For Bounjour, externalist theories are false because they fail to give or provide sufficient conditions for justification. This paper examines Bounjour's argument against foundationalism and the externalist response. The paper observes that rationality requires good reasons. However, the paper reveals that there is a difference between the status of justification and the activities of justifying.


OBJECTIVE
To study the function of interleukin-33 (IL-33) in the development of human acute schistosomiasis japonica by determining the serum IL-33 levels in acute schistosomiasis japonica patients.

METHODS
Four patients with acute schistosomiasis japonica were recruited from schistosomiasis endemic lake areas, and 15 controls were recruited outside the schistosomiasis endemic areas. The demographic data and venous blood were collected from all the subjects. The serum IL-33 levels of all the subjects were tested by using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. All the results were statistically analyzed with Stata 10.0 software.

RESULTS
The serum IL-33 levels of the patients with acute schistosomiasis japonica [517.33 (334.65, 1 056.88) pg/ml] were significantly higher than those of the controls [1.66(1.66, 6.35) pg/ml] (Z = -3.207, P = 0.001). The correlation coefficients between serum IL-33 levels and numbers of eosinophils, serum IL-33 levels and duration of infection were both 0.8 (P = 0.2).

CONCLUSIONS
The serum IL-33 level is significantly elevated in the patients with acute schistosomiasis japonica, indicating that IL-33 may play a pro-inflammatory role in the acute stage of schistosomiasis japonica and participate in initiating the Th2 type immune responses between 7 and 9 weeks after the infection.


The concept of information theoretic security is introduced. Secrecy capacity of two receiver broadcast channel for a new scenario is derived in which it is assumed that the legitimate receiver has access to a noisy version of eavesdroppers channel outputs. Also the ideas of code designing to achieve zero error on main channel and perfect secrecy on the eavesdropper's channel, without invoking complicated capacity achieving codes are provided.


BACKGROUND
Colds are common, but the abnormalities they produce in the nasal passages and sinus cavities have not been well defined.

METHODS
We studied healthy adult volunteers with self-diagnosed colds of 48 to 96 hours' duration and obtained the following data: information on symptoms, computed tomographic (CT) studies of the nasal passages and sinuses, mucosal-transport times, measures of nasal-airway resistance, and viral-culture studies. Thirty-one subjects (mean age, 24 years) had complete evaluations, including CT scans, which were read without knowledge of the clinical data. An additional 79 subjects underwent the same evaluations, except the CT scans.

RESULTS
Of the 31 subjects with CT scans, 24 (77 percent) had occlusion of the ethmoid infundibulum; 27 (87 percent) had abnormalities of one or both maxillary-sinus cavities; 20 (65 percent) had abnormalities of the ethmoid sinuses; 10 (32 percent) had abnormalities of the frontal sinuses; and 12 (39 percent) had abnormalities of the sphenoid sinuses. Infraorbital air cells were present in 14 subjects (45 percent), and pneumatization of the middle turbinate (concha bullosa) was noted in 11 subjects (35 percent). Also common were engorged turbinates (in 7 subjects) and thickening of the walls of the nasal passages (in 13). After two weeks, the CT studies were repeated in 14 subjects, none of whom received antibiotics. In 11 of these subjects (79 percent) the abnormalities of the infundibula and sinuses had cleared or markedly improved. Nasal-airway resistance was abnormal in 29 (94 percent) and mucosal transport in 19 (61 percent) of the 31 subjects who had CT scans. Rhinovirus was detected in nasal secretions from 24 (27 percent) of 90 subjects.

CONCLUSIONS
The common cold is associated with frequent and variable anatomical involvement of the upper airways, including occlusion and abnormalities in the sinus cavities.


The effect of varying plasma etching process time on alkaline textured mono-crystalline silicon has been investigated and applied for industrial process. Reduced surface reflectance is observed for longer plasma etching process time, with the trade-off having lower effective carrier lifetime induced by plasma damage. The degradation is further caused by the mismatch of the surface morphology and ionic contamination. We explain this impact through the lifetime measurement after ARC process and demonstrate the potential gain of plasma etching from the comparison between the simulation and the fabricated cell of conventional Al-BSF structure in industrial production line.


This paper is closely connected to EFOP project called Dynamics and Control of Autonomous Vehicles meeting the Synergy Demands of Automated Transport Systems (EFOP-3.6.2-16-2017-00016), in which the following research consortium is taking part: Széchenyi István University, Neumann János University, Dunaújvárosi University and Obudai University. The aim of the research is to elaborate mathematical methods and procedures which support design of technical systems and system elements with increasing complexity introduced in autonomous vehicles and transportation systems taking into operational safety and maintenance risk factors into account. This includes investigation of reliability and development of the joint risk assessment methods of vehicle sensor networks.


Based on over forty years of videotaped case-based research, Habib Davanloo of McGill University, Canada, discovered some of the core ingredients that can enable direct and rapid access to the unconscious in resistant3 patients, patients with func-tional disorders, and patients with fragile character structure. We will describe here some of the main research findings that culminated in his description of a central therapeutic process involved in the intensive short-term dynamic psychotherapy (ISTDP) model. We will also describe the evolution of the technique over the past thirty years and summarize the empirical base for Davanloo's ISTDP.


We introduce the concept of identity-based encryption (IBE) with master key-dependent chosenplaintext (mKDM-sID-CPA) security. These are IBE schemes that remain secure even after the adversary sees encryptions, under some initially selected identities, of functions of the master secret key(s). We then propose a generic construction of chosen-ciphertext secure key-dependent encryption (KDM-CCA) schemes in the public key setting starting from mKDM-sID-CPA secure IBE schemes. This is reminiscent to the celebrated work by Canetti, Halevi and Katz (Eurocrypt 2004) on the traditional key-oblivious setting. Previously only one generic construction of KDM-CCA secure public key schemes was known, due to Camenisch, Chandran and Shoup (Eurocrypt 2009), and it required non-interactive zero knowledge proofs (NIZKs). Our transformation shows that NIZKs are not intrinsic to KDM-CCA public key encryption. Additionally, we are able to instantiate our new concept under the Rank assumption on pairing groups and for affine functions of the secret keys. The scheme builds on previous work by Boneh, Halevi, Hamburg and Ostrovsky (Crypto 2008). Our concrete schemes are only able to provide security against a bounded number of encryption queries, which is enough in some practical scenarios. As a corollary we obtain a KDM-CCA secure public key encryption scheme, in the standard model, whose security reduction to a static assumption is independent of the number of challenge queries. As an independent contribution, we give new and better reductions between the Rank problem (previously named as Matrix DDH problem) and the Decisional Linear and the Decisional 3-Party Diffie-Hellman problems.


BACKGROUND
To improve student skills specific to the evaluation of radiology studies during a required clerkship in surgery for 4th-year medical students, we initiated a self-study CD-ROM educational module midway through 2000-2001. We hypothesized that student performance would improve after implementation of this module and identified factors that predicted student performance.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Students (n = 98) chose one of two hospital sites for a clerkship that focuses on the care of acutely ill surgical patients. A standardized clinical final evaluation (Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation) contained two components: radiology (R score) and ICU clinical "flow sheet" interpretation (C score). We evaluated the effect of the CD-ROM educational module and other factors on student exam performance using univariate and multivariate analysis.

RESULTS
The site of the clerkship and use of the CD-ROM educational module were significant factors affecting the C score identified by ANOVA; P < 0.05. With the R scores from both sites combined, performance improved by 22% from a mean of 29.2 +/- 1.1 to 35.7 +/- 1.1 with use of the module. A stepwise multiple regression analysis testing the effect of site, time of year, educational module, and a prior radiology clerkship on the R score identified that the site and CD-ROM educational module modeled performance; R(2) = 0.30, P < 0.01. The C score was affected by site (A: 72.5 +/- 1.6 vs B: 67.3 +/- 1.9, P < 0.05 by ANOVA). Regression analysis identified that time of year (later associated with increased score) and prior performance on the 3rd-year standardized exams (OSCE and NBME) modeled 4th-year C score; R(2) = 0.20, P < 0.01.

CONCLUSIONS
In a clerkship that already emphasized faculty-facilitated case-based learning, including evaluation of radiological studies, the addition of a self-study CD-ROM radiology module significantly improved test score. This study supports the efficacy of directed self-study to improve student skills.


The use of variable copulative prefixes in copulative structures is an unusual phenomenon, since a verbal element—in this case a subject agreement morpheme—is prefixed directly to a nonverbal complement. In this article it is argued that these prefixes are the grammaticalized remnants of full copulative verbs. This point of view is illustrated by means of both synchronic and diachronic evidence. It is furthermore indicated that the semantic nature of the copulative verb stem -le and its inability to take the normal inflections for tense and aspect are contributing factors to its deletion from copulative structures.


A rectangular periodically corrugated waveguide is considered in the exponential gain regime. In general, gain obeys a nonlinear cubic equation. In this paper it is solved numerically. Also the behavior of gain diagrams versus beam velocities for various parameters of the problem is surveyed. Furthermore, in the context of a slow-wave periodic structure oscillator, the threshold current which cause the system to be self-sustained, is obtained from a nonlinear cubic equation similar to the one obtained for gain, and the variation of its diagrams with other parameters is also considered.


A total of 4,418 samples of commercial layer feeds obtained in 1998 were investigated for the presence of salmonellae. A total of 146 strains of salmonellae which consisted of 32 serovars, including 20 strains of Salmonella Enteritidis, were isolated from 143 feed samples.


in recent years have given us the chance to explore new and existing technologies in environments we had previously thought impossible. One of the technologies that have been making waves is virtual reality (VR). In a nutshell, VR gives an individual the ability to step into a whole new world; an environment which is a realistic illusion, generated by a computer, where one can experience the world as we know it but at the same time, have the opportunity to try things without fear of consequences. For years, VR was thought to be a technology relegated to entertainment, but today, the uses for such a technology have gone from pure entertainment to very specialised applications. Naturally, VR has also found its place in the healthcare domain. Perhaps the most evident application of VR in healthcare is its application as a teaching tool. In 1993, Richard M. Satava1 presented his vision for a VR surgical simulator. Satava suggested that this VR simulator signalled the beginning of an era of computer simulation for surgery. Despite this early vision, it is only now that we are beginning to witness increased acceptance of such VR simulations. While the reasons for this resistance are numerous, the delay is attributed to two main reasons. First, the initial lack of robust scientific evidence to support the use of VR for skills training which gave rise to scepticism about the validity of the approach itself. Second, the lack of knowledge of how to effectively apply simulations to a surgical training program led to early discordant views about its effectiveness.2 As the levels of acceptance for such approaches continued to grow, other researchers pioneered the use of VR in other areas of healthcare. Buchanan3 details the use of VR in teaching dentists to carry out restorative dental procedures. Gardner et al.4 explore the use of VR simulations for obstetrics and gynaecology training procedures. Other applications include orthopaedic surgery, mastoidectomy simulation, training and pre-treatment planning of interventional neuroradiology procedures, and training and assessment of laparoscopic skills. Beyond the confined "hospital" or "clinical" environments, VR environments have been used to train psychiatrists. One such application is currently being developed at the Department of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Malta as a teaching tool to simulate what happens inside the mind of a person with schizophrenia. Similarly, research has looked into teaching carers and educators how to help children on the autism disorder spectrum. Another study carried out by the same department5 focused on helping professionals step into the daily lives of an autistic child. The use of VR as a tool for teaching individuals is relatively intuitive. However, what really distinguishes VR as a technology is its adaptability and the manner in which it can easily be deployed in a wide variety of use cases outside the conventional applications. Let us take palliative care as an example. The first article in this series6 contained a reference to the work being done by US-based company KindVR, who is collaborating with clinics across the US to trial non-invasive systems to help children cope with pain. Similar work has been trialled at the Hermes Pardini vaccine centre in Brazil where young children are transported to a virtual world while being vaccinated. The theory behind these approaches stems from what is known as distraction therapy where a child is helped to cope with a painful or difficult procedure by taking the child's mind off the procedure and make it concentrate on something else. While these approaches have been proven effective, the effectiveness tends to vary according to the individual. Not everyone gets distracted equally when presented with a particular scenario, and it is here that Artificial Intelligence comes into play through a field of study known as affective computing. In a nutshell, affective computing aims to make computers intelligent enough to adapt their behaviour to how the user is feeling at that point in time. Through the application of affective computing we can, therefore, ensure that if, for example, a child is using a game similar to that developed by KindVR or the one being trialled at the Hermes Pardini centre, the game adapts itself to how the child is feeling making the child feel more comfortable and at ease. For example, if the child feels a burning sensation, then the game changes it's environment to one that justifies the burning sensation by introducing dragons and other such characters. As a consequence of this, the child is more immersed in the game, which results in a better and less painful intervention. The opportunities that VR and Artificial Intelligence have given us in delivering a better overall experience to patients are truly immense. More important is the fact that we are now starting to appreciate them more and finding innovative ways on how to adopt and implement them in our everyday activities. If this trend does indeed continue, we can guarantee a much better overall experience for patients and care-givers in the upcoming years. LUCA BONDIN & PROF. ALEXIEI DINGLI ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE