This work explores the nature of several sources of uncertainty in the neutronics of nuclear fusion devices. Background information, radiation-matter interactions and their descriptions as 'nuclear data' are discussed before an introduction to several useful methods in nuclear analyses. After a discussion of the consequences of certain uncertainties in nuclear fusion systems, there is analysis which quantifies aspects of uncertainty in tritium breeding. This analysis uses Total Monte Carlo sampling of nuclear parameters to determine the spread in Tritium Breeding Ratio (TBR) values for the proposed DEMO reactor, due to uncertainty in our knowledge of neutron interactions with the lead nucleus. The TBR is found to have a standard deviation (1 σ ) of 1.2% of the mean value. The higher-order distribution moments are also determined, highlighting a low-value tail. Subsequently, modelling approximations are investigated, specifically the practice of spatial homogenisation of radiation transport geometries. The effects of spatial homogenisation in radiation shielding for the ITER experiment are quantified for on-load and shut-down dose rates. These are found to contribute a relatively modest (22% maximum deviation) change on the most likely value. More general conclusions about the applicability of spatial homogenisation as a technique are drawn. The thesis then explores how the energy domain is discretised in current analyses and whether an improved method, delivering greater accuracy in activation calculations, might be created. By first exploring self-shielding theory and distributions of nuclear resonances, a series of functions for assembling an optimum bin density are devised. A nuclear data processing workflow is developed to produce data on an arbitrary energy 'group structure' and employed to create nuclear data libraries in an optimised group structure. These optimised discretisations are tested against and outperform current standard group structures in an example of relevance to the JET experiment. Recommendations for future work on improving the optimisation algorithm are given. Lastly, conclusions comparing the investigated contributions to analysis uncertainty are drawn.


This article focuses on the experimentation with shareholder activism by employee representatives in several large German corporations. I argue that these experiments are a manifestation of a new politics of solidarity that has emerged in the wake of the financialisation process in Germany. What unites the employee-shareholder activists is a strong rejection of short-term shareholder value maximisation, particularly as it affects the corporation's employees. To this end, they have created of a new form of interest organisation, the so-called employee shareholder associations ( Vereine der Belegschaftsaktionare or ESAs) that have institutionalised local practices of employee-shareholder activism within German corporations. In this article, I will take a closer look at three ESAs and their activities, each representing a different type of employee-shareholder activism: a 'front door strategy' at Deutsche Telekom, a 'back door strategy' at Siemens, and 'peeking through the window' at TUI. This article will demonstrate that shareholder activism by local employee representatives offers an innovative variation on the typical conflict lines within the corporation identified by scholars of corporate governance.


This paper presents a modification of neural network structure in speech recognition system which leads to improving the accuracy of the system. Deep neural networks are widely used as a part of acoustic model which aims to predict the score of acoustic units given the speech signal. The input of deep neural network is a sequence of speech frames. Typically the network tries to classify the central one of these frames while using the context frames as an additional information. In the multiframe model the output of the network is extended to predict classes of multiple frames. This modification leads to obtaining multiple predictions for one frame. Combining these predictions results in better accuracy of the network. The approach was tested on Wall Street Journal dataset. Experimenting with different sizes of the context on the input and output of the network lead to 7% and 12% relative improvement on two testsets.


Black holes are not behaving as expected. In particular, closer examination of existing data shows that instead of falling irreversibly into a singularity, stars consumed by supermassive black holes instead reappear years later as "burps" on the surface of the black hole. Surprisingly, one potentially much simpler explanation for these findings and phenomena that include polar jets, Type II supernova core rebounds, and the relative quiescence of mature supermassive black holes is to assume the "granularity" of spacetime expands enormously at the center of black holes without losing contact with the external universe. The resulting onion-like layering of matter has near-zero density and nearly frozen time at the center, creating complex dynamics in which object with strongly elliptical orbits undergo extreme compression and slowed time during the innermost phase of their orbits. The resulting structure more closely resembles a Fermi sea in which the spatially most extensive lowest energy states occupy the deepest levels of the black hole. While this Asymmetric Orbital Scale (AOS) hypothesis necessarily violates aspects of general relativity and entirely discards event horizons and singularities as non-physical, it is also readily testable by modifying existing orbital dynamics models to include variable-scale space. The result is mathematically akin to cavitation modeling.


Because of the growing prevalence of obesity among children and adolescents, increased attention is being directed toward its prevention. An important question is: can we simultaneously work toward the prevention of obesity and eating disorders? To address this question, we need to determine (a) if there is a need for integrated approaches; (b) if we can bridge the fields of obesity and eating disorders; (c) if we can foster the development of environments that promote healthy eating and physical activity choices and the acceptance of diverse body shapes and sizes; and (d) if we can work toward the development of interventions that have relevance to a broad spectrum of weight-related conditions and behaviors.


Bronchioloalveolar carcinoma is a distinctive subtype of pulmonary adenocarcinoma, without effective therapy, although there have recently been some attempts to use lung transplantation. However, a high post‐transplantation local recurrence rate is described with some controversy regarding the possible involved mechanisms, the main possibilities being the lymphatic spread and aerosolization. Presented herein is a case of a bilateral lung transplantation for a bilateral and pneumonic form of non‐mucinous bronchioloalveolar carcinoma in a 43‐year‐old woman. The histological analysis of mediastinal lymph nodes during surgery did not show neoplastic cells. Thirty‐five months after transplantation several nodular opacities in donor lungs were detected. Three pulmonary wedge resections were performed showing a non‐mucinous bronchioloalveolar carcinoma with the same histological characteristics as the primary. Again, the mediastinal lymph nodes were tumor free. A complete microsatellites molecular analysis was performed to compare the primary and recurrent carcinoma using capillary electrophoresis, showing that the recurrent tumor was generated in a recipient cellular clone. The absence of lymph node metastasis and the molecular evidence of the recipient origin of the neoplasm supports the contamination of the new lungs at the time of implantation as being the reason for the high incidence of recurrence after lung transplantation in this kind of disease.


Titanium alloys are commonly used in biomedical application in hard tissues replacement especially for knee and hip implants. Surface modifications are required prior to diamond coating process for improving tribological and wear properties of the titanium alloy. In this study, experiments were carried out to investigate the effects of different carburizing times on the adhesion strength of carbide layer formed on the Ti-6Al-7Nb. Prior to carburization process, all samples were treated to remove residual stress and oxide scales by annealing and pickling processes respectively. Hard wood charcoal powder was used as a medium. The carburizing process was carried out for 6, 12 and 24 hours at 950 °C under normal atmospheric condition. Surface morphology, carbide layer thickness and adhesion strength were evaluated using SEM, XRD, 3D Surface Profilometer and Blast Wear Tester (BWT). It is found that a mixture of oxide and carbide layers formed on the substrate and the thickness of these layers increases with carburizing time. It is also revealed that the 24 hr carburizing time provides the strongest adhesion strength among the three and TiC as the dominant layer.


The hydrodynamic properties of the C-reactive protein in solution (pH 6.8) were studied using quasi-elastic light scattering and size-exclusion liquid chromatography. It was shown that the solution containing the C-reactive protein represents a polydisperse system. The values of the translation diffusion coefficient and the apparent molecular weight of the C-reactive protein in solution at pH 6.8 were determined. The values of the translation diffusion coefficient, molecular weight and the hydration radius obtained suggest that the native pentameric C-reactive protein is the major form of the protein in solution at pH 6.8.


The aim of this studied to find out of effect Olive oil in order to increase HDL Cholesterol of Rat (Rattus norvegicus) with high lipid diet. Twenty male rats were used as animal models are divided into two groups. Ten rats as control (Po) and the else was added with Olive oil as the treatment (P1). This research was done within three months. At the first week, rats were adapted in new condition of environment. Then, rats were given with high lipid diets to gain hypercholesterolemic condition within four weeks. The high lipid diets in P0 and P1 were still given until the end of the research. The treatment group (P1) was given until the end of the research. They done within eight weeks. In the end of this research, blood samples were taken intracardiac and followed by direct test to examine HDL cholesterol level and the result of Independent Sample tTest showed that there were no significant differences between control (Po) was 23.70 ± 5.658 mg/dl and the treatment with Olive oil (P1) was 20.90 ± 3.537 mg/dl.


Background: Liver injury is considered as a common complication of sepsis. However, there are still few studies on short-term and long-term prognostic factors of sepsis-associated liver injury (SALI). The objective of our study is to conduct a large sample data cohort study to explore the risk factors for short-term and long-term prognosis of SALI.Methods: Data from a public, US-based, critical-care database (Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care-III [MIMIC-III]) was used. Septic patients who met the definition of acute liver injury were enrolled. Variables extracted from MIMIC-III were used to evaluate patient demographics, clinical characteristics on Day 1 of intensive care unit admission, and clinical outcomes. The Logistic regression models were used to calculate risk ratio (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) after adjusting for potential factors. Results: Among the 14687 participants in our study, there were 3140 (21.38%) with SALI. SALI was significantly positively associated with ICU mortality (RR, 1.54; 95% CI, 1.32, 1.79), 28-day mortality (RR, 1.27; 95% CI, 1.11, 1.45) and 1-year mortality (RR, 1.19; 95% CI, 1.06, 1.34) after adjusting confounding factors. Stratified by SOFA, there was a positive association between SALI and ICU mortality (RR, 2.15; 95% CI, 1.64, 2.80), 28-day mortality (RR, 1.60; 95% CI, 1.28, 1.99), 1-year mortality (RR, 1.24; 95% CI, 1.04, 1.48) after adjusting confounding factors among people with sofa score ≤ 5. Similar results were also obtained between SALI and ICU mortality (RR,1.40; 95% CI, 1.17, 1.67), 28-day mortality (RR, 1.17; 95% CI, 0.99, 1.38), 1-year mortality (RR, 1.19; 95% CI, 1.02, 1.38) after adjusting confounding factors among people with sofa score> 5. Compared with SOFA renal> 1, SALI had a stronger positive correlation with ICU mortality (RR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.01, 1.84), 28-day mortality (RR, 1.19; 95% CI, 0.91, 1.56), 1-year mortality (RR, 1.11; 95% CI, 0.88, 1.41) after adjusted confounding factors among people with SOFA renal ≤ 1.Conclusions: SALI was an independent risk factor for ICU mortality, 28-day mortality and 1-year mortality. And there is a close association between liver and kidney in sepsis, but the mechanism is still unclear and requires further study.


Scott-Sheldon, Kalichman, Carey, and Fiedler (2008) present a thoughtful, important, and timely meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials of stress management interventions in HIV. They differentiate controlled effect sizes across classes of acute outcomes including psychological distress, psychosocial processes, biological processes (immune status, viral, and hormonal) and fatigue. The authors join Scott-Sheldon et al., in considering future directions for this type of clinical psychosocial intervention research in HIV. Recommendations for addressing the high prevalence of psychosocial problems including diagnosable mental health disorders comorbid with HIV are presented. Suggestions for addressing medication adherence and accommodating interventions with concomitant substance use treatment are also considered. These recommendations are presented with an emphasis on expanding both the efficacy and effectiveness of psychosocial interventions in HIV. These recommendations are presented as realistic strategies for improving the modest treatment effect sizes for psychosocial outcomes and identifying meaningful effects on distal physiological outcomes associated with traditional stress management interventions in HIV.


This paper considers optimum uplink power control policy that maximizes system capacity without any interference cancellation techniques for HetNets or cognitive-radio (CR) networks at low-SNR regime. System model has two-tier to cover cognitive-radio and heterogenous networks structures. Tier 2 users cause interference on tier 1 user under spectrum sharing paradigm. In proposed scenario, this interference power on tier 1 user is limited at a certain level. The objective function of power optimization problem is changed with an upper bound function to find optimum power control policy under individual peak power constraint at Tier2s and total interference constraint at Tier1 for uplink case at low-SNR regime. To this end, two optimal solutions, one of which is algoritmic and the other is analytical, have found from two different upper bound approximations. By exploiting analytical solution, a fast and low-complex algorithm is derived. At the end of paper, these two approximations and DC programming algorithm which is well-studied and given well-approximated lower bound have been compared with each other.


Multi-level Cell Spin-Transfer Torque Random AccessMemory (MLC STT-RAM) is a promising nonvolatile memory technology for high-capacity and high-performance applications. However, the reliability concerns and the complicated access mechanism greatly hinder the application of MLC STT-RAM. In this work, we develop a holistic solution set, namely, state-restrict MLC STT-RAM (SR-MLC STT-RAM) to improve the data integrity and performance of MLC STT-RAM with the minimized information density degradation. Three techniques: state restriction (StatRes), error pattern removal (ErrPR), and ternary coding (TerCode) are proposed at circuit level to reduce the read and write errors of MLC STT-RAMcells. State pre-recovery (PreREC) technique is also developed at architecture level to improve the access performance of SR-MLC STT-RAM by eliminating unnecessary two-step write operations. Our simulations show that compared to conventional MLC STT-RAM, SR-MLC STT-RAM can enhance the write and read reliability of memory cells by 10 - 10000×, allowing the application of simple error correction code schemes. Compared to single-level-cell (SLC) STT-RAM, SR-MLC STT-RAM based cache design can boost the system performance by 6.2% on average by leveraging the increased cache capacity at the same area and the improved write latency.


16 patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection were treated with a combination of interferon-alpha and ribavirin for 24 weeks in an open study. One patient declined further treatment due to depression after week 16 and did not complete further follow-up. A moderate decline was observed in hemoglobin and an increase in bilirubin level both reversible after discontinuing the treatment. 24 weeks after treatment cessation 9/15 (60%) evaluable patients had complete clearance of HCV-RNA as measured with PCR. HCV genotype did not seem to be correlated with response, but patients with sustained response to treatment had a significantly reduced number of HCV RNA copies/ml serum at treatment start compared with the other patients. These findings support the promising results of this combination therapy noted in other pilot studies.


The coordination behaviour of 3,5-di(2-pyridyl)-1,2,4-oxadiazole (L′) has been studied and compared with that of the 2,5-di(2-pyridyl)-1,3,4-chalcadiazoles LO, LS and LSe [LO = 2,5-di(2-pyridyl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole, LS = 2,5-di(2-pyridyl)-1,3,4-thiadiazole, LSe = 2,5-di(2-pyridyl)-1,3,4-selenadiazole]. Ligand L′ and the new complexes [CuII(L′)3](ClO4)2·1.5MeOH·H2O (1·1.5MeOH·H2O), 1·MeCN, [CoII(L′)2(MeOH)2](ClO4)2 (2), [CoII(LO)2(MeOH)2](ClO4)2 (3), [CuII(L′)2Cl2] (4), [CuII(L′)2Br2] (5) and [CuII(LSe)2Cl2]·MeOH (6·MeOH) have been structurally characterised by single-crystal X-ray diffraction analyses. With the help of DFT calculations and the analyses of metal–ligand bond lengths of similar complexes of L′, LO, LS and LSe the binding capacities have been determined as L′ << LO < LS < LSe.


Directive 2010/63/EU on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes requires that the killing of mammal foetuses during the last third of their gestational period should be accomplished through effective and humane methods. The fact that murine foetuses are resistant to hypoxia-mediated euthanasia renders the current euthanasia methods ineffective or humane for the foetuses when these methods are applied to pregnant female mice. We have assessed the time to death of foetuses after performing either indirect (dam euthanasia) or direct (via intraplacental injection – a new approach to euthanasia) euthanasia methods in order to determine a euthanasia method that is appropriate, ethical and efficient for the killing of mouse foetuses. The respective times to death of foetuses after performing the three most commonly used euthanasia methods (namely cervical dislocation, CO2 inhalation and intraperitoneal sodium pentobarbital administration) were recorded. Absence of foetal heartbeat was monitored via ultrasound. We consider that the most effective and humane method of foetal euthanasia was the one able to achieve foetal death within the shortest possible period of time. Among the indirect euthanasia methods assessed, the administration of a sodium pentobarbital overdose to pregnant female mice was found to be the fastest for foetuses, with an average post-treatment foetal death of approximately 29.8 min. As for the direct euthanasia method assessed, foetal time to death after intraplacental injection of sodium pentobarbital was approximately 14 min. Significant differences among the different mouse strains employed were found. Based on the results obtained in our study, we consider that the administration of a sodium pentobarbital overdose by intraplacental injection to be an effective euthanasia method for murine foetuses.


We prospectively evaluated a novel nano-synthesized, membrane-covered self-expanding super-elastic all-metal endoprosthesis stent (SESAME Stent) in patients undergoing percutaneous intervention (PCI) of degenerated saphenous vein graft (SVG) lesions. Methods: SESAME investigators prospectively enrolled 20 patients/21 lesions at 2 outside United States (OUS) centers, between February 2005 and August 2005. Patients underwent elective intervention of symptomatic SVG lesions with 50% stenosis. PCI was performed without embolic protection devices. The primary end point was technical and procedural success. Secondary end points included major adverse cardiac events (MACE) at 30 days and 9 months. Results: Twenty patients (twenty-one SVG lesions) received SESAME stents. The acute success was 100%. No procedural or in hospital complications occurred. One patient underwent a planned staged PCI at 28 days in a separate SVG. Follow-up was present in 20 patients at 30 days, with clinical (n 5 19) and angiographic evaluation (18 patients/19 lesions) at 9 months. No MACE events occurred at 30 days. At 9 months, 3 patients underwent repeat PCI. One TLR (restenosis at the overlap of two stents) and two nonindex lesion TVR for a MACE rate of 14% at 9 months. Conclusions: This study demonstrated the ABPS SESAME Stent has excellent acute success, low 30 day MACE rates and 9 month patency of the SESAME is similar to balloon expandable stents without embolic protection. VC 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.


Added stable gain (ASG) was measured to assess the differences in feedback reduction algorithms across six manufacturers, two earmold styles, ten audiograms, and three frequency bands.


Purpose
The sport sector is a very competitive and dynamic industry, son intrapreneurial employees are needed. However, although entrepreneurial intentions in sport sciences students have been studied, less is known about intrapreneurial intentions. It is, therefore, the purpose of this paper to validate a scale to measure the intrapreneurial intentions of sports science students from two different countries.

Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 304 final-year students from the sport sector of two different countries (Spain and Lithuania) was analyzed. First, an exploratory factorial analysis of the two samples was performed separately, and then a confirmatory factorial analysis was carried out to performed. Finally, in order to check the invariance of the measuring instrument, a multi-group analysis was performed with the constraints of all factors variances and all factors loading.

Findings
The entrepreneurial intentions scale works well both in its English version in the Lithuanian sports students' and in its Spanish version with the university sports students from Spain. Therefore, it can be said that there is a metric invariance. However, the scale presents better fit indexes, reliability and validity in its English version. Lithuanian sports students scored significantly higher on the risk-taking dimension than Spanish students.

Research limitations/implications
The scale has only been validated with final-year sport science students from two countries. It is necessary to test this scale with a larger sample of students from different fields and countries.

Practical implications
This scale can be used in both in Spanish and English versions to detect potential entrepreneurs in the sports sector, so it can help universities and employers to detect future intraentrepreneurs in the sports sector.

Social implications
Social implication of this paper is the detection of potential entrepreneurs who can improve economic, social or sports performance in organizations or sports companies.

Originality/value
A new tool to detect the potential sport intrapreneurs in university students has been created. Moreover, a cross-cultural validation of the intrapreneurial intentions scale (in English and Spanish version) with sport sciences students from two different countries has been performed.


Reactivation of the cell cycle, including DNA replication, might play a major role in Alzheimer's disease. In this study, we report that the expressions of Swedish double mutation of amyloid precursor protein (Swe‐APP) or of the APP intracellular domain (AICD) into nerve growth factor (NGF)‐differentiated PC12 cells or rat primary cortical neurons increased mRNA and protein levels of cyclin D1 and cyclin B1. Treatment with lithium chloride (a glycogen synthase kinase‐3β inhibitor) down‐regulated cyclin B1 induced by Swe‐APP expression but up‐regulated cyclin D1 expression induced by Swe‐APP, suggesting that glycogen synthase kinase‐3β activity is involved in these expression changes of cyclins D1 and B1. Swe‐APP, which is a prevailing cause of familial Alzheimer's disease, is well known to increase amyloid beta peptide production both in vitro and in vivo, but the underlying molecular means whereby it leads to the pathogenesis of AD remains unknown. The finding that cyclin D1 and B1 expressions were up‐regulated by Swe‐APP in in vitro cultured cells was substantiated in the brain tissues of Tg2576 mice, which harbor the Swe‐APP mutation. These results suggest that some disturbances in cell cycle regulation may be involved in Swe‐APP or AICD‐induced neurodegeneration and that these contribute to the pathogenesis of AD. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


We report the case of a 2-y, 11-month-old boy with G1P[8] rotavirus infection accompanied by acute meningoencephalitis. Substitutions in both the VP4 and VP7 genes were found in the identified strain. A commonly circulating G1P[8] rotavirus with such mutations might be associated with the pathogenesis of CNS complications, including meningoencephalitis.


Sterol-ester hydrolase [EC 188.8.131.52] from Saccharomyces cerevisiae grown aerobically was solubilized with 1% Tween 20 and purified about 700-fold by the protamine sulfate treatment, DEAE-cellulose-, Sepharose 6B- and DEAE-cellulose column chromatographies. The molecular weight of the enzyme was estimated to be 70,000 by Sepharose 6B gel filtration. The enzyme activity showed two peaks of pH optimum at 4.4 and 6.8. Triton X-100 stimulated the activity as its low concentrations at both pH regions, but decreased the activity at its high concentrations at pH 6.8. The presence of Tween 20 or Tween 80 also stimulated the activity. These results were different from those in the previous report showing no stimulation of the crude enzyme by these detergents. The stimulation of the activity by phosphatidylcholine or low concentrations of lysophosphatidylcholine was similar to that by Triton X-100, and taurocholate was less effective than Triton X-100. The enzyme activity was inhibited by divalent cations such as Hg2+ and Cu2+.


This is a discussion of a paper by the same title which appeared in Vol. 24, Canadian Geotechnical Journal, pp 342-356. The authors of the original paper are M.G. Jefferies, J.H.A. Crooks, D.E. Becker, and P.R. Hill.


We find a new class of invariant inhomogeneous Bianchi type-I cosmological models in electromagnetic field with variable magnetic permeability. For this, Lie group analysis method is used to identify the generators that leave the given system of nonlinear partial differential equations (NLPDEs) (Einstein field equations) invariant. With the help of canonical variables associated with these generators, the assigned system of PDEs is reduced to ordinary differential equations (ODEs) whose simple solutions provide nontrivial solutions of the original system. A new class of exact (invariant-similarity) solutions have been obtained by considering the potentials of metric and displacement field as functions of coordinates and . We have assumed that is only nonvanishing component of electromagnetic field tensor . The Maxwell equations show that is the function of alone whereas the magnetic permeability is the function of and both. The physical behavior of the obtained model is discussed.


Indonesia is a well-known country with a variety of resources vegetables and fruits. Most of them are used as a prospectus cure for cancer within antioxidant mechanisms. Some parts of these plants are eucalyptus leaves, bay leaves, guava leaves, mangosteen skin, Kepel leaves, peanut shell, yellow leaves and seeds of rambutan known to have antioxidant activity. This recent study aimed to gain information about the chemical interaction studies of the ligandprotein by molecular docking of flavonoid and phenolic compounds with a protein target that is responsible for antioxidant activity. The eight extracts obtained by maceration using 96% ethanol were tested their antioxidant activity with DPPH method to obtain their IC50 values. Flavonoids and phenolic compounds of each plants were obtained from the database of Universal Natural Product (http://pkuxxj.pku.edu.cn/UNPD) and other literature. The 99selected compounds were performed molecular docking against the 6-protein target using Dock6. The results were obtained in the form of colour pasta extracts with IC50 values (and yield) for eucalyptus leaves, bay leaves, guava leaves, mangosteen skin, kepel leaves, peanut shell, yellow leaves and seeds of rambutan was 29.4 (33.36); 43.9 (25.71); 82.6 (30.0); 170 (38.44); 190 (22.71); 240 (6.09); 790 (26.39) and 970 (8.55) μg/mL (% w/w) respectively. Eucalyptus leaf extract has the greatest antioxidant activity by DPPH method. This result correlates with its binding activity of molecular docking. A compound, namely (5R)-6,7,8trihydroxy-1,3-dioxo-1H,2H,3H,5H-cyclopenta[c]isochromene-5-carboxylic acid (eucalyptus) is highly active against all protein targets followed by murrapanine (yellow) compared to the native ligand of the protein target. All other molecules of the six remaining extract did not contain molecule that has a dominant binding affinity of ligand-protein. This could be happened because the antioxidant activity of each extract was admitted as resultant of several molecules or there are other molecules that are not incorporated in the flavonoid and phenolic groups that have antioxidant activity. However, further research is needed to prove that antioxidant activity is the resultant of several compounds.


Many enzymes that hydrolyze insoluble crystalline polysaccharides such as cellulose and chitin guide detached single-polymer chains through long and deep active-site clefts, leading to processive (stepwise) degradation of the polysaccharide. We have studied the links between enzyme efficiency and processivity by analyzing the effects of mutating aromatic residues in the substrate-binding groove of a processive chitobiohydrolase, chitinase B from Serratia marcescens. Mutation of two tryptophan residues (Trp-97 and Trp-220) close to the catalytic center (subsites +1 and +2) led to reduced processivity and a reduced ability to degrade crystalline chitin, suggesting that these two properties are linked. Most remarkably, the loss of processivity in the W97A mutant was accompanied by a 29-fold increase in the degradation rate for single-polymer chains as present in the soluble chitin-derivative chitosan. The properties of the W220A mutant showed a similar trend, although mutational effects were less dramatic. Processivity is thought to contribute to the degradation of crystalline polysaccharides because detached single-polymer chains are kept from reassociating with the solid material. The present results show that this processivity comes at a large cost in terms of enzyme speed. Thus, in some cases, it might be better to focus strategies for enzymatic depolymerization of polysaccharide biomass on improving substrate accessibility for nonprocessive enzymes rather than on improving the properties of processive enzymes.


The outlier identification and correction of the geomagnetic parameter measurement is an important influencing factor for the probability and precision of the matching algorithms. The ream-time measurements of the geomagnetic field parameter can be considered as the first-order non-stationary random process, the real-time measurement value can be predicted by using the multi-level recursive method, the outlier identification can be done by the Dixon criterion, and the correction can be made by using the median filter and the one step prediction value. The inspection is carried out by using the emulation data and actual data, the results show that not only the isolated type but also the spot-type outlier value can be detected well and the signal reconstruction error is less than 5%.


We demonstrate compact waveguide splitter networks in siliconon- insulator (SOI) rib waveguides using trench-based splitters (TBSs) and bends (TBBs). Rather than a 90 degrees geometry, we use 105 degrees TBSs to facilitate reliable fabrication of high aspect ratio trenches suitable for 50/50 splitting when filled with SU8. Three dimensional (3D) finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulation is used for splitter and bend design. Measured TBB and TBS optical efficiencies are 84% and 68%, respectively. Compact 105 degrees 1 x 4, 1 x 8, and 1 x 32 trench-based splitter networks (TBSNs) are demonstrated. The measured total optical loss of the 1 x 32 TBSN is 9.15 dB. Its size is only 700 microm x 1600 microm for an output waveguide spacing of 50 microm.


The general characteristics of radars using large planar steerable array antennas are discussed. The need for an amplifier for each element is shown, and the tolerances and stability requirements for the amplifiers are discussed. Array geometry, pattern formation and gain, mutual coupling, and beam-steering techniques are summarized. Element minimization and signal-processing techniques are analyzed.


In Europe, exotic species are assessed for their potential threat only after they have already become weeds. To test hypotheses underlying risk assessment procedures, 274 North and South American exotic species naturalized in France were compared to differentiate environmental from agricultural weeds and to characterize weeds of several crops. Most agricultural exotic weeds belonged to the Asteraceae and the Poaceae, but proportionally to the total number of invasive species from a family the most successful families were the Amaranthaceae, Euphorbiaceae and Poaceae. Weed status in North and South America was the best predictor of agricultural weed status in France, and a pre-1900 date of introduction was associated with a greater likelihood of having become a major weed. The characteristics of 78 species present in field crops were examined in relation to management practices. In annual crops, the life-cycle compatibility of weeds appeared to be the main factor of selection. Exotic species differed in their C4 photosynthesis pathway in maize and rice. In vineyards, many ecological strategies are possible because the habitat is heterogeneous. Intrageneric comparison of exotic and native species showed a superior relative growth rate and higher biomass production under nutrient-rich conditions for exotics. However, it is still difficult to find a predictive function that fits well with all observed cases of weed invasion.


In this paper, we introduce a low-complexity fine-granularity scalable (FGS) video encoder that refines both residue and motion information in the quality layers. The current scalable video coding (SVC) draft shows that significant gains can be achieved when each enhancement layer undergoes the motion estimation/motion compensation (ME/MC) process with its own motion vector field (MVF). However, given the high computational cost of ME/MC, a motion-refined FGS scheme can be expensive to implement. The proposed scheme controls the macroblock (MB) mode allowed in the base layer and channels computational resources to refine motion in enhancement layers. Through a proper selection of Lagrangian factor for the generation of the first MVF, it is possible to design a low-complexity FGS encoder that has good overall coding performance. A simplified motion-refinement scheme is also adopted for selected MBs in enhancement layers by exploiting the correlation of MB-type information between successive layers to further reduce the complexity of the FGS encoder. Meanwhile, a framework of rate-distortion-complexity optimization is proposed for the FGS by considering the interpolation complexity during the ME/MC in each layer. The FGS decoder can be simplified through the reduction in the number of interpolations.


Differences in cultural norms and incentives provide a powerful marketplace for garbled demography in the mass media. Journalists are attracted to expectation of dramatic shifts in politically and socially controversial domains that can result from long-term population projections. Demographers routinely caution against interpreting such projections as forecasts, and emphasize the complexities and uncertainties of demographic analyses. Yet such caveats are often lost in the sequence of translations from demographic study, to press release, to journalistic treatment. In addition, advocacy groups often interpret such stories to serve their own interests, while headlines and article titles designed for general readerships are another source of miscommunication about demographic studies. Two recent cases offer object lessons of how careful demographic analyses addressing politically controversial trends can suffer from such confusions: media coverage of the 1997 National Research Council report entitled "The New Americans", and the 2000 report by the United Nations Population Division entitled "Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?" The essay suggests procedural changes that might moderate the level of garbled reporting and commentary that commonly characterize coverage of such studies in the mass media. Copyright 2004 The Population Council, Inc..


It is generally taken for granted that China's monetary and exchange rate policy have repercussions on her Asian neighbors and affect the choice set open to them in terms of setting optimal economic policy. At the very least, China's neighbors would like to have a clearer idea of China's plan as regards her monetary and exchange rate policy, specifically how and in what time frame she intends to adjust or exit from the current dollar peg. In a broad sense, China's decision regarding what some might call "national monetarism" will affect the viability of "international monetarism," or the regional or global monetary and exchange rate arrangement, with the yuan playing a key role. Already, many countries in Asia have individually opted to adopt inflation targeting and more flexible exchange rate regimes following the Asian Crisis of 1997. One may question whether indeed adopting inflation targeting cum greater exchange rate flexibility is optimal in the light of current China policy and relative to adopting a regional monetary standard. From China's perspective, the choice of an optimal monetary and exchange rate strategy is largely contingent on the goals of policymakers there and what they consider to be in China's best interests. From the perspective of China's neighbors in Asia, however, the effects of China's decisions on her monetary and exchange rate policy are likely to have uneven trade and exchange rate effects in the different Asian countries. The differing degrees of complementarity between individual Asian countries and China will give rise to differences in the direction and size of exchange rate adjustment in individual countries. This, in turn, implies that a regional monetary arrangement to address intra-regional fluctuations in response to a change in China's monetary and exchange rate arrangement may not be warranted. The study will try to assess to what extent such a view is valid for some countries in Asia.


Evidence has shown that microRNAs (miRNAs) are vital in cell growth, migration, and invasion by inhibiting their target genes. A previous study demonstrated that miRNA (miR)-155-3p and miR-155-5p exerted opposite effects on cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration and invasion in breast cancer cell lines. An miRNA microarray was used to show that miR-155-3p was downregulated whereas miR-155-5p was upregulated in paclitaxel-resistant (PR) cells compared with parental breast cancer cells. However, the role of miR-155 in breast cancer cell invasion and metastasis remains to be elucidated. A 21-residue peptide derived from the viral macrophage inflammatory protein II (NT21MP), competes with the ligand of CXC chemokine receptor 4 (CXCR4) and its ligand stromal cell-derived factor-1α, inducing cell apoptosis in breast cancer. The present study aimed to identify the underlying mechanism of action of miR-155-3p/5p and NT21MP in PR breast cancer cells. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction, western blotting, wound-healing, cell cycle and apoptosis assays, and Cell Counting kit-8 assay were used to achieve this goal. The combined overexpression of miR-155-3p with NT21MP decreased the migration and invasion ability and increased the number of apoptotic and arrested cells in the G0/G1 phase transition in vitro. The knockdown of miR-155-5p combined with NT21MP had a similar effect on PR breast cancer cells. Furthermore, the ectopic expression of their target gene myeloid differentiation primary response gene 88 (MYD88) or tumor protein 53-induced nuclear protein 1 (TP53INP1) combined with NT21MP enhanced the sensitivity of the breast cancer cells to paclitaxel. Taken together, these findings suggested that miR-155-3p/5p and their target genes MYD88 and TP53INP1 may serve as novel biomarkers for NT21MP therapy through the CXCR4 pathway for improving sensitivity to paclitaxel in breast cancer.


A system for visualisation of the vocal-tract shapes during vowel articulation has been designed and developed. The system generates the vocal tract configuration using a new approach based on extracting both the area functions and the formant frequencies form the acoustic speech signal. Using a linear prediction analysis, the vocal tract area functions and the first three formants are first estimated. The estimated area functions are then mapped to corresponding mid-sagittal distances and displayed as 2D vocal tract lateral graphics. The mapping process is based on a simple numerical algorithm and an accurate reference grid derived from x-rays for the pronunciation of a number English vowels uttered by different speakers. To compensate for possible errors in the estimated area functions due to variations in vocal tract length, the first two section distances are determined by the three formants. The formants are also used to adjust the rounding of the lips and the height of the jawbone. Results show high correlation with x-ray data and the PARAFAC analysis. The system could be useful as a visual sensory aid for speech training of the hearing–impaired.


Hole cold expansion (HCE) is an effective method to extend the fatigue life of mechanical structures. During cold expansion process compressive residual stresses around the expanded hole are generated. The enhancement of fatigue life and the crack initiation and growth behavior of a holed specimen were investigated by using the 6082 Aluminum alloy. The present study suggests a simple technical method for enhancement of fatigue life by a cold expansion hole of pre-cracked specimen. Fatigue damage accumulation of cold expanded hole in aluminum alloy which is widely used in transportation and in aeronautics was analyzed. Experimental tests were carried out using pre-cracked SENT specimens. Tests were performed in two and four block loading under constant amplitude. These tests were performed by using two and four blocks under uniaxial constant amplitude loading. The increasing and decreasing loading were carried. The experimental results were compared to the damage calculated by the Miner's rule and a new simple fatigue damage indicator. This comparison shows that the 'damaged stress model', which takes into account the loading history, yields a good estimation according to the experimental results. Moreover, the error is minimized in comparison to the Miner's model.


In ATM networks, the concept of virtual path (VP) greatly simplifies cell processing in switches. The virtual channel connection (VCC) can be more quickly and efficiently established by good strategies of resource management. The method of constructing virtual path and the strategies of managing and allocating resources greatly affect the performance of the system operation. We propose a new architecture and the corresponding methods of constructing virtual paths; various methods and strategies, such as bandwidth control, rerouting, resource man- agement, and fault recovery, are studied (13). This paper focuses on multicast routing and analyzes some algorithms for this model. Simulation results show the good performance in bandwidth utilization, blocking probability, and loss probability.


During the past 20 years, we have seen an expanding role for the free market in the electricity sector as well as other sectors. A perfectly competitive power market is efficient but difficult to achieve. The special features of electricity should be taken into account. In this paper, it is shown how traditional Optimal Power Flow (OPF) can be extended to include the demand side, thereby reflecting the supply-demand balance of an open market. The OPF technique can be used for the calculation of a set of nodal prices representing the optimal price at each node in the grid, from which we can derive a set of optimal transmission prices. Depending on the market design, generation planning can be performed by central optimization or in a decentralized manner by each generation company. For an individual generating company, the planning criterion will change from cost minimization to profit maximization. Practical experiences are now available from various parts of the world. It is clearly demonstrated that a power market can be operated under free market conditions. Various solutions concerning ownership and market design have been implemented. However, experiences have been mixed. In the future, it will be important to draw upon the lessons that have been learned.


Manufacturing is moving towards complexity, large integration, digitalization and high flexibility. A combination of these characteristics is a basic for forming a new kind of production system, known as Cyber Physical System (CPS). CPS is a board range of complex, multidisciplinary, physically-aware next generation engineered systems that integrates embedded computing technologies. Those integrated manufacturing systems usually consist of four levels: network, enterprise, production system and workplace. In this article we are concentrated to the workplace level, examining the implementation of the most suitable robot-cell and integration it into the production system and enterprise structure. The problem is actual for the big companies such as automobile industry, but very important is also for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that tend to produce for example; small tractors, air conditioners for high speed trains or even different type of doors for houses. In all cases the best solution to response the situation is the implementation of robot-based manufacturing cell into a production system, which is not only a challenge but also need a lot of specific knowledge. Designing and selecting optimal solutions for robot-based manufacturing systems is suitable to carry out by a computer-based decision support systems (DSS). DSS typically works by ranking, sorting or choosing among the alternatives. This article emphasis to the problem of integration the DSS with the artificial intelligence (AI) tools. For this objective, the study has been focused to development of a conceptual model for assessing robot-based system by means of technical and functional capabilities, which is combined with cell efficiency based on process Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and enterprise Critical Success Factors (CSFs). The elaborated model takes into consideration system design parameters, product specific indicators, process execution data, production performance parameters and estimates how the production cell objective can be achieved. Ten different types of companies were selected and their robot-based manufacturing systems were mapped by qualitative and quantitative factors based on the model, whereas executives were interviewed to determine companies' strategic objectives. The study results comprise of an approach that helps SMEs to gain additional economic-technical information for decision making at different levels of a company.


Background: Pharmacological ACTH test provide information only about the ability of the adrenal gland to respond to unusual stimuli and may not reflect the daily cortisol secretion. There were some controversies in the diagnosis of mild adrenal insufficiency by using a pharmacological dose of ACTH. The purpose of the present study was to assess and compare the effect of low dose 1 pg ACTH and high dose 249 pg ACTH in the evaluation of adrenal function. The intravenous injection of a pharmacological dose(250 pg) of ACTH has been used as a standard test in the initial assessment of adrenal function. So we low dose ACTH to evaluate the adrenal function and compare the result of high dose ACTH. Method: Basal serum cortisol sampling was done at 2:00 p.m.. And after 1 pg ACTH iv bolus injection, cortisol sampling was done at 20, 30, 45 and 60 min respectively. On the next day same procedure was repeated at same time, but 249 mg ACTH was given instead of the low dose. Normal adrenal function was diagnosed with the criteria of stimulated serum cortisol concentration over 20 mg/dL. Total 65 patients took part in this study. Three hypopituitarism patients and one Addisons disease were included. Sixty-one patients had the history of glucocorticoid ingestion or had physical findings of cushingoid features with symptoms suggest the adrenal insufficiency. Results: Sixteen patients showed normal response to both low dose and high dose ACTH. Thirty-six patients were not stimulated to both low dose and high dose ACTH. The remaining thirteen patients revealed normal response to high dose ACTH, but not to low dose ACTH. Conclusion: It appears that low dose ACTH stimulation test is more sensitive and specific than high dose ACTH and is capable of revealing mild adrenal insufficiency (J Kor Soc Endocrinol 13:580-589, 1998).


ABSTRACT Contemporary models of athlete development (e.g., Development Model of Sport Participation) suggest attainment benefits from early age multi-sport "sampling" behaviour before progressive transition into "invested" single-sport involvement in teenage years compared to intensive early-age specialisation. However, specific examinations of these development patterns across a number of team sports and cultural contexts remains limited. This study involved a large sample of professional Australian Rugby League (RL) players (N = 224) who progressed along the RL system pathways. It defined two contrasting athlete development trajectories based upon initial entry into formal age group representative teams ("Early": U16, U18; "Later": U20+) to compare their developmental participation patterns using the National Rugby League Athlete Development Questionnaire (NRLADQ). Between-Within Analyses of Variance (BW-ANOVA)'s identified interaction effects as the 'Later' group reported lower volumes of deliberate practice from 10–20 years, RL-game involvement from 10–20 years, deliberate play from 5–12 years, and a later reduction in other sporting involvement. Group differences in RL-related deliberate practice and play were supported by qualitative descriptions of training at age-categories. Conclusion: RL professional senior elite success level can be attained via early intensified specialised investment and accelerated youth success as well as by a rather decelerated, much less cost-intensive participation pattern.


The existing literature on the international role of the dollar largely sees that role as dependent upon developments outside the US, such as the emergence of viable alternative currencies or contenders to US hegemony. By contrast, I see the future of the dollar as international currency as ultimately determined by the deepening conflict between the US financial system, which is based on money as a medium of circulation, and its monetary base, which is based on money as embodiment of the value of social labor. This analysis builds upon a non-monetarist understanding of money as a social relation and inflation as a government policy of regulation of class conflicts. My key argument is that the current strategy of choice for managing the wide-scale insolvency crisis in the US financial sector risks sacrificing the monetary base. Thus, the ailing status of the dollar as national currency (the crumbling monetary base) will ultimately erode its status as an international currency.


Background Brivaracetam received its UK licence as an adjuvant drug for focal epilepsy in adults in 2016. There is little data on its efficacy and tolerability in 'real life' settings. We present an interim analysis of a multicentre service evaluation of brivaracetam. Methods Data was retrospectively collected from clinical records at two UK centres of consecutive patients treated with brivaracetam and at least one follow up. Data were also extracted on previous levetiracetam use. Seizure frequency was categorised at baseline and follow-up (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly/none).Results: Of the 44 patients identified (17 male, mean age 39, range 19–66), 75% had a history of levetiracetam exposure (LE+) and 25% did not (LE−). Mean brivaracetam exposure was 10.3 months (2–21), the mean daily dose was 200 mg (50–400). Retention was 91% vs 100% in LE+ versus LE− groups at 3 months and 82% in both groups at 6 months. Seizure category improvements were seen in 20%/36.4% in the LE+ vs LE− groups, seizure category deteriorations in 0% vs 9%. There were no serious adverse events. Conclusion Brivaracetam emerges as a potentially useful adjuvant medication for focal epilepsy. It may be better tolerated by some patients than Levetiracetam and more effective than this drug.


ABSTRACT This study uses a topical, rhetorical approach to analyze how climate change denial circulates online through the 25 most popular posts on the Watts Up With That and the Global Warming Policy Forum Facebook pages. These groups adopt the appearance of credibility through reposting and hyperlinking, thus establishing a supportive, networked space among other skeptical sites, while distancing readers from original sources of scientific information. Visitors use a variety of rhetorical strategies to echo posts' main themes and to discredit alternative viewpoints. Differences between the topoi and rhetorical strategies of WUWT and the GWPF show that the climate change denial community is multifaceted and makes use of social media affordances to craft the appearance of legitimacy. This project contributes to our knowledge of how scientific information is co-opted, manipulated, and circulated in online spaces and how online features shape environmental discourse practices.


The Federation of State Medical Boards of the United States takes pleasure in once again praising the AMA Council on Medical Education for its yearly report on medical licensure. The annual State Board Number is eagerly awaited for its usual comprehensive coverage of the field and the valuable factual and statistical data herein contained. The member boards, as well as the profession at large, are greatly indebted to the Council for this compendium of ready and accurate reference material. The Federation has been in the past, and will continue to be in the future, greatly concerned with the problems of reciprocity and endorsement of medical credentials among the several jurisdictions and will continue to promote the concept of universal endorsement. Such a concept is only possible when levels of examination and licensure in each jurisdiction meet uniformly high standards. These standards are the constant goal of the Federation through the


The objective of this investigation was to evaluate chondroprotective effect of zerumbone, a purified compound of Zingiber zerumbet Smith against monosodium iodoacetate (MIA) induced knee osteoarthritis (OA) in the rat. The effect on the articular cartilage was examined and compared with celecoxib (Celebrex®), a Non-Steroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drug (NSAID). Forty adult male Sprague Dawley rats were divided into four groups (n=10 for each). All animals were injected with MIA intraarticularly in their right knee joints to induce OA. Rats from first and second groups were treated with zerumbone in a same dose but with two different concentrations. Rats in the third group were treated with celecoxib and served as positive control whereas the fourth group were treated with corn oil and served as negative control. Evaluation of OA changes in the knees was assessed with the aid of both radiography and histopathology score. Macroscopic as well as microscopic examinations revealed curative effect of zerumbone in a dose dependent manner on the osteoarthritic knee joints. Apart from this, our data also revealed very poor anti-OA property of celecoxib. We concluded that oral administration of zerumbone in a dose of 2 mL kg-1 b.wt. of 0.4% w/v diluted with corn oil for a period of 4 weeks has some chondroprotective effects.


A case of injection injury to the median nerve is presented and the literature reviewed with respect to pathogenesis, prevention, and outcome. At the present time, all injectable anesthetic agents are neurotoxic. As this case illustrates, direct intrafascicular injection of these agents can result in devastating and permanent impairment. All clinicians must take steps in order to prevent these iatrogenic injuries from occurring.


Background and Objectives: A study was carried out to compare the two methods of rapid diagnostic test (RDTs) and blood films examination in the diagnosis of malaria among pregnant women in Kano, Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A total of 300 pregnant women with clinical suspicion of malaria attending antenatal clinic (ANC) who gave informed consent were recruited to participate in the study. Blood sample were collected aseptically and dispensed into an EDTA container where RDTs and microscopic examination were performed to assess the presence of malaria parasites. Results from the rapid diagnostic kits were analyzed and compared to those obtained by general microscopy. Results: Results show that of the 300 samples enrolled 116 (38.7%) were found to be positive with blood films examination while in rapid diagnostic test 103 (34.3%) pregnant women were positive. Based on frequency of infection by age 21-25 years had 50 (43.1%) as the most vulnerable group, followed by 15-20 year with 34 (11.3%) 26-30 had 15 (5%) while age group of 31-35 had 12 (4.0%). Age group 36-40 had 10 (3.3%) and lastly the age group of 41-45 had least value of 2 (0.67%). Conclusion: The study, therefore, highlights the importance of both methods in diagnosis of malaria and it could be concluded that there was no significant difference between rapid diagnostic test and stained blood film malaria microscopy. Thus, the two malaria diagnostic tests could be routinely carried out to confirm and check each other.


This paper presents a method for coding pi-calculus in the COQ proof assistant- , in order to use this environment to formalize properties of the pi-calculus. This method consists in making a syntactic discrimination between free names (then called parameters) and bound names (then called variables) of the processes, so that implicit renamings of bound names are avoided in the substitution operation. This technique has been used by J.McKinna and R.Pollack in an extensive study of PTS [5]. We use this coding here to prove subject reduction property for a type system of a monadic pi-calculus.


We revisit the concept of a 'gesture' and discuss it, in particular, in the context of 3D interaction. We argue that one should distinguish between postures, quasi-postures, and gestures and that the first two should be (and are currently) preferred in 3D interfaces for directly-manipulative interaction with the environment in user-maintained modes. In scientific visualization we saw use cases of quasi-postures, suggesting that they are one way to re-use the same input space in order to facilitate several means of exploration.


There has been a framework sketched for learning deep bidirectional intelligence. The framework has an inbound that features two actions: one is the acquiring action, which gets inputs in appropriate patterns, and the other is A-S cognition, derived from the abbreviated form of words abstraction and self-organization, which abstracts input patterns into concepts that are labeled and understood by self-organizing parts involved in the concept into structural hierarchies. The top inner domain accommodates relations and a priori knowledge with the help of the A-I thinking action that is responsible for the accumulation-amalgamation and induction-inspiration. The framework also has an outbound that comes with two actions. One is called I-S reasoning, which makes inference and synthesis (I-S) and is responsible for performing various tasks including image thinking and problem solving, and the other is called the interacting action, which controls, communicates with, and inspects the environment. Based on this framework, we further discuss the possibilities of design intelligence through synthesis reasoning.


With the rapid development of computer technology, data mining using association rules has been widely used in all walks of life. FP-Growth algorithm is an association rule algorithm. It does not need to generate candidates, so it has practical value for the study of disease complications. However, it is inefficient and prone to spillover due to its large scale medical data. This paper proposes an improved algorithm based on the FP-Growth algorithm, which sets the minimum support threshold and deletes infrequent item sets to improve the operation efficiency. Experimental results show that this algorithm accelerates the speed of data mining and improves the processing efficiency in the medical data environment.


Early and correct diagnosis is a very important aspect of cancer treatment. Detection of tumour in Computed Tomography scan is a tedious and tricky task which requires expert knowledge and a lot of human working hours. As small human error is present in any work he does, it is possible that a CT scan could be misdiagnosed causing the patient to become terminal. This paper introduces a novel fully automated framework which helps to detect and segment tumour, if present in a lung CT scan series. It also provides useful analysis of the detected tumour such as its approximate volume, centre location and more. The framework provides a single click solution which analyses all CT images of a single patient series in one go. It helps to reduce the work of manually going through each CT slice and provides quicker and more accurate tumour diagnosis. It makes use of customized image processing and image segmentation methods, to detect and segment the prospective tumour region from the CT scan. It then uses a trained ensemble classifier to correctly classify the segmented region as being tumour or not. Tumour analysis further computed can then be used to determine malignity of the tumour. With an accuracy of 98.14%, the implemented framework can be used in various practical scenarios, capable of eliminating need of any expert pathologist intervention.


Seedlings are produced in specialized commercial nurseries during the last two decades. Peat is the most common growing medium in the conventional or organic seedling production. However, there is a need to develop alternative growing media due to the concerns about the peat in particularly in organic seedling production. The aim of this research was to develop growing medium using local resources as peat alternative in organic pepper seedlings production. Bell and sweet pepper cultivars cv. Ergenekon F1 and cv. Sagnak F1 respectively were sown into trays having 6 treatments composed of (1) local peat + clinoptilolite + composted farmyard manure (LP+CLI+CFM) (1:1:1; v:v), (2) local peat + vermicompost (60%LP+40%VC)(1.5:1, v:v), (3) local peat + clinoptilolite + vermicompost (LP+CLI+VC)(1:1:1; v:v), (4) local peat + perlite + composted farmyard manure (LP+PER+CFM)(1:1:1; v:v), (5) local peat + perlite + vermicompost (LP+PER+VC)(1:1:1; v:v) and (6) peat (P)(as control). After germination in a growth chamber for 3 days, seedlings were moved to a PE greenhouse which is specialized for seedling growing. Seedlings were fertilized by liquid composted farmyard manure (30 L ha-1) once a day. Germination rate of seeds, stem and root length, fresh and dry weight of seedlings were determined when they were ready for planting in 38 days. The results showed that among the tested media for both pepper cultivars, LP+CLI+VC and 60%LP+40%VC were found as promising peat alternatives for commercial use considering their effects on seedling quality. Keywords : Peat, Perlite, Clinoptilolite, Vermicompost, Composted Farmyard Manure


The re-evaluation of the theoretical antineutrino flux emitted by nuclear reactors revealed a deficit of about 6% between the observed flux and the expected one. This so-called reactor antineutrino anomaly has a statistical significance of 2.7σ , and one possible explanation to this deficit could be the existence of a light sterile neutrino state into which reactor antineutrino oscillate at very short distances. The STEREO project, which will be presented in this talk, aims to find an evidence of such oscillation. The measurement will take place at only few meters (9 m-11 m) from the compact core of the Institut Laue-Langevin research reactor in Grenoble (France), which provides a large flux of electron antineutrinos with an energy range from 1 to 10 MeV. The sensitive volume of the STEREO detector is 2 m3 of organic liquid scintillator doped with Gadolinium, consisting of 6 cells stacked along the direction of the core and detecting antineutrinos via inverse-β decay. This setup will provide excellent sensitivity to short-baseline oscillations effects by precisely measuring any relative distortion of the antineutrino spectrum as a function of both energy and baseline. Close proximity to the reactor yield a high background environment that is managed through heavy shielding surrounding the detector. A water-cerenkov muon veto will be settled above the detector to tag incoming cosmic muons. The detector is currently under construction and is expected to deliver its first results in spring 2017.


There has been a tremendous rise in the growth of online social networks all over the world in recent years. This has facilitated users to generate a large amount of real-time content at an incessant rate, all competing with each other to attract enough attention and become trends. While Western online social networks such as Twitter have been well studied, characteristics of the popular Chinese microblogging network Sina Weibo have not been. In this paper, we analyze in detail the temporal aspect of trends and trend-setters in Sina Weibo, constrasting it with earlier observations on Twitter. First, we look at the formation, persistence and decay of trends and examine the key topics that trend in Sina Weibo. One of our key findings is that retweets are much more common in Sina Weibo and contribute a lot to creating trends. When we look closer, we observe that a large percentage of trends in Sina Weibo are due to the continuous retweets of a small amount of fraudulent accounts. These fake accounts are set up to artificially inflate certain posts causing them to shoot up into Sina Weibo's trending list, which are in turn displayed as the most popular topics to users.


In this contribution I examine the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the conditions of peasants in the southern provinces and Sicily, usually called the Faina inquiry (1906–9). I focus on how the task of observing the conditions of the peasant was defined, how it was entrusted to agricultural economists, and how they accomplished it. The peasant way of life varied greatly across southern Italy. Knowledge about local varieties and local specificities was embedded contextually and was available only to locals themselves. Observation thus coincided with translation of local features into a more general language that could be understood by a larger community of scientists and by a nationwide public opinion. Political change imposed severe time constraints on data collection. Farm types were devised to handle variety quickly and effectively. Types mobilized difference while preserving and stabilizing variety among classes.


Buchim Mine has been built 35 years ago on the well-known porphyry copper deposit Buchim. During these three and half decades of continuous production around the Buchim Mine were created surface waste dump where have been stored more than 130 Mt of waste and hydrotailing dam with more than 110 Mt of tailing. These secondary landfills for years have been considered as basic sources of anthropogenic influences and contamination of air, soils and especially waters. In this paper we would like to present ours latest findings in regards to copper
contamination around the Buchim copper mine drainage system and adjacent copper leaching facility. Namelly, several so-called polluting hot-spots around the Buchim copper mine have been determined, which manifested pronounced acidic character of mine waters (pH 3.6-5.5)
and increased copper concentrations of up to 800 mg/l Cu. After the leaching facility and closed water system were built, the influence of pollutants to surface and ground waters significantly decreased. Positive effects in regards to environmental pollution following their construction were indicated by the results of the 2012 monitoring and especially by the results of the 2013,
2014 and 2015 monitoring. According to the monitoring in 2013, copper values ranged from <0.01 to 1.6 mg·l-1 Cu while 2014 monitoring have shown even better results from 0.01 to 0.98 mg·l-1 Cu and pH 4.50÷8.40 and during 2015 from 0.1 to 0.38 mg·l-1 Cu for piezometers and from 0.01 to 0.05 mg·l-1 Cu for ground and surface waters, which itself speaks about the positive effects achieved with constructions of the copper leaching facility and engulfed drainage waters.


Versions of the papers contained in this Special Report were presented at the "New World, New Capitalism" conference held in Paris in January 2009, organized and hosted by the French government. French President Nicholas Sarkozy set the tone for the meeting as he called on Old Europe to lead the discussions on the new world economy as a "narrative of the future", and to re-found capitalism because "if we don't do it, others will do it in our place". It is likely that the "others" he had in mind were those having meetings and working groups in Washington DC and New York; in fact, it was striking that the "American" view of capitalism presented in Paris remained clearly opposed to regulation and state intervention.


Micro-CT scans provide visualization of core samples that can be used to quantify physical properties important for subsurface flow including, as examples, porosity and pore size distribution, pore connectivity and permeability, amongst many others. 3D scans can deliver a very high level of detail, but at a cost of many hours of scan time. This also implies enormous numerical datasets and associated computational processing load. It is therefore important to understand (1) the voxel resolution that is required to retain physical structure fidelity (e.g., pore size and tortuosity) and (2) the smallest sample size that provides reliable and representative transport calculations (e.g., directional permeability and connectivity). As an application example, we analyze a 3D sandstone sample from the Chinchilla area of the Surat Basin comprising a cuboid of 6.6 mm × 6.6 mm × 12.276 mm. The CT image at 6.6 urn voxel resolution generates 1.86 billion grid elements. The work then examines the effect on physical properties and flow simulation of coarsening the voxel resolution, and reducing the physical size of the sample. For each of the different cases relating to voxel size, the major physical properties are evaluated. For different sample sizes at constant (small) voxel size, the fluid flow is modeled using a lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) on multicore supercomputers. The LBM is efficient and convenient for application in parallel computing, which is required to meet the computational resources needs of 3D simulations with large datasets. Comparison of the results obtained at different resolution scales reveals the minimum representative elementary volume (REV) for voxels to characterize the physical features of porous media, and for sample sizes that effectively eliminate boundary effects, capturing and describing the transport phenomena that underpin reservoir analysis.


This letter discusses the detection and correction of residual motion errors that appear in airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) interferograms due to the lack of precision in the navigation system. As it is shown, the effect of this lack of precision is twofold: azimuth registration errors and phase azimuth undulations. Up to now, the correction of the former was carried out by estimating the registration error and interpolating, while the latter was based on the estimation of the phase azimuth undulations to compensate the phase of the computed interferogram. In this letter, a new correction method is proposed, which avoids the interpolation step and corrects at the same time the azimuth phase undulations. Additionally, the spectral diversity technique, used to estimate registration errors, is critically analyzed. Airborne L-band repeat-pass interferometric data of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) experimental airborne SAR is used to validate the method.


Neural networks based vocoders have recently demonstrated the powerful ability to synthesize high quality speech. These models usually generate samples by conditioning on some spectrum features, such as Mel-spectrum. However, these features are extracted by using speech analysis module including some processing based on the human knowledge. In this work, we proposed RawNet, a truly end-to-end neural vocoder, which use a coder network to learn the higher representation of signal, and an autoregressive voder network to generate speech sample by sample. The coder and voder together act like an auto-encoder network, and could be jointly trained directly on raw waveform without any human-designed features. The experiments on the Copy-Synthesis tasks show that RawNet can achieve the comparative synthesized speech quality with LPCNet, with a smaller model architecture and faster speech generation at the inference step.


In this paper we show that to check Gromov hyperbolicity of any surface of constant negative curvature, or, Riemann surface, we only need to verify the Rips condition on a very small class of triangles, namely, those obtained by marking three points in a simple closed geodesic. This result is, in fact, a new characterization of Gromov hyperbolicity for Riemann surfaces.


At the nano-scale many proteins act as biological actuators for rotation or translation. Among these proteins, the building blocks of self-assembled, highly efficient natural motors, kinesin is considered a promising tool in the development of synthetic nanorobots. Conversion of chemical energy into mechanical work, harnessed by the hydrolysis of adenosine triphosphate, propels kinesin along a cytoplasmic system of fibers, known as a microtubule. Even though recent efforts were made to engineer tailor-made artificial nanotransport systems using kinesin, no systematic study investigated how these systems can be organized from the bottom up using the surface plasmon resonance technique. Here, we show that it is possible to quantitatively evaluate how each component of such nanoscopic machines is sequentially assembled by monitoring the individual association of its components, focusing specifically on the kinesin association to microtubules as well as the cargo-kinesin association. Furthermore, the kinetic parameters reported here for the microtubules and recombinant biotinylated kinesin binding process properties are of utmost importance due to the current widespread use of biotinylated kinesin in the construction of synthetic nano-machines.


1. Forest Lives and Struggles: An Introduction (Martin Doornbos, Ashwani Saith and Ben White, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague). 2.Development Discourses and Peasant--Forest Relations: Natural Resource Utilization as Social Process (Anja Nygren, Department of Anthropology, University of Helsinki). 3. Fashioned Forest Paths, Occluded Histories? International Environmental Analysis in West African Locales (Melissa Leach, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex and James Fairhead, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London). 4. State Sciences and Development Histories: Encoding Local Forestry Knowledge in Bengal (K. Sivaramakrishnan, Department of Anthropology, University of Washington, Seattle). 5. The Changing Regime: Forest Property and Reformasi in Indonesia (John F. McCarthy, Asian Research Centre, Murdoch University, Western Australia). 6. Balancing Politics, Economics and Conservation: The Case of the Cameroon Forestry Law Reform (Francois Ekoko, UNDP/BDP/SEED, New York). 7. People in Between: Conversion and Conservation of Forest Lands in Thailand (Jin Sato, Institute of Environmental Studies, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo). 8. Resettlement, Opium and Labour Dependence: Akha--Tai Relations in Northern Laos (Paul T. Cohen, Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, Sydney). 9.Environmentalists, Rubber Tappers and Empowerment: The Politics and Economics of Extractive Reserves (Katrina Brown, School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich and Sa rgio Rosendo, University of East Anglia, Norwich). 10. Maintaining Centralized Control in Community--based Forestry: Policy Construction in the Philippines (Richard Gauld, Department of Geography, Kinga s College London). 11. Unpacking the a Jointa in Joint Forest Management (Nandini Sundar, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi). 12. Community Forestry and Tree Theft in Mexico: Resistance or Complicity in Conservation? (Dan Klooster, School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York). 13. Remote Sensibilities: Discourses of Technology and the Making of Indonesiaa s Natural Disaster (Emily E. Harwell, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies). 14. From Timber to Tourism? Recommoditizing the Japanese Forest (John Knight, School of Anthropological Studies, Queena s University of Belfast). Notes on Contributors. Index.


This paper presents Maximum Power Point Control for variable speed wind turbine driven permanent-magnet generator. The wind turbine generator is operated such that the rotor speed varies according to wind speed to adjust the duty cycle of power converter and maximizes Wind Energy Conversion System (WECS) efficiency. The maximum power point for each speed value is traced using Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT) algorithm. The rotating speed of permanent-magnet generator should be adjusted in the real time to capture maximum wind power. The system includes the wind-turbine, permanent-magnet generator (PMG), three-phase rectifier, boost chopper, inverter and load. The control parameter is the duty cycle of the chopper. PMG is made to operate at variable speed to achieve good performance. The entire WECS model consists of wind turbine model, PMG model and power converters model. The MATLAB / SIMULINK is used for simulation and the results are compared with laboratory setup.


To study the spectral characteristic of TiO2/SnO2, TiO2/SnO2 composite oxide with SnO2 inside kernel was fabricated by colloid chemistry method, and was studied with UV-visible absorption spectrum, X-ray diffraction and infrared spectrum. The results showed that the bandgap widths of TiO2 and TiO2/SnO2 were 4.13 and 3.86 eV, respectively. TiO2/SnO2 had a widest and strong absorption band in the ultraviolet range. There was a quantum effect. In the X-ray diffraction, the station of TiO2 (110) diffraction peak moved 1.6 degrees, and its intensity changed. Compared with TiO2 infrared spectrum, the Ti--O stretching vibration of TiO2/SnO2 moved from 500 to 656 cm(-1), and had 560 cm(-1) shoulder peak. The intensity of the peaks near 1 650 and 3 420 cm(-1) corresponding to water absorbing peaks increased.


There is a great necessity of new cultivars of cowpea for the Bragantina region in Pará State, Brazil. To attend this demand, a selection program based on the method of individual plant selection with progeny test was carried out using cultivar BR3-Tracuateua, which has been cultivated in the region for more than 20 years. Characteristics used for selection included high grain quality, disease-free plant, good plant architecture, and high pod production. In September, 2000, 274 individual plants were selected. In the years 2000 and 2001 the progenies were evaluated in two experiments, both using the augmented block design. Twenty four progenies were selected from the total of 274 progenies. The 16 best progenies were evaluated by farmers in the Bragantina region and nine progenies were selected. These nine progenies were tested for Value of Cultivation and Use (VCU) using the randomized complete block design . Seven VCU experiments were performed in the period of 2002 to 2004. The most promising progenies were Urubuquara-113 classified into the white and the subclass.


The Emily Dickinson Journal is pleased to publish this special issue on editing and the letters. The 90s have witnessed an intensification of concern for the materiality of Dickinson's writing. We have been struck by certain material facts about Dickinson: that her writing exists almost entirely in manuscript; that she regularly suggested alternative words or phrases to her poems and produced alternative versions of her poems; that she wrote letters with poems attached to them, embedded in them; that her writing forms possess such fluidity that we cannot precisely say what is prose and what is poetry. As a consequence, the way she wrote, the literal textuality of her writing, informs what and how we read when we are "reading Dickinson." This concern has been emphatically addressed from the perspectives of both editing and reading theory, enterprises that are integrally related. The publication of William Shurr's New Poems of Emily Dickinson in 1993 provoked, although it did not inaugurate, this attention to editing and the letters. Shurr's creating "poems" from Dickinson's "prose" excited, enraged, pleased, and/or incited Dickinson readers. People wanted to attack him, correct him, applaud him. And they have done so. This special issue of The Emily Dickinson Journal uses Professor Shurr's work as a catapult for engaging with the complex questions raised by the materiality of Dickinson's writing. Both the energy and the passion aroused by the New Poems have fueled the current interest in the processes of editing Dickinson, the processes of reading Dickinson. This issue focuses on her letters, because at present they are the locus for these stimulating and illuminating debates.


Abstract In the present study we describe the effect of oral application of mAB specific for ETEC F4(ac) fimbriae in an experimental ETEC challenge model in neonatal germfree piglets. The results show that mAB, specific for different F4(ac) epitopes protect animals against ETEC specific pathology. Moreover, the results show that protection is independent of F4(ac) epitope specificity.


1. The effects of relatively small external DC electric fields on synchronous activity in CA1 and CA3 from transverse and longitudinal type hippocampal slices were studied. 2. To record neuronal activity during significant field changes, differential DC amplification was employed with a reference electrode aligned along an isopotential with the recording electrode. 3. Suppression of epileptiform activity was observed in 31 of 33 slices independent of region studied and type of slice but was highly dependent on field orientation with respect to the apical dendritic-somatic axis. 4. Modulation of neuronal activity in these experiments was readily observed at field strengths < or = 5-10 mV/mm. Suppression was seen with the field oriented (positive to negative potential) from the soma to the apical dentrites. 5. In vivo application of these results may be feasible.


The interrelationship between tradition and redaction in parable interpretation This paper investigates the legitimacy and possibility of isolating the parables from their holistic literary gospel-context for the purpose of hearing and understanding them from other possible angles. The conclusion reached is that the parables as aesthetic objects (Via) have a certain independence and that they contend with the gospels for the focal attention of the reader. As metaphors they are generative of multiple meanings and their 'meaning' cannot be one-sidedly forclosed in their present literary context or in some historical moment. When the parables are read as part and parcel of Ihe gospels as Hterary macro-Gestalten this holistic context, however, should not be ignored.


This memoir of Woodrow Wilson is a long-neglected treasure, full of the candid and perceptive observations of Wilson's brother-in-law and close friend, Stockton Axson. A charming and talented scholar of English literature, Axson became one of the few people in whom the reticent Wilson confided freely. Axson and Wilson met in 1884, when Wilson was courting Axson's sister Ellen, while Axson was still a schoolboy. The friendship of the two men ended only with the president's death in 1924. Axson's fondness for his mentor, "Brother Woodrow, " pervades this account, but he is frank in his analysis of Wilson's flaws. As one of only a few personal memoirs of Wilson, this book offers a uniquely intimate view of the "human side" of the introverted president - and a sensitive evocation of the social life of a bygone era. Axson begins with memories of Wilson's father and of Wilson's life as a young man, including his engagement and marriage to Ellen Axson and his teaching posts at Bryn Mawr College and Wesleyan University. Wilson then taught for twelve years at Princeton University before his accession to its presidency. Axson also taught there during this period, and noticed that the social distinctions among students were becoming more pronounced, and that undergraduate "eating clubs" were increasing in number. The eating clubs became an issue when Wilson did become president. His proposed "quad system" threatened their privileges, and later the location of the graduate college also caused a storm of controversy. Axsons bachelor quarters were often a meeting place for the "Wilson faction" during this tumultuous period. His lucid analysis of Wilson's successes and failures as Princeton's president is one of the highlights of the book - and probably the best record of these years of Wilson's life. The book ends with a look behind the scenes of Wilson's gubernatorial and presidential career and an analysis of the growing complexity of his personality. "It is Uncle Joseph W


The four study areas, located within the Unglaciated Allegheny Plateau of southern Ohio, are underlain predominantly by sandstones and shales of Pennsylvanian Age. The bedrock underlying the Arch Rock (AR), Watch Rock (WR), and Young's Branch (YB) study areas also contain economically important coal strata, while those of the Bluegrass Ridge (BR) study area have significant interbedded limestone layers. The soils include inceptisols, alfisols, and ultisols, and are predominantly loams and silt loams formed in residuum and colluvium. The soils of AR and WR are dominated by the Steinsburg-Gilpin Association, those at YB by soils of the Steinsburg-Shelocta Association, and those at BR by the Upshur-Gilpin-Steinsburg Association.


Objective This study aimed to identify reliable predictors of disease progression in patients with gallbladder (GB) adenocarcinoma. Patients and methods A total of 54 patients with GB adenocarcinoma underwent preoperative F-18 fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET/CT. Age, sex, clinical stage, and pathologic differentiation were collected. Tumor size and PET parameters such as SUVmax, SUVmean, SUVpeak, metabolic tumor volume (MTV), and total lesion glycolysis were measured. Univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to determine the utility of clinical values and PET parameters. Pearson bivariate correlation was used to evaluate the association between progression-free survival (PFS) and various parameters. Results No recurrence was found in 15 of 54 patients, while six showed recurrence and another 33 manifested disease progression. There were significant differences in size, stage, pathologic differentiation, and PET parameters between the groups with and without recurrence/progression. However, there was no difference in those parameters between the groups with recurrence and progression. The average PFS of the groups with no recurrence, recurrence, and progression groups was 33.1, 17.1, and 5.0 months, respectively. In univariate analysis, age, sex, clinical stage, pathologic differentiation, size, and PET parameters were correlated with PFS. In multivariate analysis, only clinical stage and MTV were statistically significant and MTV showed the highest odds ratio. Pearson correlation coefficients showed moderate negative correlations between PFS and clinical stage or MTV. Conclusion In GB adenocarcinoma, clinical stage and MTV are the most powerful parameters for predicting recurrence and disease progression. Based on clinical stage, MTV will represent a strong prognostic predictor.


In addition to the current BGO-OD experimental program we propose to study nuclear media effects in photoproduction of mesons using a new experimental method based on measuring a recoil nucleon as a tagger of the selected partial channel. The principal goal is to learn how unstable mesons (πo , π + , π − , η, ρ, ω , etc.) interact with nuclear media. This approach continues previous GRAAL experiments to study nuclear excitation dynamics, including multifragmentation of nuclei by intermediate energy photons.


The activating receptor NKG2D, expressed by natural killer (NK) cells and CD8(+) T cells, has a role in the specific killing of transformed cells. We examined NKG2D expression in patients with glioblastoma multiforme and found that NKG2D was downregulated on NK cells and CD8(+) T cells. Expression of NKG2D on lymphocytes significantly increased following tumor resection and correlated with an increased ability to kill NKG2D ligand-positive tumor targets. Despite the presence of soluble NKG2D ligands in the sera of glioblastoma patients, NKG2D downregulation was primarily caused by tumor-derived tumor growth factor-beta, suggesting that blocking of this cytokine may have therapeutic benefit.


INTRODUCTION
Neonatal mortality is increasingly recognized as an important global public health challenge. The spectrum of organisms that cause neonatal sepsis changes over time and varies from region to another. This study was conducted to determine the profile, antibiotic sensitivity pattern of bacterial isolates and outcome of confirmed neonatal sepsis in a tertiary care center.

STUDY DESIGN
All blood culture reports (n = 285), obtained during the study period (January 2012-September 2012) from the neonatal intensive care unit were analyzed.

RESULTS
Blood culture positivity rate was 22.1% (67/285). Seventy-three percent babies were outborn. Sixty-two percent babies were preterm and 80% were low birth weight. Thirty-six (57%) babies had early onset and remaining 27 (43%) had late onset neonatal sepsis. Blood culture isolates included Gram-negative bacilli (38/67, 56.7%), Gram-positive cocci (20/67, 29.8%), and Candida species (9/67, 13.4%). Staphylococci and Klebsiellae were the most common organisms responsible for infections, accounting for 25.4% (17/67) and 19.4% (13/67) of the isolates, respectively. All Gram positive isolates were sensitive to vancomycin, while 50-65% Gram negative isolates were sensitive to amikacin, ciprofloxacin and meropenem. Fifty-eight percent babies were discharged after completion of the antibiotic therapy, while 28.6% babies expired.

CONCLUSION
Multidrug resistant Gram negative isolates pose serious challenge, particularly in setting of emerging resistance to fluoroquinolones and carbepenems.


We analyze the non-Markovian stochastic Schrödinger equation describing a particle subject to spontaneous collapses in space (in the language of collapse models), or subject to a continuous measurement of its position (in the language of continuous quantum measurement). For the first time, we give the explicit general solution for the free particle case (H=p(2)/2m) and discuss the main properties. We analyze the case of an exponential correlation function for the noise, giving a quantitative description of the dynamics and of its dependence on the correlation time.


HpyNI is the first restriction endonuclease which has been isolated from pathogenic Helicobacter pylori. HpyNI, a new isoschizomer of ScrFI, recognizes and cleaves the palindromic sequence 5'CCNGG-3'.


: A homogeneous Pd II catalyst, utilizing a simple and inexpensive amine ligand (TMEDA), allows 2-alky-noates to be prepared in high yields by an oxidative carbonylation of terminal alkynes and alcohols. The catalyst system overcomes many of the limitations of previous palladium carbonylation catalysts. It has an increased substrate scope, avoids large excesses of alcohol substrate and uses a desirable solvent. The catalyst employs oxygen as the terminal oxidant and can be operated under safer gas mixtures. examples and can utilize O 2 to directly reoxidize the catalyst. The system utilizes ethyl acetate, an industrially preferred solvent, and does not require large excess of the alcohol substrates. The work also highlights the importance of using safer gas mixtures to avoid potentially explosive conditions. Further work will examine if we can improve the performance of a wider range of oxidative carbonylation reactions.


This paper presents a brief survey (in Chinese) on path planning and feedrate interpolation. Numerical control technology is widely employed in the modern manufacturing industry, and related research has been emphasized by academia and industry. The traditional process of numerical control technology is mainly composed of tool path planning and feedrate interpolation. To attain the machining of high speed and precision, several problems in tool path planning and feedrate interpolation are usually transformed into mathematical optimization models. To better undertake the research on the integrated design and optimization idea of tool path planning and feedrate interpolation, it is necessary to systematically review and drawn on the existing representative works. We will introduce the relevant methods and technical progress of tool path planning and feedrate interpolation in CNC machining successively, including tool path planning based on end milling, tool orientation optimization, G-code processing and corner transition, feedrate planning of parameter curves, and some new machining optimization methods proposed recently.


Abstract : Natural and man-made disasters ranging from minor disturbances to major catastrophic events will continue to plague U.S. business and industry in the future. The economic costs and loss of human lives will remain unacceptably high without corrective actions on the part of both government, and business and industry. Corporate losses each year are staggering -- vastly reducing the U.S. gross domestic product, and certainly weakening this nation's ability to pursue its stated national interests. The February 1993 bomb blast which ripped through New York City's World Trade Center caused over one billion dollars in property damage and lost profits. Thus, any serious efforts to ensure the uninterrupted operation of American business and industry in the event of a disaster would appear to be of paramount importance. Government leaders, as well as business and industry executives, share a responsibility in disaster planning and preparedness.


Fahr's disease involves calcification of basal ganglia and dentate nuclei of the cerebellum. Radiologic features of Fahr's disease including computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging are well described in the present literature. To our knowledge, magnetic resonance spectroscopy findings are not described yet. We report a case Fahr's disease presenting with symptoms of anxiety disorder with detailed radiological survey including single voxel magnetic resonance spectroscopy analysis.


OBJECTIVES
As thoracic aortic aneurysm disease continues to cause significant morbidity and mortality in the general population, the cardiovascular community continues the search for the golden threshold of elective surgical replacement of the ascending aorta.

METHODS
Thoracic aortic aneurysm is a common disease, classified within the 20 most common causes of death in patients over 65 years old. Once aortic complications like dissection or rupture occur, they can prove fatal. Prophylactic surgical replacement of the ascending aorta remains the mainstay of treatment to prevent these complications. Current American and European guidelines agree that the threshold for the diameter for elective replacement of the ascending aorta in non-syndromic, asymptomatic aneurysmal disease is 5.5 cm. Overall, aortic dissection is related to poor prognosis, thus making early intervention paramount.

RESULTS
There is a critical size above which the risk of dissection or rupture becomes extremely high. However, a significant post-dissection increase in diameter is reported, thus rendering the predissection aortic diameter well below the current threshold for elective surgical replacement of the ascending aorta. Moreover, it is widely reported that the majority of acute aortic dissections would not meet the criteria for prophylactic surgery prior to dissection. Additionally, elective surgical ascending aortic replacement in the current era shows a significantly improved risk-benefit ratio, which justifies a more aggressive approach in the management of aortic aneurysmal disease.

CONCLUSIONS
As a result, there is a lot of discussion in the literature about the requirement of a leftward shifting of the surgical threshold for elective aortic replacement.