Neonatal diabetes mellitus (NDM) is a rare genetic condition with an incidence of 1 in 100,000 (1) that presents before 1 year of age (2). There are two main clinical forms of NDM: permanent NDM (PNDM), which requires lifelong treatment with insulin, and transient NDM (TNDM), which may spontaneously remit and sometimes recurs in the second to third decade of life. In most cases, TNDM and PNDM cannot be distinguished clinically at the time of diagnosis, and genetic analysis needs to be performed.

The genetic origin for >90% of TNDM cases has been established. In TNDM, 68% of the cases have abnormalities in an imprinted region on chromosome 6q24; 10% have KCNJ11 gene mutations; and 13% have an ABCC8 gene mutation (3). Multiple genes involved in pancreatic development, β-cell apoptosis, or dysfunction cause PNDM (4). The most common mutations are in the KATP channel genes KCNJ11 (30%) and ABCC8 (11%) or the insulin (INS) gene (13%) (3).

Insulin is acutely required in most infants to establish metabolic control in NDM (5). Early initiation of sulfonylurea treatment is also recommended (6) as a treatment option in selected cases of NDM caused by ABCC8 and KCNJ11 mutations, and, in responsive cases, sulfonylurea therapy provides better long-term metabolic control (7,8) and could even improve neurodevelopmental outcomes (9).

The MiniMed 530G (Medtronic, Inc., Northridge, CA) is a first-generation artificial pancreas system approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on 26 September 2013 for the management of diabetes in people ≥16 years of age. The system includes an external glucose sensor and insulin pump, transmitter, glucose meter, and therapy management software. Sensor signals are transmitted to the MiniMed 530G insulin pump and converted into glucose values every 5 minutes. Fingerstick blood glucose testing is still required for both …


Paramedics are key to the provision of emergency care in the community. Those living with dementia use paramedic services at a high rate, due to a range of issues related to comorbid conditions and other acute events which mean care cannot continue in the home. There is a paucity of literature related to care provided in such instances. Anecdotally, a perception exists that providing care to this group of people is challenging for paramedics in situations where high level assessment and emergency care are paramount. Paramedics in one Australian state were sought to participate in an exploratory study to enhance understanding of how they currently worked with people who lived in the community and had dementia. Sixteen participants were recruited to the study, and they worked in a number of areas, including urban and rural. Experience was broad, ranging from one to 36 years in the paramedic role. Inductive thematic analysis of interviews revealed key themes that framed the paramedic role and permeated interactions, assessment and decision-making. Paramedics participating in this study recognised people living with dementia who had high level impacts of the condition, suggesting those with less visible symptoms may remain hidden. With the projected increase of people diagnosed with dementia it is imperative that paramedics are aware of, and integrate dementia knowledge, skills and confidence into their practice. Deeper exploration of the area that includes volunteer ambulance personnel and further inquiry of the role of paramedics in relation to those living with dementia is needed. A focus on education and professional development to equip paramedics to work with people living with dementia is recommended. The findings suggest that greater work in this area is required.


Of the many issues facing special education (and general education) today, it is difficult to imagine one more important or timely than response to intervention (RTI). Almost overnight RTI has become standard practice across the nation. Unfortunately, RTI remains ill-defined, falls far short of its evidence-based practice goal, is almost invariably misused, and often results in more harm than good. Nevertheless, as a conceptual framework RTI has great potential for ensuring that students with disabilities receive appropriate, evidence-based instruction. The mission of this handbook is to present a comprehensive and integrated discussion of response to intervention (RTI) and its relation to multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS) in both special education and general education. Although the two terms are currently used interchangeably, distinct differences exist between them. Therefore, chapters are dedicated to distinguishing the two concepts—RTI and MTSS—and describing each one's unique role in both general and special education. In addition, the authors recommend a third term, Multi-Tiered Instruction, to differentiate the practices related to the purpose of the specific intervention.


A chain of custody (COC) is required in many laboratories that handle forensics, drugs of abuse, environmental, clinical, and DNA testing, as well as other laboratories that want to assure reliability of reported results. Maintaining a dependable COC can be laborious, but with the recent establishment of the criteria for electronic records and signatures by US regulatory agencies, laboratory information management systems (LIMSs) are now being developed to fully automate COCs. The extent of automation and of data reliability can vary, and FDA- and EPA-compliant electronic signatures and system security are rare.


An interference analysis of the interconnection networks (IN's) for tightly coupled multiprocessors is presented in this correspondence. The interconnections considered are crossbars and delta networks. Two situations are examined: when a memory module is equally likely to be addressed by a processor and when a processor has a favorite memory. It is shown that for a higher rate of favorite requests, the delta networks perform close to a crossbar.


With the rapid development of mobile Internet, people pay increasing attention to the wireless network security problem. But due to the specificity of the wireless network, at present it is rare to see the research of wireless intrusion alerts clustering method for mobile Internet. This paper proposes a Wireless Intrusion Alert Clustering Method (WIACM) based on the information of the mobile terminal. The method includes alert formatting, alert reduction and alert classification. By introducing key information of the mobile terminal device, this method aggregates the original alerts into hyper alerts. The experimental results show that WIACM would be appropriate for real attack scenarios of mobile Internet, and reduce the amount of alerts with more accuracy of alert analysis.


The popularity of the educational robot in K-12 classroom has dramatically increased in the past decades to engage students studying not only Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), but also 21st-century skills. Most educational robots tend to be as simple as possible such that the lower grades can benefit from the robotics technologies safely. However, such design consideration makes most educational robots with none or minimal sensing capabilities. However, it is very important for senior students to learn more advanced robotics concepts and applications. This paper presents a concept of extending educational robots' sensing capabilities through quipping an external microcontroller. The paper also demonstrates how the framework can be easily used in sensor-based applications through a line-following example.


The present state of knowledge concerning the structure and the function of the visual cortex was discussed. Special attention was focused on the: (1) retino-geniculo-cortical pathway (2) representation and topography of the visual cortex (3) anatomy, physiology, and functional architecture of the primary visual cortex (4) organization and function of the parvocellular, magnocellular, and koniocellular pathway (5) functional specialization and connections between the visual areas (6) neurotransmitters' presence and function in the Brodmann's 17th area.


We derive a partial integro differential equation (PIDE) which relates the price of a calendar spread to the prices of butterfly spreads and the functions describing the evolution of the process. These evolution functions are the forward local variance rate and a new concept called the forward local default arrival rate. We then specialize to the case where the only jump which can occur reduces the underlying stock price by a fixed fraction of its pre-jump value. This is a standard assumption when valuing an option written on a stock which can default. We discuss novel strategies for calibrating to a term and strike structure of European options prices. In particular using a few calendar dates, we derive closed form expressions for both the local variance and the local default arrival rate.


Long‐term sediment traps were deployed from September 2005 to August 2007 in the northern Laptev Sea to assess the annual variability in vertical export of particulate organic carbon (POC). The second year of deployment coincided with the record low in Arctic summer ice extent reached in 2007 that resulted in an increase in marine primary production over the Siberian shelves. POC export fluxes increased during ice melt in 2007, leading to a ∼2‐fold increase in annual POC export relative to 2005–2006 over the continental slope of the Laptev Sea. These results suggest that the continuous decrease of sea ice extent could sustain increased POC export in the northern Laptev Sea and adjacent seas, potentially altering marine ecosystem structure in the Siberian Arctic.


Sociodemographic and reproductive health data were gathered on approximately 200 acceptors in each of three programs offering the Ovulation Method of Natural Family Planning. The programs were located in Bangladesh, Kenya, and Korea. In addition, a one year follow-up was attempted to assess continuation and efficacy. Descriptive data show a variety of religious, educational, income, family, and family planning backgrounds among acceptors. Life table analyses of reported unplanned pregnancy nccnrrence among spacers and limiters combined was 15% at 12 months in Bangladesh, 11% in Kenya and 13% in Korea. The pregnancy rate at 12 months for all pregnancies, planned and unplanned, was 27.0, 26.0, and 23.7, respectively. In Bangladesh 37 of the 48 unplanned pregnancies were user-related as were all of the 14 unplanned pregnancies in Kenya and 17 of the 20 in Korea. Method failure was the reported canse of pregnancy in only 2 of the 83 unplanned pregnancies. A major aspect of this study was the assessment of higher risk population subgroups; increasing age, education, previous pill use and previous family planning are significantly associated with fewer unplanned pregnancies while religion, attendance as a couple, family planning intention, size and sonrce of referral do not have a demonstrated impact on pregnancy occurrence. The time of entry into the data set in relation to time of initial NFP acceptance may be an important variable in assessing OM effectiveness.


Abstract With the recent introduction of recreational marijuana retail stores throughout the United States and other jurisdictions, research is warranted on whether responsible sales practices are implemented. We assessed store practices/policies in the first two US states to legalize recreational marijuana, Colorado and Washington. We surveyed a random sample of store managers (25 per state) and observed store practices in the largest city in each state (22 in Denver; 24 in Seattle). We analyzed many practices/policies with a focus on underage access (<age 21) to marijuana. Most stores in both states reported that a manager is present at all times and that employee marijuana use on premises is prohibited. All Colorado stores reported they always check age identification compared to 60% in Washington (p < 0.01). All Denver stores we observed checked age identification compared to 83% in Seattle (p < 0.01). All stores in both cities sold a variety of products including candy, concentrates, and vaping devices. We conclude that stores in both states had fairly strict underage access practices but Colorado stores were somewhat stricter. Many products available are likely to be attractive to underage youth such as candy and vaping devices. Our results can help guide jurisdictions in adopting responsible marijuana retail policies/practices.


The ability to predict future outcomes conditioned on observed video frames is crucial for intelligent decision-making in autonomous systems. Recently, deep recurrent architectures have been applied to the task of video prediction. However, this often results in blurry predictions and requires tedious training on large datasets. Here, we explore a different approach by (1) using frequency-domain approaches for video prediction and (2) explicitly inferring object-motion relationships in the observed scene. The resulting predictions are consistent with the observed dynamics in a scene and do not suffer from blur.


The depreciation of currency in Malaysia becomes a serious issue in economic condition. As a researcher I have made research about currency in Malaysia with the US Dollar day by day. The currency depreciation becomes an anxiety among people lately because it will affect their spending for daily life. Today (13 November 2016) the exchange rate is RM4.3742 to 1 USD and this is the lowest amount within 17 years since Asian crisis. The depreciation of currency also created a bad financial condition in economic scenario. The opinion of each analyst is different about this issue. Some of analyst considered that the currency depreciation due to the falling of global oil prices and some others considered because the currency in China depreciated. This is because the stock market of China is now experiencing the worst decline since 20 years ago. At this year since June, shares of China declined sharply to 30%. This fall is big enough for a second largest economic power in the world. It directly affects the value of the ringgit as Malaysia have very close economic ties with China. Malaysia-China trade relations between both countries already existed for 40 years and would have adverse effects in the Chinese economy and will affect the value of the Malaysian ringgit as well. Due this problem, the people also should take other alternatives to get over this issue in order to manage their financial as well. In order to get over this issue, the government should play the important roles to unsure that the currency in Malaysia will be back as normal. So, the purpose of this research is to examine what are actually the determinants that influencing the currency in Malaysia.


Norwegian waters have been a main arena for development of subsea pipeline technology over the last 25 year. The gas transportation systems from Norway to continental Europe comprise the largest and longest sub sea pipelines in the world. Codes traditionally require a pipeline to be designed with a uniform design pressure between stations with overpressure protection capabilities. However, the downstream part of a very long gas transmission pipeline may, after commissioning, rarely, if ever, see pressures near the pressure at the upstream end. There is, therefore, a potential for cost reduction and capacity improvement if two, or several, sections of different design pressure could be used without having to implement sub sea pressure regulation and overpressure protection facilities at the point of transition between the different sections of design pressure. In determining the lower design pressure the shutdown of the pipeline outlet facilities, at any point in time allowing for a practicable, achievable delay for closure of the upstream inlet valve has to be taken into account. The settle out pressure in a "normal" shut-in situation shall then not exceed the lower design pressure. In addition, deep water pipelines are often designed to withstand buckling due to bending and external pressure during installation, and may therefore locally tolerate a much higher internal pressure than the pipeline was designed for. Transmission pipelines crossing deepwater areas may therefore be designed for two or more operating pressures along the pipeline, thereby optimizing the cost. Even more important, for already existing pipelines, the capacity may be significantly increased by utilizing the upstream heavy wall sections. The operating pressure range for a long offshore gas transmission pipeline is very wide compared to an onshore line, typically between an upstream pressure of 150–250 bar, and a downstream pressure of 60 to 80 bar over a distance of several hundred kilometers. It may take hours to notice the closure of a downstream valve on the upstream pressure. Unless the pipeline is extensively packed, it is obvious that the pressure drop along the pipeline may be taken into account by allowing a lower design pressure for downstream part than for the upstream part. Thereby, the investment cost can be reduced. This paper describes the principles of designing a pipeline system divided into sections of different design pressures from a hydraulic point of view. The basis is the offshore standard for designing submarine pipeline systems, DNV OS-F101. The focusing will be on improvements in transportation efficiency, cost reductions and operational issues.Copyright © 2004 by ASME


Moral foundations theory (MFT), while inspiring much empirical work, has been the target of both methodological and theoretical criticism. One important criticism of MFT is that, in its attempt to explain variability in political ideology, it only repackages the core motives (resistance to change and opposition to equality) and does not actually provide additional explanatory potential. Indeed, some previous studies show that moral foundations do not explain variability in ideology beyond other relevant variables, and that the relation between moral foundations and political orientation is mediated by other ideological variables. In the present research, we examined whether moral foundations can explain variability beyond the core motives in samples from Turkey and the United States. Contrary to some previous findings, we found that moral foundations explain unique variance in general, social, and economic conservatism. These findings suggest that the moral foundations proposed by MFT cannot be reduced to other variables that have been used in the literature to measure ideological proclivities.


The proposed Abstract The proposed 15m NNTT offers a gain in collecting area over a 4m telescope of 14 and a gain in speed of up to 200. In this paper the types of problem where the gain in limiting flux is inversely proportional to area (D -problems) and those in which the gain goes only as the diameter (D-problems) are identified. The performance of the NNTT is compared to a 4m telescope and to the Space Telescope in three configurations. The NNTT is shown to have a small advantage over the Space Telescope for spectroscopy of point sources even at low resolutions. For work on sources of diameter one arcsecond or greater the gains are * a factor of 15. Even for the direct imaging of point sources the NNTT is only a little slower than the Space Telescope when there is no confusion. Three areas of astronomical investigation, studies of star formation, the Galactic halo and high redshift galaxies, are used to illustrate the impact a 15m telescope would make scientifically. These astronomical problems make substantial demands on the telescope performance and instrumentation. If these can be met the NNTT will lead to considerable advancement in the understanding of current problems and, given the order of magnitude improvement in infrared performance and spectroscopic capability, is likely to lead to the discovery of new phenomena.


Protein phosphatase 2A (PP2A) is a major cellular serine/threonine protein phosphatase, present in the cell in a variety of heterotrimeric forms that differ in their associated regulatory B-subunit. Cloning of the mammalian B′ subunit has allowed the identification of a highly homologous Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene, RTS1. Disruption of the gene results in a temperature-sensitive growth defect that can be suppressed by expression of rabbit B′α or B′γ isoforms. The B′α subunit is much more effective in restoring normal growth at 37 °C than B′γ. Immunoprecipitated Rts1p was found associated with type 2A-specific protein phosphatase activity that is sensitive to 2 nM okadaic acid, but not to 100 nM phosphatase inhibitor-2, and to be phosphorylated in vivo. However, overexpression of RTS1 was unable to suppress the cold sensitivity, defective cytokinesis, and abnormal cell morphology resulting from defects in the CDC55 gene, which encodes the yeast homolog of a different B subunit of another form of 2A phosphatase, PP2A1. These results indicate that Rts1p is a yeast homolog of the mammalian B′ subunit and that the various regulatory B-subunits of PP2A are not functionally redundant but direct the enzyme to distinct cellular functions.


Purpose of review Pancoast tumors, also known as superior sulcus tumors, to this day remain a complex and challenging condition. This review will explore the evolution of the treatment of these tumors over the better part of a century. It will illustrate how with a multidisciplinary approach and the use of trimodality therapy this entity has evolved from a universally fatal disease to one that is treatable with outcomes similar to those of other stage-matched nonsmall cell lung cancers. Recent findings The Southwest Oncology Group 9416 Intergroup 0160 trial reported in 2007 By Rusch et al. culminated years of research showing that trimodality therapy with chemotherapy, radiation and surgery provided optimal outcomes. Since that time, there have been studies corroborating these outcomes and utilization of novel surgical approaches including Video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery; however, no change in survival has been reported. Summary The treatment of tumors of the superior sulcus has evolved over the years, so that outcomes approach those of other stage-matched nonsmall cell carcinomas. In the future, new approaches, perhaps the detailed genetic analysis of tumors and guided treatments, will have a positive impact on nonsmall cell carcinomas. The tumors of the superior sulcus will hopefully follow suit in their improved outcomes.


Calibrating a L\'evy process usually requires characterizing its jump distribution. Traditionally this problem can be solved with nonparametric estimation using the empirical characteristic functions (ECF), assuming certain regularity, and results to date are mostly in 1D. For multivariate L\'evy processes and less smooth L\'evy densities, the problem becomes challenging as ECFs decay slowly and have large uncertainty because of limited observations. We solve this problem by approximating the L\'evy density with a parametrized functional form; the characteristic function is then estimated using numerical integration. In our benchmarks, we used deep neural networks and found that they are robust and can capture sharp transitions in the L\'evy density. They perform favorably compared to piecewise linear functions and radial basis functions. The methods and techniques developed here apply to many other problems that involve nonparametric estimation of functions embedded in a system model.


Background: Oral and pharyngeal cancers are emerging and troublesome diseases worldwide. Although poor oral hygiene behaviors and parameters affecting oral health have been considered as potential risk factors of oral and pharyngeal cancers including smoking and alcohol consumption for decades, study results have been inconsistent. Longitudinal studies regarding the association between poor oral hygiene behaviors and parameters of oral health and the occurrence of oral and pharyngeal cancers have been lacking. We aimed to investigate this relationship in a nationwide general population-based cohort.Methods: We included data on demographics, past history, and laboratory findings for 150,774 subjects without teeth lost from the Korean National Health Insurance System-Health Screening Cohort. The presence of periodontal disease and parameters of oral health, including frequency of tooth brushings, dental visits for any reason, professional teeth scaling, and number of teeth lost, were investigated. Oral and pharyngeal cancers were defined by the International Statistical Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, codes of C00-C14.Results: During a median 11.1 years of follow-up, 1,155 (0.77%) oral and pharyngeal cancers occurred. Based on multivariable analysis, after adjusting for demographics, alcohol consumption, smoking status, regular exercise, body mass index, systolic blood pressure, blood and urinary laboratory findings, and parameters of oral health including frequent tooth brushing (three or more times per day) were related to a lower risk of oral and pharyngeal cancers (hazard ratio [HR]: 0.78, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.66–0.93, p=0.005). An increased number of teeth lost (≥15) was positively associated with occurrence of oral and pharyngeal cancers (HR: 1.71, 95% CI: 1.26–2.31, p=0.001 in model 1; HR: 1.68, 95% CI: 1.24–2.28, p<0.001 in model 2; HR: 1.66, 95% CI: 1.22–2.25, p=0.001 in model 3; p-value for trend test for HR <0.001).Conclusions: The occurrence of oral and pharyngeal cancers decreased with more frequent tooth brushing (three or more times per day) and increased with the number of teeth lost. With regards to the prevention of oral and pharyngeal cancers, improving oral hygiene may have a significant contribution.


ABSTRACT Impacts of cattle production vary among different production systems, but data on their distribution is scarce for most world regions. In this work, we combine datasets on cattle vaccination locations and land cover in a regression framework to define and map major cattle production systems in the Argentinean Dry Chaco. We also explore how cattle occurrence relates to spatial determinants. Results indicate that the region harbors about 5.5 million heads. Cattle density was mainly described by the share of pasture (69.9%), cropland (28.1%) and aridity (23.8%). We identified 12-major cattle production systems: six cow-calf, three whole-cycle, and three fattening systems. Of these, four systems had high woodland cover (>85%). Data generated is available in a website. Understanding the distribution of cattle production systems is important to assess the environmental impacts of beef production at broad scales. Integrating vaccination data with land-cover information provides a promising avenue to identify livestock systems.


In a recent work Nathan and Reddy (2011a) have proposed a Multi-view Black-box (MVBB) framework for development of sustainable development indicators (SDIs) for an urban setup. The framework is flexible to be applied to any domain or sector of urban system. In this paper the proposed MVBB framework is applied for transportation sector of Mumbai city. The paper begins with a discussion on transportation sector and its unsustainability links and trends. It outlines the concept of sustainable transportation system and reviews some of the prominent sustainable transportation indicator initiatives. In order to formalize sustainable development indicators (SDIs) for transportation sector, the study collates the indicators from literature, placed them in Mumbai's context and classified them into the three dimensions of urban sustainability-economic efficiency, social wellbeing and ecological acceptability.


Using the data of the 2002-2003insee decennial health survey, this article aims to analyse the links between nationality, migration and health status in France. The findings show health inequalities related to immigration in favor of the native population living in France. Those inequalities are the result of a selection effect at migration counterbalanced by a deleterious impact of migration, partly due to the poor socioeconomic conditions of migrants in France. We also observe a long term effect of the economic and sanitary characteristics of country of birth that contributes to explain the heterogeneity of health status among immigrants.
 Classification JEL: I12, J15


The mapping of geographical variation in disease occurrence plays an important role in assessing environmental justice (i.e. the equitable sharing of adverse effects of pollution across socio-demographic subpopulations). Bayes and empirical Bayes methods can be used to obtain stable small-area estimates while retaining geographic and demographic resolution. In this study, we focus on modelling spatial patterns of disease rates, incorporating demographic variables of interest such as gender and race. We employ a Bayesian hierarchical modelling approach, which uses a Markov chain Monte Carlo computational method to obtain the joint posterior distribution of the model parameters. We use this approach to construct smoothed maps of lung cancer mortality in Ohio counties in 1988. Our approach also facilitates a cross-validatory comparison between the normal and Poisson likelihoods often fit uncritically to data of this type. Finally, we uncover evidence of changing spatial structure in the rates over the 21-year period 1968-1988, suggesting a spatio-temporal hierarchical model as a new possibility.


This study examines the relative performance of small‐ versus medium‐sized service firms with respect to innovation orientations and their effect on business performance. We examine the effect of innovation on business performance between the two groups of firms, exploring differences in innovation orientation on performance between the groups of small‐ and medium‐sized firms. We also examine differences within each group, exploring the extent to which innovation focus differs within each group. The empirical data were drawn from 180 managers in Australian service small and medium enterprises. The findings suggest that while there is no difference between small‐ and medium‐sized firms with respect to their innovation orientations, significant differences exist between the firm's size with respect to the effect of innovation orientations on business performance. Specifically, exploitation innovation has a stronger effect on business performance among small firms compared with medium‐sized firms, and exploration innovation shows a stronger effect on business performance among medium‐sized firms compared with small firms. Overall, the findings show important relative differences between innovation orientations and business performance across different sized firms.


Mixtures of probabilistic principal component analysis (MPPCA) is a well-known mixture model extension of principal component analysis (PCA). Similar to PCA, MPPCA assumes the data samples in each mixture contain homoscedastic noise. However, datasets with heterogeneous noise across samples are becoming increasingly common, as larger datasets are generated by collecting samples from several sources with varying noise profiles. The performance of MPPCA is suboptimal for data with heteroscedastic noise across samples. This paper proposes a heteroscedastic mixtures of probabilistic PCA technique (HeMPPCAT) that uses a gen-eralized expectation-maximization (GEM) algorithm to jointly estimate the unknown underlying factors, means, and noise variances under a heteroscedastic noise setting. Simulation results illustrate the improved factor estimates and clustering accuracies of HeMPPCAT compared to MPPCA.


The effects of acid proteases on degradation of serum amyloid A protein (SAA) were investigated in vitro. Human recombinant SAA1 (rSAA1), when incubated with human spleen extracts at pH 3.2, was degraded in the amino‐terminal portion of the molecule. This reaction was inhibited by an acid protease inhibitor, pepstatin. The degraded SAA molecules lacking nine or more amino‐terminal residues, when exposed to in vitro fibril‐forming conditions, failed to form Congo red positive precipitates and did not show amyloid fibril‐like structure by electron microscopy. This suggests that the amino‐terminal portion of SAA is essential for fibril formation. Cathepsin D, one of the lysosomal enzymes, also initiated degradation of rSAAl at the amino‐terminus. Cathepsin D immunoreactivity was detected in marginal areas of amyloid deposits in spleens from patients with reactive amyloidosis. These findings suggest that cathepsin D or similar acid proteases may be involved in SAA catabolism and may protect against amyloid formation.


There is an ongoing process of increasing urbanization of the world population with socio-spatial polarization in large cities. Such population density increases the competition for urban land, arousing crescent ground rent generation from the central areas, where there is greater availability of urban infrastructure. The outcome of this process has been an extensive growth of these cities, generating costs for the low-income population, forced to take longer trips to get to work centers. It is also represents a cost increment for public administration, responsible for the expansion of urban infrastructure networks. One among the various instruments to face these costs is the urban real estate taxation, which can also fulfill an extra fiscal function, when used to regulate land use.
In this article, we aim to analyze urban policy in Brazil regarding the use of the property taxation instrument, arguing its effectiveness in controlling land use. This was an important innovation introduced by the 1988 Federal Constitution and it is associated with private property defense as long as it fulfills its social function. Under these conditions, the main tax levied on real estate assets in Brazil, the Urban Building and Land Tax (IPTU), would be used as an urban policy instrument by foreseeing the possibility of using different rates according to the land's condition (built or not), its destination (residential or commercial), and also predicting progressive rates for properties that do not comply with the social function. Our study takes as reference municipalities with population over 200,000 inhabitants.


"The Scissors of Meter "concerns itself with the ways we read poetry. In it, Donald Wesling elaborates his influential theory of grammetrics, which argues that syntax and meter, like a pair of scissors, work together to separate lines of poetry into distinct units of meaning.The first part of the book provides a critique of modern theories of meter and poetic form, which the author believes are limited by errors of logical typing, false analogy with other languages or other arts like music, and ethical assumptions, as well as an inability to be interpretive.Subsequent chapters present the theory of grammetrics and demonstrate its usefulness by applying it to fourteen diverse poems. Wesling demonstrates that the reintroduction of metrics into the humanities allows for grammetrical readings of a variety of poetic styles, such as traditional verse, free verse, and prose poems, from diverse historical eras.""The Scissors of Meter" is a seminal study that deserves the close attention of all concerned with poetry. It has all the merits of an outstanding contribution to knowledge: precision, intelligence, confidence, humility, and grace." --Richard D. Cureton, University of Michigan"Donald Wesling's concept of grammetrics is a valuable and sensible concept that should be permanently added to literary studies." --T. V. F. Brogan, Indiana University, Donald Wesling is Professor of English, University of California, San Diego.


OBJECTIVE
To describe the cytologic findings of medulloblastomas on intraoperative crush preparation smears and compare them with the findings of other central nervous system tumors.

STUDY DESIGN
The intraoperative crush preparation smears of 19 cases of medulloblastoma were studied (6 undifferentiated type and 13 well-differentiated type). The findings were compared with those of a control group consisting of 31 astrocytomas, 22 ependymomas, 18 oligodendrogliomas, 27 meningiomas, 17 schwannomas, 17 pituitary adenomas, 3 lymphomas, 5 hemangioblastomas, 5 chordomas and 11 metastatic tumors.

RESULTS
Medulloblastomas revealed clusters and isolated small, round malignant cells with hyperchromatic nuclei and indistinct cytoplasm. Typical Homer-Wright rosettes were seen in the well-differentiated type, but they were poorly formed in the undifferentiated type. Tumor cannibalism, target inclusions, cytoplasmic vacuoles and prominent multiple nucleoli were noticed frequently in the undifferentiated type. The control group (metastatic tumors and high grade astrocytomas) rarely showed tumor cannibalism or multiple nucleoli.

CONCLUSION
Smears of the undifferentiated type of medulloblastomas frequently revealed tumor cannibalism, cytoplasmic vacuoles, target inclusions and prominent multiple nucleoli. These findings have been rarely reported. The prognosis of the undifferentiated type of medulloblastoma was poor.


1. Introduction 2. Wittgenstein's pre-Tractatus manuscripts: a new appraisal 3. Why does Wittgenstein say that ethics and aesthetics are one and the same? 4. Kierkegaard and the Tractatus 5. What is Frege's 'concept horse problem'? 6. Tractatus 5.4611: 'Signs for logical operations are punctuation marks' 7. Logical segmentation and generality in Wittgenstein's Tractatus 8. Does the Tractatus contain a private language argument? 9. Logic and solipsism 10. Was the author of the Tractatus a transcendental idealist? 11. Idealism in Wittgenstein: a further reply to Moore Index


Barn owls can localize a sound source using either the map of auditory space contained in the optic tectum or the auditory forebrain. The auditory thalamus, nucleus ovoidalis (N.Ov), is situated between these two auditory areas, and its inactivation precludes the use of the auditory forebrain for sound localization. We examined the sources of inputs to the N.Ov as well as their patterns of termination within the nucleus. We also examined the response of single neurons within the N.Ov to tonal stimuli and sound localization cues. Afferents to the N.Ov originated with a diffuse population of neurons located bilaterally within the lateral shell, core, and medial shell subdivisions of the central nucleus of the inferior colliculus. Additional afferent input originated from the ipsilateral ventral nucleus of the lateral lemniscus. No afferent input was provided to the N.Ov from the external nucleus of the inferior colliculus or the optic tectum. The N.Ov was tonotopically organized with high frequencies represented dorsally and low frequencies ventrally. Although neurons in the N.Ov responded to localization cues, there was no apparent topographic mapping of these cues within the nucleus, in contrast to the tectal pathway. However, nearly all possible types of binaural response to sound localization cues were represented. These findings suggest that in the thalamo-telencephalic auditory pathway, sound localization is subserved by a nontopographic representation of auditory space.


The characteristics of period-one oscillations in semiconductor lasers subject to optical injection are experimentally and theoretically investigated. Attention is mainly paid to the relative dependence of the frequency and the magnitude between the principal oscillation and the first sideband in period-one oscillations as a function of the detuning frequency and the injection strength of the injection signal. The frequency separation between the two signals is found to decrease as the injection strength and the detuning frequency reduce. The magnitude of the principal oscillation decreases with the decreasing injection strength and the increasing detuning frequency, while that of the first sideband grows at the same time. At some operating conditions, the magnitude of the first sideband dominates that of the original principal oscillation, resulting in a frequency shift of the principal oscillation from the injection frequency to the first sideband. Similar studies are also done for the stable injection locking to explore the transition of the frequency and the magnitude characteristics across the Hopf bifurcation line. The effects of different bias current levels of the injected laser on the frequency and the magnitude characteristics of period-one oscillations are also investigated.


The microstructure of partially reversed lath martensite in 13%Cr–6%Ni steel was examined by electron backscatter diffraction, and the crystallographic character of the reversed austenite is discussed in relation to the mechanism of 'austenite memory'. Most of the reversed austenite grains had the same orientation as the original austenite matrix before martensitic transformation. However, some austenite grains had a different orientation in a twin relationship to the other major austenite grains, although all the reversed austenite grains retained a Kurdjumov–Sachs relationship to the martensite matrix. On the basis of the crystallographic relationships among the habit plane, the close packed direction of austenite and the martensite lath boundary, we suggest that the austenite variants are theoretically limited to two kinds within one packet and five kinds within one original austenite grain. In addition, we found that internal stress introduced by martensitic transformation plays an important role in determining the austenite variant: internal stress operates so that reversed austenite selects the same variant as that present in the original austenite matrix before martensitic transformation. This phenomenon is understood as the austenite memory.


Abstract The management of rectal cancer is complex and continually evolving. With advancements in technology and the use of multidisciplinary teams to guide the treatment decision making, staging, oncologic, and functional outcomes are improving, and the management is moving toward personalized treatment strategies to optimize each individual patient's outcomes. Key in this evolution is imaging. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has emerged as the dominant method of pelvic imaging in rectal cancer, and use of MRI for staging is best practice in multiple international guidelines. MRI allows a noninvasive assessment of the tumor site, relationship to surrounding structures, and provides highly accurate rectal cancer staging, which is necessary for determining the appropriate treatment strategy. However, the applications of MRI extend far beyond pretreatment staging. MRI can be used to predict outcomes in locally advanced rectal cancer and guide the surgical or nonsurgical plan, serving as a predictive and prognostic biomarker. With continued MRI hardware improvement and new sequence development, MRI may offer new perspectives in the assessment of treatment response and new innovations that could provide better insight into the staging, restaging, and outcomes with rectal cancer.


In the current research, silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) were mixed with a polymer blend to enhance their optical and electrical properties and antibacterial efficiency. A novel approach via introducing AgNPs into the polymer blend could improve the physical and antibacterial characteristics of the nanocomposites (NCs). In the loading process, two different amounts of AgNPs were respectively encapsulated with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), polyacrylamide (PAAm) and polyethylene oxide (PEO) polymeric blend via casting method. The prepared films were characterized by X-ray, optical microscope (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Fourier transformation infrared (FTIR) and UV/Visible. The OM and SEM images showed that the AgNPs were well diffused inside the polymer blend with some weak aggregations. The optical properties were enhanced after doping. The NCs films absorbed UV-ray at (λ=220 nm). The indirect energy gap decreased after loading from 3.80 to 3.10 eV but the direct energy gap decreased from 4.25 to 3.75 eV. The AC electrical properties were studied in the frequency range between 100 Hz to 5 MHz. The dielectric constant and loss of NC films were decreased with the increase of AgNPs, while the electrical conductivity increased. The inhibition zone diameters of Escherichia coli bacteria increased with the increasing of AgNPs contents.


Reviewing the product is an important step for ecommerce platforms. Getting reviews from customers and analysis of reviews consumes many resources. As the number of reviews received day by day is increasing very rapidly, reviews should be classified as fake review and Genuine reviews. The total accumulation of reviews and analysis is different from natural language processing problem. Spammers are hired for biased reviewing of products. In this paper we put a novel comparison between purchase list and reviews. We have applied a method for finding duplicate reviews; measure the total numbers of reviews and their mismatch in counts, at the end count dispersion for every product and classification of reviews. We applied data science approach for classification and visualization to get fake reviews. We label the reviews either positive or negative based on comparison between them. A data science approach is applied because for a well-known product the reviews can goes up to many thousands.


As a special category of multiple holes, periodic holes are of particular interest since they often exist in porous media. To address periodic holes, one usually needs to impose periodic boundary conditions on the edge of corresponding representative unit cell (RUC). Despite this, complex variable methods are still applicable in the mechanical analysis of periodic holes. And to authors' knowledge, no effective procedure (based on complex variable methods or other analytic methods) so far has been established in the literature to solve the problem of periodic non-circular holes especially for imperfect boundary conditions on the edge of the holes. In our work, a complex variable-based scheme is presented to calculate the anti-plane shear properties of a porous structure containing periodic holes under uniform (anti-plane shear) loadings. Our scheme is featured by practically arbitrary shapes of the holes and the surface effects (resulting from surface elasticity) incorporated on each hole's boundary. Numerical examples are given to verify the feasibility of our scheme and to study the influence of the hole shape and surface effects on the stress concentration around the holes and the effective (longitudinal) shear moduli of the structure. It is shown that the stress concentration around periodic holes can be treated approximately as that around a single hole (for the same hole size and surface shear modulus) when the hole volume fraction is less than 7%. It is also found that for (reasonably) given surface shear modulus, hole volume fraction and hole size, the structure containing periodic circular holes can achieve larger effective shear moduli but lower sensitivity of effective shear moduli to the surface effects as compared with those containing periodic regular polygonal holes.


It is well known that microcirculation alters with age. These alterations can be evaluated by monitoring microvascular blood flow. Laser speckle contrast imaging (LSCI) is a recent optical imaging modality to monitor microvascular blood flow. From LSCI, the average velocity of microvascular moving scatterers (mainly red blood cells from the microcirculation) can be evaluated when assumptions on the scatterers velocity distribution are made. The objective of this study is twofold: 1) Process experimental LSCI data to compare velocity of red blood cells from the microcirculation when a Lorentzian profile and when a Gaussian profile are assumed. The experimental images that are processed have been recorded in healthy subjects, at rest, during a vascular occlusion and post-occlusive reactive hyperaemia, in two populations: young and aged subjects. 2) Analyze if alterations of microcirculation with age can be evaluated by processing LSCI data. Moreover, the presence of static scatterers (like skin) is taken into account in our work. Our results show that red blood cells velocity values determined when a Lorentzian velocity profile is assumed are lower than the ones determined when a Gaussian velocity profile is assumed, both for the young and the aged subjects. This is true with or without the presence of static scatterers. Furthermore, at rest, during biological zero, and post-occlusive reactive hyperaemia, the velocity of the moving scatterers increases with age. It also increases when the part of static scatterers increases. LSCI is therefore a new imaging modality that can be used to assess alterations of microvascular blood flow with age.


Over the past several decades, the development of engineered small particles as targeted and drug delivery systems (TDDS) has received great attention thanks to the possibility to overcome the limitations of classical cancer chemotherapy, including targeting incapability, nonspecific action and, consequently, systemic toxicity. Thus, this research aims at using a novel design of Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) p(NIPAM)-based microgels to specifically target cancer cells and avoid the healthy ones, which is expected to decrease or eliminate the side effects of chemotherapeutic drugs. Smart NIPAM-based microgels were functionalized with acrylic acid and coupled to folic acid (FA), targeting the folate receptors overexpressed by cancer cells and to the chemotherapeutic drug doxorubicin (Dox). The successful conjugation of FA and Dox was demonstrated by dynamic light scattering (DLS), Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), UV-VIS analysis, and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). Furthermore, viability assay performed on cancer and healthy breast cells, suggested the microgels' biocompatibility and the cytotoxic effect of the conjugated drug. On the other hand, the specific tumor targeting of synthetized microgels was demonstrated by a co-cultured (healthy and cancer cells) assay monitored using confocal microscopy and flow cytometry. Results suggest successful targeting of cancer cells and drug release. These data support the use of pNIPAM-based microgels as good candidates as TDDS.


Self-regulated learning is the key for students to be masters of their own learning processes. These self-initiated processes enable these students to become controllers of their learning experiences. The objective of this research is to maximize the use of domain ontology to develop self-regulated learning skills. Also defines activities that support self-regulation from the Self-Regulated Learning (SRL) ontology, and make use of it during learning scenarios. The three-phase model of Zimmerman is used as a theoretical framework for organizing the elements in the SRL ontology. This ontology gives rise to the structured elements that form the taxonomy for the definition and development of SRL environments. The basic idea of this work is to exploit the domain ontology as a tool to develop SRL skills. Furthermore, the SRL ontology is used to identify SRL activities needed for the learner in his learning scenarios.


Theoretical research argues that convertible bonds mitigate the contracting costs of moral hazard, adverse selection, and financial distress. Using firm-specific and macroeconomic factors of the contracting costs, we examine the extent to which they impact the likelihood of issuance and the structure of convertible bonds. Our evidence indicates that moral hazard, adverse selection, and expected financial distress costs are all important determinants of the likelihood of issuing convertible bonds over straight bonds. We also analyze the structure of convertible bonds issued by studying whether these bonds are more debt-like or equity-like. The evidence indicates that moral hazard costs do not influence bond structure, while adverse selection costs are somewhat important in determining the structure. Expected financial distress costs have the strongest statistical and economic impact on convertible bond structure.


Many library customers' questions never reach designated service points such as circulation and reference desks. These questions may be addressed to personnel untrained in customer service such as student shelving staff in an academic library. This article presents data from a 2005 study investigating where and when shelvers received questions (and what types of questions they received) in Newman Library at Virginia Tech. Results showed that these students primarily received directional and item-location questions. Follow-up workshops helped shelvers improve their ability to accurately refer questions when needed, and to increase their accompaniment rate when answering customers' queries.


This study reports the synthesis of mixed oxides of Mo, and Ni nanostructures on γAlumina as support, by utilizing ammonium hepta molybdate(AHM), nickel nitrate, as precursors, and organic additives such as citric acid, ethylene diamine tetra acetic acid (EDTA), and urea were used as chelating agent and different pH, in order to investigate the effects of additive structure and pH variation on chemical and physical properties, morphology, size of nanocatalyst and interaction of active metals with support. Also, this study evaluated the activity of catalysts and compare with commercial catalyst. The metal oxide nanoparticles were prepared and impregnated using wetness impregnation method on γAlumina in-situ. The supported nanocatalyst was calcined to remove the volatile material and gases. The nanocatalyst prepared using organic additive,EDTA as surfactant showed enhanced catalytic activity for the oil residue hydrodesulphurization which contained 21000 ppm sulfur. The sulfur content of the feed was reduced to 3000 ppm at 380°C and LHSV 1.5h showing a good catalytic activity.


Angiodysplasia describes abnormal vascular malformations found in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract, especially in the cecum and right colon. These malformations are prone to bleed and may be responsible for painless hematochezia, melena and concomitant anemia. Diagnosis can be made by direct visualization during endoscopy or angiography. Treatment consists of endoscopic interventions, including embolization and coagulation, antifibrinolytic medications and surgery as a last resort.


Periodic arrays of micro‐ or nanopillars constitute solid‐state matrices with excellent properties for DNA size separation. Nanofabrication technologies offer many solutions to tailor the geometry of obstacle arrays, yet most studies have been conducted with cylinders arranged in hexagonal lattices. In this report, we investigate the dynamics of single DNA collision with elliptical nanoposts using hydrodynamic actuation. Our data show that the asymmetry of the obstacles has minor effect on unhooking dynamics, and thus confirm recent predictions obtained by Brownian dynamics simulations. In addition, we show that the disengagement dynamics are correctly predicted by models of electrophoresis, and propose that this consistency is associated to the confinement in slit‐like channels. We finally conclude that elliptical posts are expected to marginally improve the performances of separation devices.


This paper is not the first in addressing the relationship between international and EU law. In fact, and as also noted in the Introduction to this Special Issue, ever since Van Gend & Loos the 'autonomy' of the Union (by then the Community) proved to be a source of theoretical debates on the issue.1 Studies focused on the ways in which international law was received in the Union's legal order (often applying domestic constitutional analogies involving terms such as monism and dualism), or they addressed the hierarchical position of international law among other norms (often concluding that it was placed somewhere between primary and secondary law). In other words, most studies so far have focused on the effects of international law on and in the EU and the question to what extent the EU could be said to be bound by international norms.2


Abstract Atranorin (ATR), lichenized secondary metabolite and depside molecule with several biological potentials such as antimicrobial, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antinociceptive, wound healing and photoprotective activities. Cytotoxic reports of ATR are documented in several cancer cells and in vivo models but its molecular interaction studies are poorly understood. Therefore, in this present investigation, we have used the in silico studies with biological validation of the molecular targets for the anti-breast cancer mechanism of ATR. The molecular docking studies with the breast cancer oncoproteins such as Bcl-2, Bax, Akt, Bcl-w and Bcl-xL revealed the highest interaction was observed with the Akt followed by Bax, Bcl-xL and Bcl-2 & least with the Bcl-w proteins. The cytotoxicity studies showed ATR selectively inhibited MDA MB-231 and MCF-7 breast cancer cells in differential and dose-dependent manner with the IC50 concentration of 5.36 ± 0.85 μM and 7.55 ± 1.2 μM respectively. Further mechanistic investigations revealed that ATR significantly inhibited ROS production and significantly down-regulated the anti apoptotic Akt than Bcl-2, Bcl-xL and Bcl-w proteins with a significant increase in the Bax level and caspases-3 activity in the breast cancer cells when comparison with Akt inhibitor, ipatasertib. In vitro biological activities well correlated with the molecular interaction data suggesting that atranorin had higher interaction with Akt than Bax and Bcl-2 but weak interaction with Bcl-w and Bcl-xL. In this present study, the first time we report the interactions of atranorin with molecular targets for anti-breast cancer potential. Hence, ATR represents the nature-inspired molecule for pharmacophore moiety for design in targeted therapy. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma


Archaeological investigations at a mortuary cave in southern Belize recovered a bowl containing five cacao (chocolate) seeds dating to the fourth or fifth century AD. The context of both the burial and the cacao informs our understanding of the role of chocolate as a ritual substance in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. Most archaeologists think of cacao as having an economic function as a form of currency or as a prepared beverage whose use was restricted to elites. However, a review of documentary sources at the time of Spanish contact as well as of ethnographic accounts indicates that cacao is an integral component in many rites of passage, including those associated with birth, social personhood, initiation, marriage, and death, as well as the initiation of shamans. As such it becomes an intimate ritual product implicated in areas of social identity and reproduction that transcend economic and political status. Its presence in a burial likely indicates that it was either an important possession of the deceased or intended to provide ritual sustenance during the passage into the afterworld.


Background: Remdesivir is a novel broad-spectrum antiviral therapeutic with activity against several viruses that cause emerging infectious diseases. The purpose of this study is to explore how commonly utilized antiretroviral therapy (tenofovir disoproxil fumarate /lamivudine [TDF/3TC] and atazanavir/ritonavir [ATV/r]) influence plasma and intracellular concentrations of remdesivir. Methods: This is an open label, randomized, fixed sequence single intravenous dosing study to assess pharmacokinetic interactions between remdesivir and TDF/3TC (Study A, Crossover design) or TDF/3TC plus ATV/r (Study B). Healthy volunteers satisfying study entry criteria will be enrolled in the study and randomized to either Study A; N=16 (Sequence 1 or Sequence 2) or Study B; N=8. Participants will receive standard adult doses of antiretroviral therapy for seven days and a single 200mg remdesivir infusion administered over 60 minutes. Pharmacokinetic blood sampling will be performed relative to start of remdesivir infusion; predose (before start of remdesivir infusion) and 30 minutes after start of remdesivir infusion. Additional blood samples will be taken at 2, 4, 6, 12 and 24 hours after end of remdesivir infusion. Discussion: This study will characterize the pharmacokinetics of remdesivir from a typical African population in whom clinical use is anticipated. Furthermore, this study will deliver pharmacokinetic datasets for remdesivir drug concentrations and demographic characteristics which could support pharmacometric approaches for simulation of remdesivir treatment regimens in patients concurrently using tenofovir/lamivudine and/or atazanavir/ritonavir. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov, ID:NCT04385719


The microtubes made through rolling-up of strain-engineered nanomembranes have received growing research attention after their first invention due to the technology's high flexibility, integrability, and versatility. These rolled-up microtubes have been used for a variety of device applications including sensors, batteries and transistors, among others. This paper reports the development of highly sensitive whispering-gallery mode (WGM) chemical sensors based on rolled-up microtube optical microcavities (RUM-OCs). For the first time, such microcavities were batch fabricated through rolling-up of plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD)-synthesized SiOx/SiNx bilayer nanomembranes, which have better optical properties than the conventional electron-beam-deposited SiO/SiO2 bilayers. Benefiting from the high refractive index (RI) of PECVD-deposited SiNx, our RUM-OC shows an enhanced quality factor of 880 that is much higher than that (50) of a SiO/SiO2 RUM-OC with the same dimensions. The developed RUM-OC is used for sensitive WGM solvent sensing, and demonstrate a limit of detection of 10−4 refractive index unit (RIU), which is 10 times lower than that (10−3 RIU) of a SiO/SiO2 RUM-OC.


Leiomyoma is a benign smooth muscle cell tumor commonly occurring in the uterine myometrium. Extra-uterine tumors are infrequent and those occurring in an intracranial location are extremely rare. We report a primary intracranial leiomyoma as an incidental autopsy finding in a 60-year-old woman, who died of acute myocardial infarction.


The objective was to select sorghum genotypes for silage production using its chemical characteristics. The experiment was carried out in the facilities of Embrapa Maize and Sorghum in Sete Lagoas, state of Minas Gerais, to evaluate the agronomic characteristics, and nutritional quality of silage of twelve sorghum genotypes. We used a randomized block design with three replications. In relation to the production of green matter, the genotypes SF15 Volumax and BR610 stood out (52.07; 48.00 and 41.87 ton ha-1). Regarding pH, genotypes 1015339, 1015347, 1016007, SF15, BRS655, Volumax and BR610 averaged 3.68. All genotypes were similar considering the nutritional value, ammonia nitrogen and water activity. The genotypes SF15, Volumax and BRS610 showed the highest productivity per area, representing the best options for silage production.


For the past 25 years, the AIDS pandemic has inflicted excruciating pain upon humanity, having ravaged the lives of millions of people around the world. Over the past few years, however, a quiet global revolution has enabled millions infected by HIV to live healthy lives through the free antiretroviral treatment program initiated by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. In "Access to Life", eight of the worlds leading photojournalists, all members of Magnum Photos, follow 30 individuals in nine countries before, and four months after, they began the antiretroviral treatment, documenting the transformative effect on their bodies, their lives, and the lives of their families. Here are the faces, voices, and stories representing millions of people who would otherwise be dead if not for access to free life-saving drugs. But there are also the stories of those individuals for whom treatment came too lateshowing how the fight to bring access to AIDS treatment is still a difficult one.


One of the major obstacles to prevent AKI-CKD transition is the lack of effective methods to follow and predict the ongoing kidney injury after an AKI episode. In the present study, we test the utility of urinary angiotensinogen (UAGT) for dynamically evaluating renal structural changes and predicting AKI-CKD progression by using both mild and severe bilateral renal ischemia/reperfusion injury mice. UAGT returns to pre-ischemic levels 14 days after mild AKI followed by kidney architecture restoration, whereas sustained increase in UAGT accompanies by ongoing renal fibrosis after severe AKI. UAGT at day 14-42 correlates with renal fibrosis 84 days after AKI. For predicting fibrosis at day 84, the area under receiver operating characteristics curve of UAGT at day 14 is 0.81. Persistent elevation in UAGT correlates with sustained activation of intrarenal renin-angiotensin system (RAS) during AKI-CKD transition. Abrogating RAS activation post AKI markedly reduced renal fibrosis, with early RAS intervention (from 14 days after IRI) more beneficial than late intervention (from 42 days after IRI) in alleviating fibrosis. Importantly, UAGT decreases after RAS intervention, and its level at day 14-28 correlates with the extent of renal fibrosis at day 42 post RAS blockade. A pilot study conducted in patients with acute tubular necrosis finds that compared with those recovered, patients with AKI-CKD progression exhibits elevated UAGT during the 3-month follow-up after biopsy. Our study suggests that UAGT enables the dynamical monitoring of renal structural recovery after an AKI episode and may serve as an early predictor for AKI-CKD progression and treatment response.


In human bladder cancer, overexpression of Caveolin-1 (Cav-1) and downregulation of Src expression and kinase activity correlate with aggressive behavior suggesting they may have causal and perhaps interactive roles in this process. Here we show that Cav-1 and Src are reciprocally expressed in the same tumors, suggesting they act on a similar pathway. RNAi mediated Cav-1 depletion or expression of constitutively active Src in invasive human urothelial cancer cells UMUC-3 and KU-7 resulted in loss of stress fibers and reduced capacity to migrate. Cav-1 depletion was associated with loss of pY14 Cav-1 while increased p190RhoGAP was seen with Src over-expression while both led to a significant reduction in RhoA and RhoC levels and activity. Conversely, expression of Cav-1 but not the non-phosphorylatable mutant of Cav-1 or suppression of Src using PP2 or Src RNAi in noninvasive human urothelial RT4 cancer cells, increased RhoA and RhoC GTP and cell migration. Use of ROCK inhibitor Y27632 in RT4 cells completely abolished enhanced migration induced by Cav-1 expression or that associated with Src inhibition. Furthermore, metastatic lung colonization of UMUC-3 cells expressing constitutively active Src or depleted of Cav-1 was significantly reduced while having marginal effect on subcutaneous tumor growth. Moreover, ROCK inhibitor prevented bladder cancer lung metastasis in vivo. Our findings indicate Src is metastasis suppressor protein in bladder cancer and describe a novel relationship between Cav-1 and Src in regulating RhoA and RhoC providing a unifying molecular mechanism for prior descriptive studies suggesting a role for these proteins in bladder cancer progression. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 5130.


Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications are increasingly utilized for modelling complex flow patterns in natural streams and rivers. Although CFD has been successfully implemented to model many complex flow situations in natural stream settings, adequately characterizing the effects of gravel and cobble beds on flow hydraulics in CFD is a difficult challenge due to the scale of roughness lengths and the inadequacy of traditional roughness representations to characterize flow profiles in situations with large roughness elements. An alternative method of representing gravel and cobble beds is presented. Appropriate drag forces associated with different grain sizes are computed and included in the momentum equations to account for the influence of a hydraulically rough bed. Comparisons with field measurements reveal reasonable agreement between measured and modelled profiles of spatially averaged velocity and turbulent kinetic energy, and model fidelity to the non‐logarithmic behaviour of the velocity profiles. The novel method of representing coarse beds expands the utility of CFD for investigating physical processes in natural channels with large bed roughness. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


The proliferation of Large Language Models (LLMs) has driven considerable interest in fine-tuning them with domain-specific data to create specialized language models. Nevertheless, such domain-specific fine-tuning data often contains sensitive personally identifiable information (PII). Direct fine-tuning LLMs on this data without privacy protection poses a risk of leakage. To address this challenge, we introduce Privacy Protection Language Models (PPLM), a novel paradigm for fine-tuning LLMs that effectively injects domain-specific knowledge while safeguarding data privacy. Our work offers a theoretical analysis for model design and delves into various techniques such as corpus curation, penalty-based unlikelihood in training loss, and instruction-based tuning, etc. Extensive experiments across diverse datasets and scenarios demonstrate the effectiveness of our approaches. In particular, instruction tuning with both positive and negative examples, stands out as a promising method, effectively protecting private data while enhancing the model's knowledge. Our work underscores the potential for Large Language Models as robust privacy protection learners.


Objective: To determine whether using a treatment strategy minimizing lymph node sampling and radiation therapy compromised outcome in patients with early endometrial carcinoma. Methods: One hundred three consecutive patients with International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics surgical stage I, II, or III endometrial carcinoma were treated with primary surgery followed by tailored adjuvant radiation therapy using a strategy designed to minimize lymph node sampling and whole pelvic radiation. Para-aortic lymph node dissection was performed only among patients with high-risk factors such as high-grade tumors, deep myometrial invasion, or stage II or III disease. Postoperative radiation therapy was tailored to the surgical and pathologic findings. Treatment with whole pelvic radiation was limited to patients with at least one of these high-risk factors. Results: Thirty-four patients underwent para-aortic node dissection. Thirty-six patients received no adjuvant radiation therapy; 19 received vaginal radiation and 47 received whole pelvic radiation. Ninety-three patients (90%) have had no tumor recurrence during a median follow-up period of 30 months (range 8-96). Analysis of the recurrence pattern indicates that more aggressive use of lymph node evaluation or radiation therapy would not have lowered the recurrence rate. All of the patients who had recurrence were identified as high-risk and received aggressive therapy. Furthermore, the pattern of recurrence suggests that many of these patients had occult distant disease at the outset of therapy. Conclusion: The data suggest that this selective approach does not compromise survival in patients with early-stage endometrial carcinoma. This management strategy has the advantage of confining the morbidity of lymph node dissection and radiation therapy to those patients at greatest risk for lymph node metastases and recurrence, respectively. Further improvements in survival await the development of effective systemic therapy.


Standard clinicopathological parameters (age, growth pattern, tumor size, margin status and grade) have been shown to have limited value in predicting recurrence in ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) patients. Early and accurate recurrence prediction would facilitate a more aggressive treatment policy for high-risk patients (mastectomy or adjuvant radiation therapy), and simultaneously reduce over-treatment of low-risk patients. Generative adversarial networks (GAN) are a class of DL models in which two adversarial neural networks, generator and discriminator, compete with each other to generate high quality images. In this work, we have developed a deep learning (DL) classification network that predicts breast cancer events (BCEs) in DCIS patients using hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) images. The DL classification model was trained on 67 patients using image patches from the actual DCIS cores and GAN generated image patches to predict breast cancer events (BCEs). The hold-out validation dataset (n= 66) had an AUC of 0.82. Bayesian analysis further confirmed the independence of the model from classical clinico-pathological parameters. DL models of H&E images may be used as a risk stratification strategy for DCIS patients to personalize therapy.


According to the National Family Health Survey conducted in India in 1992-93, there are approximately 60 million children under age 5 years old living in India in varying stages of malnutrition. The prevalence of malnutrition was 15.6% at age 6 months, rising to 63.4% at age 24 months. Child health and growth status are attributed to the failure of the mother to add, after age 6 months, enough supplementary food to breast milk to meet the infant's nutritional requirement. The residents of Punjab villages are either poor, largely illiterate, landless laborers without a milk-producing animal, or relatively wealthier, more literate owners of at least one milk-producing animal. The question therefore begs whether poor mothers fail to supplement their infants' diets or are unable to do so given the limits of their available resources. The problem must be addressed both locally and nationally. Those who are relatively poor must be taught to exclusively breast feed until the end of the sixth or even seventh month. The mother could then begin to supplement her breastmilk with small amounts of whatever is cooked in the household as often as she breast feeds. Community outreach could also be undertaken to spread the message.


Volcanic plumes produced by explosive eruptions represent a major threat in areas located near volcanoes. Physical models have been developed over the past forty years with an aim of better understanding these eruptions and assessing associated hazards. To test these models, we need robust and detailed field data from past and historical eruptions at active volcanoes. In this PhD work, we revisit the Plinian eruptive history of the Mount Pelee volcano in Martinique (Lesser Antilles) for the last 24,000 years. Our results combining new extensive field studies and carbon-dating measurements allow us to establish a new chronology of past eruptions, consistent with volcanic deposits identified in a deep-sea sediment core. We then reconstruct the dynamical evolution of the newly discovered eruptions of Bellefontaine (13,516 years cal BP), Balisier (14,072 cal BP), Carbet (18,711 cal BP) and Etoile (21,450 cal BP), whose great interest stems from their unusual southward dispersal axis encompassing areas that are considered to be safe in current hazard maps. The strong similarities observed between all documented Plinian eruptions of Mount Pelee volcano allow us to draw an accurate picture of the Plinian eruptive scenario most likely to occur in the future. This scenario may include a column collapse and the production of deadly pyroclastic density currents; we thus upgrade a 1D physical model of volcanic plume in order to improve its predictions. We first study the impact of the total grain-size distribution on the transition from a stable Plinian plume to a collapsing fountain. The effect of wind is then taken into account using laboratory experiments simulating turbulent jets rising in a windy environment. This new theoretical model, validated by laboratory experiments, is consistent with field data from several major historical Plinian eruptions. We then study the southward dispersal axis of the Bellefontaine and Balisier eruptions using a 2D physical model, in order to better understand this unusual dispersion towards Fort-de-France, capital of Martinique. Our results allow identifying peculiar atmospheric circulations associated to a modification of the subtropical jet-stream path, thus producing northerly winds over Martinique and spreading tephra towards the most populated areas of the island. This integrated approach, combining field studies, theoretical predictions and laboratory experiments, allows us to build a new volcanic hazard map for Martinique by taking into account for the first time the Plinian eruptions of the Mount Pelee volcano of the last 24,000 years, together with monthly variability of atmospheric winds.


Exposure to di-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) has been linked to male reproductive abnormalities. Here, we assessed transgenerational actions of DEHP on several behaviors and stress responses. We used 2 doses of DEHP (150- and 200-mg/kg body weight) and a treatment regimen previously shown to produce transgenerational effects on male reproduction. Mice, 3 generations removed from DEHP exposure (F3), were tested for social behavior and anxiety on the elevated plus maze. We collected blood and pituitaries from undisturbed and restrained mice. Body weights, anogenital distances, and reproductive organ weights were collected at killing. In social interaction tests juvenile males from the DEHP lineage (200 mg/kg) displayed more digging and less self-grooming than did controls. Interestingly, 150-mg/kg lineage males, killed in early puberty, had smaller seminal vesicle weights than their controls. However, the 200-mg/kg males (killed on average 10 d later) did not show this effect. Females from a DEHP lineage had lower corticosterone concentrations than controls after restraint stress. We also found sex- and DEHP-specific mRNA expression changes in the pituitary in 2 of the 6 stress-related genes we measured. In particular, Gnas mRNA was elevated by the combination of DEHP lineage and stress. Thus, transgenerational effects of DEHP are noted in male behavior, and in females, DEHP had transgenerational effects on levels of corticosterone. Both of these results may be related to transgenerational modifications in the expression of several pituitary hormones involved in the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis.


A system for robot vision is proposed that integrates a 3-D object recognition task and a 3-D object tracking task, enabling real-time 6-DOF localization of a known continuously moving object. A computational time-lag between the two tasks is absorbed by a large amount of frame memory. For 3-D sensing, calibrated trinocular stereo cameras are used to employ stereo-vision-based object recognition and tracking methods that allow objects of any shape to be dealt with and to provide robust performance in an environment with partial occlusions and cluttered backgrounds. The effectiveness of the system is demonstrated by experimental results.


Ectopic mineralization is a pathologic process resulting in inappropriate biomineralization of soft tissues such as the skin and blood vessels. It can be found in frequent western disorders such as chronic kidney disease and diabetes mellitus, though it is also part of a spectrum of primary genetic mineralization disorders such as pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE). These heritable disorders are associated with significant morbidity and mortality due to extensive ectopic mineralization in a variety of tissues. Early diagnosis and multidisciplinary treatment and follow-up in a reference center is of the uttermost importance in order to prevent severe or life-threatening complications. In this review, the clinical presentation, diagnosis and management of primary ectopic mineralization disorders is described.


ABSTRACT  In Italy, the term precarizzazione (precarious-ization) refers to the process of implementing neoliberal policies to transition toward a semipermanent and privatized labor regime but also to the normalization of psychic uncertainty and hypervigilance of worker-citizens. In this article, I examine "precarious workers" and a psychological harassment called "mobbing," specifically, and suggest that these practices of labor exclusion of a transitional work regime produce emergent subjectivities through an analytics of anticipation. I illustrate the social, political, and psychic effects of imagining neoliberalism, as Italians do in this context, not as complete but, rather, as a metadiscursive object of emotionally charged apprehension and anticipation.


Background: Several studies show a high prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in Asia. Data regarding the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in southeast Iran are inadequate. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in Zahedan, a sunny area in southeast Iran. Subjects and Methods: This population-based cross-sectional study was performed on 993 apparently healthy subjects. Serum levels of 25-hydroxy vitamin D (25-OH vit D), parathyroid hormone, calcium, phosphate, and alkaline phosphatase activity were measured. Results: Inadequate vitamin D status was diagnosed in 94.7% of the subjects (25-OH vit D <30 ng/ml). The frequencies of deficiency (<20 ng/ml), insufficiency (20–30 ng/ml), sufficiency (30–150 ng/ml), and toxicity (>150 ng/ml) were 85.2, 9.5, 5.3, and 0.0%, respectively. Conclusion: The results indicate that vitamin D deficiency is common in the population of Zahedan. Based on our results, fortification of milk and the use of supplements is suggested in this region.


Abstract : The National Capital Region (NCR) is plagued by the same critical infrastructure vulnerabilities, disrepair, and degradation as the rest of the United States. The ground transportation infrastructure, especially the bridges, in the NCR presents an interesting case study. There are over 230 bridges connecting the region with over 60 percent rated as functionally obsolete as of 2013. The NCR is complex in the amount of agencies and departments that play a part in its security and defense. Bridge ownership in the NCR is approximately 70 percent State, 26 percent local, and 4 percent under Federal control. This thesis studies the homeland security vulnerabilities of the bridges in the NCR. The NCR bridges enable vital commerce, public transportation, etc. Also discussed is the responsibility of upkeep and resourcing for the NCR bridges and the historical difficulties for repair or renovation. The purpose of this thesis is the increased awareness of the issue of NCR bridge vulnerabilities and analysis that can be applied to other regions of the nation.


In this paper, multistage auction-based intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) sensor coordination mechanisms are investigated in the context of dynamic and uncertain mission environments such as those faced by expeditionary strike groups. Each attribute of the mission task is modeled using a hidden Markov model (HMM) with controllable emission matrices, corresponding to each ISR asset package (subset of sensors). For each HMM-asset package pair, we evaluate a matrix of information gains (uncertainty reduction measures). The elements of this matrix depend on the asset coordination structure and the concomitant delays accrued. We consider three coordination structures (distributed ISR coordination, ISR officer serving as a coordinator, and ISR officer serving as a commander) here. We evaluate these structures on a hypothetical mission scenario that requires the monitoring of ISR activities in multiple geographic regions. The three structures are evaluated by comparing the task state estimation error cost, as well as travel, waiting, and assignment delays. The results of the analysis were used as a guide in the design of a mission scenario and asset composition for a team-in-the-loop experimentation. Our solution has the potential to be a mixed initiative decision support tool to an ISR coordinator/commander, where the human provides possible ISR asset package-task pairings and the tool evaluates the efficacy of the assignment in terms of task accuracy and delays. We also apply our approach to a hypothetical disaster management scenario involving chemical contamination and discuss the computational complexity of our approach.


The risk of alexithymia in individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) is about double compared with that observed in the general population. This finding indicates that alexithymia may be a relevant phenomenon in PD. However, several issues have to be clarified. The review here proposed outlines two main points. First, available data do not allow the clarification of whether alexithymia is independently associated with PD or if it is secondary to other mood and/or cognitive disorders. Second, it is not well understood how PD-related neurobiological changes may account for alexithymic expression. Our examination of extant literature also evidenced some potential limits of current tools and designs used that should carefully taken into account in further investigations of above issues.


Classification learning problem on hypergraph is an extension of multi-label classification problem on normal graph, which divides vertices on hypergraph into several classes. In this paper, we focus on the semi-supervised learning framework, and give theoretic analysis for spectral based hypergraph vertex classification semi-supervised learning algo- rithm. The generalization bound for such algorithm is determined by using the notations of zero-cut, non-zero-cut and pure component. Furthermore, we derive a generalization performance bound for near-zero-cut partition with optimal pa- rameter.


Physical inactivity significantly impacts personal health, reduces quality of life, and often leads to mobility disorders, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Monitoring daily life activities by means of wearable inertial sensors can provide valuable feedback necessary to improve the quality of daily life and prevent the development of mobility disorders caused by physical inactivity. In this study, a physical activity classification (PAC) algorithm was developed and tested using an inertial sensor-based dataset. The dataset was acquired from multiple inertial sensors, each mounted at a different body location, and consists of various Activities of Daily Living (ADL). Data from nineteen healthy young subjects were analyzed. Time- and frequency-domain features from raw 3D accelerometer and 3D gyroscope signals were computed by performing windowing of the time series data. The K-nearest neighbors (KNN) pattern recognition algorithm was used to classify thirteen different ADLs and was evaluated by a 10-fold cross-validation. The proposed PAC algorithm outperformed the existing algorithm validated using the same dataset, with an overall mean classification rate (sensitivity) of 97.38%. This paper discusses the limitations of this study and proposes ways to overcome said limitations in order to make the PAC algorithm more effective in real-life conditions.


A current update of our original 1980 publication entitled "Natural Transformations of Organismic Structures" is here presented, along with the original (1980) article. A unifying approach to the realization of Relational Biology models and Complex System Biology was reported in 1980 for the first time in terms of Natural Transformations between Functors of Organismic Supercategories and their generating categorical diagrams. The representation of organismal structures in terms of Organismic-Supercategories, Functors and their Natural Transformations was introduced for the investigation of developmental and evolutionary processes. Several applications of such natural transformations were presented in relation to embryogenesis and evolutionary processes involving natural selection and the emergence of 'optimally designed' organismal structures. Other molecular realizations in Relational Biology and the underlying Molecular Biology of organisms were also discussed. Current developments of this approach to Complex Systems Biology include: Fuzzy Relations in Biological Dynamics and Structural Biology, Categories of Lukasiewicz Logic Algebras as representations of Functional Genomics and Cell Interactomics, and Intuitionistic Logic Algebras in Topoi and Higher-Dimensional Algebras as possible models of the emergence of Human Consciousness through 'long-range' correlations and partially coherent, multi-level Neural Network processes.


In recent decades, the number of funds has increased which aim to explore market inefficiencies through arbitrage strategies, among which the long-short strategy stands out. A large part of the analyses used to obtain the pair tradings, however, does not consider the extreme deviations that exist in the interdependence process between the assets involved and the firms' operational quality indicators. The Extreme Value Theory and Fundamental Analysis were used in this study to model the series of the asset pair price indices obtained based on the accounting indicator structure proposed by Piotroski (2000). These approaches permitted considering companies with positive signs of profitability, an operational capital structure and efficiency, besides distributions that are capable of capturing the extreme co-movements associated with the selected pair tradings. Based on this model, a new quantitative approach was created for the long-short strategy, called the GEV Long-Short. The obtained results suggest that the best adjustment of the extreme quantiles through the extreme value distribution can provide more refined probabilistic support for the return to the average to justify the possibility of long-short arbitrage.


This study was carried out to determine the effects of hand and machine milking on milk performance in buffaloes. Twenty-four adult Anatolian water buffaloes (AWB), the age of about (5 and 6 years) old at stage 35 to 37 days of lactation were randomly divided into two similar groups, 12 AWB in each group. As a result of the investigation, it was determined that the machine milking group (2) significantly improved silage dry matter (DM), alfalfa DM and the total DM consumption of the buffalo compared to the handle milking group (1) (P<0.05), (P<0.05) and (P<0.01) While, a significant increase (P<0.01) was observed in the values of milk yield in the buffalo group (2) conducted machine milking compared to that Control group (1) (7.12 to 8.23 kg day-1). Another finding of the study was that the application of a pressure of 45 kPa increased the SCC compared to the handle milking group (1) (45.2-68.8x10 log mL-134.30%) (P<0.05). It was determined that regression equation between total DM and milk yield in machine milking was Y = -21.89+4.29 T**, regression coefficient was R2 = 0.868 and correlation coefficient was r = 0.932 (P<0.001). As a result of the research, the use of machine milking in buffalo enterprises can be recommended both in terms of increasing milk yield and facilitating work.


Author(s): Tam, Renee Lillian | Advisor(s): Grassian, Vicki H | Abstract: Compounds identified in indoor air are emitted from various sources like cooking, cleaning products, and human metabolism. Since a majority of homes experience dampness, these gaseous compounds can partition into the aqueous phase. Chemical interactions between these compounds and surfaces play an important role in altering the composition of indoor air, yet there is still a lack of knowledge on the mechanisms behind indoor surface chemistry. TiO2 is a major component of paints and self-cleaning surfaces and, therefore, of interest in indoor air chemistry. The adsorption of two indoor-relevant carboxylic acids, lactic acid and pyruvic acid, onto TiO2 particle surfaces is investigated in the aqueous phase at acidic and indoor-relevant pH values. Specifically, by using attenuated total reflection-FTIR spectroscopy coupled with quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation, this thesis focuses on the surface chemistry of lactic and pyruvic acid on TiO2, including adsorption kinetics, surface coverage, and speciation as a function of pH. The results conclude that lactic and pyruvic acid deprotonate upon adsorption and bind to TiO2 via bidentate bridging. Adsorption and desorption rate constants do not differ significantly when pH changes. Surface coverage is dependent on solution pH and decreases with increasing pH. Solution and surface speciation for lactic acid remain constant as a function of pH, but solution and surface speciation differ for pyruvic acid at higher pH values, suggesting that surface adsorption induces a change in species equilibrium. An overall molecular picture emerges from these studies of the adsorption of these important organic acids on TiO2 surfaces.


Knowledge about the symbolic potential of the place (for example, city main square) and the form of presentation of such data is very important for better understanding of cultural memory of place. The article presents examples of symbolic potential descriptions of place using specific symbolic code sets. Code units consists from 1) names of identified easy recognizable objects forming a place and 2) cultural ideas, connotational characteristics of those objects. Some ideas appear as simple cultural connotations of certain objects and are easily identifiable. However, the fuller knowledge of local symbolic potential requires using of data that have more complex connotational structure. Such ideas encourage designers to comprehend the distinctive features of the place more deeply; also they are helping them to take into account personal existential experiences that are essential for the stimulating of original creative design solutions. Data about the place can help to manage it taking into account the symbolic potential only in case when the connotational characteristics are included into that data set. To ensure consensus among all relevant actors, data about place (city square, etc) expressed in codes with more complex connotational structures must be presented in explicit form (as some kind of semantic "reference book") together with the arguments of their significance. Such codes would help align the positions of all actors involved in the management of certain place. Codes of this kind need to be defined in advance by making the appropriate research activities before and included in the legal documents regulating place management. The article discloses the model of symbolic potential of Kaunas Unity Square (Vienybės aikštė) and its closest environment, formed in period after regaining independence in 1918. In order to protect ourselves from possible unscrupulous modernizations of square, we always have to take into account the symbolic potential of this place when planning even the smallest changes of square. Research of symbolic potential of the place was conducted using theoretical methods: abstraction, analogy, generalization, reasoning (inductive, deductive, and abductive), synthesis. Moreover, the methods of phenomenology and semantic analysis were applied also.


The interaction between rootstock and scion can influence the vegetative and productive balance of grapevines. Vascular connections and patterns may be related to the observed phenotype of certain rootstock-scion combinations. However, little is known about the physiology of the rootstock-scion interaction and the related anatomical variables. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of the rootstock-scion interaction on the vegetative growth of Vitis vinifera L., with a focus on the vascular system. We investigated the rootstock genotypes 1103 Paulsen (Vitis berlandieri Planch. × Vitis rupestris Scheele), 101-14 Mgt (Vitis riparia Michx. × V. rupestris), and SO4 (V. berlandieri × V. riparia) grafted on the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapevine varieties. We evaluated vegetative growth variables and performed an image analysis of the vascular system by quantifying the xylem and vessels (diameter, total number, density, and frequency) in different portions (apical, median, and basal) of the scion stem. The rootstock-scion interaction caused differences in vegetative growth and was associated with differences in the vascular system. The vegetative growth of the Cabernet Sauvignon on 1103 Paulsen and Merlot on SO4 combinations was greater than the growths of either variety grafted on 101-14 Mgt. The more vigorous rootstock-scion combinations had vessels with greater mean diameters, xylem areas, and proportion of vessels with diameters greater than 50 μm. Vines grafted on 101-14 Mgt had a greater proportion of vessels with diameters less than 40 μm. The vessel features were altered from the apex to base sections (stem morphology) in all combinations. The physiological interaction between rootstock-scion modified the vascular system in grapevines by altering the xylem vessel.


Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves are commonly used to evaluate predictions of binary outcomes. When there is a small percentage of items of interest (as would be the case with fraud detection, for example), ROC curves can provide an inflated view of performance. This can cause challenges in determining which set of predictions is better. In this article, we discuss the conditions under which precision-recall curves may be preferable to ROC curves. As an illustrative example, we compare two commonly used fraud predictors (Beneish's [1999, Financial Analysts Journal 55: 24–36] M score and Dechow et al.'s [2011, Contemporary Accounting Research 28: 17–82] F score) using both ROC and precision-recall curves. To aid the reader with using precision-recall curves, we also introduce the command prcurve to plot them.