In the research, hybrid algorithm for counting repeated objects in the image is proposed. Proposed algorithm consists of two parts. Template matching sub-algorithm is based on normalized cross correlation function which is widely used in image processing application. Template matching can be used to recognize and/or locate specific objects in an image. Neural network sub-algorithm is needed to filter out false positives that may occur during cross correlation function evaluation. In the last section of the paper experimental evaluation is carried out to estimate the performance of the proposed template matching algorithm for images of blood microscopy and chamomile field image. In the first case, the task is to count erythrocytes in the blood sample. In the second case, it is needed to count the flowers in the field. For all 2 datasets we got precise results that coincides with actual number of objects in image. The reason of such performance is that convolutional neural network sub-algorithm improved initial results of template-matching sub-algorithm based on correlation function.


An approach for studying steady-state nanoparticle concentration gradients arising in magnetic nanoparticle suspensions in response to strong magnetic field gradient is presented. The experimental approach makes use of microscopic optical absorption measurements of ferrofluid interacting with arrays of patterned magnets. Experimental results are found to be consistent with a simple theoretical description that predicts the local nanoparticle concentration over a wide range of magnetic field conditions and ferrofluid volume fractions.


This model-based methodology and supporting toolset lets designers estimate application-specific network-on-chip (NoC) power dissipation at early stages of the design flow. An actor-oriented simulation framework captures the NoC's dynamic behavior and feeds its parameters to a rate-based power estimation model. Integrating this model into the proposed design flow enables the analysis of different design parameters and the identification of the most power-efficient application platform mappings.


In this work, we explore various ideas and approaches to deal with the inherent uncertainty and image noise in motion analysis, and develop a low-complexity, accurate and reliable scheme to estimate the motion fields from UAV navigation videos. The motion field information allows us to accurately estimate ego-motion parameters of the UAV and refine (or correct) the motion measurements from other sensors. Based on the motion field information, we also compute the range map for objects in the scene. Once we have accurate knowledge about the vehicle motion and its navigation environment (range map), control and guidance laws can be designed to navigate the UAV between way points and avoid obstacles


The way in which health care is delivered has rapidly changed since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a rapid increase in virtual delivery of clinical care. As a result, the learning environment (LE) in health professions education, which has traditionally been situated in the bricks-and-mortar clinical context, now also requires attention to the virtual space. As a frequently examined topic in the health professions literature, the LE is a critical component in the development and training of future healthcare professionals. Based on a published conceptual framework for the LE from Gruppen et al. in 2019, a conceptual framework for how the LE can manifest through virtual care space is presented here. The four components of personal, social, organizational, physical/virtual spaces are explored, with a discussion of how they can be integrated into virtual care. The authors provide suggestions that health professions educators can consider when adapting their LE to the virtual environment and highlight aspects of its integration that require further research and investigation.


In a main memory database (MMDB), the primary copy of the database may reside permanently in a volatile memory. When a system failure occurs, the database must be reloaded efficiently from archive memory into main memory. This paper presents four different reload schemes and the simulation models constructed to compare the algorithms. Simulation results indicate that the reload scheme based on freguency of data access gives the best overall performance in terms of transaction response time and system throughput.


The relative abundances and distribution patterns for two species of aquatic predaceous creeping water bugs (Family: Naucoridae) were determined for two tropical streams at Finca La Selva, Costa Rica, from July 1975 to August 1977. Seasonal changes in population densities were found to be related to differential recruitment and dispersal patterns for the two populations. Extreme population losses for both species occurred during flood periods in one of the two streams. Heavy rains in the mountainous watershed, which can occur 15-30 times/yr, caused one stream, the Sabalo, to spate, and it was in that stream that populations of both species were negatively affected during spates. The second stream, the Sura, is a low-gradient tropical stream and it is backflooded by a large river, the Puerto Viejo. During backflooding, there are reductions in dissolved oxygen and in velocity, but the changes do not affect these plastron-breathing insects. Although depths in both streams increase up to 9 m during flooding, the Sabalo is a more harsh environment for the bugs, owing to intense substrata redistribution processes during spates. Nymphs and adults of the vestigially-winged bug, Limnocoris insularis Champion, move upstream against the current, both in the wet and dry seasons. Adults can recolonize the two streams by moving in from the Puerto Viejo River (a 6th-order river into which both streams flow). Population densities of the animals are low in the Sabalo because the animals do not recruit well there and because they are also washed out during spates. Population densities are high in the Sura. The animals can recruit there and they are not washed out during flooding. Individuals of the second species, C. latus Usinger, do not move along stream bottoms against the current. Nymphs and brachypterous adults remain stationary or are passively moved downstream with the current. Populations can recruit and disperse in both streams; however, their dispersal abilities are temporally limited because only the winged morph, uncommon except in the dry season, has the ability to colonize upstream sections.


This study considers a blunt trailing-edged propeller operating both in a uniform and a nominal wake fields. Experiments are performed in the cavitation tunnel of Hyundai Maritime Research Institute. The effects of propeller rotation speed, tunnel flow speed, and blade sheet cavitation growth on the generation mechanism of the singing propeller are investigated. The cavitation, sound, and vibration characteristics related to the singing phenomena are measured by a hydrophone, a microphone, an accelerometer, and a highspeed digital camera. The natural frequencies of propeller blades are predicted using a finite element method and verified by both contact- and noncontact-type impact hammer tests in air and underwater conditions. The inflow speed and angle of attack for each section of the propeller blades are calculated using the Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equation-based flow analysis. Using a detached eddy simulation, the vortex shedding patterns and their frequencies are calculated. The predicted vortex shedding frequencies are compared with the measured singing frequency and blade natural frequency for determination of consistency. Under cavitation-free regime, the vortex shedding frequencies are predicted for normalized blade radial positions of .8R and .9R. The computed values are close to the two blade natural frequencies and also consistent with the double singing phenomena in the cavitation tunnel test. For fully developed blade sheet cavitation condition, the vortex formation in the wake region is observed to be strongly influenced by the cavitation growth on the pressure side surface. Propeller singing is diminished with the continuous growth of cavitation and is finally locked-off. The significant variation of the flow-induced sound and vibration levels are also observed for the locked-in and the locked-off conditions. The singing occurrence location and frequency under uniform inflow condition are analyzed to investigate the generation mechanism of propeller singing. This study can be applied to the analysis of singing location and its frequency of a propeller operating in the hull wake, which changes the angle of attack according to the propeller rotation angle.


Monitoring of availability of medical care and drugs for the population has been carried out by interviewing more than 4000 residents of Russian cities. Stratification of respondents by the level of life showed that more than 70% respondents evaluate their level of life as below the medium. A social gradient was detected: direct relationship between population morbidity and conditions of life. Analysis of availability of paid medical services and drugs for population with different level of life showed differentiation of the population by the level of life and by ability to pay for medical services and drugs.


The iterative projection algorithm for solving ill-posed systems of linear algebraic equations is examined. This algorithm is based on transforming the regularized normal equations to the equivalent augmented regularized normal system of equations. The proposed algorithm can effectively solve ill-posed problems of large dimension.


OBJECTIVE
A case of tubo-ovarian abscess in a patient with term pregnancy.

DESIGN
Case report.

SETTING
Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Nemocnice s poliklinikou Karviná Ráj.

CASE REPORT
I hereby report a case of a patient in her 39th week of pregnancy hospitalized for abdominal pain and vomiting. Due to unclear aetiology and growing dynamics of inflammatory markers the ending of the pregnancy by induction of labour was indicated. Postpartum examination performed through computed tomography determines the cause of current problems. Conservative therapy of the diagnosed adnexal abscess, however, is insufficient. In the fourth postpartum day, the patient is indicated for surgical intervention and unilateral salpingo oophorectomy is performed.

CONCLUSION
Even though rare during this period, some forms of clinical pelvic inflammatory disorders during pregnancy have to be taken into consideration. Timely and correct diagnosis combined with adequate therapy is of vital importance for reduction of perinatal and maternal mortality and morbidity.


Human Right thoughts of Mahatma Gandhi have spreaded through out the world because he is the one who actually gave his whole life for this issue. His Human Rights philosophy is not only simple but also easy to adopt. It consists of non-violence, brotherhood, Satyagraha, truth and love. Gandhi did lot of movements in India and South Africa for human rights. By understanding Gandhian philosophy one can know that how his ideas and movements worked for Human Rights. Today Gandhian human rights thoughts are very relevant and essential for the goodness of human society.


Abstract This article is concerned with the "word" in sign language, the "grammatical" and especially the "prosodic word". Both notions of the "word" are central in sign language linguistics and psycholinguistic. Converging evidence for the size and complexity of the prosodic word is reviewed, stemming from morphological processes such as compounding, derivation, and classification as well as from phonological processes such as coalescence, epenthesis, and deletion. Additional evidence from slips of the hand and their repairs is presented showing that (i) in slips, grammatical as well as prosodic words are involved and that (ii) slip-repair sequences may keep within the limit of the prosodic word. The distinctive morphological typology and the canonical word shape pattern in sign language is explained by modality differences which act on the Phonetic Form (PF) interface. Sign languages are processed more on the vertical axis — simultaneously — whereas spoken languages are processed more on the horizontal axis — sequentially. As a corollary, the information packaging in both language modalities is different while processing is basically the same. Controversial theoretic topics around the notion of the "word" in sign language such as iconicity and notoriously recalcitrant constructions such as classifier predicates are discussed.


To prevent pollution of the water environment by drugs, we evaluated factors affecting the elimination of drugs by inducing reactions between the pharmaceutical chemicals originating from the drugs and activated sludge (AS) in test tubes. Of 30 pharmaceutical chemicals examined, ibuprofen (IBP) as an anti-inflammatory drug most markedly inhibited the oxygen uptake rate (OUR) of AS, and its IC50 was 172 mg/l. The IBP elimination from the wastewater was due to the significant biosorption by AS and was based on the time-response and dose-response relationships. In the pharmaceutical chemical group (1) (diclofenac Na, ketoprofen, indomethacin, salicylic acid, mefenamic acid, phenylbutazone, chlorpromazine.HCl, furosemide, tolbutamide and warfarin K) showing a relatively significant OUR inhibition (IC50, 200-500 mg/l), protein binding (75-99.7%), and the biosorption by AS also tended to be significant. In group (2) (acetaminophen, kanamycin.H2SO4, antipyrine, ethenzamide, gentamicin.H2SO4, cyclophosphamide.HCl, aminophylline, procainamide.HCl and cimetidine) showing a negligible OUR inhibition (IC50 > or =2000 mg/l), the protein binding was slight (0-74%), and biosorption by AS was also negligible. For the IBP and group (1), AS was pretreated with a certain excessive amount of each pharmaceutical chemical, and the qualitative OUR curves of the AS-synthetic sewage-II after washing showed a significant OUR inhibition immediately after the start of the reaction. Group (2), as well as the control group showed no OUR inhibition. These results suggest that the degree of OUR inhibition of AS by pharmaceutical chemicals is affected by the protein binding and the degree of biosorption. This suggests that pharmaceutical chemicals with a significant protein binding possibility can be eliminated from the wastewater by binding to AS.


This dissertation offers a qualitative study of female participation in leftist
political violence in the Federal Republic of Germany since 1970. It
focuses on four militant leftist groups: the 'Red Army Faction' (RAF), the
'Movement of June 2' (MJ2), the 'Revolutionary Cells' (RC), and the 'Red
Zora' (RZ). Unlike the RAF, the MJ2 has attracted little attention by
scholars and journalists; and there is virtually no literature on the RC and
the RZ. To offer a nuanced analysis of the history, ideologies and activities
of the four groups, this thesis draws on semi-structured interviews with
former group members and contemporary witnesses, autobiographical
accounts, scholarly literature, newspaper articles, and a range of archival
sources. The guiding questions for the analysis are: what roles have
women played in the four organisations and in concrete manifestations of
political violence? And, to what extent could female participation in
political violence be understood as a form of feminist militancy? To
answer these questions, this study combines theories and methods from
new feminist materialisms, philosophies of sexual difference, gender
theory and Cultural Studies. It finds that whilst opposing the existing
gender regime, women in the RAF and MJ2 effectively used femininity as
camouflage to carry out violent attacks. Neither groups had a feminist
agenda. The RZ and some of the women in the RC, by contrast, took up
central themes in the women's movement. This thesis argues that their
activities evolved into a form of feminist militancy. Beyond the specific
context of research on political violence in Germany, this study makes a
more general contribution to scholarship on female participation in
armed conflicts, as it works towards a methodological and conceptual
approach that accounts for the material-discursive nature of political
violence, and for situational dynamics and gendered performances during
concrete attacks.


Real part of permittivity and the dielectric loss tangent of float zone high resistivity Silicon were measured at microwave frequencies at temperatures from 10 K up to 380 K employing dielectric resonator technique. The real part of permittivity proved to be frequency independent and the decrease in dielectric loss tangent versus frequency proved to be not entirely proportional to the inverse of frequency. At temperatures below 25 K where all free carriers are frozen-out loss tangents values the order of 10-4 were measured.


The manufacture of multilayer circuit boards involves relamination of alternating B-stage woven glass/epoxy prepregs, which act as bonding sheets, C-stage cores and copper foils. The high relamination temperature and mismatch of thermo-mechanical properties between the copper and woven glass/epoxy composite substrate lead to development of residual stresses in the boards. In the current work, numerical and experimental studies are performed to study residual deformation and warpage in a model multilayer circuit board construction of a common composite substrate (7628 fabric style). A numerical procedure based on classical lamination theory with non-isothermal viscoelastic constitutive relations is developed to predict the deformation and residual stress state due to relamination. Experimental values of the substrate stress relaxation modulus and coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) are used as inputs in the numerical procedure to predict warpage of model circuit boards with a non-symmetric lay-up of 7628 style composite substrate. Boards with exactly the same construction as used in the numerical analysis were fabricated according to the prescribed pressing cycle, and the time dependent warpage measured using an ultrasonic contour scan technique. Comparison of the experimental warpage data with numerical predictions provides insight into the effects of processing cycle and substrate properties on residual stress development.


Objective: Investigate whether anti-Factor Xa levels are associated with the need for change of circuit/membrane oxygenator secondary to thrombus formation in pediatric patients. Design and Settings: Retrospective single institution study. Patients: Retrospective record review of 62 pediatric patients supported with extracorporeal membrane oxygenation from 2009 to 2011. Interventions: Data on standard demographic characteristics, indications for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, duration of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, activated clotting time measurements, anti-Factor Xa measurements, and heparin infusion rate were collected. Generalized linear models were used to associate anti-Factor Xa concentrations and need for change of either entire circuit/membrane oxygenator secondary to thrombus formation. Measurements and Main Results: Sixty-two patients met study inclusion criteria. No-circuit change was required in 45 of 62 patients. Of 62 patients, 17 required change of circuit/membrane oxygenator due to thrombus formation. Multivariate analysis of daily anti-Factor Xa measurements throughout duration of extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support estimated a mean anti-Factor Xa concentration of 0.20 IU/mL (95% CI, 0.16, 0.24) in no-complete-circuit group that was significantly higher than the estimated concentration of 0.13 IU/mL (95% CI, 0.12, 0.14) in complete-circuit group (p = 0.001). A 0.01 IU/mL decrease in anti-Factor Xa increased odds of need for circuit/membrane oxygenator change by 5% (odds ratio = 1.105; 95% CI, 1.00, 1.10; p = 0.044). Based on the observed anti-Factor Xa concentrations, complete-circuit group had 41% increased odds for requiring circuit/membrane oxygenator change compared with no-complete-circuit group (odds ratio = 1.41; 95% CI, 1.01, 1.96; p = 0.044). Mean daily activated clotting time measurement (p = 0.192) was not different between groups, but mean daily heparin infusion rate (p < 0.001) was significantly different between the two groups. Conclusions: Higher anti-Factor Xa concentrations were associated with freedom from circuit/membrane oxygenator change due to thrombus formation in pediatric patients during extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support. Activated clotting time measurements did not differ significantly between groups with or without circuit/membrane oxygenator change. This is the first study to link anti-Factor Xa concentrations with a clinically relevant measure of thrombosis in pediatric patients during extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support. Further prospective study is warranted.


ABSTRACT
 The mold mite, Tyrophagus putrescentiae (Schrank), is a stored product pest of economic significance that commonly infests many types of food and animal feed products. There is limited information regarding pest management tactics, including residual acaricides for managing this pest in retail store habitats. The purpose of this study was to assess the potential of commercially available acaricides that could provide a protective barrier near susceptible food packages destined for consumer use. Mite mortality at 24 and 48 h was measured after exposing mites to acaricide residues applied to a nonporous surface. Two additional factors included in the study were humidity and the presence of an adjuvant to facilitate spread of acaricide on nonporous surfaces. Increasing humidity levels generally decreased acaricide efficacy. Use of the adjuvant itself did not appear to affect efficacy, but the type of application (wet or slurry, or dry) of dust acaricides significantly affected efficacy. The potential for residual acaricides to act as abarrier (within 24–48 h) against dispersal of this mite was discussed.


Many algorithms for reconstructing an object from a series of short-exposure images have been considered in the literature. The most promising techniques are Fienup's error reduction, exponential filtering, Knox and triple correlation techniques. The performance of these techniques is examined on two types of simulated short-exposure images. These are a binary star and a more complicated object. It has been shown that the exponential filtering algorithm (one-dimensional filter) gives better reconstructions than the others but is still not satisfactory and the quality of the reconstructions is limited by the object support constraint. The new circular exponential filtering method gives the best quality reconstructions and is not limited by the object support constraint.


Calculations of electron diffraction intensities in transmission electron microscopy commonly assume a model representing surfaces and interfaces in crystals as flat boundaries (flat-boundary model, FBM). It is shown that the independent-atom model (IAM) representing the crystal potential as a superposition of spherical atomic potentials leads to improved boundary conditions. Intensities calculated from the two models at large deviation from the Bragg peak in weak reflections (e.g. 200 in InGaAs) differ significantly. Results from both types of calculation are compared with an experimental diffraction pattern recorded using energy-filtered largeangle convergent-beam electron diffraction from an In 0.53 Ga 0.47 /InP bicrystal. It is shown that calculations using the IAM give a better agreement with experiment


A continuously height adjustable mattress support and apparatus therefor is disclosed. The mattress support is vertically displaceable by means of at least one drive unit for applying a vertical force to a corresponding solely vertically displaceable driven component and is stabilized during vertical displacement by at least one stabilizing means connected thereto. The driven component is connected to, or is in supporting relation with, the mattress support, so that a height of the mattress support above a floor surface is settable and continuously adjustable by means of at least one actuator associated with the at least one drive unit. In one embodiment, a locking device for preventing displacement of the mattress support following inadvertent actuation of the at least one drive unit is employed.


A decadal change on relationship between winter rainfall over Southern China (SCWR) and Western Pacific warm pool heat content (WPHC) was detected by a sliding correlation analysis. The decadal turning point occurred around 1993. Before 1993, the relationship between SCWR and WPHC was quite weak with a correlation coefficient of −0.17. During this epoch, the WPHC‐related anomalous troposphere circulation, sea surface temperature (SSTA) and outgoing longwave radiation (OLRA) were mainly confined to the Pacific Ocean. Therefore, the corresponding climate system anomalies cannot influence SCWR. However, after 1993, the relationship between SCWR and WPHC became significant and reached a correlation coefficient of −0.81. The troposphere circulation anomalies along with the SSTA and OLRA pattern that were associated with WPHC during this epoch significantly shifted northwestward and intensified, resulting in a direct impact on SCWR. A possible mechanism was put forth to explain the decadal enhanced relation between SCWR and WPHC. In the context of the increased and northwestward‐shifted climatological maximum WPHC, the concurrent intensified and northwestward‐shifted SST and atmospheric circulation anomaly pattern contributes to the decadal enhanced relation between SCWR and WPHC. On one hand, because of the increased and northwestward‐shifted maximum sea surface temperature, the convection became more sensitive to the SSTA over Indian Ocean and Maritime Continent, thus dragged the Philippines anticyclonic/cyclonic anomaly northwestward via Kevin wave and Rossby wave response, which can directly affect SCWR. On the other hand, the increased and northwestward‐shifted SSTA anchored the convection anomalies in South China Sea (SCS) and Maritime Continent, impacting the SCWR via anomalous descending/ascending motion of the anomalous local meridional cell.


Summary Despite knowledge of various inherited risk factors associated with venous thromboembolism (VTE), no definite cause can be found in about 50% of patients. The application of data-driven searches such as GWAS has not been able to identify genetic variants with implications for clinical care, and unexplained heritability remains. In the past years, the development of several so-called next generation sequencing (NGS) platforms is offering the possibility of generating fast, inexpensive and accurate genomic information. However, so far their application to VTE has been very limited. Here we review basic concepts of NGS data analysis and explore the application of NGS technology to VTE. We provide both computational and biological viewpoints to discuss potentials and challenges of NGS-based studies.


Deformable medical image registration has in past years been revolutionized by the use of convolutional neural networks. These methods surpass conventional image registration techniques in speed but not in accuracy. Here, we present an alternative approach to leveraging neural networks for image registration. Instead of using a convolutional neural network to predict the transformation between images, we optimize a multi-layer perceptron to represent this transformation function. Using recent insights from differentiable rendering, we show how such an implicit deformable image registration ( idir ) model can be naturally combined with regularization terms based on standard automatic differentia-tion techniques. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this model on 4D chest CT registration in the DIR-LAB data set and find that a three-layer multi-layer perceptron with periodic activation functions outperforms all published deep learning-based results on this problem, without any folding and without the need for training data. The model is implemented using standard deep learning libraries and flexible enough to be extended to include different losses, regularizers, and optimization schemes.


PURPOSE: To study the parameters of the foveal avascular zone (FAZ) and its relationship with the functional, structural and hemodynamic macular indicators in patients with primary open-angle glaucoma (POAG) and type 2 diabetes mellitus. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study included 103 patients (161 eyes), who were divided into 3 groups: the 1st group — 58 eyes (31 patients) with 1st stage of POAG and diabetes; the 2nd group — 53 eyes (36 patients) with 1st stage of POAG; the 3rd group — 50 eyes (36 patients) with diabetes. The patients underwent a complete ophthalmological examination, including optical coherence tomography with angiography mode using a Cirrus 5000 Angioplex machine ("Carl Zeiss Meditec"). Functional, structural, hemodynamic parameters, FAZ area, FAZ perimeter, circularity index were evaluated. RESULTS: The lowest functional indicators were noted in the group of patients with a combined course of POAG and diabetes (best corrected visual acuity (BCVA) 0.63±0.19, MD -4.01±1.52 dB, visual field index 94.69±3.09%) and structural indicators (RNFL 79.91±12.66 μm and GCL+IPL 66.33±15.39 μm), accompanied by a decline in blood density and perfusion (wiPD 28.87±9.08%, wiVD 13.15±3.19/mm), a decrease in FAZ area almost by 2 times (0.62±0.03 mm2), an increase in its perimeter to 3.54±1.57 mm. The circularity index was significantly lower in groups 1 and 3 (0.59±0.11 and 0.58±0.09, respectively) compared with the 2nd group (POAG): 0.66±0.1. The results of the correlation analysis showed a statistically significant inverse dependence of the area and perimeter of FAZ on all hemodynamic parameters. CONCLUSION: The combined course of POAG and diabetes, even in the initial stages of the disease, is accompanied by pronounced structural changes, deterioration of hemodynamic parameters and impaired microcirculation of the macula. Dynamic monitoring of the area and perimeter of the avascular zone, the circularity index is important for the control and early diagnosis of macular microcirculation disorders, risk assessment and the rate of progression of optic neuropathy in patients with glaucoma.


The presence of a high prevalence of bronchial hyperresponsiveness and asthma-like symptoms in swimmers has been reported. But, attacks of asthma which is related to chlorinized water is rare. Chlorine, a strong oxidizing agent, is an important toxic gas that the swimmer can breath during swimming and a worker can exposed to chlorine while he or she was using water with chlorine at home. We describe a persistent increase in nonspecific bronchial hyperresponsiveness following chronic exposure to strong respiratory irritant with chlorinized water in two subjects with no past history of asthma or atopy. We conclude that airway hyperresponsiveness can develop or increase after chronic inhalation of high concentrations of irritants such as chlorinized water an indoor irritant factor and that these changes may be prolonged.


We studied six populations of the hummingbird-pollinated Nicotiana glauca to determine if the marked differences in the degree of floral-pollinator mismatch between populations promote divergences in the pattern of pollinator-mediated phenotypic selection on single traits and on the evolution of complexes of many interacting floral traits.

We found evidence that flower phenotype is being shaped by pollinator-mediated phenotypic selection, since corolla length was consistently under contemporary directional or stabilizing selection. Weak directional selection for longer corollas was found in two populations with low flower–pollinator mismatch; much stronger directional selection was detected for shorter corollas in two populations with high flower–pollinator mismatch; finally, the remaining two populations with intermediate flower–pollinator mismatch showed stabilizing selection for corolla length. N. glauca populations differed in every flower character measured but variations in pollinator-mediated selection among populations were only observed for corolla length. Multiple covariation among traits was favoured, as suggested by the predominately functional patterns of integration and selection of complexes of many interacting floral traits. This was consistent with the patterns of correlational selection exhibited by four of the six populations, where corolla length was under significant selection in combination with corolla width, style length or stamen length. Overall floral integration was relatively high in all populations but phenotypic integration patterns were not clearly accounted by the degree of flower–pollinator mismatch or type of phenotypic selection, suggesting that trait covariation at the entire flower level is not explained by the current scenario of pollinator-mediated selection.


Certain difficulties associated with the current interpretation of ionospheric cross-modulation effects are pointed out and discussed. These arise essentially from the recent measurements which show how the mean energy lost by an electron in a collision with a gas molecule depends upon the excess of the mean energy of the electron above that of a gas molecule. When applied to ionospheric conditions these data do not give results consistent with the observations of cross-modulation.


Robust, tightly regulated DNA repair is critical to maintaining genome stability and preventing cancer. Eukaryotic DNA is packaged into chromatin, which has a profound, yet incompletely understood, regulatory influence on DNA repair and genome stability. The chromatin remodeler HELLS (helicase, lymphoid specific) has emerged as an important epigenetic regulator of DNA repair, genome stability, and multiple cancer-associated pathways. HELLS belongs to a subfamily of the conserved SNF2 ATP-dependent chromatin-remodeling complexes, which use energy from ATP hydrolysis to alter nucleosome structure and packaging of chromatin during the processes of DNA replication, transcription, and repair. The mouse homologue, LSH (lymphoid-specific helicase), plays an important role in the maintenance of heterochromatin and genome-wide DNA methylation, and is crucial in embryonic development, gametogenesis, and maturation of the immune system. Human HELLS is abundantly expressed in highly proliferating cells of the lymphoid tissue, skin, germ cells, and embryonic stem cells. Mutations in HELLS cause the human immunodeficiency syndrome ICF (Immunodeficiency, Centromeric instability, Facial anomalies). HELLS has been implicated in many types of cancer, including retinoblastoma, colorectal cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, and glioblastoma. Here, we review and summarize accumulating evidence highlighting important roles for HELLS in DNA repair, genome maintenance, and key pathways relevant to cancer development, progression, and treatment.


Previous studies have indicated high perceived stress and its relationship with life satisfaction among healthcare workers. However, most of the existing studies have focused on the investigation and evaluation of the humanistic care abilities among nurses, but few studies revealed the levels of humanistic care ability among other healthcare workers including doctors and technicians. The study aimed to investigate the perceived stress and humanistic care abilities among Chinese healthcare workers. In addition, we further examined the mediating and moderating effects of social support and life satisfaction. A convenience sample of 955 health professionals from 29 hospitals in China was recruited to fill out the questionnaires about perceived stress, humanistic care ability, social support, and life satisfaction. The correlation and multivariate logistic regression analysis were carried out by SPSS 24.0. The Hayes SPSS macro program process (version 2.16.3) was used to analyze the significance of mediating and moderating model. The findings indicated that humanistic care ability was negatively associated with perceived stress and positively correlated with social support and life satisfaction. The effect of the path "perceived stress → social support → humanistic care ability" was −0.017, and the path "perceived stress → life satisfaction → social support → humanistic care ability" was −0.129. The current study contributed to a better understanding of humanistic care abilities and influential factors in Chinese healthcare workers. Thus, it may suggest studies on interventions to interventions to alleviate or eliminate the negative impact of perceived stress and improve humanistic care abilities.


The high penetration of wind power systems in the electrical network has introduced new issues in the stability and transient operation of the grid. By means of providing advanced functionalities to the existing power converters of such power plants it is possible to enhance their performance and also to support the grid operation, as the new grid codes demand. The connection of FACTS based on power converters, such as STATCOMs, are also contributing to the integration of renewable energies improving their behavior under contingencies. However, in both cases it is needed to have a grid voltage synchronization system, able to work under unbalanced and distorted conditions. This paper presents the discrete representation and performance of three PLL's structures, designed to work in that kind of situations. Their synchronization capability will be tested in different scenarios and their performance constraints will be established according to the Grid Code Requirements (GCRs)


Type I and type II keratins represent a large family of proteins that are encoded by 54 genes in the human genome. Matched pairs of these keratins form heterodimers that constitute the basic building blocks of cytoskeletal intermediate filaments and epidermal derivatives of hair, nail and horn. Keratins have an important place in the history of the elucidation of protein structure as in 1951, Pauling et al. suggested the first model for a-helix structure for wool a-keratins, in the absence of knowledge of the sequence of keratins [1]. The first sequence of a cytoskeletal keratin was determined in 1982 [2]. By analyzing the sequences of type I and type II keratins using secondary structure prediction methods Hanukoglu and Fuchs suggested a model for the structure of keratins and other intermediate filaments proteins [3]. This model depicted a conserved central 310 residue long rod with four helical domains and highly variable N and C terminal domains that were suggested to participate in linking of subunits and interaction with other proteins. Keratins are very difficult to solubilize as they readily form clusters even in denaturing urea solutions. To partially overcome this problem in 2012, Lee et al. coexpressed the longest helical segment 2B from a pair of keratins (K14 and K5) and determined the first crystal structure of a keratin helical segment [4]. The coiled-coil helical structure of this 2B segment is shown in Fig. 1. This structure confirms the four helix model suggested by secondary structure predictions [3]. The Proteopedia entry presents interactive views of the keratin helical structure and the roles of hydrophobic residues as opposed to charged residues in the formation of coiled-coil structure of filaments. Incorporation of keratins in biochemistry and molecular biology courses could contribute to the understanding of the principles of protein structure, families of homologous proteins and the evolution of the genes that encode for them, and formation of the cytoskeletal scaffold in cell biology. Coiled-coil structures are widespread in the biological world [5], and keratins represent simple examples to illustrate the forces that bind these structures. Sequence based prediction of keratin structural domains can be taught as an illustrative example of the usefulness of protein structure prediction methods.


Fast fault detection and reconfiguration of power converters is necessary in electrical drives to prevent further damage and to make the continuity of service possible. On the other hand, component minimized converters may provide the benefits of higher reliability and less volume and cost. In this paper, a new fault-tolerant converter topology is studied. This converter has five legs before the fault occurrence, and after fault detection the converter continues to function with four legs. A very fast fault detection and reconfiguration scheme is presented and studied. Simulations and experimental tests are performed to evaluate the structure requirements, the digital reconfigurable controller, and fault detection scheme. For experimental tests, the control and the fault detection and reconfiguration schemes are implemented on a single field-programmable gate array (FPGA) chip. Experimental and simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed fault-tolerant topology and its FPGA-based control.


Background: To determine the relative impact of five proposed barriers to physician usage of advance directives with the aim of increasing the number of advance directives generated. Methods: Questionnaires were sent to 460 internal medicine resident and attending physicians at a large New York, NY, hospital. Of these, 277 (60%) responded. We used multiple regression to measure the impact of five barriers to physician-initiated discussions of advance directives (time constraints, compensation concerns, discomfort with the subject, beliefs about appropriateness, and lack of understanding) on respondents' estimates of the number of advance directives held by respondents' patients, the number of recent advance directive discussions, and the number of discussions initiated by physicians. Results: Physician lack of understanding and erroneous beliefs about appropriateness had particularly strong effects, serving as barriers to recent advance directive discussions (P<.0001 and P<.0001, respectively) and total number of advance directives held (P<.0001 and P<.02). Physicians' lack of knowledge also served as a barrier to the percentage of discussions that were physician initiated (P<.003 and P<.04). Time constraints and lack of comfort affected only discussions that were physician initiated (P<.001). Compensation concerns did not appear to serve as a barrier. Respondents were supportive of the concept of advance directives but reported minimal use of them in appropriate situations.


S-Palmitoylation is the only reversible post-translational lipid modification. Knowledge about the DHHC family of palmitoyltransferases is very limited. Here we show that mammalian DHHC6, which modifies key proteins of the endoplasmic reticulum, is controlled by an upstream palmitoyltransferase, DHHC16, revealing the first palmitoylation cascade. Combination of site specific mutagenesis of the three DHHC6 palmitoylation sites, experimental determination of kinetic parameters and data-driven mathematical modelling allowed us to obtain detailed information on the 8 differentially palmitoylated DHHC6 species. We found that species rapidly interconvert through the action of DHHC16 and the Acyl Protein Thioesterase APT2, that each species varies in terms of turnover rate and activity, altogether allowing the cell to robustly tune its DHHC6 activity.


We suggest and investigate constructions of radiotransparent windows in waveguides with increase of a matching with a tract in a broad band of frequencies.


In general, routine semen analysis makes only limited predictions about a man's reproductive potential and is not always able to explain why he is infertile. In fact, many male infertility cases are caused by sperm DNA defects ,which routine semen quality analyses fail to detect. The relationship between sperm DFI, sperm parameters and their diagnostic value were analyzed and evaluated by observing the seminal parameters of infertile patients without accessory gonadal infection. Specimens of 151 cases were collected from infertile patients who visited the male department of STD and reproductive specialty clinic of our hospital from August 2018 to September 2019. SCD test was performed to measure the DNA fragmentation in native. The routine semen analysis was performed with a semen quality detection system (CFT-920, Jiangsu Ruiqi Life Science & Tech Dev .Co.Ltd) and supporting reagents. Seminal plasma malondialdehyde (MDA), and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) were assessed. Fructose(Fru) 、a-glucosidase (a-glu), and zinc (Zn) levels are quantitatively detected by kehua-310, a fully automated biochemical tester provided by Nanjing Xindibio. According to DFI level, there were 31 cases in group I (DFI ≤ 15%), 81 cases in group II (15% < DFI < 30%), and 39 cases in group III (DFI ≥ 30%). Compared with group II, there were significant differences in sperm survival rate, PR% and Fru by non-parametric test (Z = -2.16 -2. 43. − 2. 20,respectively,P < 0. 05). There were significant differences in sperm survival rate and PR% between group I and group III (t = 4. 32, 4.25, respectively, P < 0.01). Compared with group III, there were significant differences in sperm survival rate and PR% by non-parametric test (Z= -3. 26, -3. 50, respectively).Sperm DFI was negatively correlated with sperm survival rate and PR%(R=-0.56,-0.46,P < 0.01). DFI was positively correlated with MDA content (R = 0.42, P < 0.01) and negatively correlated with TAC (r=-0.40, P < 0.01).There was no correlation with age ,abstinence days, semen volume, sperm concentration, percentage of normal form sperm, Fru, a-Glu, Zn (R = 0. 15, 0. 05,0.03,-0.03, -0.2, -0.16,- 0.20, 0.03, 0.15, p > 0.05).The survival rate and PR% of sperm decreased significantly with the increase of DFI level, antioxidant can decrease the rate of DNA fragmentation, antioxidant can decrease the rate of DNA fragmentation. Semen volume and sperm concentration were mainly related to the secretion volume of accessory gonads and total sperm count, but no correlation was found between them and DFI.


Abstract Soft sensor technique has become increasingly important to provide reliable on-line measurements, facilitate advanced process control and improve product quality in process industries. The conventional soft sensors are normally single-model based and thus may not be appropriate for processes with shifting operating conditions or phases. In this study, a multiway Gaussian mixture model (MGMM) based kernel partial least squares (PLS) method is proposed to handle multiple operating phases in batch or semibatch processes. The measurement data are first projected onto high-dimensional kernel feature space to account for the process nonlinearity. Then the multiway Gaussian mixture model is estimated with multiple Gaussian clusters in the kernel space. Thus various localized PLS models can be built within each Gaussian cluster to characterize the dynamics in the particular operating phase. Using Bayesian inference strategy, the soft sensor models for all the test samples are adaptively selected from the multiple localized kernel PLS models representing different phases and further used for online quality predictions. The presented soft sensor method is applied to the multiphase penicillin fermentation process and the computational results demonstrate that its performance is superior to the conventional multiway kernel PLS model.


To determine the nature of the mechanism by which certain derived ruthenium (Ru) complexes induce regression in tumour growth, we have investigated the possibility that this mechanism was associated with an increase of superoxide anion (O2-. production by phagocytic cells, which are usually found in tumour nodes. Here we present evidence that a newly synthesized complex, Ru3+-propylene-1, 2-diaminotetra-acetic acid (Ru-PDTA), derived from Ru and the sequestering ligand (PDTA), specifically stimulates O2-. production. This increase was associated with the translocation of cytosolic factors p47(phox) and p67(phox) of NADPH oxidase to the plasma membrane. The Ru-PDTA-complex-dependent O2-. production was abrogated by staurosporine, partially inhibited by diphenylene iodonium, and it was insensitive to pertussis toxin or dibutyryl cyclic AMP pretreatment. An increase of cytosolic Ca2+ levels were also detected in neutrophils treated with the Ru-PDTA complex. Also, Ru-PDTA complex induced the phosphorylation of tyrosine residues of several proteins as assessed by Western blotting. Present data are consistent with the possibility that Ru-PDTA-dependent antitumour effects are due in part to the complex's ability to stimulate the release of toxic oxygen metabolites from phagocytic cells infiltrating tumour masses.


Introduction. Reforming the health care system in Ukraine, dismantling its old economic model, the emergence and development of entrepreneurship in this type of economic activity, which took place in recent years, led to a new nature of economic relations. The health care system of Ukraine faces the formation of a competitive environment, the need to characterize itself through the prism of its diagnosis as a kind of market. Both the system of public management of the industry and the influence of new opportunities and threats management on the system of the health care institutions should be taken into account. Given the current challenges, significant uncertainty, dynamic changes, this highlights the need for in-depth systematic theoretical and methodological analysis of the specifics of the model of the created market, identifying the degree of its adaptability to the needs of restoring or maintaining public health. Additionally, health care system management requires attention to the development of scientific and methodological framework for this task. Purpose. The purpose of the article is a theoretical and methodological assessment of the process of market formation in the health care system, its impact on the nature of the health care system in today's challenges and recommendations for adjusting public policy and mechanisms for its implementation in multilevel governance. Methods. The method of comparative analysis was used to compare health care systems and models of the health care market in Ukraine and the world; systematic analysis allowed to determine the components of the health care market at the macro and meso levels, pest analysis to identify factors influencing the development of health care market segments and factors that indicate the need for regulatory influence of public authorities, hospital management; institutional and comparative analysis to identify the institutional environment of market actors; SWOT-analysis and expert assessments to assess internal and external environment of competition, setting goals and strategic priorities. Results. Having analyzed the theoretical basis, the author's approach to the interpretation of the essential characteristics of the model of the healthcare market in Ukraine is formed. The current state, features of the market, factors of internal and external environment of health care facilities in Ukraine are assessed, and the problems are identified. The model of the healthcare market in the country is interpreted by the author as: a) transformational, due to a number of factors, primarily the incompleteness of health care reform; b) the model of different speeds, which is caused by the different degree of development of individual market segments, the spread of externalities to them, etc. The current regulatory policy is analyzed, the factors of actualization of the problem of implementation of strategic planning at the present stage are revealed and the necessity of its implementation in management of the relevant public authorities and market participants is proved.


In this research the selective delivery of drug by liposomes to solid tumors as compared to healthy tissues is studied. Liposomes are small spheres (typically about 30-500 nm in diameter and preferably about 200 nm or less) in which drugs can be encapsulated. As long as the drug is encapsulated it cannot cause toxic and therapeutic effects. The drug has to be released from the liposomes to do so. Therefore, knowledge of the individual encapsulated and released drug concentrations is essential to understand and improve drug delivery by liposomes. While such individual concentrations in plasma have been reported, these are rarely measured in tumor and healthy tissues due to practical complications. In this study, such individual concentrations in murine blood and tissues were measured by using liposomes containing prednisolone phosphate as a model formulation. The rapid conversion of prednisolone phosphate into prednisolone after release of prednisolone phosphate from the liposomes enables the separate quantification of encapsulated and released drug, respectively. The corresponding analytical methodology was appropriately developed and validated to obtain reliable results. Implementation of the methodology shows that, from a quantitative point of view, the availability of released drug in the tumor is not pronounced as compared to the liver, spleen and kidneys. However, extended drug release is observed in the tumor and probably contributes to the beneficial effect. The probably rapid redistribution of prednisolone from the tissues after drug release from the liposomes highlights the impact of the properties of the drug compound itself on the liposomal drug delivery effect. It is therefore suggested that, from a pharmacodynamic point of view, further research should focus on released drug concentrations instead of the drug release.


Most of financial models, including the famous Black–Scholes–Merton options pricing model, rely upon the assumption that asset returns follow a normal distribution. However, this assumption is not justified by empirical data. To be more concrete, the empirical observations exhibit fat tails or heavy tails and implied volatilities against the strike prices demonstrate U-shaped curve resembling a smile, which is the famous volatility smile. In this paper we present a mean bound financial model and show that asset returns per time unit are Pareto distributed and assets are log Gamma distributed under this model. Based on this we study the sensitivity of the options prices to a change in underlying parameters, which are commonly called the Greeks, and derive options pricing formulas. Finally, we reveal the relation between correct volatility and implied volatility in Black–Scholes model and provide a mathematical explanation of volatility smile.


This review describes the current knowledge level of epidemiology, genetics and pathogenesis of psoriasis for continuing education purposes. The different clinical appearances and degrees of severity of the illness are portrayed and important associated diseases are depicted. Treatment goals are designated and different therapy forms like topical therapy, phototherapy and classical as well as modem systemic therapies (biologicals) are described.


© 2016 The Author(s) Global Networks © 2016 Global Networks Partnership & John Wiley & Sons Ltd Recent decades have seen dramatic changes in the global political arena, including shifts in geopolitical arrangements, increases in popular mobilization and contestation over the direction of globalization, and efforts by elites to channel or curb popular opposition. We explore how these factors affect changes in global politics. Organizational populations are shaped by ongoing interactions among civil-society, corporate and governmental actors operating at multiple levels. During the 1990s and 2000s, corporate and government actors promoted the 'neoliberalization of civil society' and the appropriation of movement concepts and practices to support elite interests. Not all movement actors have been passive witnesses to this process: they have engaged in intense internal debates, and they have adapted their organizational strategies to advance social transformation. This article draws from quantitative research on the population of transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs) and on qualitative research on contemporary transnational activism to describe changes in transnational organizing at a time of growing contention in world politics. We show how interactions among global actors have shaped new, hybrid organizational forms and spaces that include actors other than states in influential roles.


Performance enhancement of small conformal antennas, e.g., microstrip patch antennas (MPA's) is often accomplished by adding a superstrate or a substrate, comprising of artificial dielectrics that are also referred to as metamaterials, especially when the effective parameters differ substantially from those of the constituent media. These embellishments to the MPA are designed to increase its effective aperture area, broaden its impedance and pattern bandwidths, improve its side or back lobes, to name just a few. Typically, these metamaterial (or EBG) superstrates, as well as substrates, are designed to have DNG characteristics.


Malignant glioma (glioblastoma, GBM) is a lethal cancer resistant to multimodality therapeutic approaches. A high burden of tumor-specific mutant peptides (neoantigens) correlates with a more favorable prognosis and response to immunotherapies in selected solid tumors but the role of neoantigens and how they impact clinical outcome in most tumors including GBM remains unclear. Here, we exploited the similarity between tumor neoantigens and infectious disease-derived immune epitopes and applied a neoantigen fitness model for the identification of high quality neoantigens in human GBM. The neoantigen quality fitness model stratified GBM patients with more favorable clinical outcome and, together with tumor infiltration of CD8 T lymphocytes, identified a subgroup of GBM patients with the longest survival, thus exhibiting optimal performance. Conversely, neither tumor neoantigen burden from a quantity model nor the isolated enrichment of CD8 T lymphocytes could predict better survival of GBM patients. The GBM subgroup that emerged from the neoantigen quality model displays distinct genomic and transcriptomic features that should guide patient stratification for immunotherapy and maximal benefit of GBM patients. Citation Format: Jing Zhang, Francesca P. Caruso, Jason K. Sa, Sune Justesen, Do-Hyun Nam, Peter Sims, Michele Ceccarelli, Anna Lasorella, Antonio Iavarone. A high quality neoantigen fitness model cooperates with T lymphocyte infiltrates to identify glioblastoma patients with the longest survival [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-065.


Diabetes insipidus has been found in association with xanthomatosis; sarcoidosis; pulmonary fibrosis; trauma; tumors; hemorrhage and infarcts; infections, including syphilis, tuberculosis, measles, mumps, scarlet fever, chicken pox, influenza, encephalitis, and actinomycosis; pellagra; hereditary and congenital lesions such as Laurence-Moon-Biedl-syndrome, pituitary dwarfism, and idiopathic diabetes insipidus. 1 Many of the above conditions may cause or be found in association with pulmonary disease. The purpose of this paper is to discuss some of the relationships between the causes of diabetes insipidus and pulmonary disease and to present two cases of diabetes insipidus with pulmonary fibrosis and no known etiology. Case 1. —A 26-year-old white man was admitted to the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md., with an eight-month history of polydipsia and polyuria. He consumed up to 2 gallons (7.6 liters) of water daily and voided equally large quantities of urine. He voided approximately every 40 minutes and had nocturia as often


ABSTRACT A comprehensive approach to 13C tracer studies, labeling measurements by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, metabolite balancing, and isotopomer modeling, was applied for comparative metabolic network analysis of lysine-producing Corynebacterium glutamicum on glucose or fructose. Significantly reduced yields of lysine and biomass and enhanced formation of dihydroxyacetone, glycerol, and lactate in comparison to those for glucose resulted on fructose. Metabolic flux analysis revealed drastic differences in intracellular flux depending on the carbon source applied. On fructose, flux through the pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) was only 14.4% of the total substrate uptake flux and therefore markedly decreased compared to that for glucose (62.0%). This result is due mainly to (i) the predominance of phosphoenolpyruvate-dependent phosphotransferase systems for fructose uptake (PTSFructose) (92.3%), resulting in a major entry of fructose via fructose 1,6-bisphosphate, and (ii) the inactivity of fructose 1,6-bisphosphatase (0.0%). The uptake of fructose during flux via PTSMannose was only 7.7%. In glucose-grown cells, the flux through pyruvate dehydrogenase (70.9%) was much less than that in fructose-grown cells (95.2%). Accordingly, flux through the tricarboxylic acid cycle was decreased on glucose. Normalized to that for glucose uptake, the supply of NADPH during flux was only 112.4% on fructose compared to 176.9% on glucose, which might explain the substantially lower lysine yield of C. glutamicum on fructose. Balancing NADPH levels even revealed an apparent deficiency of NADPH on fructose, which is probably overcome by in vivo activity of malic enzyme. Based on these results, potential targets could be identified for optimization of lysine production by C. glutamicum on fructose, involving (i) modification of flux through the two PTS for fructose uptake, (ii) amplification of fructose 1,6-bisphosphatase to increase flux through the PPP, and (iii) knockout of a not-yet-annotated gene encoding dihydroxyacetone phosphatase or kinase activity to suppress overflow metabolism. Statistical evaluation revealed high precision of the estimates of flux, so the observed differences for metabolic flux are clearly substrate specific.


The Green Economy is something more than the sum of all possible related efforts to create a "green" turning point in the economy. It is a revolution of the way of life of the inhabitants of the planet to try to change a system that is leading us to self-destruction. The facts speak for themselves: the human factor is affecting the climate with vast greenhouse gas emissions due not only to the exploitation of fossil fuels but also to deforestation, agriculture and intensive livestock farms, and of course industrialization. The Green Revolution is thus the first collective effort to save the species. It has just started, but like all revolutions that start from the bottom it will make changes to our reality that become normality.


Study of compacted soils by geotechnical engineers over the past twenty years has resulted in a practical explanation of the compaction process, and of the effects of compaction variables, which is both simple and easily understood. Such explanations are essential to economical design and construction of a wide variety of fills. Earlier work focused on the concentration and distribution of solids in the compacted mass, while more recent research has dealt with the distribution of voids (pores). The physical model is one of coarse particles and aggregations of fine particles. The coarse particles are generally brittle, while the aggregates of fine particles may be either brittle or plastic, depending upon their moisture condition. The fill compaction is thus achieved by one of three mechanisms: (a) pushing the soil aggregates closer together, (b) breaking the brittle aggregates and (c) plastically deforming the plastic aggregates. The principal evidence of the compaction results is in the distribution of pores, viz., the relative amounts of pore space in inter aggregate and intra aggregate voids. The interaggregate pores are considerably larger than the other, and can be reasonably controlled by appropriate construction specifications for the fill. For example, the transmission of fluids through a landfill can be reduced by thinner compaction lifts, moisture control during compaction, and thorough rolling. The authors present experimental evidence to support their compactive mechanism model, which may be quite helpful to those geologists and engineers concerned with the design and construction of a wide variety of fills.


3D printing technology has attracted much attention due to its high potential in scientific and industrial applications. As an outstanding 3D printing technology, two-photon polymerization (TPP) microfabrication has been applied in the fields of micro/nanophotonics, micro-electromechanical systems, microfluidics, biomedical implants and microdevices. In particular, TPP microfabrication is very useful in tissue engineering and drug delivery due to its powerful fabrication capability for precise microstructures with high spatial resolution on both the microscopic and the nanometric scale. The design and fabrication of 3D hydrogels widely used in tissue engineering and drug delivery has been an important research area of TPP microfabrication. The resolution is a key parameter for 3D hydrogels to simulate the native 3D environment in which the cells reside and the drug is controlled to release with optimal temporal and spatial distribution in vitro and in vivo. The resolution of 3D hydrogels largely depends on the efficiency of TPP initiators. In this paper, we will review the widely used photoresists, the development of TPP photoinitiators, the strategies for improving the resolution and the microfabrication of 3D hydrogels.


Technology is the most important thing that involve in our everyday life. It is involving in almost every aspect of life like communication, work, shopping, recreation etc. Communication through mobile devices is the most effective and easy way now a day. It is faster, easier and you can communicate whenever you want from any-where. Mobile messaging or short message service is one of the popular ways to communicate using mobile devices. It is a big challenge to write and display Bangla characters on mobile devices. In this paper, we describe a Bangla text input method and rendering support on mobile devices for short message service.


Background: The present study was to investigate the influence of induction therapy on robot-assisted McKeown esophagectomy (RAME) with radical superior mediastinal lymph node dissection for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in a high-volume cancer center. Methods: A consecutive patient cohort who underwent RAME from January 2017 to May 2019 were reviewed. The perioperative outcomes of patients with induction therapy were compared with those who had surgery alone. Results: In total, 118 patients underwent RAME during the study period. The average age was 59.1 ± 7.5 years, including 100 male and 18 female patients. Thirty patients (25.4%) had induction therapy, and 88 patients did not receive induction therapy. The average age of the patients treated with induction therapy was younger than those received surgery alone (56.8 ± 6.1 vs. 59.5 ± 7.6 years, p = 0.039). There were no statistically significant differences in the mean operative time and estimated blood loss between both groups. Complications occurred in 46 (39.0%) patients. There were no statistically significant differences in the rates of any complications between both groups (p = 0.951). There were no deaths in either group. The hospital stay was prolonged in patients with induction therapy than those in the surgery-alone group (20.8 ± 8.9 vs. 16.8 ± 6.0, p = 0.048). There was no statistically significant difference in the average number of dissected lymph nodes in total and both recurrent laryngeal nerve stations between both groups. Conclusion: For patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, induction therapy has no influence on RAME with radical superior mediastinal lymph node dissection.


In this work, we propose an application specific routing algorithm to reduce the hot-spot temperature for Network-on-chip (NoC). Using the traffic information of applications, we develop a routing scheme which can achieve a higher adaptivity than the generic ones and at the same time distribute the traffic more uniformly. A set of deadlock-free admissible paths for all the communications is first obtained. To reduce the hot-spot temperature, we find the optimal distribution ratio of the communication traffic among the set of candidate paths. The problem of finding this optimal distribution ratio is formulated as a linear programming (LP) problem and is solved offline. A router microarchitecture which supports our ratio-based selection policy is also proposed. From the simulation results, the peak energy reduction considering the energy consumption of both the processors and routers can be as high as 16.6% for synthetic traffic and real benchmarks.


Electron-diffraction data for the arrangement and the orientation of the molecules and the side spacings of the two-dimensional crystals of thin multilayers of methyl and ethyl stearate, and octadecyl acetate are given. A state similar to the α-modification in crystals is a stable form for thin multilayers of long-chain esters. The 'multilayer' state is transient and is replaced by an aggregation of micro-crystals with 'fibre' orientation.


We describe the fossil vertebrate remains from a site ('Het Gat') on the bottom of the North Sea, between the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The site is a maximally c. 46 m deep gully that cuts through layers of Holocene and Eemian sediments and reaches into the Yarmouth Roads Formation. This part of the Yarmouth Roads Formation is a complex of fluvial sediments of late Early-Pleistocene, most probably Bavelian, age. The age of the Bavelian is considered to be some 1.000.000 750.000 years (1 0.75 Ma). As the fossils originate from the Yarmouth Roads Formation, the fauna is thus attributed a late Early Pleistocene age; we correlate it to localities such as Untermassfeld (Germany) and Saint-Prest (France), which both have an estimated age of c. 1 Ma. The faunal content of the site 'Het Gat' is provisionally as follows: (Proboscidea) Mammuthus meridionalis and/or Mammuthus trogontherii; (Artiodactyla) Hippopotamus antiquus, Alces latifrons, Megaloceros dawkinsi, Megaloceros savini, Eucladoceros ctenoides, Bison menneri; (Perissodactyla) Equus major, Stephanorhinus etruscus; (Carnivora) Homotherium cf. latidens, Ursus cf. etruscus. These finds necessitate us to discuss whether or not two different species of mammoth can have coexisted and can thus be present in one fossil faunal assemblage. There appears to have been a continuous evolutionary development leading from Early Pleistocene M. meridionalis to Late Pleistocene and Holocene M. primigenius. Most authors recognise an intermediate species M. trogontherii, of supposedly Middle Pleistocene age. The differences are in the dentition, while postcranially the taxa are difficult to distinguish. The molars we found in 'Het Gat' can either be interpreted as advanced M. meridionalis or as M. trogontherii. Until the taxonomy of Pleistocene Mammuthus species is clarified we doubt the presence of two species in one locality.


The Indian marketplace is vibrant and evolving as the Indian consumer is amongst the youngest in the world and willing to experiment with new retail formats and transaction modes. Added to this is an exodus of movement towards urban living and hectic work schedule steer the consumer for e-channels where the transaction is faster, convenient and from the comfort of his individual space. The study was conducted on a sample of 236 online buyers residing in the National Capital Region. Analysis revealed the existence of three distinctly different segments - online innovators, socially compliant buyers and the online laggard buyers. Each segment had its own particular motivations and usage patterns, thus there is a clear indication to understand and target them differently. However, trust, offers and discounts and attractive website design emerged as features important for all the three segments.


Without assuming prior legal knowledge, books in the Directions series introduce and guide readers through key points of law and legal debate. Questions, discussion points, and thinking points help readers to engage fully with each subject and check their understanding as they progress and knowledge can be tested by self-test questions and exam questions at the chapter end. This chapter continues the analysis of the Human Rights Act. It discusses how cases can be brought under the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) and what remedies are available from the courts if a violation of a Convention right is found. The aim here is to delve deeper into the issue of how the rights of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) are given further effect in the law of the UK by the HRA. The main issues discussed in the chapter include the importance of remedies and Article 13 ECHR—the right to a remedy, procedural issues for seeking remedies under the HRA, and remedies available under the HRA.


Microstructure, mechanical properties, corrosion resistance, and biocompatibility were studied for rapidly cooled 3 mm rods of Zr40Ti15Cu10Ni10Be25, Zr50Ti5Cu10Ni10Be25, and Zr40Ti15Cu10Ni5Si5Be25 (at.%) alloys, as well as for the reference 316L stainless steel and Ti-based Ti6Al4V alloy. Microstructure investigations confirm that Zr-based bulk metallic samples exhibit a glassy structure with minor fractions of crystalline phases. The nanoindentation tests carried out for all investigated composite materials allowed us to determine the mechanical parameters of individual phases observed in the samples. The instrumental hardness and elastic to total deformation energy ratio for every single phase observed in the manufactured Zr-based materials are higher than for the reference materials (316L stainless steel and Ti6Al4V alloy). A scratch tester used to determine the wear behavior of manufactured samples and reference materials revealed the effect of microstructure on mechanical parameters such as residual depth, friction force, and coefficient of friction. Electrochemical investigations in simulated body fluid performed up to 120 h show better or comparable corrosion resistance of Zr-based bulk metallic glasses in comparison with 316L stainless steel and Ti6Al4V alloy. The fibroblasts viability studies confirm the good biocompatibility of the produced materials. All obtained results show that fabricated biocompatible Zr-based materials are promising candidates for biomedical implants that require enhanced mechanical properties.


This work is partially supported by the grant AST-1517246 from the NSF. RS acknowledges funding from the European Research Council under the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC grant agreement [614922].


BackgroundAcute Ischemic Stroke is a leading cause of death worldwide. Many clinical studies have focused on the correlation between thyroid axis hormones and disease outcomes, but results remain controversial. One possible reason for the conflicting results is that the association among prognostic factors varies in different age groups. our study is focused on the effect of aging on the association and the degree of correlation between thyroid-related hormones and ischemic stroke outcomes. MethodsThe retrospective study was performed on 1025 stroke patient records. Included patients were in three age groups: Above 85 Group, 65-80 Group, and Below 65 Group. Spearman's rank correlation was performed to evaluate the association and the degree of correlation between thyroid hormones and the NIHSS score. ResultsA total of 604 patients meeting study criteria were included in the study. Excluding reasons were previous stroke, thyroid-related diseases, cancer, chronic liver diseases, and other reasons. T3 was found to be significantly associated with NIHSS score except in the Below 65 Group. fT3 was inversely related to the NIHSS in all age groups. TSH had similar association except in the Above 80 Year Group. T4 and fT4 didn't have significant association with disease severity, except in the 65-80 Year group for fT4. ConclusionsAging had a significant effect on the association and the magnitude of correlation between thyroid hormones and stroke outcomes. The more delicate age-dependent grouping methods could provide more accurate and clinically meaningful insights into the prognostic values of biomarkers.


The study aimed to demonstrate the impact of the accounting mechanisms for governance to reduce the negative effects of the practices and methods of creative accounting in Public Industrial Shareholding Companies in Jordan. The questionnaire was prepared and distributed to the community and my sample study consisting of Public Industrial Shareholding Companies in Jordan and the External Auditors. Where the community (57) companies were selected sample of (50) companies of the first sample and distributed to members the sample (6) qustioneers on each company and the number (300) qustioneers of them recovered (290) qustioneers , found of them (282) qustioneers to identify valid for statistical analysis. The second community and sample (354) from an external auditors, targeted sample from (200) external auditors distributed the questionnaires, and of recovered them (154) questionnaires, found (144) questionnaires for identifying valid statistical analysis. The questionnaires analysis by statistical methods: cronbach alpha, Pearson correlation coefficient, spearman- brown formula, multiple and simple linear regression analysis, stepwise multiple regression analysis, measures of descriptive statistics frequencies, percentages and averages and standard deviations. The study concluded that the adoption of corporate governance accounting mechanisms will contribute significantly to the disclosure of creative accounting practices, which will positively reflect on the quality of financial reporting and the effectiveness of the monitoring process, and this is achieved provided to overcome some of the shortcomings outlined by the study of some of these mechanisms. It is the study's recommendations to strengthen the accounting mechanisms for the governance of companies urged to apply, because this proposed role in increasing transparency and disclosure, which helps minimize the creative accounting, in addition to the importance of coordination between the internal audit and the Board of Directors and the external audit for risk management and control them.


Lab-scale and pilot-scale activated sludge bioreactors with integrated microfiltration membranes were operated over a period of up to three years. During the entire operation period no excess sludge was removed from the bioreactors apart from sampling, resulting in highly concentrated biomass in the reactors. The dry weight of the sludge ranged from 15 to 23 g MLSS l –1 for a plant fed with municipal wastewater and up to 60 g ll –1 for a lab-scale plant fed with high strength molasses. Stable biomass concentrations were reached at F/M ratios as low as approximately 0.07 kg COD (kg MLSS) –1 d –1 . The degradation performance of the analyzed reactors was high and stable. Direct microscopical studies revealed high amounts of free suspended cells and at various times also high numbers of filamentous bacteria. Surprisingly only low numbers of protozoa were observed during most of the time. By use of fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) only about 40% to 50% of all bacteria emitted probe conferred fluorescence signals sufficient for detection, compared to around 80% cells detectable in conventional activated sludge. Studies on oxygen consumption rates indicated that the biomass in the bioreactor was substrate limited. These data suggest that substrate is mainly oxidized and not used for growth purposes which offers the possibility to operate membrane bioreactors with significantly reduced secondary sludge production.


To the Editor.— Weissberg and Dodson 1 summarize interesting clinical observations on the possible relationship between recurrent vaginal and cervical ulcers and toxic shock syndrome (TSS) in a recent article in JAMA . The authors summarize previous reports back to 1977, ie, the year before the first clinical report on staphylococcal TSS. 2 In 1978, Kuusela reported that Staphylococcus aureus strains show binding of a specific serum and connective tissue protein— fibronectin (cold insoluble globulin)— to their surface. We now report on the possible role of fibronectin exposed in vaginal ulcers in association with tampon use, permitting S aureus to colonize these ulcers. The initial step of many mucosal infections involves binding of pathogens to specific mucosal cell surface receptors. Uropathogenic Escherichia coli colonize the upper urinary tract by specific hairlike proteins (pili or fimbriae) that recognize specific glycosphingolipid cell surface receptors while Neisseria gonorrhoeae were reported to recognize other glycolipid


Linz Donawitz converter gas (LDG) is one of the most important sources of fuel energy in steel industry, whose reasonable use plays a crucial role in energy saving and environment protection. In practice, online prediction of variation of gas holder level and gas demand by users is fundamental to gas utilization and scheduling activities. In this study, a least square support vector machine-based prediction model combined with the parallel strategies is proposed, in which parameter optimization is realized online by a parallel particle swarm optimization and a parallelized validation method, both being implemented with the use of a graphic processing unit. The experiments demonstrate that the online parameter optimization based model greatly improves the prediction quality compared to the version with the fixed modeling parameters. Furthermore, the parallelized strategies largely reduce the computational cost thus guaranteeing the real-time effectiveness of the practical application.


Background: Continuing Medical education during the COVID-19 Pandemic has been a great challenge to Medical educators, especially teaching clinical skills online. Aims: The study aims too study the efficacy of teaching ECG in online mode to first MBBS students in the Department of Physiology. Materials and Methods: There are 200 students in the first MBBS batch at Burdwan Medical College. Our method of teaching was flipped classroom-assisted self-directed learning. For teaching ECG to our students we had first arranged for presession MCQ to assess the initial level of knowledge. We had then provided the students with PowerPoint presentations with voice narrations for their self-study, following which the students were divided into batches of twenty and each batch had a team leader and a facilitator. These small batches were shown videos of instruments, methods of recording ECG, normal and abnormal ECG along with explanations in multiple sessions (10). Doubt clearing sessions were arranged for each batch and these sessions were brainstorming. The students were assessed with MCQs (10 marks each Session), oral questions, short answer type questions, spots, and problem-based questions. We also took a feedback survey from the students and provided the students with feedback regarding their performance. Results: MCQ assessments of students in Pre and Posttest session on ECG teaching classes were 50.39 ± 19.41 vs. 65.25 ± 9.14; P ≤ 0.001FNx08. Students performed significantly better in MCQ assessments of students on Normal parameters of ECG assessment as compared to Abnormal ECG parameters: 67.25 ± 10.98 vs. 63.157 ± 7.399; P = 0.000424FNx08. Results of Written Examination and Viva Examination of students in ECG classes were 64.844 ± 9.923 vs. 71.89 ± 10.49; P ≤ 0.001FNx08. Conclusions: The online method of teaching ECG was a success in the institution as observed in this study as observed in the assessment. Students performed better in viva in online exam for ECG and students were satisfied with online delivery.


Artificial intelligence has been widely used in reliability analysis for industrial equipment. The gear transmission systems are the most common components in mining machines. A simple fault in the gearbox may break down the mining machine for couple of days, resulting in enormous economic loss. Condition monitoring techniques can prevent unscheduled failures in the gear transmission systems. Although many techniques have been developed for gearbox fault diagnosis, one challenging task that the condition monitoring still faces is how to extract quantitative fault indicators. To this end, this paper proposes an improved quantitative recurrence analysis (IQRA) based on artificial intelligence theory. This new method takes advantages of chaos and fractal properties of the gear transmission system to obtain the recurrence of the system. The characteristics of different gear faults can be observed through the visualization of recurrence. Quantitative parameters can be then calculated from the recurrence plots. Experimental data acquired from a gearbox under variable working conditions was used to evaluate the proposed method. The analysis results demonstrate that the proposed IQRA method is able to effectively quantify different the gear faults.


Many astronomers have studied lunar crescent visibility throughout history. Its importance is unquestionable, especially in determining the local Islamic calendar and the dates of important Islamic events. Different criteria have been used to predict the possible visibility of the crescent moon during the sighting process. However, so far, the visibility models used are based on linear statistical theory, whereas the useful variables in this study are in the circular unit. Hence, in this paper, we propose new visibility tests using the circular regression model, which will split the data into three visibility categories; visible to the unaided eye, may need optical aid and not visible. We formulate the procedure to separate the categories using the residuals of the fitted circular regression model. We apply the model on 254 observations collected at Baitul Hilal Teluk Kemang Malaysia, starting from March 2000 to date. We show that the visibility test developed based on elongation of the moon (dependent variable) and altitude of the moon (independent variable) gives the smallest misclassification rate. From the statistical analysis, we propose the elongation of the moon 7.28°, altitude of the moon of 3.33° and arc of vision of 3.74 at sunset as the new crescent visibility criteria. The new criteria have a significant impact on improving the chance of observing the crescent moon and in producing a more accurate Islamic calendar in Malaysia.


Effective hyper-parameter tuning is essential to guarantee the performance that neural networks have come to be known for.In this work, a principled approach to choosing the learning rate is proposed for shallow feedforward neural networks. We associate the learning rate with the gradient Lipschitz constant of the objective to be minimized while training. An upper bound on the mentioned constant is derived, and a search algorithm, which always results in non-divergent traces, is proposed to exploit the derived bound. It is shown through simulations that the proposed search method significantly outperforms the existing tuning methods such as Tree Parzen Estimators (TPE). The proposed method is applied to three different existing applications: a) channel estimation in OFDM systems, b) prediction of the exchange currency rates, and c) offset estimation in OFDM receivers, and it is shown to pick better learning rates than the existing methods using the same or lesser compute power.


The autorotation of two tandem triangular cylinders at different gap distances is investigated by numerical simulations. At the Reynolds number of 200, three distinct regimes are observed with the increase of gap distance: namely, angular oscillation, quasi-periodic autorotation and 'chaotic' autorotation. For various gap distances, the characteristic of vortex shedding and vortex interaction are discussed. The phase graphs (angular acceleration vs. angular velocity) and the power spectra of moment are analyzed to characterize the motion of the cylinder. The Lyapunov exponent is also calculated to identify the existence of chaos.


A fuzzy requirement based strategy for QoS service in broadband networks was presented. With the analysis of QoS service in ATM networks and broadband IP networks, it gave a requirement based strategy for QoS service application with Fuzzy language evaluation principles. The requirement parameters are chosen according to the WANT/COST rule, and a fuzzy set is constructed to realize the fuzzy determinant. The simulation results show that it is useful to evaluate the QoS service in broadband networks, and to effectively simplify the access protocols and solve the billing issues in broadband networks.


The objective of the present study was to examine the influence of a long term Thai-Bo training program on muscular strength of the knee muscles, postural balance, and cardiovascular parameters. Thirty-five volunteers participated in two groups. Pre-and posttest with measuring of isometric and isokinetic strength of knee extension/flexion as well as postural balance on a force plate were performed before and after a weekly six-months training period. Furthermore cardiovascular parameters were measured during a stepwise increasing cycle ergometry. The results showed a significant increase of isometric strength and isokinetic strength at 600 /s in addition to an improvement in postural balance. Also a significant improvement of cardiovascular parameters in retest could be demonstrated.


We designed and evaluated an ambulatory care intervention aimed at improving glycemic control and reducing hospitalizations in patients with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM). One hundred seventy-one youth with IDDM, ages 10–15, were assigned either to a Care Ambassador intervention (N = 89) or to standard care (N = 82). The intervention consisted of scheduling, confirming, and documenting medical follow-up for 24 months. During the study, the intervention group had more diabetes visits, 7.1 ± 1.50 (mean ± SD)Vs. 5.2 ± 2.57 in the standard care group (P = 0.0001). In the at-risk subjects (baseline HbA1c 8.1%, N= 162), 50% of intervention subjects compared with 29% of standard care achieved HbA1c 8.6% while 17% of intervention subjects compared with 32% of standard care had values >9.6% (P = 0.039). During follow-up, severe hypoglycemia and hospitalization/ER use occurred at half the rate in the intervention group compared with standard care. This specific, low-cost intervention aimed at increasing ambulatory medical visits in at-risk patients with diabetes improves metabolic outcomes and significantly reduces hospital/ER use.


The physiological functional reserve and regenerative capacity of liver can be lost by diseases affecting liver. Camel liver infection is an imperative disease that leads to great losses to camel production and condemnation of large numbers of livers in slaughter houses. A number of diseases can affect camel liver but toxic substances, infectious diseases, parasitic hepatitis, fatty liver, and tumors are considered as the usual causes. Clinical signs and pathological lesions of liver diseases are usually nonspecific hence, the disease is frustrating to diagnose and often difficult to treat. It is tricky to know the primary cause and even to differentiate the location of liver pathology (hepatic vs pre/post -hepatic). Hence its tentative clinical diagnosis should be confirmed by special techniques and diagnostic approaches such as necropsy, histopathology, serum liver enzyme (ALT, AST, GGT and ALP) tests, molecular pathology tests like IHC, PCR and in situ hybridization, and diagnostic cytology. Molecular pathology tests are employed in specific antigen detection, nucleic acid amplification and localization of cells containing specific nucleic acid sequences. Thus, an up to date and special diagnostic approach towards differentiation and confirmation of liver pathology requires the combined application of the above tests coupled to anatomic-pathology of the organ.


In the usual method of calculating the solvent extraction of complex mixtures it is assumed that the complex mixture behaves like a binary mixture. However, the hypothetical binary composition of the mixture is never explicitly used; rather, an additive property of the mixture is used as an indication of its composition. The calculation must be done graphically on a triangular diagram or its equivalent.

On the assumption that the complex mixture consists of only two hypothetical components, empirical equations have been arrived at relating the distribution coefficients of these two components and of the solvent to the phase compositions. These equations contain three arbitrary constants. By use of the data from a minimum of three simple laboratory batch extractions of a given complex mixture, the three constants, plus the hypothetical binary composition of the original complex mixture, can be determined.

With the equations for the distribution coefficients, the equilibrium curve and tie lines for the system can be calculated. Properties of the raffinates and extracts can be measured and related to the hypothetical binary compositions of these mixtures.

The use of the method is demonstrated by comparing calculated results with laboratory yields and properties. The calculated results show good agreement with the experimental results. Calculations can be carried out not only on the triangular diagram, but by any of the other graphical methods that have been developed for the solvent extraction of binary mixtures. Equally important, calculations can be done analytically, and therefore the use of automatic computers is feasible.


This paper describes a wide-band surface acoustic wave (SAW) filter designed to achieve large stop-band attenuation. The SAW filters using slanted finger interdigital transducers are suitable for mid- or wide-band filters. To achieve a stop-band attenuation of more than 80 dB, two SAW filters using slanted finger unidirectional transducers (SFUDTs) were cascaded. Since these SFUDT filters have center-to-center distances that differ by one-fourth of the acoustic wavelength at the center frequency, the triple transit echo was effectively compensated. A cascaded-pair SFUDT SAW filter with a fractional bandwidth of 15 percent was designed and fabricated on a 128°Y-X LiNbO3 substrate. An insertion loss of 14 dB, amplitude ripples of 0.5 dB and stop-band attenuation of 80 dB or more were achieved.


Investigations into human norovirus infection, replication and pathogenesis, as well as the development of potential antiviral agents, have been restricted by the lack of a cell culture system for human norovirus. To date, the optimal cell culture surrogate virus model for studying human norovirus biology is the murine norovirus (MNV). In this report we generate a tetracycline-regulated, inducible eukaryotic cell system expressing the entire MNV ORF1 polyprotein. Once induced, the MNV ORF1 polyprotein was faithfully processed to the six mature non-structural proteins that predominately located to a discrete perinuclear region, as has been observed in active MNV infection. Furthermore, we found that expression of the ORF1 polyprotein alone was sufficient to induce apoptosis, characterised by caspase-9 activation and survivin down-regulation. This cell line provides a valuable new tool for studying MNV ORF1 non-structural protein function, screening for potential antiviral agents and acts as a proof-of-principle for such systems to be developed for human noroviruses.


Summary China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), designed to build critical infrastructure and coordinate economic growth, is the most significant development initiative in modern history. The BRI has a documented vision for sustainability, including environmental impact assessments and responsibility tenets. Despite this, a growing body of literature has found adverse effects of BRI projects on protected land and species. To understand corporate responsibility and regulations for companies participating in the BRI, we gathered information on 260 BRI companies using the Refinitiv Eikon BRI Connect database and the China Global Investment Tracker. The results revealed a significant gap in corporate responsibility reporting for biodiversity impacts, environmental restoration, environmental project financing and the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 14 'Life below Water' and 15 'Life on Land'. The modest fraction of companies that we found to report biodiversity accountability highlights the need to restructure and incentivize the reporting of environmental and biodiversity risks. The current evidence of limited adherence to responsibility measures highlights a clear opportunity to align BRI development with the BRI's vision for sustainability, and to strengthen links for policy engagement within Chinese regulatory frameworks and international obligations at the United Nations within its SDG framework.


A preliminary study was performed on the feasibility and validity of objective categorization of patients into basic 'treatment types'. The Reflex Metrograph was used for a three-dimensional cast analysis, and an H.P. 9874 A digitizer was used for a two-dimensional radiograph analysis. In both measurement techniques the method error was found to be acceptable. Using the Ricketts 10 Factor Analysis, it was found that by means of 'Clinical deviators' radiographs could be used to distinguish orthognathic cases from the other treatment groups. The three-dimensional study cast analysis showed promise, distinguishing a number of statistically significant factors within the lower arch and between simple and fixed appliance cases. A number of variables which might have been expected to be significant were confounded by their range of values within the groups. Further investigation is required with an improved technique of initial categorization of patients, perhaps by means of a panel of clinicians, and more sophisticated statistical techniques.