Advances in virtual outcrop technologies and their introduction to fracture characterization allow extraction of fracture data from very large and inaccessible areas. The recent development of automated or semiautomated methods for fracture extraction aims to reduce or avoid tedious, time-consuming, and biased manual interpretation of fractures from virtual outcrops. We present a benchmarking exercise between a previously proposed automated fracture picking method, manual picking, and fieldwork methods. Comparison between the three methods highlighted their relative advantages and limitations. The automated fracture picking method provided excellent results in terms of fracture orientation, size, spatial distribution, and density. Fieldwork is complementary to fracture extraction from virtual outcrops, and it should focus on quality control of remote sensing data, poorly exposed areas, small-scale observations, diagenesis, timing of fracture development, building conceptual models, and linking fracture stratigraphy to rock properties. We propose a best practice for the use and integration of manual and/or automated fracture extraction from virtual outcrop and fieldwork data for fracture characterization and modeling from outcrop analogs. We consider integration of different methods as the best way to improve the modeling exercise while reducing operational costs and risks.


The presence of accessory renal arteries has been considered a relative contraindication in the setting of a live related renal transplant program. Failure to properly anastomose the arteries can cause segmental infarction leading to increased morbidity. The authors describe a transplant patient with a well-defined cortical defect on a Tc-99m DMSA study, which was caused by a vascular complication. Although Tc-99m DTPA scintigraphy revealed the hypoperfused area, Tc-99m DMSA provided better delineation of the infarcted parenchymal zone.


This paper formally investigates the relationship between Open Logic Programming (OLP) and Description Logics (DL). A description logic is designed to represent two different forms of knowledge, A T-Box represents definitional knowledge, i.e. definitions for a set of concepts. An A-Box represents assertional knowledge about specific domain objects. OLP is a declarative, terminological interpretation of the formalism of Abductive Logic Programming. In this interpretation, an abductive logic program is considered to consist of a T-Box providing definitions for non-abducible predicates and an A-Box providing assertional knowledge in the form of first order logic axioms. We define a provably correct mapping of DL theories to open logic programs, and identify sublanguages of OLP corresponding to several description logics. We also show strong correspondences between derivations produced by a typical DL algorithm and an abductive resolution procedure. The correspondences clarify long-questioned relationships between Logic Programming and Description Logics. To the LP community they may offer the possibility to import efficient reasoning techniques used in description logics. More importantly, the correspondences indicate the value of OLP as a suitable and highly expressive knowledge representation language, as opposed to both standard LP and first order logic. As current description logics are all subsets of OLP, the latter may also indicate directions for enhancing the expressivity of the former.


A secondary analysis of data collected from 1,130 young people ages 15 to 24 in a population-based household survey to assess the reproductive health needs of young people in three communities in Jamaica was conducted to determine the relationships among three measures of sexual violence, background variables, three measures of sexual risk taking (early sexual debut, multiple partners, and no condom at last sex), and two reproductive health outcomes (genital discharge within the past 12 months and pregnancy). In the multivariate analyses, forced first sex increased the likelihood of genital discharge among males (odds ratio, OR = 5.33) and females (OR = 2.02) and pregnancy among females (OR = 2.05), controlling for background characteristics and sexual risk taking. Associations between sexual violence and reported genital discharge and pregnancy that were not mediated by our measures of sexual risk taking were found. More research into the causal mechanisms for this association is needed.


We consider the UV-protected inflation, where the inflaton potential is obtained by quantum (one-loop) breaking of a global symmetry into a discrete symmetry. In this model, all coupling scales are sub-Planckian. This is achieved by coupling the inflaton kinetic term to the Einstein tensor such that the friction is enhanced gravitationally at high energies. In this respect, this new interaction makes virtually any potential adequate for inflation while keeping the system perturbative unitary. We show that even if the gravitationally enhanced friction intrinsically contains new nonlinearities, the UV-protected inflation (and any similar models) behaves as a single field scenario with red tilted spectrum and potentially detectable gravitational waves. Interestingly enough, we find that non-Gaussianity of the curvature perturbations in the local form are completely dominated by the nonlinear gauge transformation from the spatially flat to uniform-field gauge and/or by parity violating interactions of the inflaton and gauge bosons. In particular, the parity violating interactions may produce detectable non-Gaussianity.


Residual dipolar couplings (RDCs), in combination with molecular order matrix calculations, were used to unambiguously determine the complete relative stereochemistry of an organic compound with five stereocenters. Three simple one-dimensional experiments were utilized for the measurements of (13)C-(1)H, (13)C-(19)F, (19)F-(1)H, and (1)H-(1)H RDCs. The order matrix calculation was performed on each chiral isomer independently. The fits were evaluated by the comparison of the root-mean-square deviation (rmsd) of calculated and measured RDCs. The order tensor simulations based on two different sets of RDC data collected with phage and bicelles are consistent. The resulting stereochemical assignments of the stereocenters obtained from using only RDCs are in perfect agreement with those obtained from the single-crystal X-ray structure. Six RDCs are found to be necessary to run the simulation, and seven are the minimum to get an acceptable result for the investigated compound. It was also shown that (13)C-(1)H and (1)H-(1)H RDCs, which are the easiest to measure, are also the most important and information-rich data for the order matrix calculation. The effect of each RDC on the calculation depends on the location of the corresponding vector in the structure. The direct RDC of a stereocenter is important to the configuration determination, but the configuration of stereocenters devoid of protons can also be obtained from analysis of nearby RDCs.


Background: Uterine corpus endometrioid carcinoma (UCEC), a common gynecological malignancy with high incidence, affects the mental and physical health of women. It is increasingly evident that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have causative roles in cancers including UCEC. However, very little is known about the cancer hallmark-related risks for UCEC based on lncRNAs and genes. Methods: In this study, a computational integrated pipeline was development to evaluate cancer hallmark-related risk for each UCEC patient based on gene and lncRNA expression. Results: Some UCEC-specific cancer hallmark-related genes and lncRNAs were identified. Core modules were extracted from co-expressed UCEC-specific lncRNAs and genes networks for each cancer hallmark. Some core modules showed specific features and functions. Follow a multi-dimensional rank approach and core modules, each UCEC sample was given an integrated cancer hallmark-related risk score. We divided all the UCEC patients to diverse hallmark risk groups including multi-hallmark, media-hallmark and single-hallmark groups and they showed different prognosis. We also identified some key lncRNAs which participated in multiple kinds of cancer hallmarks. These key lncRNAs were associated with some essential pathways such as estrogen receptor signaling. Conclusions: In conclusion, the present study provide novel insights to the classification and treatment of UCEC.


This study analyses some hydrological driving forces and their interrelation with surface‐flow initiation in a semiarid Caatinga basin (12 km2), Northeastern Brazil. During the analysis period (2005 – 2014), 118 events with precipitation higher than 10 mm were monitored, providing 45 events with runoff, 25 with negligible runoff and 49 without runoff. To verify the dominant processes, 179 on‐site measurements of saturated hydraulic conductivity (Ksat) were conducted. The results showed that annual runoff coefficient lay below 0.5% and discharge at the outlet has only occurred four days per annum on average, providing an insight to the surface‐water scarcity of the Caatinga biome. The most relevant variables to explain runoff initiation were total precipitation and maximum 60‐min rainfall intensity (I60). Runoff always occurred when rainfall surpassed 31 mm, but it never occurred for rainfall below 14 mm or for I60 below 12 mm h−1. The fact that the duration of the critical intensity is similar to the basin concentration time (65 min) and that the infiltration threshold value approaches the river‐bank saturated hydraulic conductivity support the assumption that Hortonian runoff prevails. However, none of the analysed variables (total or precedent precipitation, soil moisture content, rainfall intensities or rainfall duration) has been able to explain the runoff initiation in all monitored events: the best criteria, e.g. failed to explain 27% of the events. It is possible that surface‐flow initiation in the Caatinga biome is strongly influenced by the root‐system dynamics, which changes macro‐porosity status and, therefore, initial abstraction. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Prospective mathematics teachers often start their practice with images of learning situations quite different from current curriculum orientations. Such is the case of Fabio, who, at the beginning of his practicum, proposed mostly exercises and promoted unidirectional communication. We analyse the contribution of a teacher education setting based on ICT (email and forum) in developing his professional knowledge, looking especially at tasks and forms of communication. The qualitative and interpretative case study of this prospective teacher is based on interviews and on the analysis of the documentation generated in the teacher education setting. The results show that, in addition to exercises, the prospective teacher began to suggest more open and challenging tasks, and to promote contributive communication in his classroom. In planning his lessons, Fabio's professional knowledge showed improvement in the diversity of tasks that he adopted, in the attention he gave to student activity, in the adequacy of instructional materials that he used, and in the forms of communication that he promoted, which involved more students in the classroom activities. By reflecting on his actions, he developed his ability to gather information about his practice, how to interpret it, question it, and reshape it. The reconstruction of particular parts of the practice helped Fabio to expand his professional knowledge and to see practice as a source of learning to teach.


OBJECTIVE
2-methylbutyryl-CoA dehydrogenase deficiency, also known as short/branched-chain acyl-CoA dehydrogenase (SBCAD) deficiency, is a recently described autosomal recessive disorder of L-isoleucine metabolism. Only 4 affected individuals in 2 families have been described. One patient developed athetoid cerebral palsy, and another had severe motor developmental delay with muscle atrophy. A sibling of the first patient is asymptomatic after prenatal diagnosis and early treatment. Family investigations in the second family revealed that the patient's mother was also affected but asymptomatic.

METHODS
We report 8 additional patients identified by prospective newborn screening using tandem mass spectrometry.

RESULTS
Molecular genetic analysis performed for 3 of these patients revealed that all are homozygous for an 1165A>G mutation that causes skipping of exon 10 of the SBCAD gene. Although there was no obvious consanguinity, all patients belong to the Hmong, an ancient ethnic group that originated in China and constitutes only 0.8% and 0.6% of the Minnesota and Wisconsin population, respectively. Dietary treatment was initiated in the neonatal period. Except for 1 patient who developed mild muscle hypotonia, all patients remain asymptomatic at ages ranging from 3 to 14 months of age.

CONCLUSIONS
These cases suggest that SBCAD deficiency is another inborn error of metabolism detectable by newborn screening using tandem mass spectrometry. The continued efficacy of long-term dietary therapy instituted presymptomatically remains to be established.


Docosahexaenoic acid (DHA, 22:6) and eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA, 20:5) have been reported to improve metabolic disorders, but their differential effects on anti-obesity under insulin resistance (IR) are still unclear. We fed IR mice with high-fat diet with added 1%, 2%, 4% (w/w) DHA or EPA for 12 weeks. Changes in weight, food intake, white adipose tissue (WAT), liver and blood lipids were assessed. GPR120 and PPARγ of WAT were evaluated to explore the related molecular mechanisms of DHA and EPA for anti-obesity in IR mice. 1%DHA and 1%EPA inhibit adipogenesis by down-regulating GPR120; 4%DHA stimulates browning of WAT and improves IR and inflammatory infiltration by up-regulating PPARγ; 4%EPA exerts its anti-obesity effect by mechanisms independent of PPARγ and GPR120 signaling.


The aim of present study was to design the concept of bilayered tablets containing Pioglitazone hydrochloride for immediate release using cross Povidone as super disintegrant and Metformin hydrochloride for sustained release using poly ethylene oxide (PEO-303) as matrix forming polymer. The tablets were evaluated for physicochemical properties. All the values are found to be satisfactory. In vitro release studies were carried out as per USP in pH 1.2 and phosphate buffer pH 6.8 using the USP apparatus II. The release kinetics of Metformin hydrochloride was evaluated using the regression coefficient analysis. The formulated tablets (F5) shows first order release and diffusion was the dominant mechanism of drug release. The polymer Polyethylene oxide (PEO303) had significant effect on the release of Metformin HCl matrix tablets (F5).Thus formulated bilayer tablets proved immediate release of Pioglitazone and Metformin HCl as sustained release over a period of 12 hours. The stability studies and FT-IR studies were also indicating the absence of strong interactions between the components and suggesting drug-excipient compatibility in all the formulations examined.


Joint effects of lysin, eprin and formaldehyde in acute and subacute experiments were investigated. As shown, this effect can be evaluated as a partial summing with coefficient 1.84.


The article examines the role and importance of the administrative control and the administrative-penal liability as one of the main legal instruments for consumer protection. The Administrative-legal instruments for consumer protection are of big importance for the practical application, because of their public significance and because of the necessity that the state protects the consumers as the more vulnerable party in these legal relations through its competent organs of executive power. Based on the normative analysis are made conclusions and summaries about the application of the legislation in the sphere of consumer rights protection from the point of view of the Administrative Law.


The application of the wavelet transform in the joint time delay and Doppler stretch estimation for a wideband signal is discussed. It was previously shown by the authors that, under a high signal to noise ratio, the joint estimation using the wavelet transform is unbiased and the estimation variance is close to the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) for a large variety of signals. Here, it is demonstrated that the joint estimation accuracy depends on the signal structure and the optimum signal structure is strongly related to the form of its wavelet transform. Optimum signals for the joint estimation of time delay and the Doppler stretch under practical constraints are designed, and, through computer simulations, their performance is shown to be superior to that of the commonly used signals.<<ETX>>


– The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effect of tert-Butylhydroquinone (TBHQ) on the quality characteristics of low-fat Kalari, a hard and dry cheese. The products treated with TBHQ were assessed for various oxidative stability and storage-quality parameters. , – Low-fat Kalari was prepared and treated with different concentrations of TBHQ (0, 200, 300 ppm) and aerobically packaged within low-density polyethylene pouches and assessed for physicochemical, microbiological and sensory characteristics under refrigerated (4 ± 1°C) conditions. , – TBHQ showed a significant (p
 <
 0.05) effect on the lipid stability, as the treated products exhibited significantly (p
 <
 0.05) lower TBARS (mg malonaldehyde/kg) values for the entire period of storage. pH showed a significant (p
 <
 0.05) decreasing trend, whereas titratable acidity followed a significant (p
 <
 0.05) increasing trend with storage period in control as well as treated products. No significant (p
 >
 0.05) effect was observed on the microbiological characteristics of the products, as TBHQ-treated products showed comparable (p
 >
 0.05) values for total plate count, psychrophillic count and yeast and mould count. Significantly (p
 <
 0.05) higher scores were observed for various sensory parameters of the treated products. , – TBHQ successfully improved the storage quality of low fat Kalari during refrigerated (4 ± 1°C) storage and may be commercially exploited as an antioxidant in Kalari and other cheese like products.


INTRODUCTION
 It is cautioned that there is an element of risk in early discharge insofar as medical supervision during the infant's transitional period must, of necessity, be intermittent rather than continuous. With this in mind, the following guidelines are suggested.
 CRITERIA FOR EARLY INFANT DISCHARGE
 1. Attendance at prenatal childbirth education and infant care classes where problems of the first three to five days of life are included.
 2. Identification of a supporting person to assist with care at home in the neonatal period.
 3. Identification of physician-directed source of continuous medical care following hospital discharge. This should include an appointment at 2 to 3 days of age.
 4. Uncomplicated antepatum, intrapartum, and postpartum course of both mother and infant.
 5. Term infant (38 to 41 completed weeks) who is normally growrn (2,500 to 4,500 gm) and who is examined by a physician prior to discharge and found normal.
 6. A minimum of six hours of hospitalization during which time the infant has achieved thermal homeostasis and fed successfully (demonstrated a normal suck and swallowing mechanism).
 7. Laboratory data: (a) maternal or cord blood serologic test for syphilis; (b) cord blood (or infant blood) type and Coombs if mother Rh negative or type O. A Coombs test should be performed on all infants if a screening test for irregular antibodies was not performed during pregnancy; and (c) hemoglobin and blood sugar determinations as clinically indicated.
 8. Maternal skill and demonstrated ability with: (a) feeding technique; (b) skin care, including cord care; (c) temperature assessment and measurement with thermometer and (d) assessment of infant well being and recognition of illness.


Service-Learning in Occupational Therapy Education: Philosophy and Practice will explore the use of service-learning as a pedagogical tool for educators to enhance occupational therapy students' knowledge and skills in the areas of critical thinking and problem solving, diversity, health promotion, community issues, social justice and citizenship. These areas are representative of core competencies needed by occupational therapy professionals for occupation-based practice in the 21st century. This book will describe philosophical and theoretical principles of service-learning in relationship to occupational therapy philosophical and pedagogical traditions. Effective service-learning educational strategies and experiential applications of occupational therapy in the community will be highlighted through the presentation of case studies of service-learning initiatives in occupational therapy programs across the United States. Examples of how to design, implement and assess service-learning projects and partnerships will be provided along with insights and lessons learned from faculty engaging in service learning. Samples of syllabi, readings, websites, assignments and assessments will be provided to encourage faculty to explore service-learning for course and curricular use.


We systematically reviewed randomized controlled trials examining inhaled nitric oxide (INO) for the treatment of acute respiratory distress syndrome or acute lung injury in children and adults. Qualitative assessments of identified trials were made, and metaanalyses were performed according to Cochrane methodology. Five randomized controlled trials (n = 535) met entry criteria. One study demonstrated significant improvement in oxygenation in the first 4 days of treatment, with no difference after this. There was no difference in ventilator-free days between treatment and placebo groups, and no specific dose of INO was more advantageous than any other. INO had no effect on mortality in trials without crossover of treatment failures to open-label INO (relative risk, 0.98; 95% confidence interval, 0.66–1.44). Other clinical indicators of effectiveness, such as duration of hospital and intensive care stay, were inconsistently reported. Lack of data prevented assessment of all outcomes. If further trials assessing INO in acute respiratory distress syndrome or acute lung injury are to proceed, they should be stratified for primary etiology, incorporate other modalities that may affect outcome, and evaluate clinically relevant outcomes before any benefit of INO can be excluded.


The study aimed to provide within-race data on the time course of pulmonary function during a mountain ultramarathon (MUM). Additionally, we wanted to assess possible sex differences regarding pre- to post-race change in pulmonary and inspiratory muscle function. Lastly, we were interested in evaluating whether changes in respiratory function were associated with relative running speed and due to general or specific fatigue. 47 athletes (29 males and 18 females; 41 ± 5 years) were submitted to a cardiopulmonary exercise test (CPET) before a 107-km MUM. Spirometric variables: forced vital capacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1), FEV1/FVC and peak expiratory flow (PEF); maximal inspiratory pressure (MIP); squat jump (SJ) and handgrip strength (HG) were assessed before and after the race. Additionally PEF was measured at three aid stations (33rd, 66th and 84th km) during the race. PEF declined from the 33rd to the 66th km (p = 0.004; d = 0.72) and from the 84th km to the finish line (p = 0.003; d = 0.90), while relative running speed dropped from the first (0-33 km) to the second (33-66 km) race section (p < 0.001; d = 1.81) and from the third (66-84 km) to the last race section (p < 0.001; d = 1.61). Post-race, a moderate reduction was noted in FVC (-13%; p < 0.001; d = 0.52), FEV1 (-19.5%; p < 0.001; d = 0.65), FEV1/FVC (-8.4%; p = 0.030; d = 0.59), PEF (-20.3%; p < 0.001; d = 0.58), MIP (-25.3%; p < 0.001; d = 0.79) and SJ (-31.6%; p < 0.001; d = 1.42). Conversely, HG did not change from pre- to post-race (-1.4%; p = 0.56; d = 0.05). PEF declined during the race in parallel with running speed drop. No sex differences were noted regarding post-race respiratory function, except that FEV1/FVC decay was significantly greater among women. The magnitude of pre- to post-race respiratory function decline was uncorrelated with relative running speed.


The classic approach of controlled volunteer studies to study drug metabolism is difficult or impossible to undertake for novel psychoactive substances (NPS), as there is generally very limited information available to allow appropriate dose finding and safety. A viable and powerful alternative is the identification and characterization of phase I and II metabolites of such drugs by examining the concordance of data gathered from analysis of microsomal incubates with that from analysis of specimens collected from individuals with analytically confirmed use of NPS. Liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry provides the ability to reliably identify such metabolites. We used this technique here to study the metabolism of the ketamine analogue methoxetamine. A large number of metabolites were identified in the in vitro studies including normethoxetamine, O-desmethylmethoxetamine, dihydromethoxetamine, dehydromethoxetamine and several structural isomers of hydroxymethoxetamine and hydroxynormethoxetamine. pH dependent liquid-liquid extraction was used to discriminate phenolic from alcoholic metabolites. Phase II glucuronide conjugates included those of O-desmethylmethoxetamine, O-desmethylnormethoxetamine and O-desmethylhydroxymethoxetamine. The majority of these phase I and II metabolites were confirmed to be present in urine collected from three individuals presenting with acute methoxetamine toxicity.


Bone marrow stromal cells serve hematopoietic microenvironments where different blood cells are controlled in their growth and differentiation. To characterize functions of stromal cells, 33 bone marrow stromal cells including preadipocytes, endothelial cells, and fibroblasts were established from transgenic mice harboring temperature‐sensitive SV40 T‐antigen gene and their selective stimulatory abilities to support large colony formation of lineage‐specific hematopoietic progenitor cells (erythroid, monocyte/macrophage, granulocyte, and monocyte‐granulocyte) were examined. Among established stromal cells, 27 clones showed erythropoietic stimulatory activity in the presence of erythropoietin. On myeloid progenitors, the stromal cells showed lineage‐restricted stimulatory activity and a reciprocal relationship was observed between granulocyte formation and macrophage formation, but these activities were not dependent on the amount of produced colony‐stimulating factors (CSFs). Our present study with many stromal cells established from bone marrow indicated that each stromal cell in the bone marrow may provide the preferable microenvironment for a rapid expansion of the lineage‐restricted progenitor cells in combination with CSFs. © 1995 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


The aim of this research study is to look for possible research opportunities to applying blockchain technology in supply chain management and logistics. In addition, accompanying challenges to utilizing blockchain in supply chain management along with possible solutions are also provided. To fulfil the study objective, both theoretical and empirical approaches are adopted for this study. With respect to theoretical approach, relevant literature on blockchain was reviewed considering both technical and economic aspects, its architecture and implementation challenges. The empirical part of the research was conducted by studying three case companies operating in the domains of wood construction, consulting and regional development, and technology. Three case companies were analysed with respect to the application of blockchain in their supply chain operations. From the study outcomes, it was noticed that blockchain technology can be utilized successfully in supply chain management in various business domains in order to provide, for instance, better services and transparency.


Report from the 43rd Annual Meeting of the European Society for Blood & Marrow Transplantation 2017, 26-29 March 2017, Marseille, France Cytomegalovirus (CMV) reactivation is a potentially life-threatening complication in immunocompromised recipients of hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). Its management was therefore a key topic for over 5000 delegates from 85 countries attending the 43rd Annual Meeting of the European Society for Blood & Marrow Transplantation 2017. The currently available anti-CMV armamentarium is seldom used to prevent CMV reactivation due to the associated myelosuppression and renal toxicity. Following HCT, CMV reactivation is generally managed pre-emptively using sensitive assays for early detection of viral DNA (and to a lesser extent antigenemia) and, where necessary, treatment with antiviral drugs with the aim of preventing CMV disease. However, any degree of CMV reactivation increases the risk of mortality, and novel antiviral therapies may offer the possibility of prophylaxis to prevent CMV reactivation and improve survival after HCT.


The effectiveness of enteral and parenteral feeding in supporting a satisfactory nutritional status and/or reversing protein-energy malnutrition was evaluated in 28 children, ages 1-19 (14 female) with advanced malignant disease (21 solid tumors, 7 leukemia-lymphoma). At the onset of treatment, 21 patients received intensive nutritional counseling (INC) and oral supplementation while seven received total parenteral nutrition (TPN). Sixteen of 21 patients who received INC had a decreased intake (x 48 +/- 24%) Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) for kilocalories and dramatic weight loss (x 16.4 +/- 12.4%). A total of 18 patients received TPN for a mean of 24 days (7-60); kcal averaged 90 +/- 26% RDA during weight gain. At onset of TPN, the mean serum albumin, transferrin and total lymphocyte counts were 3.06 +/- 0.38 g/dl, 175 +/- 62 mg/dl, and 1102 +/- 966/mm3 respectively, 15/18 children had subnormal anthropometric measurements and 17/18 patients were anergic to recall skin test antigens. TPN for less than 9-14 days neither repleted weight, skinfold reserves, nor serum albumin concentrations (greater than 3.2 g/dl) although an early increase (p less than .02) in transferrin concentration was observed. However, TPN for 28 days supported weight gain (3.27 kg, 16 +/- 6%), increased serum albumin (0.62 +/- 0.43 g/dl, p less than .001) and transferrin (62 +/- 42, p less than .002) to normal concentrations and reversed anergy in 7/11 patients retested. This study documents the severity of protein energy malnutrition which accompanies intense treatment of children with cancer and the nutritional and immunological benefits of a 28 day course of TPN.


Pre-trained language models (PLMs) have played an increasing role in multimedia research. In terms of vision-language (VL) tasks, they often serve as a language encoder and still require an additional fusion network for VL reasoning, resulting in excessive memory overhead. In this paper, we focus on exploring PLMs as a stand-alone model for VL reasoning tasks. Inspired by the recently popular prompt tuning, we first prove that the processed visual features can be also projected onto the semantic space of PLMs and act as prompt tokens to bridge the gap between single- and multi-modal learning. However, this solution exhibits obvious redundancy in visual information and model inference, and the placement of prompt tokens also greatly affects the final performance. Based on these observations, we further propose a novel transfer learning approach for PLMs, termed Dynamic Visual Prompting (DVP). Concretely, DVP first deploys a cross-attention module to obtain text-related and compact visual prompt tokens, thereby greatly reducing the input length of PLMs. To obtain the optimal placement, we also equip DVP with a reinforcement-learning based search algorithm, which can automatically merge DVP with PLMs for different VL tasks via a very short search process. In addition, we also experiment DVP with the recently popular adapter approach to keep the most parameters of PLMs intact when adapting to VL tasks, helping PLMs achieve a quick shift between single- and multi-modal tasks. We apply DVP to two representative PLMs, namely BERT and T5, and conduct extensive experiments on a set of VL reasoning benchmarks including VQA2.0, GQA and SNLIVE. The experimental results not only show the advantage of DVP on efficiency and performance, but also confirm its superiority in adapting pre-trained language models to VL tasks.


We prove that all Rényi entanglement entropies of spin-chains described by generic (gapped), translational invariant matrix product states (MPS) are extensive for disconnected sub-systems: All Rényi entanglement entropy densities of the sub-system consisting of every k-th spin are non-zero in the thermodynamic limit if and only if the state does not converge to a product state in the thermodynamic limit. Furthermore, we provide explicit lower bounds to the entanglement entropy in terms of the expansion coefficient of the transfer operator of the MPS and spectral properties of its fixed point in canonical form. As side-result we obtain a lower bound for the expansion coefficient and singular value distribution of a primitve quantum channel in terms of its Kraus-rank and entropic properties of its fixed-point. For unital quantum channels this yields a very simple lower bound on the distribution of singular values and the expansion coefficient in terms of the Kraus-rank. Physically, our results are motivated by questions about equilibration in many-body localized systems, which we review.


Instead of doing arithmetic operations using fuzzy membership functions for fuzzy numbers, parameterized representation of fuzzy numbers have been used in arithmetic operations in the literature. The most applied parameterized fuzzy numbers used in many of the research papers are symmetric and asymmetric triangular and trapezoidal fuzzy numbers. Although addition and subtraction of parameterized fuzzy numbers give closed form results, multiplication and division of these fuzzy numbers generate approximated results. Therefore, some approximation methods have been proposed for fuzzy multiplication and division. In this study, we propose a new approximation method based on linear programming for fuzzy division. In order to show the applicability of the proposed method, some examples are solved using this method and the results are compared with those generated by other methods in the literature. The proposed method has produced better results than those generated by the others.


It is often suggested that fire acts as an environmental filter that selects species and functional traits, and reduces trait variability within communities, affecting ecosystem function and underlying services. This may be particularly important in fire-sensitive ecosystems, such as the central European Alps, where fires are scarce. According to climate and land use change scenarios in Europe, fire risk will increase during the next decades, raising important questions about the maintenance of ecological and functional resilience in these regions. We used two families of saproxylic beetles (i.e. Cerambycidae and Buprestidae) as model group to test the combined effect of fire and altitude on species and trait composition in the central Alps of Switzerland. Trait response was based on weighted means and variation of 15 traits over the communities. Our results showed an overall positive effect of fire on taxonomic and functional diversity, while indicator species and community analyses revealed that the response to fire was also modulated by altitude. The positive effect of fire and the presence of large populations of pyrophilous species suggest co-evolution with fire and adaptation to disturbance in the Alps. Biodiversity in the central Alps might thus be more resilient to fire than expected. In the light of climatic and land use changes, forest management and species conservation in the central Alps have to consider fire one of the major disruptive factors that have shaped and will shape species composition and ecosystem services.


The relationships between steady state pharmacokinetics of vancomycin and various indices of maturation were examined in 11 infants (gestational ages, 27 to 40 weeks; postconceptional ages (PCA), 29 to 48 weeks). Vancomycin was administered as a 10-mg/kg iv infusion over 30 minutes. Serial blood samples were obtained over a dosage interval and vancomycin serum concentrations were determined by fluorescence polarization immunoassay. Model-independent pharmacokinetic data analysis yielded values for vancomycin systemic clearance (CL), volume of distribution (Vdss) and half-life ranging from 0.032 to 0.484 liter/hour, 0.44 to 2.5 liters and 3.5 to 9.6 hours respectively. Stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated that PCA was the best single variable model to predict vancomycin clearance as described, namely: CL (liters/hour) = 0.0224 PCA (weeks) - 0.639 (r = 0.91; P less than 0.0001). Other more complex models using a combination of patient variables only modestly improved the ability to explain the variability in vancomycin clearance. Vdss was strongly related to body weight (r = 0.93; P less than 0.0001) Vdss = 0.563 weight (kg) + 0.052). Our results suggest that postnatal alterations in vancomycin disposition are related to maturational changes in body composition and renal function. These data also suggest that vancomycin doses smaller than those previously recommended may be used to achieve therapeutic steady state vancomycin serum concentrations during the first 2 months of life.


Recent work in the history of science has questioned the Eurocentric nature of the field and sought to include a more global approach that would serve to displace center–periphery models in favor of approaches that take seriously local knowledge production. Historians of Iberian colonial science have taken up this approach, which involves reliance on indigenous knowledge traditions of the Americas. These traditions present a number of challenges to modern researchers, including availability and reliability of source material, issues of translation and identification, and lack of systematization. This essay explores the challenges that emerged in the author's attempt to compile a pre-contact Nahua pharmacopeia, the reasons for these challenges, and the ways they may – or may not – be overcome.


We introduce a provably stable variant of neural ordinary differential equations (neural ODEs) whose trajectories evolve on an energy functional parametrised by a neural network. Stable neural flows provide an implicit guarantee on asymptotic stability of the depth-flows, leading to robustness against input perturbations and low computational burden for the numerical solver. The learning procedure is cast as an optimal control problem, and an approximate solution is proposed based on adjoint sensivity analysis. We further introduce novel regularizers designed to ease the optimization process and speed up convergence. The proposed model class is evaluated on non-linear classification and function approximation tasks.


We investigated whether or not a user's personality affects his or her attitude and behavioral intention towards a website. Results of an experiment in which the density of the homepage screen was manipulated show that participants prefer homepages with a moderate screen density, that homepage screen density significantly influences the website evaluations of intuiting and feeling types, but not of sensing and thinking types, and that the influence of homepage screen density on website evaluation varies according to individual cognitive style. The practical implications of the findings are that although a moderate-density homepage design is a condition for general positive website evaluations, the influence of individual difference in relation to personality types must also be considered.


A case of cystic adventitial disease (CAD) of the popliteal artery with intermittent claudication in the left calf is reported. This patient was first treated by total excision of the cyst and the involved artery followed by graft interposition with an autogenous saphenous vein. Recurrence of CAD in the interposed vein graft was noted after 6 months, and excision of the cyst with the involved graft and graft interposition with an autogenous saphenous vein was again required. We consider that the definitive evidence from early recurrence in the interposed vein graft shown in this case will close the discussion of the cause of CAD. The cystic lesion is thought by some to originate from the adventitia; traumatic, embryologic, or systemic abnormality theories were proposed. We assume that the mucin-secreting synovial cells originating from the neighboring joint capsule, tendon sheath, or, in some cases, from the ganglion itself, directly invade the adventitia through any rough or injured crack caused by trauma to the adventitia or simply attach to and encircle the adventitia. Total resection of the lesion with grafting is the recommended treatment for CAD because of the excellent results. However, as shown in our case, complete removal of the synovial cells even by resection technique may be difficult; therefore intensive follow-up is fundamentally necessary in this disease.


Salmonellosis is an infectious disease that causes confusion in diagnosis because of its being a multisystem disease and appears in different clinical forms. Herein, we presented a 38 year old male who had dark urine and jaundice, admitted to hospital with abdominal pain. The final diagnosis was cholestatic hepatitis secondary to salmonellosis. Although cholestatic hepatitis is a rare complication of salmonellosis, we should keep it in mind in endemic regions like Turkey.


The housing and feeding requirements necessary for quick multiplication of snails were studied using fifty mature African giant land snails of the species  Archachatina marginata (Swainson). Their initial weights ranged from 250g to 450g. The feeding materials used were green pawpaw fruits and leaves ( Carico papaya ), shaft from fermented milled maize, water leaf ( Talinum triangulare ) and Amaranthus leaves. Results showed that the adult snails gained weight and laid a total or four hundred and eight (408) eggs during the 6 months rearing period. Three hundred and sixty two or the eggs hatched out into baby snails, representing a hatchability of 88.73% after a mean incubation period of 30.25 days. The baby snails increased from a mean live weight of 2.3g at hatch to 25g after four months. This study demonstrated that snails can be reared intensively in a backyard system similar to what obtains with other animals. Keywords: African giant snails, raised cage units, hackyard, baby snails, concrete trench


BACKGROUND: The role of citizens' participation in the process of social, economic, and cultural development is necessary. Institutionalizing this role is inevitable to identify priorities and also planning, implementing, and evaluating health services. This study aimed to identify challenges ahead of volunteers' participation toward primary health-care (PHC) system and providing managerial solutions. MATERIALS AND METHOD: The study employed a qualitative research design. The data were collected via semi-structured interviews with key experts in the Ministry of Health, university education and health promotion officials, education experts, health center staff, and health volunteers. Then, a focused group discussion method was employed to provide solutions. The participants were selected via the purposive sampling method. The qualitative data were analyzed using a thematic analysis method. RESULTS: The analyzed data were categorized into 6 main themes and 24 subthemes. The most important challenges were categorized into six temporal, management, education, quality of services, motivation, and infrastructural themes. Allocating special funds for the health volunteer program, paying attention to the problems of the health workers, providing motivational programs, holding regular retraining courses and providing educational software for health volunteers, holding regular training courses for health trainers and volunteers, and supporting the health volunteer program are among the solutions. CONCLUSION: The present study showed that the health volunteer program in the PHC system faces several challenges, most of which are organizational and managerial ones. Therefore, a multifaceted approach should be used to improve the participation of health volunteers. In addition to motivational factors, factors such as allocating proper resources, empowering trainers, and mobilizing the community should be also considered. It seems that interaction among health system, people, and health volunteers should be improved.


ABSTRACT Introduction: Evaluation of health status and physical condition of Kyrgyz Judo Athletes before the Olympic Games. Objective: To evaluate changes in hematological, biochemical and blood gas values of athletes during the training period. Methods: Eight elite athletes (n=8 men), participated to the study. Before and after the exercise periods (baseline, 3rd month and 6th month), blood samples were taken, to determine plasma red blood cell (RBC), white blood cell (WBC), blood clot cell (PLT), granulocyte (NOTR) and agranulocyte (LNF) counts, hemoglobin (HGB) and hematocrit (HCT) values, mean corpuscular volume (MCV), mean corpuscular hemoglobin concentration (MCHC), and venous blood pH, PO2, PCO2, SAT O2, HCO3, BE, Na, K, Cl values. In addition, serum glucose (Glu), total protein (TP), total cholesterol (TC), HDL cholesterol, triglyceride (Trig), blood urea nitrogen (BUN), creatinine (Creat), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) and creatine phosphokinase (CPK) values were measured. Results: Although, the athletes' WBC and LNF counts increased significantly (p<0.05) in post-exercise periods, no statistical significance (p>0.05) was found in the other hematological parameters. Blood pH, pCO2, HCO3 and BE values decreased (P<0.05) after the exercise periods. Conclusion: The effects of exercise on judo athletes were evaluated before the Olympics. Level of Evidence III; Case-control study.


The past decade has witnessed increasing migration from silicon (Si) to silicon carbide (SiC) in power electronics applications. This is due to the unique advantages of SiC over Si counterparts, like higher breakdown field, higher band gap, and higher thermal conductivity [1], [2]. Therefore, SiC devices can operate at faster switching frequencies, higher power density, and with exceptional thermal performance. However, as this technology progressively becomes mature, questions still arise regarding its long-term reliability. These questions can be answered proactively using accelerated lifetime tests (ALTs). ALTs accelerate the aging mechanisms by amplifying the thermal and electrical stresses. The data from ALTs serve a crucial function for evaluating the sustained reliability of SiC MOSFETs through assessment of their lifespan, identification of breakdown causes, and continuous monitoring of their performance. This article introduces an ac power cycling test setup for SiC MOSFETs and discusses the correlation of aging precursors to different failure mechanisms. Also, the study identifies and presents patterns of common precursor shifts.


Interference with or without entanglement has been recognized as a key resource for quantum computing and quantum communications systems, as for example discussed by Nielsen and Chuang1 and numerous other works. Multiple paths between sources and detectors require an understanding of the underpinning wave-particle duality issue in the interference effects. Recently a new axiom (particle and its wave function φ(r, t) cannot be coincident or co-located at space-time point (rk, tk) unless φ(r, t) = δ(r-rk, t-tk) the Dirac delta function) has been suggested2 and justified, which explains duality without Niels Bohr's complementarity principle, thus eliminating the role of the observer, avoiding complicated "which way" (welcher-weg) considerations and observer subjectivity. This greatly simplifies analysis and design of multi-path quantum systems and restores objectivity. The same paper also suggested in the context of entanglement new concepts of (a) "total causality" that includes entanglement as a cause to locally and causally explain "action at a distance", and (b) "partial causality" that excludes entanglement as a cause and thereby introduces the perception of strange phenomena of non-locality, retro-causality and quantum erasure, which are nevertheless very important. This paper reviews and then applies the axiom to bring much needed clarity to certain confusing and much debated aspects of developments in non-interaction measurements, counterfactual communications and quantum computers. These potential clarifications and simplifications of analysis and design of multi path systems may help developers of future quantum communication and quantum computer systems.


Children were immunized with plain pertussis vaccine made by three manufacturers in 1967. After a primary course of three injections at monthly intervals, starting at 3-4 months of age, the agglutinin response was poor. Even after a "booster" dose, given five months later, not all of the vaccines had stimulated a response to all three pertussis agglutinogens. A further investigation with current vaccines of different kinds administered according to more than one schedule is recommended.


CD 410 LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE LIFESPAN. (3) An introduction to the normal development of language in individuals from birth to advanced age. Topics include theories of language acquisition; prelinguistic development; development in each of the language domains (phonology, semantics, morphology and syntax, and pragmatics); the relationships between oral language, written language, and academic progress; and cultural differences. Prereq: CODI major or consent of instructor.


In video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS), a surgeon cannot easily detect a lung tumor during surgical operation. This paper discusses a noncontact tumor imager capable of detecting a tumor position for application during VATS; this sensor is based on the phase differential technique. The developed sensor comprises an air supply system and an optical-fiber-based displacement sensor adjacent to the air nozzle. For a periodic air pressure, a displacement sensor provides sinusoidal outputs with individual phases. The phase difference varies according to the change in the mechanical impedance parameters of tissues between two points. We confirmed the validity of the sensor for the removed human lung through basic experiments. With regard to clinical applications, both the tumor detection capability and the safety to lung tissues of the developed sensor were confirmed through in vivo animal experiments using pig lungs. Finally, the sensor system was developed for clinical tests and the results of the clinical experiments are shown.


The underlying objective of this book is to critically analyze hawalah based transactions and related laws. The study describes the jurisprudence of the doctrine of hawalah from the perspective of Suftaja (bill of exchange). The study looks the legal framework by taking different sets of laws based upon the doctrine of hawalah. The study also draws a line of demarcation between two distinct concepts viz., debt and loan which are wrongly dealt with one and same yardstick while applying in hawalah based transactions. It critically examines that any kind of transaction to be based upon the doctrine of hawalah, should be applied in strict inclination to its jurisprudence, given by the classical Islamic Jurist. Asif Raza keeps solid academic record, with Master's degree in International Relations (IR) from the University of Peshawar, LLB (Hons) Sharia'h & Law and LLM/M.Phil (Islamic Commercial Law) from International Islamic University Islamabad (IIUI). The auther , is working as a District Relief Coordinator SPARC at District Nowshera. The author is also member of KPK Bar Council and visiting Lecturer at IIUI.


The importance of innovative processes in design and engineering for business success is increasingly recognised in today's competitive environment. Academia and management need to gain a more profound understanding of these processes, develop better management approaches and exploit the still hidden potentials to improve the business.
In order to roadmap the research activities in the research area of modelling and management of engineering processes, the three partners – the Engineering Design Centre (EDC) at the University of Cambridge, the Chair of Integrated Product Development, School of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm, Sweden and the Institute of Product Development at Technische Universitat Munchen (TUM), Germany collaborated to carry out three industry workshops with a total of 39 practitioners from 27 companies in March 2009.
The results were grouped under the three main topics addressed during the workshops:
(a) Understanding modelling processes relates to the clarification of topics such as terms/concepts used, purposes of models, prescriptive or descriptive models, the benefits of modelling, ease of use versus expert tools; (b) Managing modelling processes relates to skills needed for modelling, whom to involve in modelling, how to configure models, how to deal with uncertainty and human factors, visualisation of models, maintenance, simulation and prediction from models, process behaviour in real time; (c) Exploiting modelling processes relates to the applicability of models, ease of understanding process modelling as well as how to best use a model from communication towards automation. Finally a road map was constructed during the third workshop at Cambridge which resulted in seven major research strands: (1) Theory development (State-of-the-art, Case studies, Best practices, etc.) (2) Training of users of modelling at university and in companies including development of curricula (3) Tools & Techniques with emphasis on better visualisation techniques, (4) Metrics & value about ROI, KPI, etc. (5) Application of models for analysis and diagnosis, real-time forecast, process control and automation (6) Implementation and human factors (7) Standards.
On August 26, 2009, the three academic partners presented the results from this workshop series to the members of the Special Interest Group (SIG) for Modelling and Management of Engineering Processes (MMEP) at the Design Society Conference (ICED'09). The 34 participants at the SIG meeting were organized into three working groups to identify their current and future research topics and ranked these topics and the topics from industry roadmap. Four major research areas have been identified: (1) Metrics & Value of Process Modelling, (2) Human factors in process modelling and management, (3) Uncertainty in process modelling and (4) Visualization of design processes. While practitioners are interested in State-of-the-Art and Best Practice case studies, academics aren't.


Mysteries are among the most popular books today, and women continue to be among the most creative and widely read mystery writers. This book includes alphabetically arranged entries on 90 women mystery writers. Many of the writers discussed were not even writing when the first edition of this book was published in 1994, while others have written numerous works since then. Writers were selected based on their status as award winners, their commercial success, and their critical acclaim. Each entry provides biographical information, a discussion of major works and themes, and primary and secondary bibliographies. The volume closes with appendices and a selected, general bibliography. Public library patrons will value this guide to their favorite authors, while students will turn to it when writing reports.


In the application of various types of locomotives to switching service, it is at times quite desirable to have data concerning the energy requirements involved. A convenient figure for expressing such requirements in relation to work done is watt hours per ton-mile. The determination of such a figure involves certain difficulties peculiar to switching service, in that trailing loads and distances moved are continually varying. The electrified Oak Point Yard of the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad in New York City offered an excellent opportunity for determining figures of watt hours per ton-mile for different kinds of switching. Accordingly two electric locomotives were equipped with the necessary instruments, and a total of 391/6 hr. of operation was observed and recorded. The paper describes in some detail the entire procedure of the tests and lists in tabulated form the data obtained. Basic figures necessary for calculating watt hours per ton-mile, it was found, could be expanded to give a much broader scope to the results, so that many interesting data became available. Incidentally, the data will permit of even further expansion where certain special figures or factors are desired. Although electric locomotives of different types were used, the results set forth in the paper should be considered without regard to either type. It is hoped that data concerning switching operations on other railroads may become available.


The paper presented a new multi-coupling-links scale-free coupled networks model based on the existing scale-free network model. More precisely, we investigated the cascading failures of multi-coupling-links three-dimensional coupled networks based on coupled map lattices model. And through Matlab simulation, this paper detailedly studied the cascading failure under different attack strategies, different coupling strength and different network's scale. The results indicate that the deliberate attack has a faster transmission speed than the random attack under the same perturbation amplitude; the greater coupling strength of the network, the more likely to occur global failure; the coupled networks performs more robust to resist cascading failures if each sub-network possess a larger average scale; and under the deliberate attack, the network in a isolated state is more vulnerable than in a coupled state.


Background There have been studies suggesting that various measures of health, health behaviours or health seeking cluster within households. Previous research on the impact of omitting small clusters from analyses have suggested little impact on parameter estimates or standard errors but have typically assumed small intraclass correlations – not usually the case for the household. Since there are typically few individuals per household, and many households contain just one person, several studies have excluded household from the analysis. We examine what difference it makes in practice when the level of household is excluded for a variety of outcomes. Methods 7901 adults from 5063 households in 356 small areas were interviewed in the 2003 Scottish Health Survey; in 2512 (49.6%) of households just one adult participated. We analysed systolic blood pressure (SBP), BMI, current smoking status, eating 5+ portions of fruit and vegetables per day, eating oily fish at least once per week, and having seen a GP within the past 2 weeks. All results were adjusted for age and sex; in addition, we examined the effects of education, social class and area deprivation. Interactions were fitted between sex and all terms in the fixed and random parts of the model. Multiple imputation was used to account for item non-response. Multilevel linear and logistic regression models including and excluding household were fitted by Markov chain Monte Carlo and the results compared, with population average estimates obtained for logistic regression models. Results The extent of clustering varied by outcome and gender; the proportion of the total unexplained variance at the household level ranged from 8.6% (95% Credible interval 0.3–24.5) for systolic blood pressure for women to 87.5% (83.7–90.7) for eating oily fish for women. Bias was evident in both the fixed parameter estimates and their standard errors. The bias in the fixed parameters tended to be higher for outcomes for which the household variance was higher. Conclusion For all outcomes the inclusion of household provided an improvement in model fit. Excluding the level of household led to biases not just in the standard errors but also in the parameter estimates themselves. This has implications not only regarding the need to account for clustering within households but also regarding the use of "sandwich estimators" that adjust the standard error but not the regression coefficient.


PURPOSE
This study was to determine the current trend of nursing research as exploring both quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and to provide the explicit direction to improve the quality of published papers.

METHODS
Total of 366 articles published between 2004 and 2006 was reviewed using the criteria of analysis.

RESULTS
There was more number of quantitative studies than qualitative studies. More studies were conducted with subjects who had health problems, and studies that targeted women and elderly population have been significantly increased. In quantitative methodology, utilization of experimental and quasi-experimental designs has been increased, however descriptive study was dominant as yet. In qualitative methodology, studies using grounded theory and phenomenology were frequently published. It was noted that theoretical framework and rational for sample size were rarely presented in quantitative study. Philosophical position and the process of preparation for study, which guided the research, were not clearly described in qualitative study.

CONCLUSION
The findings of this review suggest that published studies have been improved and diversified, however, detailed and clear evaluation tool that assesses study process and method should be developed as a way to further improve the quality of published papers.


this current paper introduces the research results aiming at demonstrating and identifying, in the city of Medellin, the multiple effects to people by the lack of home utilities, still and the technical, operational, and financial capacities of the company providing services in the city: Public Companies of Medellin (EPM -ESP), which supposes an inadequate reading of the reality of the city, mainly on the outskirts and high-risk areas. This situation makes the citizens resort to the judicial routes or assault and battery in order for them to provide with the service, and in either of the two routes, a series of legal, social, and economic difficulties are derived, which becomes a problem to the Municipality, which according to the Law 142 as of 1994, is responsible for ensuring the people the right to home utilities, situations which could have a more adequate solution to the extent that it can be adjusted to the reality of the city.


We describe the stingless bee Geotrigona kaba sp. nov. from the cordillera Central of Colombia. We also provide new geographical records and comments on the other two species of the genus that occur in Colombia.


Several forms of immunoreactive calcitonin (0) have been detected in extracts of medullary carcinoma of the thyroid (Moukhtar and al. 1975; Jullienne et aL 1977)


This volume brings together the most influential theoretical and empirical contributions to the topic of trade and inequality from recent years. Segregating it into four key areas, the collection forms a comprehensive study of the subject, targeted at academic readers familiar with the main trade models and empirical methods used in economics. The first two parts cover empirical evidence on trade and inequality in developed and developing countries, while the third and fourth sections confront transition dynamics following trade liberalization and new theoretical contributions inspired by the previously-discussed empirical evidence, respectively.


Background Extraintestinal manifestations occur rather frequently in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Rheumatic manifestations are the most common and are associated with a wide range of clinical patterns. Objectives To estimate the prevalence of joint manifestations in chronic inflammatory bowel disease and to identify risk factors of their occurrence. Methods Cross-sectional study of 114 cases of IBD collected in gastroenterology and rheumatology departments of a Moroccan teaching hospital on a period of 9 months (from April 2009 to December 2010). Data were analyzed using SPSS. A multivariate logistic regression was used. Results Seventy-three women and fourty-one men were included in the study. Their mean age was 38.5±14 year. IBD onset was at an average age of 35±14 years. Fifty-two patients were diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (UC) and 62 with Crohn's disease. Joint manifestations were present in 71.1% of cases. The prevalence of axial involvement, peripheral involvement, and enthesis involvement were 72.8%, 90.1% and 40.7% respectively. Radiological changes were identified in 52.63% of cases; 7.9% of patients had isolated asymptomatic sacroiliitis. 52.6% of cases satisfied the criteria of The European Spondyloarthropathy Study Group (ESSG), 28.1% of them satisfied the modified New York criteria. In univariate analysis, factors associated with joint damage were female gender, CRP>10 mg/l, high ESR and extensive UC. In multivariate analysis, only female sex (OR =3.02 [95% CI: 1,14-8]), CRP>10 mg/l (OR =5.51 [95% CI: 1,39-21, 82]) and high ESR (OR =9.18 [95% CI: 1,80-46, 83]) were selected as predictors of joint damage in IBD. Conclusions Musculoskeletal involvements are the most important extra digestive manifestations of IBD. Compared with the North African series, our results highlight the predominance of peripheral versus axial arthritis. Their screening should be systematic for patients with IBD especially if they are female and if they have a biological inflammatory syndrome, allowing early diagnosis and better treatment. Disclosure of Interest None Declared


The coherence of the precessional switching was compared in planar spin-valves comprising either an additional simple perpendicular polarizer or a synthetic antiferromagnet perpendicular polarizer. A significant improvement in the precession coherence was observed experimentally in the second type of samples. Micromagnetic simulations were performed to study the effect of the stray field from the perpendicular polarizer. They provide an explanation for the gradual loss of coherence of the precession in terms of vortex formation, which occurs much faster when a simple perpendicular polarizer is used.


This study evaluates the potential of ChatGPT-4, an artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI, as an editing tool for Spanish literary and academic books. The need for efficient and accessible reviewing and editing processes in the publishing industry has driven the search for automated solutions. ChatGPT-4, being one of the most advanced language models, offers notable capabilities in text comprehension and generation. In this study, the features and capabilities of ChatGPT-4 are analyzed in terms of grammatical correction, stylistic coherence, and linguistic enrichment of texts in Spanish. Tests were conducted with 100 literary and academic texts, where the edits made by ChatGPT-4 were compared to those made by expert human reviewers and editors. The results show that while ChatGPT-4 is capable of making grammatical and orthographic corrections with high accuracy and in a very short time, it still faces challenges in areas such as context sensitivity, bibliometric analysis, deep contextual understanding, and interaction with visual content like graphs and tables. However, it is observed that collaboration between ChatGPT-4 and human reviewers and editors can be a promising strategy for improving efficiency without compromising quality. Furthermore, the authors consider that ChatGPT-4 represents a valuable tool in the editing process, but its use should be complementary to the work of human editors to ensure high-caliber editing in Spanish literary and academic books.


AIM
To evaluate the clinical and microbiological effects of neodymium: yttrium-aluminum-garnet laser therapy as an adjunct to scaling and root planing during the hygienic phase.

METHODS
In eight patients, sites with a mean probing pocket depth (PPD) of ≥5 mm were treated by either scaling and root planing (n=28) (control) or by scaling and root planing and adjunctive laser therapy (n=28) (power: 5W). Re-evaluation was at 4-6 weeks. Thereafter, remaining pockets (mean PPD ≥5 mm) were eliminated by either laser surgery (power: 7 W) or gingivectomy (control).

RESULTS
At baseline, the mean PPD of sites originally presenting with a mean PPD ≥4 mm were 4.69 and 4.73 mm in the test and control sites, respectively. Six months following surgery, there was a similar average mean PPD reduction in the test (1.18 mm, P<0.01) and control sites (1.35 mm, P<0.01). Also, the reduction in bleeding on probing in both groups was statistically significant (P<0.01, paired t-tests). No statistically-significant differences between the test and control sites were found for any clinical or microbiological parameters at baseline, after initial, and 3 or 6 months' post-surgical therapy.

CONCLUSION
During the hygienic phase, neodymium: yttrium-aluminum-garnet (1064 nm) laser treatment yielded no superiority in clinical efficacy compared to conventional debridement. Laser gingivectomy resulted in similar treatment outcomes (mean PPD and bleeding on probing reduction), as did conventional gingivectomy.


Background and purpose: It is often hard to diagnose ground glass opacity (GGO) lesions by transbronchial biopsy (TBB), because of difficulty in detecting the site of the lesions under X-ray fluoroscopy. We have reported the usefulness of TBB using endobronchial ultrasonography with a guide sheath (EBUS-GS) for small peripheral pulmonary lesions (PPLs). EBUS-GS has an advantage to detect the location of PPLs. In this study, we retrospectively analyzed the diagnostic yield of GGO lesions by EBUS-GS and examined of lesions which might influence the diagnostic yield.

Patients and methods: Between August 2003 and December 2007, we performed EBUS-GS for a total of 67 GGO lesions in Hokkaido University Hospital and Hokkaido Cancer Center.

Results: Of the 67 lesions (11 pure GGO lesions and 56 mixed GGO lesions, which consist of GGO components more than 50%), 43 (64%) were not visible by conventional X-ray fluoroscopy. Thirty-eight lesions were diagnosed by TBB with EBUS-GS (36 adenocarcinoma, 1 lymphoma and 1 inflammation). The average size of lesions with diagnosis was significantly larger than that of lesions without definitive diagnosis. (23.9mm vs. 16.7mm; P<0.01) For lesions with bronchus leading directly to the center of the lesions on high-resolution computed tomography images (positive CT sign), the diagnostic yield was significantly higher than lesions with negative CT sign. (31% vs. 66%; P < 0.01)

Conclusion: EBUS-GS is a useful method for diagnosing GGO lesions. However, failure of diagnosis is associated with the lesions in smaller size and/or with negative CT sign.


The article is devoted to the issues of learning toponyms at school. The relevance of the topic is determined by the effectiveness of using toponyms to form students' cultural competencies, to achieve their personal, meta-subject and subject results. Practice shows that the names of geographical objects always arouse great interest among students.
Methods used in the study: analysis of scientific and methodological literature on this topic; study and generalization of the experience of teachers working on this topic; observation of the educational process.
The results of the work are identification of the most effective methods of using toponyms in the lessons of the Chuvash language and literature for the implementation of educational and educational tasks, compilation of a questionnaire for collecting toponyms, development of methodological recommendations for the organization of research activities of students on this topic. The practical value of this work is determined by the possibility of applying its results by teachers in the classroom and outside of school hours.
The author comes to the conclusion that studying the names of geographical objects helps to achieve the planned results, develop cultural competence, learn the history and culture of the native land, realize that language is not only a means of cognition and communication, but also a form of expression of national culture.


Abstract The medicinal plant Actaea racemosa is a perennial, whose rhizome (black cohosh rhizome) is usually wild harvested on a multiton scale to meet market requirements. Since this North American species is increasingly endangered, cultivation is needed. Even though studies prove that cultivation is possible, it has not been widely established. This may be due to a different quality of cultivated material, which does not comply with current pharmacopoeial requirements. This study compares contents and chromatographic fingerprints of phenolic acids and triterpene glycosides in different types of black cohosh rhizomes. Commercial batches from wild harvests were compared to individual plants from the wild and from cultivation. Phenolic acids' contents and profiles were generally comparable between wild harvesting and cultivation. On the contrary, the total triterpene glycoside content was significantly lower in cultivation (p ≤ 0.001). In individual plants, different profiles of triterpene glycosides occurred. Possibly, specimen or chemotype selection for cultivation would cause a shift of the triterpene glycoside profile of cultivation batches away from the common pattern found in batches from wild harvesting. Potentially, such differences have an impact on the efficacy of black cohosh herbal products, if cultivated plant material is used for manufacturing.


A globally convergent visual feedback control scheme is proposed for dynamical planar robot arms subject to uncertain camera, robot, analytical Jacobian and dynamic friction parameters. When complex friction arises, visual servoing suffers to drive the robot to the desired trajectories, in particular in slow motion and velocity reversals, which are typical motion regime in visual servoing due to the vision system properties. Moreover, dynamic friction is usually neglected in motion control and it is not the exception in visual servoing literature. In order to prove the theory described in this paper, the real-time OS, Linux-RTAI, is used to obtain experimental results of this controller on a direct-drive robot manipulator. Results suggest its excelent performance.


Single-phase squirrel cage and three-phase induction electromotors are the most popular electromotors used in industry from long ago. When an induction motor starts with direct connection method, it takes a lot of current from the power supply (several times the nominal current); so, several methods have been devised to start such electromotors. These methods either reduce the voltage of the stator or increase the value of rotor resistance. In this paper a new method is presented that reduces the value of the magnetic flux in stator core resulting in reduction of induction voltage in the rotor bars culminating in reduction of rotor and stator currents. This system reduces the electromotor loss and smartly protects itself against damages due to overload. Process functions are analyzed, the uses of the system are discussed and the operation of the electromotor is simulated in Matlab version 220.127.116.114 (R2010b) and Maxwell 16.0.


All papers published in this volume of Journal of Physics: Conference Series have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing. • Type of peer review: Single-blind • Conference submission management system: Authors submitted abstract and papers using the conference website. • Number of submissions received: 72 • Number of submissions sent for review: 37 • Number of submissions accepted: 37 • Acceptance Rate (Number of Submissions Accepted / Number of Submissions Received X 100): 1 • Average number of reviews per paper: 2 • Total number of reviewers involved: 61 • Any additional info on review process: : Each paper was considered by 2 reviewers at least. Most of the papers had been sent for revision and some of them for revision more than once. • Contact person for queries: name Valentin Bityurin, e-mail: email@example.com affiliation: Joint Institute for High Temperatures of the Russian Academy of Sciences (JIHT RAS) institutional email address: email@example.com, email@example.com


When a flow is flowing past a blunt body or solid boundaries, there will be formation of flow patterns and interactions between flow and the solid bodies. Other than that, heat transfer can also take place if there is a temperature difference between the flow and solid bodies. In this study, a pile of parallel-plates was considered as the solid bodies. A simplified model of parallel-plate heat exchanger was chosen as the computational domain in order to study of effect of plate geometry and channel dimensions on the flow and heat transfer across a parallel-plate heat exchanger. There will be an oscillatory flow where the flow moves back and forth across the solid boundaries. The study was carried out using ANSYS software. Drawing of the computational domain, meshing of the domain, solver settings and validation of the model were carried out before the study can be recognized. After having done validation, the results and data from the original model were compared with other three cases. One of the three cases has round-shaped edges for its parallel-plates heat exchanger. The remaining two cases have triangle-shaped edges with one having two times longer edge length of the other one. All the cases were compared in terms of vorticity contours, total and average surface heat flux and last but not least, velocity profile inside the channel. The study shows that the shape of the edge affects the flow and the heat transfer of the system. Vortices discontinuities were eliminated through the changing of edge shapes. Heat energy transfer across the surface also changes when the shape of the edge changes.


Kim, K. (University of Washington, Seattle), and N. B. Groman. Mode of inhibition of diphtheria toxin by ammonium chloride. J. Bacteriol. 90:1557–1562. 1965.—The inhibition of diphtheria toxin by ammonium salts was independent of toxin concentration over a 100-fold range of toxin. Inhibition by minimal concentrations of ammonium chloride was abolished by lowering the pH, indicating that free ammonia is the active form of inhibitor. A single addition of ammonium chloride inhibited toxin for a limited period of time, but periodic readdition of the ammonium salt was required to sustain inhibition indefinitely in the absence of antitoxin. Toxin was not destroyed and its adsorption occurred equally well in the presence or absence of ammonium chloride. Preadsorbed toxin was also effectively inhibited by the addition of ammonium chloride. Inhibited toxin remained accessible to antitoxin neutralization. Attempts to reverse ammonia inhibition by the addition of succinate or reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide were unsuccessful. Attempts to inhibit toxin by interfering with active transport were also unsuccessful.


We appreciate the detailed review provided by Magge et al1 of our article, "Deep learning for pharmacovigilance: recurrent neural network architectures for labeling adverse drug reactions in Twitter posts." 2 In their letter, they present a subjective criticism that rests on concerns about our dataset composition and potential misinterpretation of comparisons to existing methods. Our article underwent two rounds of extensive peer review and has been cited 28 times1 in the nearly 2 years since it was published online (February 2017). Neither the reviewers nor the citing authors raised similar concerns. There are, however, portions of the commentary that highlight areas of our work that would benefit from further clarification.


Introduction: Osteoarthritis is a non-inflammatory degenerative disorder of joints causing disability in millions of people all over the world. WHO estimates that 10% of world's population over 60 years of age suffers from osteoarthritis and 80% of people with osteoarthritis have limitation of movement and 25% are unable to do daily activities. Thus, making it a major cause of impairment & disability in elderly and economic burden in community.
The purpose of the study is to compare the effects of biofeedback training along with strengthening exercises vs strengthening exercises in knee osteoarthritis subjects to reduce the symptoms of pain, loss of ROM and functional activity.
Methods: 50 subjects diagnosed of grade-I to early grade-II osteoarthritis recruited for the studyafter obtaining an Informed consent. Each group will comprise of 25 subjects with age group ranging 40-70 years. Group A will be given biofeedback training along with the strengthening exercises of knee, Group B will be given strengthening exercises exclusively. Both the groups will undergo training for 3 days per week for 6 weeks. Each session will be of 20-30 minutes.
Results: Parameters include WOMAC score and joint ROM, both pre-test and post-test measures will be analyzed statistically using t-test to check the effectiveness of each technique. P-value WOMAC Score showed p>0.0001 and shows significance in the biofeedback training subjects.
Conclusion: In this study bio feedback training with the strengthening exercises shows significant improvement in quadriceps muscle strength, increase Range of Motion in knee joint and reduction in other symptoms of OA knee.


The study was designed to assess the effect of various forms of right atrial or ventricular stimulation on the termination of re‐entrant "supravenlricular" tachycardias. LStandard eleclrophysio‐logical techniques were used in 81 patients to study 86 stable tachycardias. All tachycardias were initiated by single or double atrial or ventricular premature stimuli or incremental atrial pacing. Eight groups of tachycardia circuit were defined in terms of the anterograde and retrograde pathways. Termination of each tachycardia was studied by atrial underdrive, ventricular underdrive. rapid atrial stimulation and single or double atrial and ventricular premature extrastimuli. fntranodal re‐entrant tachycardias formed 33% of the total and WPW tachycardias as a whole formed 55% of the total number of arrhythmias. The remainder were comprised of utrial tachycardia (5%). tachycardias in association with a partial AV nodal bypass (3%) and pre‐excited tachycardias (5%). A single atrial extrastimulus was most effective where the circuit involved the right atrium. Atrial underdrive was consistently Jess successful than a single atrial exlrastimulus in all groups. Rapid atrial pacing was effective in all groups, but caused transient atrial flutter or fibrillation in a proportion of each group except one. Ventricular underdrive stimulation was most effective in those groups where the right ventricle was involved in the circuit, but tended to be less effective than programmed single or double ventricular extrastimuli. Pacemakers designed to deliver appropriately timed single or double extrastimuli may offer an important alternative to other pacing modalities.


This work strives for the issue of generalised dissipative asynchronous output feedback control for Markov jump repeated scalar non-linear systems with time-varying delay. The objective is to design an asynchronous output feedback controller, which ensures that the closed-loop system is generalised stochastically dissipative. Meanwhile, such an asynchronous controller covers not only the asynchronous controller but also the mode-independent one. By means of a stochastic analysis technique and a modified matrix decoupling method, sufficient conditions are given for deriving the desired controller. At length, an illustrative example is provided to demonstrate the availability of the presented approach.


This study represents an exploration into the relationship between comprehension and metacomprehension. The effects of variables known to be sources of reading difficulty were compared on a measure of reading comprehension and one of metacomprehension. One hundred and twenty seventh grade students each read four versions of thirty-six passages which differed in level of familiarity, goodness of structure, and vocabulary difficulty. Then students either rated the comprehensibility of each passage or responded to ten comprehension probes for each of the passages. Both comprehensibility judgments and comprehension performance were positively related to topic familiarity and good story structure. Vocabulary difficulty was negatively related to performance on the comprehension measure only. Implications for research are discussed.


Azathioprine and 6-mercaptopurine (AZA/6MP) are effective immunosuppressives used for the treatment of inflammatory bowel disease. The optimal strategy for monitoring therapeutic efficacy and adequate immunosuppression remains to be defined. White blood cell count, mean corpuscle volume (MCV), and 6-mercaptopurine metabolites (6TGN, 6MMP) have all been suggested as potential parameters to monitor efficacy and safety. However, immunomodulators target lymphocytes specifically rather than leukocytes overall; little data is available on the relationship between lymphocytes and immunomodulators in IBD. This study evaluates the incidence of lymphopenia with immunosuppressive use, and correlates metabolite levels (6TGN and 6MMP) with leukocyte, lymphocyte, and MCV levels in IBD patients treated with AZA/6MP. Medical records of 125 adult IBD patients were analyzed based on the use of AZA/6MP, blood counts, and mercaptopurine metabolites 6TGN and 6MMP. Forty three percent of patients taking AZA/6MP developed lymphopenia. Of those with lymphopenia, only 11% had leukopenia. A low but statistically significant correlation of r = -0.3 (p=0.04) for 6TGN to leukocyte counts as well as to MCV levels was found. No correlation between 6TGN levels and lymphocyte counts was noted. This analysis shows that not only leukocyte counts but lymphocyte counts should be monitored closely in patients on these immunosuppressives. Metabolite markers do not provide information regarding who will develop lymphopenia. Consequences of lymphopenia such as opportunistic infections need to be discussed with patients prior to starting this type of therapy.


Deep neural networks have been widely studied in autonomous driving applications such as semantic segmentation or depth estimation. However, training a neural network in a supervised manner requires a large amount of annotated labels which are expensive and time-consuming to collect. Recent studies leverage synthetic data collected from a virtual environment which are much easier to acquire and more accurate compared to data from the real world, but they usually suffer from poor generalization due to the inherent domain shift problem. In this paper, we propose a Domain-Agnostic Contrastive Learning (DACL) which is a two-stage unsupervised domain adaptation framework with cyclic adversarial training and contrastive loss. DACL leads the neural network to learn domain-agnostic representation to overcome performance degradation when there exists a difference between training and test data distribution. Our proposed approach achieves better performance in the monocular depth estimation task compared to previous state-of-the-art methods and also shows effectiveness in the semantic segmentation task.


The dried root of Codonopsis pilosula (Franch.) Nannf., referred to as Dangshen in Chinese, is a famous traditional Chinese medicine. Polysaccharides, lobetyolin, and atractylenolide III are the major bioactive components contributing to its medicinal properties. Here, we investigated the dynamic changes of the main substances in annual Dangshen harvested at 12 time points from 20 May to 20 November 2020 (from early summer to early winter). Although the root biomass increased continuously, the crude polysaccharides content increased and then declined as the temperature fell, and so did the content of soluble proteins. However, the content of total phenolics and flavonoids showed an opposite trend, indicating that the carbon flux was changed between primary metabolism and secondary metabolism as the temperature and growth stages changed. The changes in the contents of lobetyolin and atractylenolide III indicated that autumn might be a suitable harvest time for Dangshen. The antioxidant capacity in Dangshen might be correlated with vitamin C. Furthermore, we analyzed the expression profiles of a few enzyme genes involved in the polysaccharide biosynthesis pathways at different growth stages, showing that CpUGpase and CPPs exhibited a highly positive correlation. These results might lay a foundation for choosing cultivars using gene expression levels as markers.


In recent studies, neural message passing has proved to be an effective way to design graph neural networks (GNNs), which have achieved state-of-the-art performance in many graph-based tasks. However, current neural-message passing architectures typically need to perform an expensive recursive neighborhood expansion in multiple rounds and consequently suffer from a scalability issue. Moreover, most existing neural-message passing schemes are inflexible since they are restricted to fixed-hop neighborhoods and insensitive to the actual demands of different nodes. We circumvent these limitations by a novel feature-message passing framework, called Graph Multi-layer Perceptron (GMLP), which separates the neural update from the message passing. With such separation, GMLP significantly improves the scalability and efficiency by performing the message passing procedure in a pre-compute manner, and is flexible and adaptive in leveraging node feature messages over various levels of localities. We further derive novel variants of scalable GNNs under this framework to achieve the best of both worlds in terms of performance and efficiency. We conduct extensive evaluations on 11 benchmark datasets, including large-scale datasets like ogbn-products and an industrial dataset, demonstrating that GMLP achieves not only the state-of-art performance, but also high training scalability and efficiency. PVLDB Reference Format: Wentao Zhang, Yu Shen, Zheyu Lin, Yang Li, Xiaosen Li, Wen Ouyang, Yangyu Tao, Zhi Yang, and Bin Cui. GMLP: Building Scalable and Flexible Graph Neural Networks with Feature-message Passing. PVLDB, 14(1): XXX-XXX, 2021. doi:XX.XX/XXX.XX


In work are submitted data of spring water monitoring of Yelets town. Research on the general condition of physical and chemical properties of spring water of the town and availability of heavy metals in water didn't reveal excess of maximum permissible concentration during one-year-old monitoring.


Corneal scarring is one of the major causes of blindness, affecting millions worldwide. Despite recent advancements in surgical strategies, there is an unmet need for a clinically feasible material and methods to prevent scarring following corneal injury. In this study, we report the potential utility of a hydrogel derived from cadaveric animal corneas, using a decellularized corneal matrix hydrogel (abbreviated as dCMH), which is prepared by a simple method. This hydrogel is easily injectable, biocompatible, and has the ability to maintain good shape-retention properties at 37 °C, which make it suitable for in vivo applications. Furthermore, our gene expression studies and immunofluorescence studies indicate that dCMH maintains the morphology and function of keratocytes in vitro and prevents their transdifferentiation to myofibroblasts. From the above results, it is evident that dCMH maintains the keratocytes with the ability to regenerate the corneal defect without scar. We thus suggest a simple yet effective approach for corneal tissue decellularization and that dCMH can be a promising material for prophylaxis against blinding scar formation in an injured cornea.


In response to the concerns regarding environmental pollution and energy security, renewable energy has been perceived as a solution. As liquid fuel is the most consumed form of energy in the world, much attention has been paid to pyrolysis for the production of bio-oil. Bio-oil may be derived from biomass and is a potential fuel supplement and source of chemicals. However, lignocellulosic biomass-derived bio-oil is generally highly acidic and highly oxygenated than crude oil. Consequently, the bio-oil is unstable and has a comparatively low energy density. Hence, bio-oil has to be upgraded in order to use directly as fuel and other applications. One of the upgrading methods is catalytic pyrolysis using non-acidic oxides.

The current project investigated the effects of calcium oxide (CaO), magnesium oxide (MgO), and zinc oxide (ZnO) on the upgrading of palm empty fruit bunch fibre (EFBF)-derived bio-oil. Apart from that, cellulose was used as feed to study the effects of the oxides on lignocellulosic biomass at its simplest form upon intermediate pyrolysis. The possible reaction pathways involved upon the utilization of the oxides were also summarized.

Thermogravimetric studies revealed that the addition of MgO and ZnO did not affect the degradation behaviour of both cellulose and EFBF. However, because CaO is prone to adsorb moisture and carbon dioxide (CO2), an additional weight loss stage was observed. Even though the oxides did not affect the activation energy and mechanism of EFBF devolatilization, the amount of volatiles released reduced due to the restriction posed by the oxides. Despite the catalytic effects posed by the oxides, the reaction of the oxides with CO2 and water categorizes CaO, MgO, and ZnO as catalytic additives, rather than catalysts.

Based on the results obtained when cellulose was used as feed, the reaction pathways involved in the catalytic upgrading of bio-oil were compiled. Nevertheless, upon comparing the results of the results with literature, it was concluded that the results may be used as a reference of the reactions involved during catalytic pyrolysis of biomass but it may not exactly reflect the absolute effects of the oxides on the physical properties of all bio-oils.

All three oxides showed evidence in enhancing the physical properties of cellulose and EFBF-derived bio-oil, in terms of reducing the amounts of acids and oxygenated compounds. However, the oxides reacted with carbon dioxide (CO2) and water. Hence, the oxides may be considered as catalytic additives rather than as catalysts. Among the three oxides, CaO exhibited the best performance in the matter of reducing the acidity for both cellulose and EFBF-derived bio-oils, without affecting the bio-oil yield substantially. CaO also showed potential in stabilizing the EFBF-derived bio-oil without influencing the surface structure of the bio-oil.


Sirs, Onwujekwe et al. (2000) address the challenging and timely issue of whether people in rural African communities are willing to pay for the re-treatment of insecticideimpregnated nets (ITNs). The study took place in four communities in Enugu State, Nigeria. Two of those communities, Ibagwa-ani and Alor-uno, had participated in an ef®cacy trial that compared ITNs, insecticide-treated curtains, residual house spraying and a control group between 1992 and 1994 (Brieger et al. 1996). In that study, bednets were perceived as more effective than curtains and residual spraying, and children under ®ve years of age in the bednet group had the lowest prevalence of malaria parasites by the end of the study. The study was sponsored by USAID and conducted by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Health. After the project, all participants were given an ITN. Although CDC was unable to conduct a follow-up study in Enugu, its staff revisited an ITN project site in western Kenya three years later and found that most households that had been given nets still had them and had repaired them, but none had bought replacements (Kachur et al. 1999). Onwujekwe et al. (2000) did not refer to the USAID study, but noted that the two communities that had participated in it had lower mean values for willingness to pay for re-treatment of ITNs, and one community, Ibagwaani, had the lowest proportion of respondents who were willing to pay. It was not clear from the article whether respondents were asked whether they currently possessed or had ever owned a bednet and what its source was. If the authors have more information that could help distinguish between the two former intervention communities and those who had not participated in the previous ITN research, they would make an additional valuable contribution to future ITN programmes in Nigeria which are currently being planned by UNICEF, USAID and colleagues. Finally, one third of respondents were women. Other studies have found that women ®nd it more dif®cult than men to state a price or a lower price when asked what they will pay for a health product (Brieger et al. 1990 1 ). The two communities that had participated in the previous ITN project also had the highest proportion of female respondents (47% vs. 20%). Further analysis by gender would be bene®cial, as would be a discussion of gender roles in making purchases for household health and welfare. William R. Brieger, African Regional Health Education Centre, College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria. E-mail: email@example.com