Prevalent approaches for endowing robots with autonomous navigation capabilities require the estimation of a system state representation based on noisy sensor information. This system state usually depicts a set of dynamic variables such as the position, velocity and orientation required for the robot to achieve a task. In robotics, and in many other contexts, research efforts on state estimation converged towards the popular Bayes filter. The primary reason for the success of Bayes filtering is its simplicity, from the mathematical tools required by the recursive filtering equations, to the light and intuitive system representation provided by the underlying Hidden Markov Model. Recursive filtering also provides the most common and reliable method for real-time state estimation thanks to its computational efficiency. To keep low computational complexity, but also because real physical systems are not perfectly understood, and hence never faithfully represented by a model, Bayes filters usually rely on a minimum system state representation. Any unmodeled or unknown aspect of the system is then encompassed within additional noise terms. On the other hand, autonomous navigation requires robustness and adaptation capabilities regarding changing environments. This creates the need for introducing contextual awareness within the filtering process. In this thesis, we specifically focus on enhancing state estimation models for dealing with context-dependent sensor performance alterations. The issue is then to establish a practical balance between computational complexity and realistic modeling of the system through the introduction of contextual information. We investigate on achieving this balance by extending the classical Bayes filter in order to compensate for the optimistic assumptions made by modeling the system through time-homogeneous distributions, while still benefiting from the recursive filtering computational efficiency. Based on raw data provided by a set of sensors and any relevant information, we start by introducing a new context variable, while never trying to characterize a concrete context typology. Within the Bayesian framework, machine learning techniques are then used in order to automatically define a context-dependent time-heterogeneous observation distribution by introducing two additional models: a model providing observation noise predictions and a model providing observation selection rules. The investigation also concerns the impact of the training method. In the context of Bayesian filtering, the underlying model we exploit is usually trained in the generative manner. Thus, optimal parameters are those that allow the model to explain at best the data observed in the training set. On the other hand, discriminative training can implicitly help in compensating for mismodeled aspects of the system, by optimizing the model


Low-temperature neutron scattering spectra of diammonium dodecahydro-closo-dodecaborate [(NH(4))(2)B(12)H(12)] reveal two NH(4)(+) rotational tunneling peaks (e.g., 18.5 μeV and 37 μeV at 4 K), consistent with the tetrahedral symmetry and environment of the cations. The tunneling peaks persist between 4 K and 40 K. An estimate was made for the tunnel splitting of the first NH(4)(+) librational state from a fit of the observed ground-state tunnel splitting as a function of temperature. At temperatures of 50 K-70 K, classical neutron quasi-elastic scattering appears to dominate the spectra and is attributed to NH(4)(+) cation jump reorientation about the four C(3) axes defined by the N-H bonds. A reorientational activation energy of 8.1 ± 0.6 meV (0.79 ± 0.06 kJ/mol) is determined from the behavior of the quasi-elastic linewidths in this temperature regime. This activation energy is in accord with a change in NH(4)(+) dynamical behavior above 70 K. A low-temperature inelastic neutron scattering feature at 7.8 meV is assigned to a NH(4)(+) librational mode. At increased temperatures, this feature drops in intensity, having shifted entirely to higher energies by 200 K, suggesting the onset of quasi-free NH(4)(+) rotation. This is consistent with neutron-diffraction-based model refinements, which derive very large thermal ellipsoids for the ammonium-ion hydrogen atoms at room temperature in the direction of reorientation.


This paper studies the issue of the efficient taxation of capital income in intertemporal optimizing models with infinite horizons and endogenous population growth. We discover that, in the steady state, the optimal capital income tax is negative when the economy is closed. Instead, in a small open economy facing perfect capital mobility, the Chamley-Judd result of a zero tax rate is obtained if capital taxation is source-based; otherwise, income from wealth should be subsidized if taxation is residence-based. Moreover, we find that in our setup, taxing capital income with immediate expensing of capital expenditure may replicate the first-best equilibrium when labor is subsidized. Our findings, which depart substantially from those obtained in representative agent models with an endogenous labor supply, are to be ascribed to a wealth effect in the fertility choices that directly affects the pseudo-welfare function of the social planner.


Anchorage location selection is one of important factors concerning the safety of vessel in the Yangtze river. On the basis of the characteristics of the inland ports and channels, this paper fully considers the safety of anchoring vessels, the surrounding facilities and the vessels sailing nearby, refines the influence factors of anchorage location selection in the Yangtze river, analyses the influence factors individually, evaluates comprehensively influence factors of the Yangtze river anchorage location selection by using the multi-objective optimization method, constructs the Yangtze river anchorage location selection comprehensive evaluation model, and gives an example of anchorage location selection in Ezhou port as application instance. The establishment of the model enriches the theory related to inland river anchorage, provides theoretical guidance for the Yangtze river anchorage location selection.


In 2002, K. M. Passino proposed Bacterial Foraging Optimization Algorithm (BFOA) for distributed optimization and control. One of the major driving forces of BFOA is the chemotactic movement of a virtual bacterium that models a trial solution of the optimization problem. However, during the process of chemotaxis, the BFOA depends on random search directions which may lead to delay in reaching the global solution. Recently, a new algorithm BFOA oriented by PSO termed BF-PSO has shown superior in proportional integral derivative controller tuning application. In order to examine the global search capability of BF-PSO, we evaluate the performance of BFOA and BF-PSO on 23 numerical benchmark functions. In BF-PSO, the search directions of tumble behavior for each bacterium oriented by the individual's best location and the global best location. The experimental results show that BF-PSO performs much better than BFOA for almost all test functions. That's approved that the BFOA oriented by PSO strategy improve its global optimization capability.


OBJECTIVE
To evaluate the relationship between peripheral arterial disease and elevated levels of C-reactive protein in the Japanese-Brazilian population of high cardiovascular risk.

METHODS
We conducted a cross-sectional study derived from a population-based study on the prevalence of diabetes and associated diseases in the Japanese-Brazilian population. One thousand, three hundred and thirty individuals aged e" 30 underwent clinical and laboratory examination, including measurement of ultrasensitive C-reactive protein. The diagnosis of peripheral arterial disease was performed by calculating the ankle-brachial index. We considered with peripheral arterial disease patients who had ankle-brachial index d" 0.9. After applying the exclusion criteria, 1,038 subjects completed the study.

RESULTS
The mean age of the population was 56.8 years; 46% were male. The prevalence of peripheral arterial disease was 21%, with no difference between genders. Data analysis showed no association between peripheral arterial disease and ultrasensitive C-reactive protein. Patients with ankle-brachial index d" 0.70 showed higher values of ultrasensitive C-reactive protein and worse cardiometabolic profile. We found a positive independent association of peripheral arterial disease with hypertension and smoking.

CONCLUSION
The association between low levels of ankle-brachial index and elevated levels of ultrasensitive C-reactive protein may suggest a relationship of gravity, aiding in the mapping of high-risk patients.


This study computationally evaluates the effect of loudspeakers on the in situ electric field in a driver body model exposed to the magnetic field from a wireless power transfer (WPT) system in an electric vehicle (EV), one with a body made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) and the other made with aluminum. A quasi-static two-step approach was applied to compute the in situ electric field. The computational results showed that the magnetic field distribution generated by the WPT is significantly altered around the loudspeakers, and shows obvious discontinuity and local enhancement. The maximum spatial-average magnetic field strength in the driver's body was increased by 11% in the CFRP vehicle. It was 2.25 times larger than the reference levels (RL) prescribed in the International Commission of Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP) guidelines in 2010. In addition, we found that the in situ electric field computed by the line- and volume-averaging methods were stable if the top 0.1% voxels are excluded. The maximum value was well below the basic restriction (BR) of the ICNIRP guidelines. Nevertheless, the presence of the loudspeaker led to increments in the electric field strength in parts of the human body, suggesting the potential influence of permissible transmitting power in the WPT system. The maximum electric field strength in the thigh and buttock with the woofer, increased by 27% in the CFRP vehicle. The arm value was up to 3 times higher than that obtained without the tweeter in the aluminum vehicle. Moreover, this study found that the maximum electric field strength depended on the location of the loudspeaker with respect to the WPT system and the separation from the driver model. Therefore, the loudspeaker should be considered when evaluating the maximum in situ electric field strength in the vehicle body design stage.


A full-enterprise simulation was evaluated from the perspective of the means-end theory. The study is exploratory in that it examines the relationships among attributes of an educational service (a business simulation), the consequences of these attributes as experienced by customers (students), the goals that the customers want to achieve, and finally, the behavioral intentions of the customers after they experienced the service. The sample was composed of two groups, undergraduates and executives, all enrolled in for-credit educational programs. The findings suggest that undergraduate and executive students benefit in many ways from their participation in a simulation experience. However, what they take away from the learning experience is different and the differences may be due to the level of experience they have in the real world of business.


Introduction: Anaplastic thyroid cancers (ATCs) usually present in the sixth to seventh decades of life and little is known about the disease in young patients. The aim was to analyze the clinicopathological characteristics diagnosed with ATC in an iodine-deficient area. Material and Methods: The medical records of 100 patients diagnosed with ATC at a tertiary care hospital between 1991 and 2013 were reviewed. Results: The mean age of patient was 58 years. About 34 patients were ≤50 years. The common presentation was that of a rapidly growing fixed and hard mass (64%). Due to rapid expansion, 27% patients experienced severe pain. About one-third presented as sudden enlargement of pre-existing goiter over few weeks. The median duration of symptoms before diagnosis was 3 months. About 41% presented with lymph node enlargement and 31% with distant metastasis. The diagnosis was established with fine-needle aspiration or core biopsy. Histopathology was available in 32 patients and showed four major patterns: spindle cell (9), giant cell (7), epithelioid (5), squamoid (1), mixed type in 10 patients. Eight patients presenting with stridor required emergency tracheostomy for airway control. Total thyroidectomy with or without lymph node dissection was possible in 21 patients. Patients received radiotherapy with or without chemotherapy. Median overall survival was 3 months. Overall survival was significantly better in patients receiving some form of treatment. Conclusion: ATC in endemic goiter areas presents at an earlier age. One-third of ATC is due to anaplastic transformation of pre-existing goiter and majority of the patients refuse treatment due to dismal outcome.


Ultrasonic acoustic emissions (AE) in the frequency range of 0.1 to 1 megahertz appear to originate in the sapwood of Thuja occidentalis L. The AE are vibrations of an impulsive nature. The vibrations can be transduced to a voltage waveform and amplified. The vibrations of each AE event begin at a large amplitude which decays over 20 to 100 microseconds. Strong circumstantial evidence indicates that the ultrasonic AE result from cavitation events because: (a) they occur only when the xylem pressure potential Psi(xp) is more negative than a threshold level of about -1 megapascal; (b) the rate of AE events increases as Psi(xp) decreases and when the net rate of water loss increases; (c) the AE can be stopped by raising Psi(xp) above -1 megapascal. Ultrasonic AE have been measured in whole terminal shoots allowed to dry in the laboratory, in isolated pieces of sapwood as they dried in the laboratory, and in whole terminal shoots in a pressure bomb when Psi(xp) was decreased by lowering the gas pressure in the pressure bomb.


Klein-Kaluza theories take a higher-dimensional perspective of four-dimensional constructions. The authors have used dimensional continuation in order to extract the 'axial anomalies' in such higher-dimensional theories-consistency conditions on the fermion content then arise by imposing a vanishing anomaly. These axial anomalies should rightfully emerge from consideration of the higher-dimensional gravitational contributions to it.


At Hamamatsu University School of Medicine, the Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (PRTR) was tried. The following results were obtained. On solid chemical substances, the stored quantity was comparatively greater than the purchased or disposed quantity. However, on liquid substances, the purchased volume was similar to the disposed volume.


We evaluated 3 patients with biopsy-proven hypertrophic cranial pachymeningitis apparently unrelated to any systemic disease. Each patient had chronic headache, cranial neuropathy, an elevated ESR, and a mild CSF pleocytosis. Neuro-ophthalmic findings included bilateral sixth nerve palsies in two patients and the third had bilateral optic neuropathies. MR imaging revealed thickened dura that enhanced with Gd-DTPA administration. Histologic examination showed thickened, fibrotic dura with a sterile, chronic, nongranulomatous inflammation. The response to treatment was variable with corticosteroids, immunosuppressive drugs, or radiation. The distinctive MR appearance should help physicians recognize this rarely reported disease.


A stereoselective debromoborylation of aliphatic 1,1-dibromo-1-alkenes to prepare (Z)-1-bromo-1-alkenylboronate esters using copper(i) catalysts was developed. The debromoborylation of various aliphatic 1,1-dibromo-1-alkenes in the presence of a copper(i) catalyst and bis(pinacolato)diboron proceeded smoothly to produce (Z)-1-bromo-1-alkenylboronate esters in good yields with only Z geometry.


Our goal is to identify more relevant indicators of women's drinking problems. We first reviewed the literature on women's drinking problems to uncover the major issues and research problems that previous studies have raised. We then systematically analyzed 464 indicators of women's alcohol problems cited in the literature from 1970-86. We calculated the frequency of their appearance by source (literature review, clinical studies, research articles, or surveys) and organized them into a comprehensive indicator taxonomy that included physiological, social, psychological and behavioral categories. The resulting taxonomy can serve as a baseline for grounding indicators of women's alcohol problems collected from other sources, such as ethnographic studies of particular populations or surveys of the general population.


Quebec in the seventeenth century is often depicted as a little France in the New World. Populated by first and second generation arrivals, and governed by officials sent over from France, there are many areas in which this picture has some accuracy. But there are others where it does not. There were significant differences in the way in which New and Old France dealt with the problem of witchcraft. These differences were the result of important though perhaps subtle differences in the structure of the two societies.


Abstract. The High Efficiency and Resolution Multi Element Spectrograph, HERMES, is a facility-class optical spectrograph for the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT). It is designed primarily for Galactic Archaeology, the first major attempt to create a detailed understanding of galaxy formation and evolution by studying the history of our own galaxy, the Milky Way. The goal of the GALAH survey is to reconstruct the mass assembly history of the Milky Way through a detailed chemical abundance study of one million stars. The spectrograph is based at the AAT and is fed by the existing 2dF robotic fiber positioning system. The spectrograph uses volume phase holographic gratings to achieve a spectral resolving power of 28,000 in standard mode and also provides a high-resolution mode ranging between 40,000 and 50,000 using a slit mask. The GALAH survey requires an SNR greater than 100 for a star brightness of V=14 in an exposure time of one hour. The total spectral coverage of the four channels is about 100 nm between 370 and 1000 nm for up to 392 simultaneous targets within the 2-degree field of view. HERMES has been commissioned over three runs, during bright time in October, November, and December 2013, in parallel with the beginning of the GALAH pilot survey, which started in November 2013. We present the first-light results from the commissioning run and the beginning of the GALAH survey, including performance results such as throughput and resolution, as well as instrument reliability.


Objective To evaluate the efficiency of wide-angle viewing system in parsplana vitrectomy for the extraction of posterior intraocular foreign bodies. Methods Retrospective study was conducted in 57 patients (57 eyes) who underwent pars plana vitrectomy for the extraction of posterior intraocular foreign bodies by using the wide-angle viewing system. Results Foreign bodies were extracted successfully during the operation in all patients. After 8-36 months (mean 24.2 months) follow-up, the visual acuity was improved in 39 eyes, no change in 12 eyes, de- creased in 6 eyes. One patient was suffered from atrophia bulbi in 1 eye because of retinal detachment. Conclusion The wide-angle viewing system has many advantages in parsplana vitrectomy for the extraction of posterior intraocular foreign dodies, which is effective for treatmnet of intraocular foreign bodies.


Pituitary metastasis are rare but represent an important differential diagnosis of intrasellar tumorous syndromes. We report one case of intrasellar metastasis of a bronchial adenocarcinoma in a 50 year old woman. Clinical syndrome associated a tumorous syndrome (cephalalgia, bitemporal hemianopsia) and an anterior and posterior hypopituitarism biologically proven. A large intra and suprasellar mass which compressed the optic chiasma and highly enhanced after gadolinium injection was found by nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. The surgical biopsy displayed a pituitary metastasis of a right inferior lobar bronchial adenocarcinoma with bone secondary localizations. Cerebral radiotherapy and corticotherapy allowed recovery of visual loss but did not prevent rapid death. The clinical and radiological features which may evoke an intrasellar metastasis were: the tumorous syndrome associated with or revealed by diabetes insipidus, loss of spontaneous hypersignal of the neurohypophysis in nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, bulking pituitary stalk, bilobar character of the mass which is in favour of rapid cell proliferation, postero-superior extension, lowering of the V3 floor and very strong and homogeneous signal after gadolinium injection.


Community clinicians may soon provide the bulk of instruction to medical students at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon as the school's College of Medicine is proposing to divide its activities into separate arms to overcome accreditation woes and a flagging performance in its current research endeavours.

The changes would alter the balance between clinical work and pedagogy for existing full-time faculty and transfer more of the teaching load onto community physicians. They'd be paid on a contractual basis and fall under the umbrella of a newly created division of clinical instruction (www.medicine.usask.ca/concept/College%20of%20Medicine%20Concept%20Paper.pdf).

All full-time faculty would still be compelled to do a measure of teaching. Some, though, would fall under a research track, in which they would be expected to devote 50%–75% of their time to conducting research within a new division of clinical science. They'd spend a maximum 25%–50% of their time on teaching and clinical work.

The remainder of the faculty, would fall under the rubric of a division of biomedical and population science, which would include community health, epidemiology and other basic science programs. Those professors would continue to teach undergraduate and postgraduate students.

The move substantially alters the roles and responsibilities of clinical faculty members, says Dr. William Albritton, dean of the college.

Currently, too few clinical faculty members teach classes, conduct research or accept graduate students, with the majority spending "up to 90% of their time doing clinical work" on the university's dime, Albritton says. "There's constant tension between academic expectations and clinical work, and the demands of clinical service have really begun to erode the research and scholarship and teaching work of the university faculty."

The proposed changes are being driven in part by failing grades that the college received from the Committee on Accreditation of Canadian Medical Schools in July 2011. The committee placed the school on warning of probation, citing the lack of a clear process for assigning educational responsibilities to, and ensuring the accountability of, full-time clinical faculty, among other areas of noncompliance (https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/327424/2012-03-21-10-13-06.pdf). It gave the college until March 2013 to introduce reforms or face losing its accreditation.

Too few clinical faculty members at the University of Saskatchewan's medical school teach classes, conduct research or accept graduate students, with the majority spending "up to 90% of their time doing clinical work" on the university's dime, says Dr. William Albritton, dean of the College of Medicine.

Image courtesy of University of Saskatchewan

Pressures to bolster research output are also driving the need for change, Albritton says. "The province has invested almost $400 million in building a new academic facility, and so there are expectations to improve our research."

Clinical faculty members, who are concerned they will lose their academic credentials if they fail to increase their academic workload, have responded to the proposal with "anger, frustration, and outrage."

Typical was the response from clinicians within the Department of Surgery. "I will need a great deal more information about loss of my individual tenured university faculty appointment before I am prepared to accept the simplistic approach that I will suddenly become a community based faculty member," Dr. William Dust, interim head of the department of surgery, wrote on behalf of his colleagues (www.medicine.usask.ca/concept/concept%20reply%20surgery.pdf).

"This is a major shake-up, and I think some people have the potential to get seriously burned," Dust added.

The Department of Medicine, meanwhile, warned that the changes could detrimentally affect patient care as clinicians who are faculty members would have to assume more teaching and research responsibilities. "The concept that non-faculty clinicians will be able to relieve the patient burden sounds fine on paper, but in reality where are these warm bodies coming from?" (www.medicine.usask.ca/concept/DoMResponseCoMConcept1May12.pdf).

Others argued that community clinicians cannot readily pick up a pedagogical shortfall. While many community clinicians "teach for love of teaching and a sense of responsibility," nonfaculty physicians cannot be expected to "undertake the significant clinical teaching load required … when they are already struggling to meet the heavy clinical service demands in their various communities," wrote a group of 23 faculty members in the Department of Academic Family Medicine (www.medicine.usask.ca/concept/summary-of-feedback/Family%20Medicine%20Response%20to%20Concept%20Paper.pdf). That pool has been tapped for many years, it added. "The required increased capacity implied by the realignment proposal is simply not there."

But senior university brass defend the move as crucial to the "survival" of the college's teaching and research missions.

"We can look at other universities and see that, depending on the metrics you use, our college is in the bottom couple," says Brett Fairbairn, University of Saskatchewan provost and vice-president academic. "It's not necessarily because we have fewer resources per faculty member, or that other schools that have more research than we do have worse teaching. It's because there are organizational structures that can optimize the resources they've got."

Albritton explains that the college's management structure allows many physicians who work for the university to be simultaneously working within the Saskatoon Health Region, which is responsible for regional delivery of health services. Some faculty do "insignificant amounts of teaching and research, yet we can't give them insignificant amounts of resources because they're entitled in the collective agreement to full academic salaries no matter how much they deliver," he notes.

That's not an environment conducive to protected time for research, Fairbairn says. "Someone who wishes to conduct research in a clinical setting will more than likely have to do it off the side of their desk after they've done their clinical duties equivalent to everyone else."

"Even when we've had resources and candidates for clinical research positions, we haven't always been able to complete hiring because the environment hasn't been there. It's just hard to make it work in our current structure," Fairbairn adds.

The reforms also appear to be aimed at articulating a clearer line between clinical and academic responsibilities. "Those whose predominant focus is clinical practice need to be aligned with health services and planning for service delivery; [and] those with a predominant focus in research or education need to be aligned with the university," the paper notes.

Community clinicians under the new division of clinical instruction "will not hold full-time academic appointments and will not be expected to perform full-time academic duties including research, administration, and didactic teaching. Duties will be assigned (and accountability ensured) via the negotiation of individual service contracts," it adds.

The proposal will be submitted to the university's faculty council for approval May 17.


In crisis situations, the survival of businesses depends on the policies which they apply. Businesses that have been able to internalise the concept of crisis management and prepare an environment for their employees that can turn the crisis into an opportunity will be able to survive the crisis moments with the least damage. In this study, it is aimed to determine the effect of individual creativity factor on proactive crisis management, which is necessary for the success of crisis management. Within the scope of the study, the data were collected from 118 participants who were working in micro and small enterprises in Tokat province via questionnaire. t-Test, analysis of variance, correlation analysis and simple regression analysis were applied to obtained data. As a result of the analysis, it has been determined that individual creativity and proactive crisis management have a positive relationship (r = 0.505; Sig. = 0.000) and individual creativity positively effects proactive crisis management (R2 = 0.255; p = 0.000; ß Change = 0.16).

Keywords: Individual creativity, proactive crisis management, micro enterprises, small enterprises.
Jel Codes: M1, M10, M19


Since penile Mondor's disease is a rare condition, different treatment choices are used. Herein we recommend a new treatment strategy with acetylsalicylic acid and pentoxifylline, which was tested in 14 patients with penile Mondor's disease. Materials and methods: Fourteen patients with the clinical presentation of penile Mondor's disease were included. Patients were given acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) 500 mg qid and pentoxifylline 600 mg bid for 14 days. Physical examinations were performed in all patients. In addition, ultrasonic examinations were done before the treatment and on days 7 and 14 of treatment to evaluate dorsal vein thrombosis. Results: Physical examinations revealed lesions parallel to the coronal sulcus in 9 patients and in the dorsal aspect of the proximal penis in 5 patients. All patients had painful induration of the penis. On day 7, hyperechoic structures were still observed in 8 patients and no thrombus was seen in 6 patients. Ultrasonographic measurements were repeated 14 days after treatment and a hyperechoic structure was observed in 4 patients. No side effects were encountered during the follow-up period. Conclusion: We think that the ASA and pentoxifylline protocol, which is also used for the treatment of thrombotic events in other parts of the body, helps to resolve penile Mondor's disease in a shorter time compared to previous treatment protocols. Further randomized controlled studies are needed for a definitive decision.


The development of controlled synthesis protocols of nanostructured materials with tailored particle size and shape has been a significant research area in nanoscience and nanotechnology. Much innovative research efforts had been focused on finding suitable chemical reagents and synthetic methodologies that offer opportunities to produce the desired structure-function controlled nanomaterials. On the other hand, the reactor equipment for the synthesis of these tailored nanomaterials is of prime importance not only at laboratory-scale but also with view of up-scaling the synthetic processes into large-scale productions. Whilst the sequential three-stage scale-up from the conventional process (i.e., lab-scale/pilot-scale/large-scale) using multi-purpose batch reactor is masked with complications, on the other hand, the interface of nanomaterials synthesis processes and continuous-flow microfluidic chemistry has demonstrated relatively superior process performance over conventional technologies. Consequently, the uses of continuous-flow microfluidics systems have recently attracted much research attention as versatile tools for the synthesis of various structured nanomaterials. In this review, we highlight and analyze the key achievements to date of adopting microfluidics technologies for the controlled synthesis of nanomaterials with well-defined structural properties desirable for the intended applications. We devote the significant emphasis on demonstrating the improved potential characteristics features of continuous-flow microfluidics as a capable technology to provide efficient synthesis processes for the production of various nanosized scale structured materials with precise control of the involved chemistry. Moreover, we discuss the novel process window opportunities of hyphenated microfluidics nanoparticles synthesis with the in-situ or in-line structure characterization during synthesis under real-time reaction conditions which provide interesting insights and experimental evidence on nanoparticle growth mechanisms.


The structure of the category of matroids and strong maps is investigated: it has coproducts and equalizers, but not products or coequalizers; there are functors from the categories of graphs and vector spaces, the latter being faithful and having a nearly full Kan extension; there is a functor to the category of geometric lattices, that is nearly full; there are various adjunctions and free constructions on subcategories, inducing a simplification monad; there are two orthogonal factorization systems; some, but not many, combinatorial constructions from matroid theory are functorial. Finally, a characterization of matroids in terms of optimality of the greedy algorithm can be rephrased in terms of limits.


(1) Substitution of dithiocarboxymethyl or dithiocarboxyphenyl groups (in p-carbamidophenylarsenous acid) did not appreciably alter amebacidal activity, in vitro or in vivo. (2) Toxicity and tolerance tests in mice, rats, rabbits and monkeys indicated that the dithiocarboxyphenyl derivative was the least toxic. (3) Reaction of the gastric mucosa and peritoneum to the direct application of dithio derivatives was less severe than to the arsenoxide. The liver, lungs and kidneys were appreciably damaged after single toxic doses of the arsenoxide. (4) Within the range of therapeutic activity, the short-term (11 day) chronic toxicity test in rats and the 30-day chronic tolerance test in monkeys resulted in minimal damage to tissues after the dithio derivatives. (5) After carbarsone oxide (p-carbamidophenyl arsenous oxide), distribution studies revealed exceptionally high levels of arsenic in the bile, blood and urine, moderate amounts in the feces, and contents of the stomach and small intestine, and in the colon, kidneys and liver, and smaller amounts in the lungs, heart and spleen. Appreciable tissue levels persisted for at least 9 days in rats after chronic intragastric therapy. (6) Dithio derivatives (C.C. 914 and 1037) also accumulated in large amounts in bile, feces, urine, liver, kidneys, cecum and colon, with moderate amounts in contents of the stomach, cecum, and small intestine, blood, lungs, heart and spleen, and small amounts in brain, pleural and peritoneal fluids and thymus. The levels attained in these tissues in rats and rabbits after short-term chronic toxicity tests, were appreciably higher than in monkeys, on the 30-day chronic tolerance test. (7) As with other arsenoxides, the arsenic of carbarsone oxide and its dithio derivatives, was bound by tissues roughly in proportion to the toxicity of each drug. Higher concentrations in intestinal tissue and in bile have been reported following injection of phenyl arsenoxides than after proportional doses of arsonic acids (10). This observation was confirmed and is believed to be significant. (8) The suggestion of Voegtlin (2) that protozoa contain and are dependent upon smaller absolute amounts of -SH groups than mammalian tissue cells agrees with the experimental evidence presented.


The multiconfiguration time-dependent Hartree (MCTDH) method and its multilayer extension (ML-MCTDH) are powerful algorithms for the efficient computation of nuclear quantum dynamics in high-dimensional systems. By providing time-dependent variational orbitals and an optimal choice of layered effective degrees of freedom, one is able to reduce the computational cost to an amenable number of configurations. However, choices related to selecting properly the mode grouping and tensor tree are strongly system dependent and, thus far, subjectively based on intuition and/or experience. Therefore, herein we detail a new protocol based on multivariate statistics─more specifically, factor analysis and hierarchical clustering─for a reliable and convenient guiding in the optimal design of such complex "system-of-systems" tensor-network decompositions. The advantages of employing the new algorithm and its applicability are tested on water and two floppy protonated water clusters with large amplitude motions.


Sediment records recovered from coastal lagoons and submerged sinkholes across the hurricane belt of the North Atlantic can provide high‐resolution archives of the passage of tropical cyclones spanning the last few millennia. These "event‐based" records of tropical cyclone activity mostly exhibit centennial‐scale variability, which has hitherto been attributed to climatic change. In a landmark study, Wallace et al. (2020, https://doi.org/10.1029/2020gl091145) show that the centennial‐scale signal exhibited by individual event‐based storm reconstructions is most likely explained by local‐scale stochastic processes that influence the course taken by individual storms and not by climatic change. Detecting a climate signal within proxy‐based storm records must now either rely on developing a composite signal derived from multiple "event‐based" records or by adopting a statistical approach to the reconstruction of storms. Future work needs to increase the density of study archives across the region and standardize and integrate diverse approaches to the reconstruction of hurricane activity.


AIMS
The possible contribution of the cardiac mitochondrial permeability transition pore (PTP) towards the cardioprotective effects of Na(+)-H(+) exchanger-1 (NHE-1) inhibition was studied in hearts subjected to ischaemia/reperfusion (IR).

METHODS AND RESULTS
Langendorff-perfused rat hearts were subjected to 40 min of global ischaemia and 60 min of reperfusion in the presence or absence of the NHE-1 specific inhibitor AVE-4890 (AVE, 5 microM). Mitochondrial PTP opening was determined in the intact heart using 2-deoxy-[(3)H]-glucose entrapment and in isolated mitochondria by monitoring the decrease of the calcium-induced light scattering. Mitochondrial respiration was measured with a Clark-type oxygen electrode whereas release of apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF) and endonuclease G (EndoG) and levels of cleaved poly-(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) were analysed by western blotting. IR induced mitochondrial PTP opening, which was inhibited by 28% (P < 0.05) with AVE treatment. Mitochondria isolated from AVE-treated hearts demonstrated significantly less calcium-induced swelling and higher substrate oxidation at complex I and II as well as cytochrome c oxidase and citrate synthase activity. AVE treatment also suppressed IR-induced release of AIF and EndoG from mitochondria, prevented the IR-induced rise in cleaved PARP levels, and was associated with significantly enhanced postischaemic recovery of left ventricular developed pressure and a significant decrease in lactate dehydrogenase release. AVE did not affect PTP opening directly in isolated mitochondria.

CONCLUSION
The beneficial effect of NHE-1 inhibition in hearts subjected to IR is associated with attenuation of mitochondrial PTP opening and apoptosis and the resultant mitochondrial dysfunction. The effect of AVE on PTP opening most likely is indirect, as pore opening was not affected by direct administration of AVE to mitochondrial suspensions.


This study aims to analyze the effect of relationship marketing and service quality on word of mouth through customer satisfaction, loan customers at the Bank BRI Branch Tulungagung. This research is quantitative research with the type of research is explanatory research with a survey approach. The sample of this study is the commercial retail loan customers of the UKM sector at the Tulungagung Branch Bank BRI with 1,176 debtors. Based on the analysis method using Structural Equation Modeling, the results of the study show that relationship marketing and service quality affect customer satisfaction and word of mouth. While word of mouth is influenced by customer satisfaction, meaning that satisfaction from borrowing customers will be able to increase positive word of mouth against other prospective borrowers. The results of this study also show that relationship marketing has an effect on word of mouth through customer satisfaction, which means that increasing customer satisfaction will increase word of mouth from customers. The better the ability of bank officers to maintain customer trust, it will make customers provide positive information about the product of the bank concerned to others.


One of the main requirements to take part in business life with highly competitive products in a national and international environment, to maintain its presence in the market and to be successful in today's world is to establish long-term partnerships to bring together the elements of the economic according to the same destination. In other words, one of the basic conditions to achieving the above objectives is a common business to do. Be able to work together is a consciousness and a culture in business in itself. That is, to be able to make a joint business is based on the culture and consciousness of partnership.In particular, one of the essential conditions to achievement of Turkey's 2023 economic targets set by the government is required that business life should be dominated by a common understanding of doing business and a common culture of doing business. The number of enterprises circuiting to second generation in Turkey is fifty percent. More interesting is that the third generation circuit is only two percent. These rates are taken into account, it is understood that there are significant gaps about the necessary consciousness and culture regarding to establish long-term and strong partnership in business life. Consideration of the basic principles of Akhism, which is a non-governmental organization, would be appropriate to develop the culture and consciousness of partnership and to ripen the basic principles of this culture in business life in Turkey. Consideration of the basic principles of Akhism to develop the culture and consciousness of partnership would be meaningful with regard to benefit from the experience a significant organization which has obtained the socio-economic success in a commercial environment in the past, and to gain this experience for today's business life. To the development of the basic principles of the culture of partnership primarily need to be addressed again the cultural values of the related society. Although the trade gained an international nature, among the partners of businesses, which will exist and will continue the existence in the international trade environment, could not be considered a partnership with their own that cultural values are ignored. In this approach, today's culture of partnership in Turkey should be included the basic principles of Akhism.


Removal of dental calculus deposits is one of the basic parts of professional dental cleaning. Despite the popularity of power-driven scalers, several risks are associated with their use, mechanical damage of the enamel surface being one of the most important. The present study evaluated enamel damage caused by a sonic scaler in different work patterns to quantify the damage and allow a clear comparison. Seventy-five canine teeth were carefully extracted from twenty-three dogs. The scaler was used on a clean surface with several combinations of time (five to twenty seconds) and parts of the scaler (point vs. side of the tip). Subsequently, damaged surface topography was mapped using three-dimensional optical microscopy. The results revealed a high variance in defect depth which was influenced by both factors. Statistical assessment confirmed highly significant (P < 0.001) or at least significant (P < 0.05) differences in data acquired for each group. As expected, the shallowest defects were produced by the scaler side in the shortest experimental period (five seconds). Point use proved to be quite damaging, as it resulted in approximately four times higher median values than the side in the same timeframe. Therefore, it is crucial to follow all safety precautions when handling a power-driven scaler even during routine treatments. Use of the side of the tip and constant movement on the tooth surface are essential to reduce the risk of enamel damage.


The effect of the solvent on the structure of a molecule in an electronic excited state cannot be neglected. However, the computational cost of including explicit solvent molecules around the solute becomes rather onerous when an accurate method such as the equation of motion coupled cluster singles and doubles (EOM-CCSD) is employed. Solvation continuum models like the polarizable continuum model (PCM) provide an efficient alternative to explicit models, since the solvent conformational average is implicit and the solute-solvent mutual polarization is naturally accounted for. In this work, the coupling of EOM-CCSD and PCM in a state specific approach is presented for the evaluation of energy and analytic energy gradients. Also, various approximations are explored to maintain the computational cost comparable to gas phase EOM-CCSD. Numerical examples are used to test the different schemes.


Most contemporary object detection approaches assume each object instance in the training data to be uniquely represented by a single bounding box. In this paper, we go beyond this conventional view by allowing an object instance to be described by multiple bounding boxes. The new bounding box annotations are determined based on the alignment of an object instance with the other training instances in the dataset. Our proposal enables the training data to be reused multiple times for training richer multi-component category models. We operationalize this idea by two complementary operations: bounding box shrinking, which finds subregions of an object instance that could be shared; and bounding box enlarging, which enlarges object instances to include local contextual cues. We empirically validate our approach on the PASCAL VOC detection dataset.


ABSTRACT The existence of novel endogenous retrovirus elements in the chicken genome, designated EAV-HP, with close sequence identity to theenv gene of avian leukosis virus (ALV) subgroup J has been reported (L. M. Smith, A. A. Toye, K. Howes, N. Bumstead, L. N. Payne, and K. Venugopal, J. Gen. Virol. 80:261–268, 1999). To resolve the genome structure of these retroviral elements, we have determined the complete sequence of two proviral clones of EAV-HP from a line N chicken genomic DNA yeast artificial chromosome library and from a meat-type chicken line 21 lambda library. The EAV-HP sequences from the two lines were 98% identical and had a typical provirus structure. The two EAV-HP clones showed identical large deletions spanning part of the gag, the entirepol, and part of the env genes. Theenv region of the EAV-HP clones was 97% identical to theenv sequence of HPRS-103, the prototype subgroup J ALV. The 5′ region of EAV-HP comprising the R and U5 regions of the long terminal repeat (LTR), the untranslated leader, and the 5′ end of the putative gag region were 97% identical to the avian retrotransposon sequence, ART-CH. The remaining gagsequence shared less than 60% identity with other ALV sequences. The U3 region of the LTR was distinct from those of other retroviruses but contained some of the conserved motifs required for functioning as a promoter. To examine the ability of this endogenous retroviral LTR to function as a transcriptional promoter, the EAV-HP and HPRS-103 LTR U3 regions were compared in a luciferase reporter gene assay. The low luciferase activity detected with the EAV-HP LTR U3 constructs, at levels close to those observed for a control vector lacking the promoter or enhancer elements, suggested that these elements function as a weak promoter, possibly accounting for their low expression levels in chicken embryos.


Abstract Some results concerning the ϵ-rate and the ϵ-entropy presented by one of the authors (cf. [Peetre, Ricerche Mat. 17 (1968), pp. 216-220]) are investigated, updated, and generalized in various ways. In addition we give some examples, as well as a discussion, related to the problems presented by Hajela and Honig of this interpolation theory technique in an abstract model of digital communication.


In spread spectrum systems PN-code tracking is a crucial performance aspect. The delay-locked loop (DLL) is an appropriate device to guarantee fine synchronization. In this paper, a modified extended tracking range DLL is proposed. In the design of a DLL there is a tradeoff between tracking jitter and tracking range. The loop noise in an extended tracking range DLL is normally increased since more correlators are used. The jitter performance is improved by selecting the two strongest extended DLL branches. This modifies the extended DLL detector S-curve only slightly while reducing the noise power in the loop considerably.


Web service composition is defined as an orchestration of multiple web services into a single composite web service. Web service composition is done in three ways such as static web service composition, dynamic web service composition, semi dynamic web service composition. The dynamic web service composition is done on the fly. When the user gives the request the dynamic composer searches for suitable web services and it is composed accordingly. When the services composed dynamically they need to execute in different environment. The dynamic web service composition leads to several faults such as poor response, incorrect order, service incompatibility, unavailability etc. If the failure occurs the cause of the failure has to be detected and healed. The healing should be done automatically. Hence this paper focuses on self-healing mechanism for dynamic web service composition. Self healing is a property of autonomic computing which makes the system to heal itself from the faults. This paper focuses on QoS faults. We proposed a self-healing solution for dynamic web service composition faults. We proposed architecture for self-healing which heals the QoS faults in dynamic web service composition. We have given procedure for our healing mechanism.


Abstract Neuroblastoma is the most prevalent malignancy in infants characterized by heterogeneous prognosis. It is critical to stratify the risks for patients with neuroblastoma. To stratify the risks for neuroblastoma, clinical characteristics of neuroblastoma patients were retrieved from the Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatment program. All patients were randomly sampled into the development and validation sets. Cox regression was used to construct a prediction nomogram. The discrimination and calibration capacity of the nomogram was assessed. Prognostic index (PI) was calculated and tested to evaluate the performance of the nomogram. This nomogram demonstrated reasonable discrimination and calibration capacity. The nomogram derived PI exhibited acceptable accuracy in predicting the prognosis for neuroblastoma patients. The overall survival rate was significantly different between the PI discriminated high and low-risk patient subgroups. In conclusion, besides traditional staging systems, some newly defined risk factors could be involved in risk stratification for patients with neuroblastoma. Our nomogram may aid the risk stratification for neuroblastoma patients.


Major changes have occurred in the Arctic Ocean during 2000–2019, including the unprecedented spin-up of the Beaufort Gyre and the emergence of Arctic Atlantification in the eastern Eurasian Basin. We explored the main drivers for these changes by synthesizing numerical simulations and observations in this paper. The Arctic atmospheric circulation was unusual in some years in this period, with strongly negative wind curl over the Canada Basin. However, the wind-driven spin-up of the Beaufort Gyre would have been much weaker had it not been for Arctic sea ice decline. The sea ice decline not only fed the ocean with meltwater, but also made other freshwater components more available to the Beaufort Gyre through mediating the ocean surface stress. This dynamical effect of shifting surface freshwater from the Eurasian Basin towards the Amerasian Basin also resulted in the Arctic Atlantification in the eastern Eurasian Basin, which is characterized by halocline salinification and the uplift of the boundary between the halocline and the Atlantic Water layer. Contemporarily, the sea ice decline caused a strong warming trend in the Atlantic Water layer. The Empirical Orthogonal Function (EOF) analysis of Arctic annual sea surface height for this period reveals that the first two modes of the upper ocean circulation have active centers associated with the Arctic Oscillation and Beaufort High variability, respectively. In the presence of sea ice decline the first two EOFs can better distinguish the ocean variability driven by the two atmospheric circulation modes. Therefore, the major changes in the Arctic Ocean in the past two decades are indicators of climate change as is the sea ice retreat. Our synthesis could help assess how the Arctic Ocean might change in future warming climate.


An alternative methodology to determine profit maximizing economic thresholds is developed and illustrated. An optimization problem based on the main biological and economic relations involved in determining a profit maximizing economic threshold is first advanced. From it, a more manageable model of 2 nonsimultaneous reduced-from equations is derived, which represents a simpler but conceptually and statistically sound alternative. The model recognizes that yields and pest control costs are a function of the economic threshold used. Higher (less strict) economic thresholds can result in lower yields and, therefore, a lower gross income from the sale of the product, but could also be less costly to maintain. The highest possible profits will be obtained by using the economic threshold that results in a maximum difference between gross income and pest control cost functions.


The effect of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (S. minnesota R 595) (LPS) on the luminol dependent chemiluminescence (LUM-CL) of resting and phagocytosing polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) in cord blood or healthy adults has been investigated. The inhibitory effect of LPS on the LUM-CL of phagocytosing cord blood PMN has been much more pronounced than on the LUM-CL of adult PMN. The emission curves showed a delayed reaction in cord blood PMN and in contrast to this finding an accelerated reaction in adult PMN. LPS stimulated the photone emission of resting PMN of both groups in comparable intensity.


Summary Prior studies examining the association between self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination and obesity have had mixed results and primarily been cross-sectional. This study tests the hypothesis that an increase in self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination predicts gains in waist circumference and body mass index in Black and White women and men over eight years. In race/ethnicity- and gender-stratified models, this study examined whether change in self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination predicts changes in waist circumference and body mass index over time using a fixed-effects regression approach in SAS statistical software, providing control for both measured and unmeasured time-invariant covariates. Between 1992–93 and 2000–01, self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination decreased among 843 Black women (75% to 73%), 601 Black men (80% to 77%), 893 White women (30% to 23%) and 856 White men (28% to 23%). In fixed-effects regression models, controlling for all time-invariant covariates, social desirability bias, and changes in education and parity (women only) over time, an increase in self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination over time was significantly associated with an increase in waist circumference (β=1.09, 95% CI: 0.00–2.19, p=0.05) and an increase in body mass index (β=0.67, 95% CI: 0.19–1.16, p=0.007) among Black women. No associations were observed among Black men and White women and men. These findings suggest that an increase in self-reported experiences of racial/ethnic discrimination may be associated with increases in waist circumference and body mass index among Black women over time.


THE following are the chief peculiarities of the cephalotribe I show you. 1. It is longer than those in use, being fifteen inches, of which the blades are ten, and the handles five ; therefore, it is better adapted for operations at or above the pelvic brim. Each blade and handle is measured from the lock respeetively. 2. In breadth of blade and pelvic eurve, this cephalotribe is similar to Barnes's long forceps, an instrument I have used' upwards of 600 times in 4,000 deliveries. I have, therefore, modelled my cephalotribe on the lines of a forceps whose efficiency I have fully proved. Further, as I believe axis-traction depends more on the accoucheur thpn on his tool, I discard all useless encumbrances, such as traction-rods, with the accompanying belly-band or waist-belt.


A relatively perfect organizational system of extreme floods emergency management has been established in China. However, no-timely response and procrastination still exist in practical actions of grassroots organizations. In this paper, evolutionary game (EG) theory is applied to extreme floods emergency management, and to analyze replicator dynamics and its evolutionary stable strategy (ESS) between different level hierarchical governments. Evolution results are simulated by system dynamics (SD). Some conclusions are inferred that: (1) the evolutionary game between a higher-level government and a lower-level government has no ESS; (2) the evolution results of EG between a higher-level government and a lower-level government show a trend of cycle. In order to break the cycle, the higher-level government has to strengthen supervision to the lower-level government.


Politics have traditionally looked at the exercise of democracy with at least two implicit assumptions: (1) institutions are the normal channel of politics and (2) voting is the normal channel for politics to make decisions. Of course, reality is much more complex than that, but, on the one hand, all the extensions of that model beyond or around voting –issues related to access to public information, to deliberation and argumentation, to negotiation and opinion shaping, or related to accountability– are based on institutions as the core axis around which politics spin. On the other hand, the existence and analysis of extra-institutional political participation –awareness raising, lobbying, citizen movements, protests and demonstrations– have also most of the times been put in relationship with affecting the final outcomes of institutional participation and decision-making, especially in affecting voting. Inspired in the concept of «feet voting» (developed by Tiebout, Friedman and others) in this paper we want to challenge this way of understanding politics as a proactive and conscious action, and propose instead a reactive and unconscious way of doing politics, based on small, casual contributions and its posterior analysis by means of big data, emergence analysis and pattern recognition. In our theoretical approach –illustrated with real examples in and out of the field of politics– we will argue that social media practices like tweeting, liking and sharing on Facebook or Google+, blogging, commenting on social networking sites, tagging, hashtagging and geotagging are not what has been pejoratively labelled as «slacktivism» (a comfortable, low commitment and feel-good way of activism) but «casual politics», that is, the same kind of politics that happen informally in the offline world. The difference being that, for the first time, policyand decision-makers can leverage and turn into real politics. If they are able to listen. If they are able to think about politics out of institutions and in real-time.


Macular edema is a common cause of visual loss in patients with retinal vein occlusions. Ozurdex®, a dexamethasone intravitreal implant, has been shown in randomized controlled trials to reduce macular edema and improve visual acuity in patients with either branch retinal vein occlusions or central retinal vein occlusions. It was approved in the United States in 2009. Since then, new therapeutic agents and clinical data have emerged. The purpose of this review is to critically evaluate the clinical utility of Ozurdex® in the current treatment strategy of macular edema related to retinal vein occlusion.


A reflex is an involuntary reaction of the nervous system to intrinsic and extrinsic stimuli. In athletes, it is largely damaged, which presents a serious problem. The psychomotor pattern for the neurological assessment of reflex in karate, taekwondo and other martial arts is based on the principles of physiology, neurology and biomechanics. Pattern can be defined as an inseparable entity of the physical (motor), psychological (mental-emotional) and energy factor, during manual muscle test under load used to assess muscle tonus, which is the subject of this paper. The aim of the paper is to determine neurological reflex activities of athletes' muscles when they are subject to load in order to fully exploit their potential. Investigating the reaction of the peripheral nervous system was based on the assessment of examinees' reflexes, among which were active athletes N = 50 and random sample of examinees N = 50, as well as on data comparison. The results indicated the damaged muscle innervation in 46% of athletes and 50% of random sample of examinees. The conclusion is that muscle tone virtually does not depend on whether someone is engaged in sport or not, and on the other hand, it sends a warning that it is necessary to balance the nervous system. Therefore, by restoring biological feedback, an adequate reaction of the nervous system improves health and athletes' training process. The authors provide a model of pre-exercise testing, which has the basic role of preventing muscle tone and a key role as a guardian of natural human functioning.


The X-ray pictures of the thorax from premature infants must be prepared by conditions of neonatal intensive care. For this X-ray pictures are available very often single-puls generators only. The radiation exposure is dependent prominently on the type of the generator. The radiation exposure was compared between single-puls generators and 6-puls generators. The dosimetry was performed with CaF2-thermoluminescent dosimeters. The results of measurement demonstrated: In the radiation fields the radiation exposure is considerable higher by the single-puls generators than by the 6-puls generators. The indication to X-ray pictures of the thorax from premature infants under conditions of bed-side with single-puls generators must be very accuratly.


We show that the basic reproduction number of an SIS patch model with standard incidence is either strictly decreasing and strictly convex with respect to the diffusion coefficient of infected subpopulation if the patch reproduction numbers of at least two patches in isolation are distinct or constant otherwise. Biologically, it means that fast diffusion of the infected people reduces the risk of infection. This completely solves and generalizes a conjecture by Allen et al. ({\it SIAM J Appl Math}, 67: 1283-1309, 2007). Furthermore, a substantially improved lower bound on the multipatch reproduction number, a generalized monotone result on the spectral bound the Jacobian matrix of the model system at the disease-free equilibrium, and the limiting endemic equilibrium are obtained. The approach and results can be applied to a class of epidemic patch models where only one class of infected compartments migrate between patches and one transmission route is involved.


South Africa is currently grappling with the problem of transforming a fragmented, apartheid-inspired health delivery system structured along racial lines. Cuban doctors have been invited to serve in rural areas where many South African-trained medical personnel refuse to go, often joining the post-democracy 'brain drain' as a result of dissatisfaction with government health policies. This paper attempts to bring to light a once very successful and highly innovative health delivery model that was conceived and piloted in South Africa over a half-century ago. This model combined anthropology and epidemiology and resulted in calls for a re-design of national health delivery based on what was called the Pholela model. Due to short sighted government policy at the time, the model was exported abroad (via immigration) where it formed the basis of several progressive health initiatives in various countries. Significantly, it marked the beginnings of social science and medicine collaborations that are still viewed as an ideal for developing more effective health interventions. The author suggests that this historic experiment at Pholela has much to offer in terms of providing a model that could foster transformations in both academic and medical service.
 JOURNAL OF THE PAN AFRICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION Number 2 Volume VII September 2000, pp. 137-157


Scrapie prions are composed largely, if not entirely, of the scrapie prion protein (PrPSc) that is encoded by a chromosomal gene. Scrapie-infected mouse neuroblastoma (ScN2a) and hamster brain (ScHaB) cells synthesize PrPSc from the normal PrP isoform (PrPC) or a precursor through a posttranslational process. In pulse-chase radiolabeling experiments, we found that presence of brefeldin A (BFA) during both the pulse and the chase periods prevented the synthesis of PrPSc. Removal of BFA after the chase permitted synthesis of PrPSc to resume. BFA also blocked the export of nascent PrPC to the cell surface but did not alter the distribution of intracellular deposits of PrPSc. Under the same conditions, BFA caused the redistribution of the Golgi marker MG160 into the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Using monensin as an inhibitor of mid-Golgi glycosylation, we determined that PrP traverses the mid-Golgi stack before acquiring protease resistance. About 1 h after the formation of PrPSc, its N-terminus was removed by a proteolytic process that was inhibited by ammonium chloride, chloroquine, and monensin, arguing that this is a lysosomal event. These results suggest that the ER is not competent for the synthesis of PrPSc and that the synthesis of PrPSc occurs during the transit of PrP between the mid-Golgi stack and lysosomes. Presumably, the endocytic pathway features in the synthesis of PrPSc.


The virulence protein YopM of the plague bacterium Yersinia pestis has different dominant effects in liver and spleen. Previous studies focused on spleen, where YopM inhibits accumulation of inflammatory dendritic cells. In the present study we focused on liver, where PMN function may be directly undermined by YopM without changes in inflammatory cell numbers in the initial days of infection, and foci of inflammation are easily identified. Mice were infected with parent and ΔyopM-1 Y. pestis KIM5, and effects of YopM were assessed by immunohistochemistry and determinations of bacterial viable numbers in organs. The bacteria were found associated with myeloid cells in foci of inflammation and in liver sinusoids. A new in-vivo phenotype of YopM was revealed: death of inflammatory cells, evidenced by TUNEL staining beginning at d 1 of infection. Based on distributions of Ly6G+, F4/80+, and iNOS+ cells within foci, the cells that were killed could have included both PMNs and macrophages. By 2 d post-infection, YopM had no effect on distribution of these cells, but by 3 d cellular decomposition had outstripped acute inflammation in foci due to parent Y. pestis, while foci due to the ΔyopM-1 strain still contained many inflammatory cells. The destruction depended on the presence of both PMNs in the mice and YopM in the bacteria. In mice that lacked the apoptosis mediator caspase-3 the infection dynamics were novel: the parent Y. pestis was limited in growth comparably to the ΔyopM-1 strain in liver, and in spleen a partial growth limitation for parent Y. pestis was seen. This result identified caspase-3 as a co-factor or effector in YopM's action and supports the hypothesis that in liver YopM's main pathogenic effect is mediated by caspase-3 to cause apoptosis of PMNs.


The effects of the welding parameters, contact tip-to-workpiece distance (CTWD), current, and voltage on the diffusible hydrogen content in weld metal deposited by self-shielded flux cored arc welding were investigated and rationalized by comparing the amount of heat generated in the extension length of the wire. This showed that as CTWD increased from 15mm to 25mm, the amount of heat generated was increased from 71.1J to 174.8J, and the hydrogen content was decreased from 11.3mL/100g to 5.9mL/100 g. Even if little difference was observed in the amount of heat generated, the hydrogen content was increased with an increase in voltage because of the longer arc length. A regression analysis showed that the regression coefficient of voltage in self-shielded flux cored arc welding is greater than that in arc welding. This implies that voltage control is more important in self-shielded flux cored arc welding than in arc welding.


This paper uses the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey to investigate the factors that influence young Australians' mental health and life satisfaction, with an emphasis upon the role of family background. It also explores male and female differences concerning those background effects. The results indicate a particularly significant negative association between parental divorce and well-being, and suggest that the timing of divorce matters. Distinguishing the samples by gender shows that this relationship remains significant only for females. Past living arrangements consistently turn out to be statistically insignificant whether the sample used is the total, males or females. The current living arrangements, however, appear to be significantly associated with both mental health and life satisfaction of males. Adding potentially confounding characteristics to our basic regression, which includes only the family background variables, suggests that some of the 'aggregate' effects of family background might work indirectly through the mediating variables such as education or lifestyles, though most of them remain direct. Among those, marital status, education, labour market experience and lifestyles seem to be the major factors explaining the dispersion in well-being of young Australians. Income and wealth, on the other hand, have only a minor impact. Copyright 2008 The Authors. Journal compilation 2008 Blackwell Publishing Ltd/University of Adelaide and Flinders University.


: Introduction : Child maltreatment is a global problem, not only for its repercussions at the time of the act but also for its possible sequelae; therefore, it is crucial to characterize the changes found in magnetic resonance, to correlate the structural outcome with its functional repercussions. Objective : To demonstrate brain changes and their functional repercussions using magnetic resonance imaging in people exposed to chronic child abuse. This article seeks to unify and summarize what is already known. Materials and methods : We performed a systematic literature review; the search was carried out through PubMed, LILACS, ScienceDirect, and Embase. The inclusion criteria were studies published in English, Spanish and French, between January 2015 and March 2020 that discussed the clinical and encephalic alterations in MRI caused by child abuse. Results: 7 studies with 760 participants were included, mean age ranging between 6-35 years. In 42% of the article's alterations were evidenced at the amygdala and hippocampus, defined as volume reduction or decreased connectivity. On the other hand, 28% of the articles included alterations in the frontal cortex. Conclusions anatomical and functional changes, which may be reversible if early intervention is performed by separating these children from the focus of abuse. It is possible to conclude that structural changes in the brain vary depending on the sub-type of abuse; nevertheless, it remains controversial which changes correspond to each child maltreatment sub-type. There is not enough literature to classify the anatomical variations caused by child abuse according to gender, for which the literature must be expanded to emit a concept.


In this paper, a new concept called generalized stochastic convexity is introduced as an extension of the classic notion of stochastic convexity. It relies on the well-known concept of generalized convex functions and corresponds to a stochastic convexity with respect to some Tchebycheff system of functions. A special case discussed in detail is the notion of stochastic s-convexity (s ∈ [real number symbol]), which is obtained when this system is the family of power functions {x0, x1,..., xs−1}. The analysis is made, first for totally positive families of distributions and then for families that do not enjoy that property. Further, integral stochastic orderings, said of Tchebycheff-type, are introduced that are induced by cones of generalized convex functions. For s-convex functions, they reduce to the s-convex stochastic orderings studied recently. These orderings are then used for comparing mixtures and compound sums, with some illustrations in epidemic theory and actuarial sciences.


Advancements in information technology, and transfer of data online leading to the vulnerabilities and giving an invitation to cyber threats. Security and privacy are important issues in cloud storage and networking fields. Cloud computing created an environment that facilitates the internet of things. The cloud computing technology consisted of servers, applications, and other storage devices, relying on the virtual connection. The stored information in clouds can be manipulated without the need for extensive physical activities. The internet of things devices provide information and services through information and communication technology, these end-node IoT devices are not very intelligent and resource-constrained thus they are vulnerable to cyber threats. It posed an issue of insecurity as malicious individuals learned ways of intruding these systems and causing intellectual and physical losses. The study proposes numerous solutions for the challenges of privacy and security in the cloud and IoT. The paper provides an in-depth examination of security challenges in cloud computing and IoT. The methodology uses the interpretive technique. The results depict the importance of the machine and deep learning in cyber-attack and mitigation.  Analysis of variance (ANOVA) test statistics is used to test the reliability of the study.


NDRV disease is a new epidemic disease in waterfowl that first appeared in China. Compared with the classical DRV (CDRV), NDRV is associated with more severe symptoms, a higher mortality rate, and a broader host range. ABSTRACT The novel duck reovirus (NDRV) is an emerging pathogen that causes disease in various waterfowl species. Since the outbreak, it has caused huge economic losses to the duck industry in China. A rapid, reliable, and high-throughput method is required for epidemiological investigation and evaluation of vaccine immunogenicity. A good first step would be establishing an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) that could detect NDRV antibodies in different breeds of ducks and geese from the serum and egg yolk. This study used a recombinant NDRV σB protein and a corresponding horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-labeled monoclonal antibody to develop a blocking ELISA (B-ELISA). The cutoff value of the B-ELISA was 37.01%. A total of 212 serum samples were tested by the B-ELISA, and the virus neutralization test (VNT) was the gold standard test. The sensitivity and specificity of the B-ELISA were 92.17% (106/115) and 97.94% (95/97), respectively. The agreement rates between the B-ELISA and VNT were 94.81% (kappa value, 0.896). The B-ELISA could specifically recognize anti-NDRV sera without cross-reacting with other positive serums for other major diseases in ducks and geese. The inter- and intra-assay coefficients of variation (CVs) of the B-ELISA and VNT assays were acceptable. In conclusion, the novel B-ELISA could be a rapid, simple, safe, and economically attractive alternative to the VNT in assessing duck flocks' immunity status and in epidemiological surveillance in multiple waterfowl species. IMPORTANCE NDRV disease is a new epidemic disease in waterfowl that first appeared in China. Compared with the classical DRV (CDRV), NDRV is associated with more severe symptoms, a higher mortality rate, and a broader host range. NDRV has become the prevalent genotype in China. At present, there are no commercially available diagnostic products for the NDRV disease. VNT, as the gold standard serologic test, is not only time-consuming and laborious, but also has high requirements for facilities and equipment, which is not suitable for clinical application. Conventional ELISA requires specific antispecies conjugates that are not currently available. B-ELISA not only has the advantage of higher analysis specificity, but also can be used to test specific antibodies against different waterfowl species, because no species-specific conjugates are required in such detection. Therefore, it is necessary to establish a B-ELISA for the detection of antibodies against NDRV in waterfowl species.


The characterisation of heat transfer in oscillatory flow of thermo-acoustic based heat exchangers is a cumbersome issue. This is due to the nature of the heat transfer between the gas particles moving along the device at high amplitude and the solid surface of the heat exchangers. In addition, the change in velocity, pressure and temperature induces nonlinear effect. As a result, the performance of heat exchangers negatively affects the efficiency of thermo-acoustic systems. Hence, it is necessary to determine to oscillatory heat transfer coefficient in order to measure the performance of heat exchangers in thermo-acoustic systems. Although it is possible to conduct experimental investigation or perform numerical analysis in order to determine oscillatory heat transfer coefficient, the former requires costly time consuming experiment while the latter involves the resolution of complex mathematical models. In this paper, an improved adaptive neurofuzzy inference system and artificial neural network trained by particle swarm optimization are proposed to predict oscillatory heat transfer coefficient. This paper is intending to provide clarity on the benefits of these new approaches on the computation of geometrical configuration and the working parameters of heat exchangers in thermo-acoustic systems.


We present a high-power and broadband photoconductive terahertz emitter operating at telecommunication optical wavelengths, at which compact and high-performance fiber lasers are commercially available. The presented terahertz emitter utilizes an ErAs:InGaAs substrate to achieve high resistivity and short carrier lifetime characteristics required for robust operation at telecommunication optical wavelengths. It also uses a two-dimensional array of plasmonic nano-antennas to offer significantly higher optical-to-terahertz conversion efficiencies compared to the conventional photoconductive emitters, while maintaining broad operation bandwidths. We experimentally demonstrate pulsed terahertz radiation over 0.1-5 THz frequency range with the power levels as high as 300 μW. This is the highest-reported terahertz radiation power from a photoconductive emitter operating at telecommunication optical wavelengths.


Summary Soymilk was fermented using culture composed of Lactobacillus casei, Bifidobacterium spp. and Streptococcus thermophilus (BCT culture, Chr. Hansen's, Denmark) at two temperatures 37 °C and 41 °C with and without 5% of glucose addition. Fermentation was conducted until pH value 4.6 was reached. During fermentation and storage time (28 days at +4 °C) changes of pH values and viable cells counts were observed. All fermentations lasted between 6 and 7.5 hours. At temperature 41 °C fermentation was approximately 1 hour shorter, while glucose addition had reduced fermentation time for 30 minutes. Higher temperature of fermentation, as well as glucose addition, had negligible influence on portions and viable cells count of particular bacterial species in the product. In all fermented soymilk samples the viable cells count of particular bacterial strains was roughly equal: Str. thermophilus have grown the best (~ 10 8 CFU/mL) while lactobacilli have grown the weakest (~ 10 5 - 10 6 CFU/mL). Generally, for soymilk fermentation mainly Str. thermophilus was responsible. On its growth rate glucose addition and higher fermentation temperature had strong positive influence. During 28 days of refrigerated storage, the product was stable. A remarkable decrease of viable cells count of lactobacilli was noticed in the last week of storage.


This paper presents an online reinforcement learning based application which increases the revenue of one particular electric vehicles (EV) station, connected to a renewable source of energy. Moreover, the proposed application adapts to changes in the trends of the station's average number of customers and their types. Most of the parameters in the model are simulated stochastically and the algorithm used is the Q-learning algorithm. A computer simulation was implemented which demonstrates and confirms the utility of the model.


Bladder cancer (BC) is one of the most common cancers in the world. From an early age, it was observed that chronic inflammation is associated with conditions favorable to the development of tumors, as well as the tumor microenvironment. Moreover, regulating tumor progression also interferes with the therapy's response. The interaction between the tumor and the immune system led to the development of new immune therapies, the immune checkpoint inhibitors. Immunotherapy has shown a better safety profile, survival, and tolerance compared to standard chemotherapy. This therapy offers an effective alternative to patients who are ineligible for cisplatin and patients with advanced disease progression after platinum-based therapy. The first immunotherapy approved for BC was intravesical instillation with Bacillus Calmette–Guérin, for tumors at early stages. Later, immunotherapy focused on immune checkpoint inhibitors, namely, anti-programmed cell death protein 1 (PD1), anti-programmed cell death protein ligand 1(PD-L1), and anti-antigen 4 associated with cytotoxic T cells (CTLA-4). Currently, five immune checkpoint inhibitors for advanced BC are approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA): Atezolizumab, Durvalumab, Avelumab, Pembrolizumab, and Nivolumab. This review addresses the correlation between inflammation, tumor microenvironment, and cancer; various studies regarding immune checkpoint inhibitors, either in monotherapy or in combination therapy, are also addressed.


Bashania fargesii, one of the dominant bamboo species distributed at the ele vation between 1 000-1 900 m of Qinling Mountains, is an important food source f or the Giant Panda (Ailuropoda melanoleuca). The habitat preference of the G iant Panda for different bamboo forests is hardly known. To investigate the rel ationship between the bamboo and Giant Pandas, we conducted a study on the food selection of the Giant Pandas on the B. fargesii at Foping National Nature R eserve, Shaanxi Province in the winter of 2004 and the spring of 2005. Forty-fi ve transects (about 17.3 km/Each) across the reserve and 159 large samples (20 m×20 m each) were surveyed. The data about the density, coverage, basal diamete r, average height and proportion of the young B. fargesii were collected in the sample and the characteristic of the bamboo previously bitten by the Giant P andas. The result indicated that pandas mainly foraged on old bamboo in the B. fargesii forest in which the proportion of young bamboo was as low as the pro portion of died bamboo in the winter. In the spring, however, the pandas showed strong preference for B. fargesii forests with lower densities, larger basal diameters and higher proportion of young bamboos. Most pandas selected to habit at with a large density of growing B. fargesii, and young bamboos were the p andas' favorite food. When bamboo shoots bourgeoned, the thick shoots among the sparse B. fargesii forests with larger basal diameters became the major foo d source for those pandas.


Against the backdrop of the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2017 the authors propose to focus the political agenda on the threats to free trade which emerged by the protectionist views of the Trump government, the imminent weakening of the EU Common Market in course of the Brexit and the still lingering conflict with Russia which is accompanied by trade sanctions. The authors show how far the three Baltic States depend on trade with Russia, the United Kingdom and the USA by a share analysis of disaggregated trade flows and a gravity analysis of trade relations. The analyses reveal that Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania could be affected negatively by all the three challenges to the free movements of goods and services. While they are still trading over-proportionally with Russia the attractiveness of UK and US markets for Baltic enterprises is already visible and these markets offer further development potential. Hence, the promotion of the concept of open markets would not only help bridging political divides but it would also foster the Baltic States' gains from globalization and would reduce economic and political dependencies


Malaria is a serious global health problem and in the absence of an effective vaccine, access
to safe and effective treatment still remains the mainstay in the control of the disease.
However, the efficacy of this control strategy is hampered by the emergence and spread of
drug resistant malaria which may lead to excess of mortality. One of the greatest challenges
for health authorities of malaria endemic countries is thus to decide on when and how
antimalarial drug policy should be changed, so that most of the patients will fully recover
from the disease and will be cleared from parasites.
The current 'gold standard' for the assessment of antimalarial resistance is the estimation of in
vivo drug efficacy, whereas in vitro drug sensitivity tests and the analysis of molecular
resistance markers in the parasite serve as complementary tools.
In the present study, we assessed the relevance of a new appraisal approach for malaria
resistance: community-based cross-sectional surveys versus clinical malaria studies, and the
usefulness of a new molecular technology for the identification of molecular markers in
different parasite genes. The frequencies of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in given
resistance marker genes, as well as genotype patterns were analyzed in clinical samples and
their role in predicting in vivo treatment response was investigated. Furthermore, community
drug resistance profiles were correlated with the incidence risk of clinical treatment failure in
order to evaluate the relevance and usefulness of such a novel approach in the management of
drug use.
In Papua New Guinea (PNG), the 4-aminoquinoline drugs amodiaquine (AQ) and chloroquine
(CQ) have been first-line treatment against uncomplicated malaria until the late 1990s. At the
same time, resistance of Plasmodium falciparum and P. vivax to these drugs had reached
unacceptably high levels and health authorities were prompted to revise antimalarial treatment
policy in 1997. First efficacy trials with the combination of AQ or CQ plus SP conducted
between 1998 and 1999 showed good efficacy against falciparum and vivax malaria and the
PNG Department of Health chose these combination regimens to replace the monotherapy
with AQ or CQ as the standard first-line treatment against uncomplicated malaria in 2000.
The in vivo studies we conducted between 2003 and 2005 were the first ones to assess the
therapeutic efficacy of the newly introduced combination regimen against P. falciparum and
P. vivax malaria using the revised WHO standard protocol. In our studies conducted in three
different areas over the period of three consecutive years, we observed PCR-corrected
treatment failure rates up to 28% for P. falciparum and 12% for P. vivax malaria.

Regarding former drug history in PNG (i.e., long lasting 4-aminoquinoline use and sporadic
use of SP as mass chemprophylaxis or partner drug with quinine for second-line treatment),
we found a genetic background in the parasite population that is associated with high CQ as
well as moderate pyrimethamine resistance. We also observed the emergence of mutations
concordant with a sulphadoxine resistant phenotype, indicating that the efficacy of the sulpha
component is already compromised. Further results that identified key pfdhps mutations to be
most relevant in predicting treatment failure with the current first-line regimen corroborated
our findings that AQ and CQ as inefficacious partner drugs of SP in the new standard
treatment were not able to curb both, the progression of pyrimethamine resistance as well as
the emergence of sulphadoxine resistance in PNG.
We have shown that our community-based molecular monitoring approach was feasible in
PNG and that molecular monitoring of parasite resistance can indeed be a valuable
supplementary tool in malaria resistance surveillance. However, our data also clearly
highlighted several drawbacks of the presently applied methods for the assessment of
resistance, the most important being the lack of standardised methods that are applicable in
different epidemiological settings. In addition, our data indicate that currently suggested
public health models for the molecular monitoring of parasite resistance are not suitable for
universal application in settings which are different with regard to several factors such as
malaria endemicity, transmission intensity and drug use patterns.
To summarize, decreasing in vivo efficacy of the current first-line regimen in PNG and the
molecular drug resistance profile of the parasite population consistent with a CQ and SP
resistant phenotype strongly indicate that a policy change to artemisinin-based combination
therapy (ACT) has to be considered in the near future. We have shown that a careful baseline
evaluation of the molecular resistance background is needed for the identification of the most
relevant molecular markers for longitudinal monitoring in a given area. The novel DNA
microarray-based method which allows the parallel analysis of multiple drug resistanceassociated
SNPs has been proven to be a valuable tool to assess the usefulness of each known
molecular marker in a particular region with specific drug use. Moreover, the new technology
enabled the assessment of molecular markers on an epidemiological scale and hence opened
the avenue for the investigation of a more comprehensive community-based monitoring
programme.
To conclude, the novel technical tool for the assessment of molecular markers of parasite
resistance presented in the current study is cheap, easy to use, and applicable in laboratories

with limited infrastructure. Moreover, the technology is highly versatile and allows rapid
adaptation to specific monitoring needs, the most important at the moment being the close
monitoring of resistance to the highly effective artemisinin derivates and potential partner
drugs in ACTs. Though molecular markers have been proven to be useful as an early warning
system, their usefulness in predicting treatment response and the progression of resistance is
still limited. Hence, currently suggested public health models based on molecular data will
have to include additional parameters for important determinants of parasite resistance and to
be evaluated in varying epidemiological settings before molecular methods may eventually
replace in vivo efficacy studies for the surveillance of resistance.


A patient in whom gingival hyperplasia was caused by prolonged use of an anticonvulsant drug (hydantoin) is described. Advanced gingival hyperplasia and significant displacement of the remaining teeth caused severe damage, especially to the patient's appearance. It was not possible to cure the problems completely with routine periodontal treatment. It was decided to extract all the remaining teeth and restore function and esthetics early with complete dentures. Cephalometric analysis was used to determine the degree to which the teeth had drifted. During fabrication of the dentures, the analysis was very useful in deciding the position of the anterior teeth and checking the vertical dimension of occlusion.


—This paper mainly proposes the Level-Crossing Rate (LCR) and Average Duration of Fades (ADF) of the Two Wave with Diffuse Power (TWDP) fading process. Both reference model and deterministic model are presented. The reference model is derived based on the description of TWDP process while the deterministic model is derived based on the Rice's sum-of-sinusoids (SOS). The derived deterministic model is proved to consist with the reference model based on the central limit theorem. The simulation results show an excellent agreement between these two models and the simulations.


In recent years, several companies and researchers focused on evaluating the impacts of Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) technologies on supply chain performance. This paper deals with the introduction of an RFID technology in an entity where printers are Configured-To-Order (CTO). The objective is to evaluate the impact of this technology on system performances such as resource utilization, cycle time and yield. Therefore, we developed a model of discrete event simulation using Automod and we made a comparison between a baseline scenario and an RFID scenario. Results show that RFID shortens cycle times, increases yield, and creates imbalance of processing times that should be corrected by rethinking resource allocation.


Background and Aims TLNO, transfer factor for nitric oxide, is a pulmonary function test of gas transfer. The test, in combination with carbon monoxide, allows for calculation of the alveolar membrane diffusing capacity and red blood cell conductance. This allows physicians to recognise physiologically where issues with gas transfer arise. Currently, there are very few papers looking at TLNO reproducibility in healthy subjects and none aiming with a target of 5% repeatability between efforts. This study attempts to look at the reproducibility of TLNO over 10 sessions (7 weeks total) with an intra-session repeatability of 5%. In addition, comparison of TLCO measurements between 10 and 5 s breath holds are made. Methods 14 normal subjects were recruited and a baseline spirometry was taken and height, weight, age and sex were recorded. Subjects were asked to perform a TLCO test with 10 s breath hold followed by 10 repeated sessions of the TLNO test on different days. Measurements within 5% of each other were considered acceptable repeated Results in one session. A Bland-Altman plot and regression line were constructed to compare TLCO measures between different breath hold times. One-way repeated measures ANOVA, measurement error values, intra and inter-session variability were calculated for TLNO and TLCO recordings obtained over the 10 repeated sessions. Results Bland-Altman plot revealed no statistically significant (p=0.783, p≥0.05) difference between TLCO breath hold times. Coefficient of determination from the regression line, r2=0.860. Repeated measures ANOVA revealed no significant difference for TLNO and TLCO measurements over time at p=0.374 and p=0.842 (p≥0.05) respectively. Intra-session and inter-session variability for TLNO were calculated as 15.02 ml/min/mmHg and 16.12 ml/min/mmHg respectively. TLCO intra-session and inter-session variability were 4.30 ml/min/mmHg and 3.70 ml/min/mmHg. We have shown that TLCO values recorded with the shorter 5 s breath hold agree with the conventional 10 s technique. Over a 7 week period TLNO and TLCO do not change significantly and calculated session variability is consistent with ERS/ATS guidelines. Conclusion TLNO is a highly reproducible test over a 7 week period and a shortened breath hold in healthy people provides the same values as the traditional 10 s breath hold for TLCO.


Different categories of crime, location, victim and offender details have a national security concerns. Premises surveillance needs are growing. One of the surveillance systems is the closed-circuit television (CCTV) that able to provide information about the crime. With the increase in wide usage of the system, more technical flexibility for CCTV systems is required. Human detection techniques can play big role in this field and provide more efficient working CCTV system. The system work based human detection resulting in most efficient in saving recording space. Part of the human detection is a video motion detection system that works to trigger the system to increase its frame rate recording to a predetermined value. The system also can be useful in triggering an alarm only in moments of a human appearance. The paper presents a design of a human detection system utilizing CCTV cameras based on fuzzy logic model. The propose system aiming to has a capability of identifying certain objects in line of sight and determine if the object is a human or not. The propose system is a real time system for human detection, tracking, and verification in such challenging environments. The system integrates several computer vision techniques in order to design an algorithm that is capable of processing the digital images to perform its functions that include human detection, object tracking, and motion analysis. The testing results provide very encouraging outcome for the proposed system.