Background/Aim: It is well-established knowledge that persons with nonaffective psychotic disorders often have problematic use of alcohol, cannabis and stimulants, but heroin use is usually not included. Our aim was to investigate the prevalence of heroin use disorders in patients with nonaffective psychosis. Methods: As the combination of heroin use and nonaffective psychosis is infrequent, epidemiological studies have to include large populations. The present study is acase count study using information from all psychiatric and social services in Oslo. Prevalence was calculated for four possible scenarios of minimum and maximum case counts and prevalences of nonaffective psychosis. Odds ratios were calculated for the resulting prevalences compared to the minimum and maximum prevalence of heroin use disorder in the general population. Results: We found between 39 and 56 subjects with nonaffective psychoses and comorbid heroin use disorder. The number of individuals with nonaffective psychosis was estimated to be between 692 and 1,730. This corresponds to a prevalence of heroin use disorder of between 2.3 and 8.1%. The odds ratio compared to the general population will range from 1.83 with a prevalence of heroin use disorder in the general population of 1.2% to 9.43 with a prevalence of 0.9%. Conclusion: Individuals with nonaffective psychosis are at increased risk of heroin use.


The sensitivity of fluorescence of pyrrolocytosine-containing oligonucleotides to changes in their secondary structure has been harnessed to monitor the hybridization of modified metal-ion-chelating oligonucleotides with their unmodified counterparts. With short double-helical oligonucleotides, quenching of fluorescence correlated well with the length and, hence, Tm of the duplex provided that the pyrrolo-dC residue was incorporated within the duplex. Furthermore, hybridization of the metal-ion-chelating oligonucleotides was greatly enhanced on addition of 1 eq. of Cu2+, as evidenced by both Tm and fluorometric measurements. As an example of a case where interpretation of a conventional UV-melting profile is challenging, application of the fluorometric method was extended to probing hybridization of short metal-ion-carrying oligonucleotides with the trinucleotide bulge motif of TAR RNA models. In this case the results were more ambiguous, presumably due to weak hybridization with the short target sequence.


An experimental investigation using the Zehnder Mach interferometer reveals the temperature field around heated cylinders in an air stream normal to the axis. From the temperature distribution the local distribution of the heat-transfer coefficient around the cylinder circumference is obtained. The thermal boundary layers are quite thick, especially for the lower Reynolds numbers investigated and the separation occurs farther downstream than at high Reynolds numbers. Accordingly, the contribution of the stagnant region at the downstream side of the cylinder to the over-all heat transfer is low (approximately 15 per cent), and the heat flow into the upstream side is much larger than into the downstream side.


Unlike most existing studies, this paper examines the effects of birth interval on child mortality in a sequential framework. Birth spacing is captured by the length of time since the birth of the last child and the time varying covariates identifying the arrival of a younger sibling during any month after the birth of the present child. We use an instrumental variable method to reduce the endogeneity bias and compare the hazard estimates of child survival with and without instruments for birth spacing. These instrumented sequential results not only reaffirm the static inverse relationship, but also emphasize that the inverse relationship between birth interval and child mortality crucially depends on both the gender and the birth order of the child.


In this paper I would like to present the recent progress in the field of micro-optics including miniaturized light sources, bulk and planar optical components and the key role played by miniaturized optomechanical devices in the general development of future optical microsystems.


Abstract Extract During the last decade significant advances have been made in the control of oestrus and ovulation in domestic animals and this topic has been reviewed many times within that period (Hansel, 1964; Robinson, 1967; Jochie, 1969; Mauleon, 1974). This paper compares the advantages and disadvantages of the major methods for oestrus control and discusses the major overall problems associated with this control.


The authors investigated the three-dimensional nanostructuring of hydrogen silsesquioxane (HSQ) resist by multiple-step 100 keV electron beam lithography. Consecutive overlay exposures were used to create twoand three-levels in high aspect ratio HSQ structures with lateral dimensions down to 30 nm and resist thicknesses of about 1 lm. The HSQ resist was developed by a high contrast solution and supercritically dried in a carbon dioxide environment after each exposure step. The three-dimensional HSQ patterning has potential applications in the fabrication of performance enhanced devices such as photonic crystals, nanoelectromechanical systems, and diffractive X-ray lenses. VC 2011 American Vacuum Society. [DOI: 10.1116/1.3629811]


ABSTRACT Being ostracized can be a painful and distressing experience and can lead to subsequent aggression by the victim. However, it is unknown whether watching someone else be ostracized either in real life or on television is similarly distressing. The purpose of the current study was to examine what type of distress (if any) is induced after viewing ostracism on television. The study consisted of 50 participants, half who viewed a movie clip containing ostracism and half who viewed a control clip. Physiological and self-report data revealed that viewing ostracism was distressing to participants. In particular, participants who viewed the ostracism clip reported a lower sense of belonging, self esteem, and mood, and a greater increase in heart rate and skin conductivity than those who viewed the control clip.


In the summers of 1974 till 1979 microdistribution of Podarcis sicula saffti was examined. Areas without much vegetation and areas with dense vegetation have low densities. Horizontal space, predators, parasites, interspecific competition, shelter and dew appear to be non important factors in the microdistribution of P. s. safii. From 9 a. m. until 6 p. m. temperature in the sun is above PBT (preferred-body-temperature) in all zones. Shade temperature is different from one zone to another. In the most rocky zone without much vegetation, shade is provided by crevices. Shade temperature is under PBT. Food is mainly available outside crevices, in vegetation of Statice sinuatum. Food-size is small, so excursion-time will be long. Lizards are able to collect sufficient food if Statice-plants are close to crevices. The zone with vegetation of Erica arborea, on top of the island, is shaded all day. Shade temperature is under PBT. Only clearings are inhabited by lizards. All other zones have bushes and open areas. During the hot hours bushes provide shade, with shade temperature close to PBT. Food is mainly available in these bushes.


The origin of localized fast mantle flow near subduction zones found in regional (Jadamec and Billen, 2010, 2012) and global (Stadler et al., 2010; Alisic et al., 2010) numerical models using non‐Newtonian rheology is explored using 3D models with simple geometry. Two suites of models, using both a free slab and a slab attached to a lithospheric layer, are presented to determine (1) the origin of high magnitudes of mantle flow (>50 cm/yr) and (2) focusing of flow within the mantle wedge, with mantle wedge velocities up to two times higher than slab sinking velocities. The rheology in the models is either Newtonian with a prescribed low viscosity wedge (LVW) or non‐Newtonian wherein low viscosity regions form in response to high stress surrounding the sinking slab. The results show that there are two aspects of the models that lead to localized fast velocities: reduction in the mantle viscosity surrounding the sinking slab leads to faster overall flow rates induced by the negative buoyancy of the sinking slab; and geometric effects that are caused by lateral variations in viscosity, including retrograde pivoting motion of the slab.


Abstract On the Cape Peninsula, Capensibufo rosei is known from only two isolated breeding populations within Table Mountain National Park. Because of its declining state, there is an urgent need to understand the genetic diversity, population structure and patterns of movement of this species. To do this, 15 microsatellite primer pairs were designed, optimised and tested. Successful loci were screened for null alleles and genotyping errors and then analysed, specifically noting the number of alleles, allelic size range, observed and expected heterozygosities, deviations from Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) and linkage disequilibria. Bottleneck tests and analyses of molecular variance (AMOVA) were also conducted to gain insight into each population's structure. Eleven primer pairs produced unambiguous polymerase chain reactions (PCR) products and scoreable bands, which were found to be polymorphic across both breeding populations. Deviations from HWE were detected owing to the presence of null alleles and inbreeding. Significant bottleneck signatures were detected for both populations and the AMOVA revealed significant differentiation between the two populations, indicating genetic structure at the population level.


The main objective of the work is to test and implement modern interactive methods in the field of medical education, namely the method of cooperative groups into the educational process of the Department of General Surgery of SI "DMA MH" and to determine its efficacy by the example of class on the topic "Burns, frostbites, electrical trauma. Diagnosis, first aid, medical treatment". The method is used to find similarities in different patterns of giving medical care to patients with burns, frostbites and electric trauma. Learning activity is divided into three stages. Stage 1: the teacher divides the students into four groups and gives a task to each group. Stage 2: each group announces the results and presents them in the standardized format. After the discussion the proper decision on the common features of the first aid, treatment, and the algorithm of action is made. Stage 3: the groups share results of the previous clinical experience, sum up, solve situational tasks and tests of level III. The method of co-operative groups allows to increase the motivation of students in the learning process, causes more efficient and thorough acquiring of the material, promotes development of clinical thinking, develops the urge towards collaboration and collective responsibility, favors the development of positive personal qualities of a future professional doctor.


When the socialist party (PSOE) unexpectedly won the Spanish elections in 2004, one of the first initiatives of the new government was to scrap the most controversial parts of the Second National Hydraulic Plan, approved in 2001 by the Conservative government (PP). The new plan (AGUA) replaces highly contested major river diversion schemes with a new hydro-technical logic, centered on the construction of high-volume desalination plants on the Mediterranean coast as the means to manage Spain's recurrent water crisis. The desalination of seawater has indeed become one of the contested terrains for managing hydro-scarcities. This article teases out the heterogeneous and often conflicting post-1980s assembling of heterogeneous human and nonhuman agents around desalination as a new socioecological fix for Spain. The broader intellectual objective of the article is, first, to explore how diverse political projects, social visions, the materialities of water, ecological concerns, cultural imaginaries, discursive formations, institutional practices, and economic strategies of global competitiveness fuse together around specific hydro-technical infrastructures. Second, the article considers how desalination and the networks of actors sustaining its realization mark the transition from a state hydro-structural to a decentralized market environmentalist water framework. The article concludes that the assemblage of socionatural actors around the desalination fix and the "mobilization of the seas" continues to focus on increasing water supply and reproduces hydro-modernizing development despite affirmations of radical change.


Abstract Background Myositis ossificans traumatica (MOT) involves the heterotopic development of lamellar bone after a traumatic injury. Despite being termed "myositis," MOT is not limited to muscle but rather can involve tendons, fat, and fascia. "Traumatica" reflects that lesions are usually associated with a history of significant trauma, that is, fractures or surgery; however, many reports suggest they can also be linked to repetitive low-energy insults. In both cases, the inflammatory response secondary to tissue injury generates a proliferative osteoblastic cascade. Case Description We present a case of persistent wrist pain in a 43-year-old woman associated with yoga activities. Her radiographic studies demonstrated partial scapholunate (SL) ligament tear and an associated mass lesion. Surgical pathology revealed MOT involving the SL ligament. Literature Review MOT lesions in the upper extremity are usually localized around the elbow, and cases in the hand are relatively rare. There are no prior reports of occurrences within the wrist joint or in association with the SL ligament. However, biomechanical studies have quantified significant mechanical strains across the SL interval during various yoga poses. This pattern of microtrauma is capable of generating MOT. Clinical Relevance Upper extremity weight-bearing positions are common in yoga and subject the wrist, especially the SL interval, to high mechanical strains. This pattern of microtrauma should lead the clinician to suspect MOT when encountering a mass in the wrist, but malignancy and infection must be ruled out.


Viral promoters can yield high gene expression levels yet tend to be attenuated in vivo by host proinflammatory cytokines. Prolonged transgene expression can be obtained using constitutive cellular promoters. However, levels of transgene expression driven by cellular promoters are insufficient for effective therapy. We designed a novel self-augmenting gene expression cassette in which the transgene product can induce an endogenous transcription factor to enhance the activity of a weak cellular promoter driving its expression. Using the cellular major histocompatibility complex class I (H-2K(b)) promoter to drive the interferon (IFN-gamma) cytokine gene, we show that the H-2K(b) promoter, although exhibiting much lower basal activity, yields higher IFN-gamma production than the CMV promoter 2 days after transfection. IFN-gamma expression driven by the H-2K(b) promoter also lasts longer than that driven by the cytomegalovirus promoter. Our data demonstrate that the self-augmenting strategy provides a promising approach to achieve high and sustained transgene expression in vivo.


Some remarks on the formation of the working-class: the past and the present Partly in response to fundamental changes which have occurred in the social relations of actually existing capitalism, and to the concomitant political upheavals, partly as a result of the related debates and transformations in social and cultural theory, several social historians of the 1970s and 1980s began to rethink their ideas about class. Having previously made a powerful contribution to the history of working-class formation, the historians in question began to advocate the necessity of a decisive break with Marxist and other materialist sociologies, by way of a turn to various forms of cultural and linguistic analysis ("the discursive approach to history"). By the end of the 1990s, forms of consensus had coalesced around this so-called cultural turn, stressing the complex and contingent relationship between a society's forms of collective agency and identification (such as "class") and its structural circumstances and characteristics (such as the organization of work and the distribution of inequality). During the first two-thirds of the 20th century, distinctive political traditions of the Left had developed around the given processes of capital development and their associated social histories, acquiring strong and long-lasting shape after 1945. Since the 1970s however, as capitalist restructuring under neoliberal auspices inexorably remade the social worlds of class, those earlier patterns of politics also ceased to work. In the light of the fundamentally different patterns of working-class formation, the terms of Left political practice consequently need to be radically rethought.


In Reply. —We thank Drs Lee and Olver for their comments regarding our case report. They bring up three points. First, they note that the botulinum toxin injection was unlikely to contribute to anterior segment ischemia. While we acknowledge their assumption, it remains as yet unproved. As stated in our report, it is possible that several factors may contribute to ischemia in addition to the transposition procedure. Their second point relates to the timing of the injection. They offer their rational for administering botulinum toxin prior to the muscle transposition. We believe that the injection can be administered with equal precision either before or in combination with the muscle transposition. Whether the timing of the injection has any effect on the long-term ocular alignment or the incidence of anterior segment ischemia is unknown. The third point is that vertical rectus surgery alone may result in anterior segment ischemia. We agree


An attempt has been made to prepare surfactants containing oxazoline ring such as 2-alkyl-2-oxazoline organic salt and N-alkyl-4, 4-dimethyl-2-oxazolinium bromide.2-Alkyl-2-oxazoline was formed by the ring closure of N-β-chloroethyl fatty amide made by condensing a fatty acid (C10-C14) with etanolamine followed by chlorination and 4, 4-dimethyl-2-oxazoline was prepared from formic acid and 2-amino-2-methyl-1-propanol.From the experimental results it was found rhat the organic salts of oxazoline were generally superior in surface tension lowering ability and wetting power, but inferior in foaming power and emulsifying power to the oxazolinium salts.


Among the 10 commonly used therapeutic agents investigated, concurrent oral administration of tetracycline (140 mg/kg) twice daily on Days 1–5 post-coitum (pc) interfered with the post-coital anti-implantation activity and almost completely abolished estrogen antagonistic activity of the single anti-implantation (1.5 mg/kg, orally) dose of dl-ormeloxifene administered on Day 1 pc, resulting in the occurrence of resorbed implantations in 50% of the females. However, no such interaction was evident when tetracycline was administered intramuscularly or when ormeloxifene was administered at twice its anti-implantation dose. There was no effect of ormeloxifene and/or tetracycline treatment on serum estradiol and progesterone levels, and all animals presented apparently normal corpora lutea. Ormeloxifene administered per se inhibited aminopyrine-N-demethylase (AD), glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G-6-PDH) and glutathione-Stransferase (GST) in the liver on the day of maximal endometrial receptivity, which was prevented by tetracycline co-administration. Aniline hydroxylase and AD were not detected in small intestine or uterus in vehicle control or any of the treatment groups. There was, however, no effect of ormeloxifene plus tetracycline treatment on serum total alkaline phosphatase activity. Findings suggest that interference with anti-implantation action of ormeloxifene by tetracycline might be due primarily to the almost complete abolition of its estrogen antagonistic activity at the uterine level, effected by decreased bioavailability of ormeloxifene and/or its active metabolite(s) by altered enterohepatic recirculation because of the effect on gut microflora. This might alternatively be related to an increased rate of its metabolism and elimination from the system via prevention of ormeloxifene-induced inhibition of hepatic AD, G-6-PDH, and GST, which, by effecting a decreased rate of metabolism, might be responsible for prolonged (120 h) duration of estrogen antagonistic/anti-implantation action of ormeloxifene in this species. © 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.


For building and leading successful software engineering teams it is vital to understand their team structure as well as many other "soft" factors, e.g. the personality and skills of individual team members. A key element of the team structure, besides power distribution, knowledge distribution etc., is the role distribution within the team. The role distribution has a twofold aspect: first, the formal role distribution, which is defined by the standard process and role model or the project management, and second, the informal role distribution which grows within a team by the natural interactions between the team members and is based to some extent upon their individual characteristics.This paper presents an empirical examination of the informal role distribution in student software engineering teams and compares the results to the concept of functional group roles.


Objectives: The purpose of the study is to evaluate the influence of a multidisciplinary model of care on the incidence of postoperative complications after a hip fracture. Design: Retrospective cohort series. Setting: Level I trauma center. Patients/Participants: Three hundred six patients with pertrochanteric femur fracture (OTA classification: 31-B1, 31-B2, 31-B3, 31-A1, 31-A2, 31-B3, 32-A1, and 32-A2). Intervention: A multidisciplinary, collaborative model of perioperative care: the Medical Orthopaedic Trauma Service (MOTS). Main Outcome Measures: Incidence of in-patient complications, length of in-patient hospitalization, readmission rate after hospital discharge, and postdischarge mortality at 90 days and 1 year. Results: Although there was no change in length of hospitalization, there was a significantly decreased overall incidence of in-patient complications and a decreased incidences of new-onset urinary tract infection and arrhythmias in the MOTS cohort. These differences persisted after controlling for age, comorbidity, gender, ethnicity, type of fracture, and number of days from admission to surgery with a logistic regression model. Subgroup analysis of patients with an American Society of Anesthesiologists physical status classification of 1 or 2 revealed a significantly decreased 90 day readmission rate with the MOTS model, but this did not persist in a regression model (P = 0.07). Conclusions: A multidisciplinary, collaborative model of care for patients with hip fractures decreases the incidence of postoperative in-patient complications and may influence hospital readmission rates. Level of Evidence: Therapeutic Level III. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.


How Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) affects the clinical outcome of EBV-positive diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) remains largely unknown. The viral oncogene LMP1 is at the crux of tumorigenesis and cell survival. Therefore, we examined the association between LMP1high cells drug resistance. We first assessed SLAMF1 as a surrogate marker for LMP1high cells. LMP1 and its target gene CCL22 were highly expressed in SLAMF1high Farage cells. These cells survived longer following treatment with a combination of cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine and prednisone (CHOP). Genes associated with interferon-alpha, allograft rejection, NF-κB and STAT3 were also overexpressed in the surviving Farage cells. Specifically, CHOP treatment increased IL10, LMP1 and pSTAT3 expression levels in a dose-dependent fashion. Addition of exogenous IL4 greatly increased the levels of LMP1 and pSTAT3, which rendered the Farage cells more resistant to CHOP by up-regulating the anti-apoptotic genes BCL-XL and MCL1. The Farage cells were sensitive to Velcade and STAT3, 5, and 6 inhibitors. Inhibition of NF-κB and STAT3, in combination with CHOP, decreased LMP1 levels and effectively induced cell death in the Farage cells. We suggest that LMP1high cells are responsible for the poor drug response of EBV+ DLBCL and that perturbation of the NF-κB and STAT signaling pathways increases toxicity in these cells.


Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder are conditions caused by exposure to one or more stressful events of extraordinary magnitude and/or repeated over many years. The traumatic experience(s) may have different outcomes in different persons: some people fully recover within a short time, while others go on to develop one of these three disorders, whose interdependencies are still poorly understood. The present work utilises an updated version of a model of mental functioning, that has been previously applied to schizophrenia, to provide an interpretation of the aforementioned conditions. The model, built through the method of Artificial Life and with the toolset of Artificial Intelligence, foresees that the mind is subject to two forces: trauma, which represents the attack on the mind, and dissociation, which embodies the mind defence in both physiological and pathological conditions. The balance between these forces determines the pathological outcome.


In this work, an experimental technique is presente d for the acoustic characterization of materials and devices. The developed technique is b ased on the two source method with simultaneous excitation, thus reducing the time req uirements in comparison with the standard two source technique. A decomposition technique is applied to the pressure measurements associated with each microphone, that include noise of two sources acting simultaneously, and the input signals used to excite the two source s. The procedure allows the calculation of the transfer functions between each microphone and each input separately. Once the individual transfer functions have been obtained, i t is possible to characterize an acoustic device by means of its four-pole matrix as well as its transmission loss. The technique has been validated by comparison with theoretical resul ts and experimental methods of earlier studies, for several test cases including a straigh t duct and a reactive muffler.


This article shows how the monolingual mindset of many decision makers in fields such as education detracts from Australia's capacity to develop its potential in plurilingualism. It contrasts the projection of monolingualism as the desired norm with the linguistic diversity within the Australian community. A number of fallacious cliches are discussed critically and attributed to the monolingual mindset – The overcrowded curriculum, competing literacies, the 'unfair advantage' of students with a home background in a language which they are studying, and the sufficiency of global English. It is suggested that more plurilinguals are needed in decision making roles.


Optimizing the colloidal state of polyamic acid (PAA) nanoparticles is essential for achieving a uniform and high-performance polyimide coating by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) on metal substrates of various shapes. In this paper, we report two important roles of the counterions in the formation of PAA colloids for EPD, which, to date, have not been recognized. First, when tertiary alkyl amines are used to neutralize PAA, the polarity of neutralizing counterions determines the size and stability of the PAA colloidal particles. The polarity can be finely tuned by using two different tertiary alkyl amines containing polar and nonpolar groups and adjusting the molar ratio. Depending on the polar/nonpolar ratio, various states of PAA colloids were obtained, including dissolved state, stable colloid, and aggregates. Second, we observed that the confined counterions inside PAA nanoparticles can act as an imidization catalyst during the thermal annealing process. It is revealed that some fraction of the counterion species, mostly having nonpolar groups, is not drawn toward the counter electrode and remains inside the PAA nanoparticles during the EPD process. Optimizing the polarity eventually allowed us to form uniform EPD coatings with high dielectric strengths.


PURPOSE Low-grade serous carcinoma (LGSC) is a rare type of ovarian cancer, which commonly arises from serous borderline tumor (SBT) and is characterized by frequent activating mutations in the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway, including BRAF. The BRAFV600E mutation is associated with improved prognosis in SBT and LGSC, and responses to BRAF inhibitor therapy have been reported. We sought to characterize the clinicopathologic and molecular features of BRAF-driven tubo-ovarian and primary peritoneal serous tumors. METHODS Retrospective analysis of our institutional cohort of SBTs (n = 22), LGSCs (n = 119) and high-grade serous carcinomas (HGSCs, n = 1,290) subjected to targeted massively parallel sequencing was performed to identify cases with BRAF genetic alterations. Putative BRAF rearrangements were confirmed using targeted RNA sequencing and/or fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH). BRAFV600E oncoprotein expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry on selected cases. RESULTS BRAF somatic genetic alterations were identified in 29 of 1,431 (2%) serous tumors and included mutations (n = 24), gene rearrangements (n = 3), and amplification (n = 2). BRAF mutations were more frequent in SBTs (7 of 22; 32%) compared with LGSCs (11 of 119; 9%, P = .009) and HGSCs (6 of 1,290; 0.5%; P < .0001, SBT/LGSC v HGSC). The BRAFV600E hotspot mutation was most common (n = 16); however, other BRAF driver mutations were also detected (n = 8). BRAF mutations were often clonal or truncal in SBTs and LGSCs, but subclonal in most HGSCs. Pathogenic BRAF gene fusions were identified in LGSCs (n = 2) and HGSC (n = 1) and involved distinct fusion partners (AGK, MKRN1, and AGAP3). Three patients with BRAF-mutant LGSC were treated with targeted mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors, one of whom was maintained on therapy for over 3 years with clinical benefit. CONCLUSION Recognition of BRAF alterations beyond V600E mutation in LGSC may have clinical implications for appropriate targeted therapy selection. Novel BRAF non-V600E mutations and gene re-arrangements in ovarian serous carcinoma


This letter reports the first experimental evidence of multielectron excitations in magnetic circular x-ray dichroism (MCXD) spectra, measured at the LI,II,III-edges of Rare Earths (RE) in several RE-Transition Metal (Fe, Co) compounds. These multielectron features involve transitions from the 2p and 4d levels and exhibit a very strong magnetic enhancement compared to normal MCXD.


documented in The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945. The effectiveness of the resistance was determined, however, by extrinsic considerations. Gilles Lambert, a Le Figaro correspondent, has written a gripping and fascinating narrative which draws largely upon interviews with survivors of the Hazalah. It is by no means a systematic and scholarly work. Documentation is absent and the various statistics he provides are questionable. Nonetheless, the work is a valuable addition to the literature of the Holocaust.


Abstract Arnold Zweig and Walter A. Berendsohn, who were in correspondence with each other between 1909 and 1968, continuously sought to convert the other to their beliefs. Around 1910 Zweig wanted to convert Berendsohn to Zionism as coined by Buber, while his views changed after his exile in Palestine, when he tried to win Berendsohn over to communism. Berendsohn, for his part, wanted to convince Zweig of social democracy around 1910, but after traveling Palestine in the 1950s tried to convince Zweig of Zionism. Viewed retrospectively, both appear as idealistic German intellectuals whose eagerness to reform society in 1910 led them in very different directions due to their individual experiences especially in and after the Second World War.


Solid-state anodic oxidation of aluminum contacted to a pellet of various organic conductors based on 7,7,8,8-tetracyanoquinodimethane was observed. A typical passivation curve was observed in the current-voltage characteristics for the anodic polarization of the metal. Along with impedance measurements on the electrode system, it was proved that the passivation is due partly to a thermal transformation in the organic conductor and partly to a solid-state anodization of aluminum, the latter being conditioned by the former through the formation of an electrolyte layer in situ. The current efficiency of anodization was estimated by a linear voltage sweep method to be as high as 2%, depending on the ambient moisture. The high efficiency explains the prominent self-healing action of a new type of solid electrolytic capacitor in which manganese dioxide is replaced by an organic-conductor counterelectrode.


A fibre-optic frequency synthesiser is developed that is stabilised to the optical frequency standard based on molecular iodine . The possibility of transferring stability of the optical frequency standard to other optical frequencies in the IR range and to the RF range by using synthesiser phase-locked loops (PLLs) with acousto-optical and electro-optical modulators is experimentally demonstrated. The additive instability introduced into the optical frequency comb of the synthesiser (which arises due to PLL residual random errors) is several orders less than the intrinsic instability of the reference optical frequency standard employed (i.e., is noticeably less than for and for ).


Large ovarian cysts are not of common occurrence in young girls. Up to 1905, only sixty-one ovarian cysts in children had been reported. Since that date thirty-eight more have been recorded. Most of these were not very large, but a few were enormous. The most remarkable one was that reported by Keen1in 1893. It occurred in a girl, aged 15 years, from whom he removed a cystic ovarian tumor weighing 111 pounds (50Kg.), and the fluid removed weighed 84 pounds (38 Kg.). The child weighed only 68 pounds (31 Kg.). Keen remarks that after the removal of the tumor the abdominal cavity looked almost like that of an eviscerated cadaver in the dissecting room. The child made a good recovery. In 1921, Findley2reported a case of ovarian cyst in a girl, aged 15 years. The cyst was of the right ovary, was thin walled and


Social media is playing an important role to most people these days. People are using it to be connected among peers, updated with the latest information and also for e-commerce purposes . However, apart from its benefits there are others who would use the information obtained from social media in a malicious way such as harvesting personal information for black mailing, information manipulation and tele-marketing. This threat coupled with unsafe social media practice could expose the social media users to being manipulate into sharing sensitive and revealing information about them. In this paper, a preliminary investigation to identify distinct characterizations of unsafe social media habits is presented. For this study, we focused on one particular social engineering attack known as gatekeeper friending. In this attack, a would--be attacker or manipulator of information could exploit information shared over a social network and how an unsafe social media habits could expose its users to such attacks and exploitation. By identifying this habits we hope that a more secure and cautious code of conduct could be established to prevent unwanted disclosure of private information for malicious intention.


Responsive hydrogel thin films are interesting materials as responsive adhesives or as an active matrix in actuators and sensing applications, and thus, knowledge about their structural and micromechanical properties is of high relevance. Using atomic force spectroscopy, temperature-induced structural and adhesive changes of thermoresponsive hydrogel layers with micrometer thickness based on photo-cross-linked N-isopropylacrylamide (NiPAAm) were investigated in the temperature range of 18-50 degrees C. Grafted onto flat surfaces, these hydrogel layers are restricted to a highly anisotropic swelling and deswelling predominantly perpendicular to the substrate surface, which was monitored and evaluated by force spectroscopy during vertical tip approach and retraction. Analyses of the tip penetration depth yielded quantitative information about the degree of swelling. As a second feature, the critical temperature was found to decrease with increasing cross-linking density. Temperature-dependent measurements with hydrophobic and hydrophilic atomic force microscopy (AFM) tips revealed a strong adhesion to the hydrogel layer in the swollen state, which was reduced upon the layer volume collapse. These observations on the micrometer-thick gel network layers are in contrast to previous reports on ultrathin pNiPAAm brushes and monolayers, which show no adhesion in the swollen state but only in the collapsed state. Furthermore, it was found that the hydrophobicity of the hydrogel probed with a hydrophobic tip continuously increases with temperature over a broad range of at least 30 K.


In anaerobic sediments, microbial degradation of petroleum hydrocarbons is limited by the rapid depletion of electron acceptors (e.g., ferric oxide, sulfate) and accumulation of toxic metabolites (e.g., sulfide, following sulfate reduction). Deep-sea sediments are increasingly impacted by oil contamination, and the elevated hydrostatic pressure (HP) they are subjected to represents an additional limitation for microbial metabolism. While the use of electrodes to support electrobioremediation in oil-contaminated sediments has been described, there is no evidence on their applicability for deep-sea sediments. Here, we tested a passive bioelectrochemical system named "oil-spill snorkel" with two crude oils carrying different alkane contents (4 vs. 15%), at increased or ambient HP (10 vs. 0.1 MPa). Snorkels enhanced alkanes biodegradation at both 10 and 0.1 MPa within only seven weeks, as compared to nonconductive glass controls. Microprofiles in anaerobic, contaminated sediments indicated that snorkels kept sulfide concentration to low titers. Bulk-sediment analysis confirmed that sulfide oxidation by snorkels largely regenerated sulfate. Hence, the sole application of snorkels could eliminate a toxicity factor and replenish a spent electron acceptor at increased HP. Both aspects are crucial for petroleum decontamination of the deep sea, a remote environment featured by low metabolic activity.


The novel trans-bicyclic-perhydro-2(1H)-quinoxalinones 4, 6 and 7 and the tricyclic-perhydropyrrolo[1,2-a]-quinoxalin-4(5H)-one derivatives 8 and 9 are prepared via a ring opening and spontaneous ring closing reaction of the aziridines 2 and 3 with the α-amino acids glycine, L-alanine, L-proline and L-phenylalanine. This methodology was used to prepare 5 and 10 which are novel rigid analogues of the kappa opioid compound 1. Treatment of aziridine 3 with methyl carbamate gave the cyclic urea 11.


Long-endurance, unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) usually employ high-aspect-ratio, flexible wings to reduce weight and power required to achieve extended flight operation. There are currently several advanced concept designs and prototypes that will sustain autonomous operations for months or even years. The increased wing flexibility can lead to large structural deflections for trimmed flight states. These large elastic deformations within the static equilibrium state of the vehicle can induce aeroelastic instabilities quite different from their rigid counterparts. Therefore, it is imperative to perform flutter analysis, which considers the trimmed, large amplitude deformed state as a reference condition. Considering the complexity of the system under investigation, the aeroelastic flutter analysis process usually includes an experimental test phase for verification purposes. In this respect, wind tunnel test models provide the opportunity to modify and calibrate theoretical models, through a process of model updating. This paper proposes the development of an experimental, aeroelastic, slender-wing model that can be designed using a scaling procedure. The model is based on a consistent, aeroelastic, beam-wise scheme, capable of simulating the unconventional aeroelastic behavior of flexible wings.


Industry 4.0 connotes a new industrial revolution centered around cyber-physical systems. It posits that the real-time connection of physical and digital systems, along with new enabling technologies, will change the way that work is done and therefore, how work should be managed. It has the potential to break, or at least change, the traditional operations trade-offs among the competitive priorities of cost, flexibility, speed, and quality. This article describes the technologies inherent in Industry 4.0 and the opportunities and challenges for research in this area. The focus is on goods-producing industries, which includes both the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. Specific technologies discussed include additive manufacturing, the internet of things, blockchain, advanced robotics, and artificial intelligence.


This paper presents a new distributed computation model adapted to manycore processors. In this model, the run is spread on the available cores by fork machine instructions produced by the compiler, for example at function calls and loops iterations. This approach is to be opposed to the actual model of computation based on cache and predictor. Cache efficiency relies on data locality and predictor efficiency relies on the reproducibility of the control. Data locality and control reproducibility are less effective when the execution is distributed. The computation model proposed is based on a new core hardware. Its main features are described in this paper. This new core is the building block of a manycore design. The processor automatically parallelizes an execution. It keeps the computation deterministic by constructing a totally ordered trace of the machine instructions run. References are renamed, including memory, which fixes the communications and synchronizations needs. When a data is referenced, its producer is found in the trace and the reader is synchronized with the writer. This paper shows how a consumer can be located in the same core as its producer, improving parallel locality and parallelization quality. Our deterministic and fine grain distribution of a run on a manycore processor is compared with OS primitives and API based parallelization (e.g. pthread, OpenMP or MPI) and to compiler automatic parallelization of loops. The former implies (i) a high OS overhead meaning that only coarse grain parallelization is cost-effective and (ii) a non deterministic behaviour meaning that appropriate synchronization to eliminate wrong results is a challenge. The latter is unable to fully parallelize general purpose programs due to structures like functions, complex loops and branches.


Observations and estimates of solar radiation at ground level deal most frequently with global irradiance (GHI) while direct irradiance (DHI) is needed for various applications, including design of system converting solar energy in electricity. Obtaining data set on direct irradiance is an issue which is often resolved by the application of empirical global-to-direct models. Several such models are proposed in the literature. They are obtained by fit of an empirical function onto measurements made at few stations. These models are well suited to a given climatic region, and their accuracy cannot be stated a priori when applied to other climates. A new method is proposed. A general shape of the relationship between the clearsky index (Kc) and the ratio of the diffuse to global irradiance (fD) is derived from literature and analysis of several data sets of ground measurements. This analytical function needs two parameters. One is defined by the case of the overcast skies, where we fix fD to 0.95 when Kc is less than 0.2 or GHI less than 150 W/m2, from experience. The other is changing depending on the clear-sky conditions for the location and time under concern. A clear-sky model provides the Kc and fD for the clear-sky conditions. The new method was validated against BSRN (Baseline Surface Radiation Network) ground measurements made in Carpentras, Sede Boqer and Tamanrasset sites. It reveals itself accurate compared to other methods. For the data sets used, the bias amounts to 0%, -9% and 10%, the standard-deviation to 16%, 19% and 21% and the correlation coefficient to 0.98, 0.96 and 0.95. The proposed method is interesting because it is flexible and adaptive -meaning that it can be apply at any location or season, and it offers room for improvements.


Process intensification is currently considered as the main trend to improve process performance, and one of the major approaches to this regard is to reduce the number of pieces of equipment in the plant. For distillation systems, thermal coupling technique provides such an approach to retrofit the traditional simple column configurations through the elimination of the condenser and/or the reboiler. In this work, starting from the existing plant with the simple columns, two types of retrofit alternatives are proposed. The first includes the possible alternatives by eliminating all the condensers and reboilers involving the submixtures. The second includes all the possible alternatives when only some of the condensers and/or reboilers are eliminated at one time. The latter solution represents less modification to the existing plant. In addition, in order to investigate the capital investment for the modified plant, all the obtained alternatives through the recombination of the column sections have been compared. All the configurations were compared with respect to energy saving and the possibilities to reuse the plant equipment. The optimal solution was found to be the alternative that has the minimum modification to the existing plant. At the same time, it achieves a 23% savings on energy consumption and allows a maximum reuse of the pieces of the existing equipment.


Eight neurologically normal beagles were imaged using three-dimensional (3D) time-of-flight magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) in a 3T magnetic resonance scanner. Four of the eight dogs were also imaged using a 1T unit for comparison. Ten intracranial arteries were consistently identified at 3T: external and internal carotid, basilar, vertebral, rostral cerebral, middle cerebral, caudal cerebral, rostral communicating, caudal communicating, and ventral spinal arteries. Only four were reliably identified at 1T with diagnostic spatial and contrast resolution. At 3 T, vessels as small as 1 mm were reliably detected. Vessel conspicuity was superior using the 3T system. An anatomic atlas of the canine circulus arteriosus cerebri using a 3T scan was constructed. The effect of MRA parameters on vascular spatial resolution a nd conspicuity are reviewed.


The present paper describes a new type of force sensor having the properties of passive compliance, capable of sensing two components of the contact force. The device is based on the use of simple single-component tactile sensors. It is especially convenient for placing on the gripper fingertips with the aim of controlling force along the object axis and obtaining information about the pressure profile at the contact surface between the object and the gripper. A sensor's prototype has been built and some of its basic features were experimentally verified.<<ETX>>


The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of the Health Sciences Library Gopher at St. Louis University (SLU) Health Sciences Center. The authors will outline university criteria from the Office of Computing and Information Services, library selection criteria, bibliographical access, reference and instructional implications, data entry and maintenance, and the role of the library's Internet Committee. All libraries have been awed by the tremendous amount of resources available through the Internet; the challenge is to not be intimidated but to be innovative in designing systems that can present these resources to the library client in the most easily understandable approaches possible. The Internet Committee in the SLU Health Sciences Center Library has designed a framework for the construction of "menus" to lead the client to selected Internet resources. Some of the issues confronted include relating the Internet resources to the library's Collection Development Policy, coordination of Internet resources to other bibliographic sources (Journal Holdings List, Intelligent Catalog), and educating staff and clients to manage a wide range of new resources as well as traditional ones in electronic formats.


This study is an attempt to examine and incorporate HR practices and its relationship with turnover intentions. Moreover, there is a gap to link such HR practices with talent engagement, affective commitment and their outcomes. The first objective of the study is to investigate the impact of HR practices in reducing turnover intentions. The second objective is to examine the effect of HR practices on turnover intentions through mediating role of talent engagement (job engagement & organization engagement). The third objective is to analyze the mediating role of affective commitment between HR practices and turnover intentions. Based on the social exchange theory, an integrated model with three bundle of HR practices (motivation enhancing, empowerment enhancing, and skills enhancing) predicting variables, three mediating variables (job engagement, organization engagement and affective commitment) and one dependent variable, turnover intentions, is examined in this study. First, relevant dimensions of HR practices are identified from literature, where 16 dimensions of these three HR practices are selected with the help of expert survey. Based on this, the study develops a close ended questionnaire. Data was collected from 51 hotels (three star, four star and five star) which are registered with Malaysia Association of Hotels, 2014. The respondents (the line and middle line manages) are identified as the locus of talent resulting in a total of 425 managers with the response rate of 75%. This study applied the structural equation modeling technique to investigate the direct effects of HR practices (overall and dimensions) and indirect effects (through talent engagement and affective commitment) on turnover intentions. The results reveal a significant negative effect of HR practices on turnover intentions. Likewise, findings showed the mediating role of talent engagement and affective commitment between HR practices and turnover intentions. In analyzing the effects of individual HR practices, the study concludes that i) motivation enhancing practices negatively effect the turnover intentions, ii) empowerment enhancing practices negatively effect the turnover intentions and, iii) skills enhancing practices positively effect on turnover intentions. This study classified and developed three bundles of HR practices which adds value to the existing body of knowledge. Moreover, before bundling the HR practices, it is necessary to consider its individual effects on turnover intentions instead of only aggregate HR practices. This study highlights the need of careful selection of skills enhancing practices with company specific training practices. Further, this empirical study has focused on the managerial level which is considered as locus of talent. This research contributes to the existing literature of HRM on managerial level rather than general employee turnover. In addition to empirical progress in the existing knowledge, this study provides the application of this proposed model in hotels in Malaysia. Therefore, hotel management may introduce intervention strategies in the form of equipping talents with the necessary meaningful job engagement and organizational engagement. Moreover, hotel management could view engagement as a broad organizational and cultural strategy. Hence, top management could develop and manage HR practices with affective commitment and talent engagement in reducing turnover intentions.


Forty-eight patients with suspected brain tumor were studied to evaluate the clinical efficacy of Thallium-201 (201Tl) SPECT. 201Tl scintigrams showed abnormal accumulation in 24/26 (92.3%) and 9/14 (64.3%) of patients with malignant and benign tumors, respectively. 201Tl tended to be retained more prominently in malignant brain tumors than in benign ones. The lesion-to-normal ratios (L/N ratios) of 201Tl demonstrated significant correlation with those of 18F-FDG (n = 5, r = 0.90, p = 0.044). L/N ratios were higher in patients with recurrent tumors than those with necrotic lesions (3.33 +/- 0.81 and 1.73 +/- 0.81, respectively, p = 0.0123). The positive predictive value of L/N ratios > or = 2.5 for diagnosing as recurrence and L/N ratios < 2.5 as necrosis were 83.3% and 100%, respectively. These results suggest that 201Tl scintigraphy may be useful to determine the malignancy of brain tumors and to differentiate recurrence from necrosis after therapeutic procedures.


We may expect that the next influenza pandemic will affect about half the world's population within a year and that it will cause unpredictable mortality rates. In this perspective, we review the molecular mechanisms underlying the development of new pandemic influenza strains and a discussion on existing and future vaccination strategies directed towards prevention of pandemic influenza is presented. There is an urgent need to develop paninfluenza-specific vaccines and invest substantially in new technologies in order to better meet this threat.


The relatively recent introduction of microelectronics technology into the area of biological sciences has drastically revolutionized the field. New foreseeable applications include miniaturized, multiparametric biosensors for high performance multianalyte assays or DNA sequencing, biocomputers, and substrates for controlled cell growth (i.e. tissue engineering). The objectives of this work were to investigate new methods combining microphotolithographical techniques with high energy KrF excimer laser beam technology to create surfaces with well defined 3-D microdomains in order to delineate critical microscopic topographical surface features that are relevant in governing material-cell interaction. Another obvious application of this study pertains to the fabrication of cell-based biosensors. Reproducible submicron features could also be obtained using this method. Subsequently, model osteoblast-like cells plated onto the laser modified surfaces showed preferential cell deposition on surfaces presenting "smooth" microtopographical transitions. This system may provide an interesting model for further insights into correlations between 3-D surface microtopography and cell response with new applications in the field of biosensor, biomaterial and pharmaceutical engineering sciences (e.g. new cell based biosensors, controlled synthesis of immobilized cell derived active ingredients).


Background Our aim was to describe the medium-term course (2–3 years) in a series of victims who had experienced severe trauma. Method We selected a consecutive series of 31 trauma victims and applied a structured clinical schedule (CAPS-2) to their psychiatric evaluations prepared for the court on two separate occasions approximately one year apart. Results Post-traumatic stress disorder and depression were the commonest diagnoses, occurring in 39% and 16% of the victims respectively when they were first assessed. Most had improved between the assessments and this was especially the case for the re-experiencing of the trauma and over-arousal, but less so for avoidance; 20% of subjects showed no improvement, often being handicapped by secondary psychiatric illness. Conclusion Traumatised victims generally showed recovery in the 2–3 years after the trauma, but this was slow and was not universal.


【In this paper, we have verified the performance of ballistic resistance material on wet condition. Considering Korea terrain, soldiers may face many rivers and streams. However, bullet-proof jacket has no waterproofing and there's no water-proof standard in Military. Wearing wet bullet-proof jacket, soldiers can't be protected properly because of the decrement of jacket. Thus, we measure the performance of existing material on wet condition and analyze failure mechanism in order to indicate factors to improve bullet-proof jacket.】


In our previous work, we have presented a method for genetically synthesizing software architecture design. Synthesis begins with a responsibility dependency graph and domain model for a system, and results in a full architecture proposal through the application of design patterns and architectural styles. In this paper, we study the method of reproduction in the genetic algorithm. More specifically, we try to find out whether sexual or asexual method of reproduction should be used. We hypothesize that although sexual reproduction method is so favored among various species of animals and plants, asexual reproduction is more natural in the case of genetic synthesis of software architecture. We search for empirical confirmation to our hypothesis by performing tests on two sample systems.


With the booming of worldwide agriculture intensification, brucellosis, one of the most neglected zoonotic diseases, has become an increasing challenge for global public health. Although the transmission patterns of human brucellosis (HB) have been studied in many regions, the dynamic transfer processes of risk and its driving factors remain poorly understood, especially in the context of agricultural intensification. This study attempted to explore the risk transfer of HB between the exact epidemic areas and the neighboring or distant low-risk areas to explain the impact of livestock agriculture intensification and foodborne infections on the transmission of HB in Shaanxi Province as a case study. We adopted multiple approaches, including test-based methods, model-based methods, and a geographical detector to detect the spatial-temporal dynamic changes of high-risk epidemic areas of HB at the county scale. We also quantitatively estimated how the related factors drove the risk transfer of the disease. Results confirmed the risk transfer pattern of HB with an expansion from north to south in Shaanxi Province and identified two primary transfer routes. In particular, in the traditional epidemic areas of the Shaanbei plateau, the farm agglomeration effect can significantly increase the risk of HB. Meanwhile, retail outlets for milk and dairy products were partially responsible for the foodborne infections of HB in the emerging epidemic areas of Xi'an. This study not only contributed helpful insights to support HB control and prevention in the rapid transition of livestock agriculture but also provided possible directions for further research on foodborne HB infections in urbanized areas.


Chronic haloperidol treatment in the laboratory rat induces spontaneous orofacial movements in some but not all of the animals, a behavior which has been described in the literature as vacuous chewing movements (VCMs). In an attempt to understand the neurochemical mechanism of these rat dyskinesias, we measured regional dopamine D1, D2, and GABAA binding density in rats with and without VCMs after chronic haloperidol treatment and in untreated controls using in vitro receptor autoradiography and correlated the binding changes with the dyskinetic behavior. Chronic haloperidol treatment produced an overall increase in dopamine D2 family receptor binding in the caudate putamen and in nucleus accumbens in both groups of treated rats, those with and without VCMs. In the haloperidol-treated rats with VCMs, a significant increase in GABAA receptor density occurred in the substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNR), with a trend in those rats without VCMs. However, only in those haloperidol-treated animals with VCMs did a significant decrease in dopamine D1 receptor density occur in SNR. These receptor alterations are consistent with a process of haloperidol-induced neuronal death of striatonigral fibers. However, we have failed to identify cellular evidence of such toxicity. Alternatively, the receptor changes may reflect increased dendritic dopamine release in SNR, or, more speculatively a functional response to chronically diminished striatonigral pathway activity. Perhaps the release of dopamine from dendrites of the local DA-containing neurons might be variably enhanced with ongoing haloperidol treatment.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Metadata is broadly used to describe learning objects and its standards have been developed to improve interoperability. With the current Web extension by the Semantic Web, learning object metadata has been migrating from XML-based metadata standards to semantic metadata standards. This work explores XSLT to provide a solution for this transition of descriptions to educational metadata. The approach consists of retrieve, convert, and store metadata in Semantic Web context. In this work, we converted OBAA metadata in XML to OWL format. The OWL format aims to give more semantic and improve the reasoners inference capabilities. The converted metadata can be managed by different applications and systems. In addition, we have been working in OWL to OWL mappings through aligned ontologies.


Technology Focus
 Production-design, engineering, operations, and maintenance concerns have represented some of the more interesting and challenging issues with which I have dealt over more than 20 years of experiences around the world in offshore production facilities as a major operator; manufacturer; and engineering, procurement, and construction contractor. While gas-hydrate handling typically dominates thermohydraulic design, the mitigation of wax, erosion, asphaltenes, corrosion, and salt deposition, along with solids handling; slugging; and elimination/ minimization of pipeline, tubing, and surface choke failures are all challenging issues that demand attention and considerable technical effort.
 The deposition of paraffin (interchangeable with wax) in pipelines has gained importance in offshore production design, engineering, and operations. Development of reliable wax-deposition mathematical models based on specially designed flow-loop experiments is worthy of investigation as an available mitigation option. Developing erosion-prediction models for fine particles in multiphase flow is another option to address offshore production assurance. Also, addressing these challenges requires thorough technical investigation and development of offshore pipeline failures. The three papers presented here discuss slightly different issues and approaches to production continuity and oil/gas fluid-production assurance. All three have been defined by mathematical modeling and verified with actual field confirmation and use.
 Wax deposition is a phenomenon present in oil-production systems mainly in deep water. Given the relevance of this issue in new-fields development and the absence of a theory able to explain its evolution and characteristics, the production limitation caused by this phenomenon is one of the main issues in offshore production. Because the flow regime in production lines can vary from laminar to turbulent, the influence of the Reynolds number in the deposition phenomena is investigated and modeled in paper OTC 28053. The model combines an enthalpy/porosity approach with a kinetic energy/specific dissipation turbulence model. The main behaviors observed with respect to the shape of the paraffin deposit for turbulent regimes were verified with the proposed model and corroborated by the thermal, velocity, and turbulence profiles presented.
 Pipeline production systems often experience complex multiphase flow and entrained fine particles. The erosion from solid fine particles presents one of the larger threats to oil and gas offshore production. Paper OTC 28360 investigates the erosional effect caused by fine particles in annular flow regime using a multiphase computational fluids dynamics (CFD) approach. The integration of a multiphase-fluid-flow model and erosion calculation using a multiphase CFD approach improved the accuracy of erosion prediction.
 Paper SPE 188717 presents a failure-root-cause analysis for offshore pipelines. The study objectives were to evaluate potential causes of failures of several pipelines operating in shallow waters and develop an analysis/program to identify the root cause of failure, perform an analysis to confirm the causes of failures, assess remedial measures to find the most suitable option, recommend those remedial measures, and then perform high-level engineering to confirm suitability of the chosen option in accordance with recommended practices.
 Offshore production assurance continues to drive new production technology applications and approaches. The three papers highlighted here focus on developing analytical tools and performing root-cause analyses while providing safe, cost-effective, and reliable operations. I hope you find them as interesting as I did; I much appreciate this opportunity to disseminate these new technology options to you. In addition, I invite you to join the Flow Assurance Technical Section to learn more on different topics.
 Recommended additional reading at OnePetro: www.onepetro.org.
 OTC 28155 Stability Solver for Offshore Oil Flows by Ivanilto Andreolli, Petrobras, et al.
 OTC 28548 A Pragmatic Approach to Corrosion Inhibition of Offshore Pipelines Transporting Produced Hydrocarbons by Robert Horan Nuttall, Petronas, et al.
 OTC 28885 Risk-Based, Statistical Approach to Assessment of Corrosion Anomalies in Pipelines by Derek Scales, Atteris, et al.


The elimination of a wide variety of infections requires the production of high affinity antibodies specific for the invading pathogen. The generation of these high affinity antibodies depends on the ability of B cells to recognise and internalise antigens from the surface of antigen-presenting cells (APCs) in an affinity-dependent manner. B cells expressing high affinity B cell receptors (BCRs) internalise, process and present more antigen, obtain better T cell help, and are selectively expanded over lower affinity equivalents. However, the molecular mechanisms by which B cells extract antigens for presentation remain unclear. Using a new fluid and flexible membrane substrate to mimic APCs, we show that B cells acquire antigen by dynamic myosin IIA-mediated contractions that pull out and invaginate the presenting membranes. Invaginations containing high affinity BCR-antigen microclusters were able to withstand the force of these contractions and recruit clathrin resulting in endocytosis. In contrast, low affinity BCR-antigen bonds quickly ruptured aborting internalisation. Thus we conclude that coupling contractility to endocytosis permits B cells to discriminate between antigen affinities, which provides a mechanism for the selective advantage seen for high affinity B cell clones in vivo. Disruptions in BCR-antigen internalisation has been linked to the growth of malignant B cells and the development of autoimmunity. Therefore, ultimately, our results could contribute to the effective design of future therapeutics for B cell diseases.


This paper investigates the problem of path calculation of multiple metric routing. Today's Internet routing is based on a single metric path selecting algorithm. The single metric path is a best effort service that can only support a path for one requirement. In order to support quality-of-service (QoS) call, the path is subject to multiple constraints on the routing metric. In many cases, the path finding problem is NP-complete. This paper proposes the widest-least cost routing algorithm that uses a cost metric that is based on a delay metric and influenced by the resource bandwidth metric and network state. This algorithm is a multiple metric routing algorithm that has the traffic distribution ability to serve a traffic engine ring. Our goal is to select the shortest path when the network link is not loaded, and perform traffic engineering to move traffic to the other path when the network load is heavy. We have studied the performance through simulation and compared it against other routing algorithms.


It is widely believed that Vārānasī (Benares) ranks among the oldest holy cities on earth. Archaeological and textual sources, however, begin only to testify to the construction of sacred space in the first millennium AD. A significant discrepancy is found between the archaeological data (mainly seals) and early textual sources belonging to the 5th to 8th centuries. While seals provide us with the names of temples that apparently were frequented by the ordinary pilgrim, the oldest Māhātmya text that has recently become available, three chapters of the 'original' Skandapurāna , depicts Vārānasī as a place of ascetics and yogis. The spheres of devotion and world-renouncing are further complicated in the 11th and 12th centuries, when Vārānasī is made the political capital of the Gāhadavāla dynasty. Inscriptions reveal yet another dimension of sacred space, that of state ritual. After the destruction of the town by the Muslim conquerors, a process of reconstruction sets in during the 13th and 14th centuries, resulting eventually in the sacred Vārānasī as we know it today.


Large-scale science instruments, such as the distributed radio telescope LOFAR, show that we are in an era of data-intensive scientific discovery. Such instruments rely critically on significant eScience resources, both hardware and software, to do science. Considering limited science budgets, and the small fraction of these that can be dedicated to compute hardware and software, there is a strong and obvious desire for low-cost computing. However, optimising for cost is only part of the equation; the value potential over the lifetime of the solution should also be taken into account. Using a tangible example, compute hardware, we introduce a conceptual model to approximate the lifetime relative science value of such a system. While the introduced model is not intended to result in a numeric value for merit, it does enumerate some components that define this metric. The intent of this paper is to show how compute system related design and procurement decisions in data-intensive science projects should be weighed and valued. By using both total cost and science value as a driver, the science output per invested Euro is maximised. With a number of case studies, focused on eScience applications in radio astronomy past, present and future, we show that the hardware-based analysis can be and has been applied more broadly.


Introduction: The diagnosis of indeterminate biliary strictures remains a challenge for the endoscopist and the sensitivity of ERCP based diagnostic methods such as brush cytology is relatively low, usually not exceeding 60%. The aim of this study is to look at the diagnostic performance of ERCP and ancillary techniques in the diagnosis of indeterminate biliary strictures. Methods: we have identified a retrospective cohort of patients who had ERCP for the diagnosis of indeterminate biliary strictures, excluding pancreatic malignancy or metastases from 1/2010 to 8/ 2020. Data was collected including demographics, type of diagnostic procedure, procedural details, cytology/pathology results from the specimen and need for repeat interventions. Results: A total of 116 patients were identified and 169 ERCP procedures were performed. 42 (36%) patients were male, 82 (71%) were white and the median age was 69 (IQR: 54-69). 59 (51%) patients had brushings alone, 33 (28%) brushings and forceps biopsy combined, 9 (8%) forceps biopsy alone and 15 (13%) had cholangioscopy and direct biopsies. The results of the pathology/cytology after the first ERCP were benign in 55 (46%), atypia in 32 (28%) and malignant in 29 (25%). DNA and FISH analysis of was done in 10 (9%). In 37 (32 %) patients a repeat ERCP was required and the median number of repeat ERCPs was 3 (IQR: 2-3). After a repeat ERCP, 8 (22%) lesions were reported to be malignant. The final diagnosis as malignant cholangiocarcinoma by ERCP was done on 37 (32%) of the patients. The accuracy of detection malignancy during the first ERCP was 54 % by brushings, 51 % by brushings and biopsy and 56 % by cholangioscopy (Table 1). Conclusion: ERCP with the different ancillary techniques are essential for the diagnosis of indeterminate biliary strictures. The combination of these methods with reintervention can increase cancer detection rates on indeterminate biliary strictures with or without FISH and DNA analysis. As described in other publications, we could reproduce a very high sensitivity and overall accuracy for the diagnosis of malignant strictures.


Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emerged in December 2019 in China and exhibited as a highly contagious viral infection which led to a high level of mortality and morbidity. It is followed by a great deal of complications, such as serious psychological disorders. There are a few studies evaluating the psychological status of COVID-19 on the patients with cancer in Iran. Method: This was a cross-sectional study carried out on 94 patients with cancer who referred to Haft-e-Tir hospital for radiotherapy and chemotherapy from 20 April to 15 may, 2020. The data collection tool was the impact of events scale-revised (IES-R). Results: The prevalence of anxiety disorders and obsessive compulsive disorder based on past psychiatric history in the patients was 11.7% and 2.1%, respectively. The results revealed that age was significantly related to avoidance dimension score (B=-0. 209, 95% CI: -0.084 to - 0.335). Regarding hyper arousal dimension score, the results were as follows: rural residency (B=5.091, 95% CI: 0.610 to 9.573), past psychiatric history (PPH) (B = 8.312, 95% CI: 4.314 to 12.310), and radiotherapy (B=-2.976, 95% CI: -5.878 to -0.074) had a statistically significant relationship with the hyper arousal dimension score. Conclusion: The patients with cancer had a severe form of COVID-19. Individuals with cancer who had a previous psychiatric history are more vulnerable to post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms after trauma.


As a result of the wide acceptance of object oriented database systems, some implementation issues such as query processing and indexing become a crucial factor in the success of object oriented database systems. To tackle the issues, we propose an s-signature scheme, which is an efficient access method to nested objects for query processing, especially, when the path dictionary is used. We also compare the s-signature scheme with other indexing techniques such as path index, path signature, and path dictionary. Finally, we present that the proposed method shows significant improvements in the retrieval operation, while at the same time producing lower storage overhead than the path index.


Date Presented 04/01/2022
 This study examined parent satisfaction and perceptions of telehealth for a parent coaching intervention for families of children with special health care needs. Parents (N = 15) completed the Telehealth Usability Questionnaire and a semistructured interview. Researchers analyzed data using descriptive and correlational statistics and thematic analyses. Findings provide informative evidence to understand for whom and how telehealth is a satisfying OT service delivery approach.
 Primary Author and Speaker: Sarah L. Smith
 Contributing Authors: Elizabeth Humphreys, Semra Aytur


High‐growth firms, often referred to as "gazelles," are equated with entrepreneurial success and celebrated as the key to growing economies, and women's entrepreneurship is a vehicle of economic and social development. This special issue publishes papers that address the general lack of research on high‐growth women's entrepreneurship. In this introduction paper, we offer an adapted framework for the factors driving high growth across multiple levels: individual (entrepreneur and entrepreneurial team characteristics), venture (strategy, organizational structures, and systems), resources, location, and environment. We also introduce the papers in this special issue and present an overview of the contributions to this issue.


Vehicle Make and Model Recognition (MMR) systems provide a fully automatic framework to recognize and classify different vehicle models. Several approaches have been proposed to address this challenge, however they can perform in restricted conditions. Here, we formulate the vehicle make and model recognition as a fine-grained classification problem and propose a new configurable on-road vehicle make and model recognition framework. We benefit from the unsupervised feature learning methods and in more details we employ Locality constraint Linear Coding (LLC) method as a fast feature encoder for encoding the input SIFT features. The proposed method can perform in real environments of different conditions. This framework can recognize fifty models of vehicles and has an advantage to classify every other vehicle not belonging to one of the specified fifty classes as an unknown vehicle. The proposed MMR framework can be configured to become faster or more accurate based on the application domain. The proposed approach is examined on two datasets including Iranian on-road vehicle dataset and CompuCar dataset. The Iranian on-road vehicle dataset contains images of 50 models of vehicles captured in real situations by traffic cameras in different weather and lighting conditions. Experimental results show superiority of the proposed framework over the state-of-the-art methods on Iranian on-road vehicle datatset and comparable results on CompuCar dataset with 97.5% and 98.4% accuracies, respectively.


Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men. Its current treatment includes various physical and chemical approaches for the localized and advanced prostate cancer [e.g. metastatic castrate resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC)]. Although many new drugs are now available for prostate cancer, none is suitable for local treatment that can reduce adverse effects often associated with the current physical treatment. Of the drugs approved by FDA for mCRPC, the best mean improvement in overall survival is only about 4.8 months. Therefore, there is a need for improved treatment approaches for prostate cancer, especially drug-resistant cancer. Ultrasound therapy represents a useful new physical approach for the drug-resistant cancer treatment by facilitating the entry of the related chemotherapy drug into the target cancer cells. There are two versions of ultrasound: High Intensity Focused Ultrasound (HIFU) and Low Intensity Pulsed Ultrasound (LIPUS). HIFU has been a promising treatment option for prostate cancer due to its noninvasiveness and various biological effects on cancer tissue. It has been approved for the treatment of cancer and in recent years there have been numerous findings suggesting HIFU can reduce cancer cell viability and possibly reverse the spread of cancerous tumors. LIPUS is currently being studied as an alternative treatment option for prostate cancer. Preliminary studies have found LIPUS to reduce cancer cell viability without the side effects seen in HIFU. Reversible cell membrane damage caused by LIPUS could allow increased uptake of anticancer drugs, enhancing cytotoxicity and death of cancer cells. In this way, a low dose of anticancer drug is more effective toward cancer cells while there is less damage to normal cells. The combination of LIPUS with certain chemotherapeutic agents can be an exciting physical-chemical combination therapy for prostate cancer. This review will focus on this topic as well as the clinical use of HIFU to provide an understanding of their current use and future potential role for prostate cancer therapy.


Objective
To study the circulating endothelial microparticles related microRNA in the atherosclerosis induced by inflammatory response of macrophage.

Methods
Five-week-old mice of SPF-grade were randomized to an experimental group and a control group (n = 50 for each group). The experimental mice were divided into four groups: a control group, an atherosclerosis (AS) model group, an NC-microRNA group and a microRNA-19 b inhibitor group. The histology of atherosclerotic lesions was observed with oil red staining, and the plaque area ratio was calculated. Serum cholesterol (TC), triglyceride (TG), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C) and low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), TNF-α, IL-1, IL-6 and IL-10 were measured. The expressions of apoptosis related proteins Bcl-2, cleaved-caspase-3 and Bax were detected with Western Blot, the mir-19b expression was detected with real-time quantitative PCR, and the apoptosis rate of macrophages was detected with flow cytometry. Then the comparison among groups were analyzed with variance by single-factor or repeated measures, the comparison between two groups were analyzed with LSD-t test.

Results
The percentage of plaque area of thoracic artery in each group: (0.00±0.00)% in the control group, (9.59±6.53)% in the AS model group, (8.96±3.47)%in the NC-microRNA group and (3.21±2.03)% in the microRNA19b inhibitor group, and the differences of the three group were statistically significant (F = 20.572, P = 0.002). Compared with the control group, TC (TC) in the AS model group and the NC-microRNA group were as follows: TC[AS model group (3.26±0.21) mmol/L; NC-microRNA group (3.13±0.14) mmol/ L; F = 13.994, P = 13.994, P = 0.002], TG [AS model group 0.25 (0.25±0.06) mmol/ L; AS model group (1.65±0.11) mmol/L; NC-miRNA (1.59±0.27) mmol/L; F = 10.069, P = 0.006) increased, and HDL-C (AS) increased. In the model group, the levels of NC-microRNA (0.08±0.09) mmol/ L, NC-microRNA (0.08±0.05) mmol/L and F = 12.450, P = 0.004 decreased. Compared with the model group, the levels of TC (1.85±0.06) mmol/L, TG (0.15±0.03) mmol/ L and LDL-C (1.21±0.10) mmol/L decreased, while HDL-C (0.11±0.05) mmol/L increased in the miRNA- 19b inhibitor group (P < 0.05). Compared with the control group, the levels of IL-1 (34.06±3.58) g/ L, IL-6 (92.57±31.97) g/Land TNF-alpha (63.01±15.65)g/L increased, while the levels of IL-10 (16.86±1.29) g/L decreased, and the indexes of NC-microNA group also showed a same change trend; the levels of IL-1(24.85±6.21) g/L, IL-6 (53.29±17.15) g/L and TNF-alpha (34.51±6.47) g/ L in the inhibitor group of microRNA-19b were lower than those in the control group. The levels of IL- 10 (24.94±4.72 )g/L in Group A and NC-microRNA (F = 13.671, P = 0.002) were higher than those in Group B (F = 13.675, P = 0.008). Compared with the control group, Bax (AS model group 3.39±0.01; AS model group 3.39±0.01; NC- microRNA group 0.64 ±0.02; F = 26.910, P = 0.000) and cleaved-PARP (AS model group 2.47±0.05; NANC-microRNA group 3.27±0.01; F = 13.226, P = 0.000) expression increased. However, Bcl-2 (model group 0.67±0.02; NC-microRNA group 0.64±0.02; F = 12.585, P = 0.000) expression level was down-regulated. Compared with the NC-microRNA group, the expression levels of Bax (2.16±0.02) and cleaved-PARP (1.91±0.04) were down-regulated, while the expression levels of Bcl-2 (1.05±0.01) were up-regulated. Compared with the control group, the transcription level of microRNA-19b in the AS model group (2.71±0.02) and NC-microRNA group (2.43±0.02) D increased significantly (P < 0.05). The transcription level of the microRNA-19b inhibitor group (1.52±0.01) increased, but the increase was not significant (F = 15.353, P = 0.002) compared with the AS model group and NC-microRNA group. The transcription level of microRNA-19b gene was 1.02±0.03 in the control group, 2.71±0.02 in the AS model group, 2.43±0.02 in the NC-microRNA group and 1.52±0.01 in the microRNA-19b inhibitor group (P < 0.05). Apoptotic rate: (4.41±0.18)% in thecontrol group, (7.16±0.73)% in the AS model group, (6.29±0.24)% in the NC-microRNA group and (5.01±0.11)% in the microRNA19b inhibitor group, (F = 12.889, P = 0.008).

Conclusion
The inhibitor microRNA-19b can reduce macrophage apoptosis, decrease the pro-inflammatory factors, and reduce the development of blood vessel thickness caused by atherosclerosisi. It also can decrease the lipid TC, TG and LDL-C and increase the HDL-C, so that it may have active guiding significance for the clinical diagnosis and treatment of coronary heart disease.

Key words:
Endothelial particles; Micrornas-19b; Macrophages; Inflammat-ory factors; Atherosclerosisi


In Hong Kong, there is an acute need to provide newly appointed principals with opportunities for continuous professional development so that they could face the impact of reforms and globalization on school development. The Education Bureau has commissioned the tertiary institutions to provide structured professional development courses to cater for the needs of aspiring, newly appointed and serving principals for leadership development. This paper aims to report on an exploratory qualitative study regarding the perception of 32 newly appointed principals from secondary schools on (a) their role as a new principal and (b) their needs and expectations on the school leadership development programme so that contents of existing development programmes could be improved to meet their needs. Findings demonstrated that the newly appointed principals expected to be equipped with the administrative skills of human resources management such as empowering middle leaders and handing underperforming staff; the practical technique of financial management; the skills of dealing with legal matters regarding school management and the capacities of curriculum and instructional leadership. In addition, they attributed networking with peers and working with mentors as invaluable experience and support for their early years' principalship.


This study investigated the effect of precursor concentration on both the morphology and the structural, optical, and photoresponse properties of zinc-oxide (ZnO) nanorods when using a ZnO seed layer formed by using the electro-oxidation method. The ZnO nanorods were grown on the ZnO seed layer at various precursor concentrations. Field-emission scanning electron microscopy images revealed that most ZnO nanorods showed a pyramid-like top surface; however, those grown at a concentration of 40 mM showed a flat top surface. X-ray diffraction analysis revealed that the ZnO nanorods showed an improvement in orientation along the c-axis direction with increasing precursor concentration. Photoluminescence spectra showed that the full width at half maximum values of the near-band-edge emission peak and the ratio of the near-band-edge emission peak to the deep-level emission peak increased and decreased, respectively, with increasing precursor concentration, indicating the occurrence of many defects in the ZnO nanorods. In terms of the photoresponse properties, ZnO nanorods grown at a precursor concentration of 20 mM showed the highest responsivity.


PURPOSE
To evaluate through standardized questionnaires the quality of life of elderly people with hearing loss diagnosed with and without the use of hearing aids (HA) and elderly without hearing complaints.

METHODS
This is a cross-sectional study with non probabilistic sample, divided into three groups divided as follows: 30 elderly people with diagnosed hearing loss and indication for use of individual sound amplification devices (hearing aids), but have not yet made use of the prosthesis; 30 individuals with hearing impairment who used hearing aids and 30 elderly without hearing complaints. Participants completed a questionnaire investigating sociodemographic and family data, the Hearing Handicap Inventory for the Elderly Screening Version (HHIE-S) and the World Health Organization Quality of Life - Short version (WHOQOL-BREF). In addition to the descriptive analysis of the data were performed tests to compare the three groups by applying analysis of variance (ANOVA) and the Bonferroni post hoc test.

RESULTS
The three groups differed significantly in all domains of quality of life. The group of the elderly people with hearing loss diagnosed and with indication for the use of hearing aids presented lower scores and the group of the elderly with hearing disabilities that used the hearing aid and that the reference group. The AASI group presented the best quality of life results.

CONCLUSION
The hearing loss affects the quality of life of the elderly. The effective use of hearing aid is beneficial to this population, improving their living and health conditions.


Background Early diagnosis and early treatment with DMARDs lead to better outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) (1,2). The 2010 ACR/EULAR criteria for RA were developed for early classification (3) and have good sensitivity, lower specificity and overall moderate accuracy. Their usefulness to lead treatment selection has not been investigated yet. Objectives To compare clinical remission (CR) rates in patients with early polyarthritis in which the decision to start methotrexate (MTX) was based on the 1987 ACR vs 2010 ACR/EULAR criteria, over the first 12 months follow up. Methods This is an observational non concurrent cohort study. Patients classified as RA or undifferentiated arthritis (UA) attending for the first time our early arthritis clinic (2005-2013) were eligible for inclusion. At baseline, before October 2010, patients classified as RA according to the 1987 criteria were treated with MTX (from 10 mg/wk up to 20 mg/wk), while patients with UA received hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) (1987 cohort). After October 2010, patients fulfilling the 2010 criteria received MTX (from 15 mg/wk up to 25mg/wk), while UA received HCQ (2010 cohort). Low-dose prednisone could be given according to clinician's decision. Patients were seen every 2 months in the first six months and every 3 afterwards; treatment was increased in order to achieve low disease activity (DAS28<3.2). CR (DAS28<2.6) was evaluated at every visit. Analyses were performed with a Cox proportional hazard regression analysis, and results presented as hazard ratios (HR) and 95% confidence intervals (CI). Results Out of 676 patients, 467 were included in the 1987 cohort and 209 in the 2010 cohort. There were no significant differences between the two cohorts in terms of age, gender, VAS pain, RF and ACPA positivity. Patients in the 2010 cohort had significantly fewer median (IQR) tender (4 (2-8) vs 5 (2-10), p=0.018) and swollen joints (4 (2-7) vs 6 (3-10), p<0.0001) over 28 joints, ESR (19 (10-34) vs 22 (13-39), p=0.007) and CRP (0.4 (0.3-1.2) vs 0.7 (0.31-2.09), p=0.001), mean (SD) DAS28 (4.44 (1.14) vs 4.74 (1.25), p=0.005) and median (IQR) HAQ (0.75 (0.375-1.25) vs 1 (0.5-1.625), p=0.0001). Comparing the two cohorts, the 2010 cohort was more likely to achieve CR even when the analysis was limited to patients who strictly followed the protocol or actually received MTX, both in crude and adjusted analyses (Tab1). Table 1 Crude HR (95% CI) Adjusted HR (95% CI)* ACR/EULAR 2010 vs ACR 1987  All subjects (N=676) 1.83 (1.50, 2.22) 1.73 (1.34, 2.22)  Per protocol (N=413) 1.79 (1.39, 2.29) 1.49 (1.11, 2.02)  MTX users (N=265) 1.96 (1.46, 2.64) 2.18 (1.14, 4.17) * Adjusted for age, gender, baseline DAS28, symptom duration, MTX dose, glucocorticoid use. Conclusions Patients with early arthritis in which the decision to start MTX is driven by the 2010 criteria achieve more often CR compared to those treated according to the 1987 criteria. Beside the limited diagnostic accuracy of the 2010 criteria, these results support their usefulness as treatment selection guidance in practice. References Sakellariou G et al, Ann Rheum Dis 2013;72:245-9 Breedveld FC et al, Arthritis Res Ther 2011;13:S3 Aletaha et al, Ann Rheum Dis 2010;69:1580-8 Disclosure of Interest None declared DOI 10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-eular.4987


Objectives: To assess the relationship between Urgent and Emergency Care (UEC) Vanguards, which include as an aim the integration of healthcare and social care sectors, and Delayed Transfers of Care (DTOC) at Local Authority level in England. Methods: Difference-in-difference pooled cross section, fixed and random effects panel estimations were used to compare DTOC between UEC partner site Local Authorities with non-UEC Local Authorities employing quarterly data on days of DTOC from Local Authorities in England for the period 2010 to 2017. Robustness checks included employing a range of sample and variable specifications and synthetic control estimations.Results: A statistically significant negative relationship was found between UEC Vanguards and DTOC rates that is robust to various specification checks with no indication of UEC participant sites having lower DTOC rates prior to the start of the initiative. Conclusions:UEC Vanguards appear to be associated with up to 40.5% lower DTOC rates at 1% significance level compared with other English Local Authorities. The empirical evidence indicates a statistically significant impact; however, more research is required to explain the reasons for this relationship.


The physical science importance of the Cauchy problem of the reaction-diffusion equation appears in the modelling of a wide variety of nonlinear systems in physics, chemistry, ecology, biology, and engineering. A hybrid of Fourier transform and Adomian decomposition method (FTADM) is developed for solving the nonlinear non-homogeneous partial differential equations of the Cauchy problem of reaction-diffusion. The results of the FTADM and the ADM are compared with the exact solution. The comparison reveals that for the same components of the recursive sequences, the errors associated with the FTADM are much lesser than those of the ADM. We show that as time increases the results of the FTADM approaches 1 with only six recursive terms. This is in agreement with the physical property of the density-dependent nonlinear diffusion of the Cauchy problem which is also in agreement with the exact solution. The monotonic and very rapid convergence of the results of the FTADM towards the exact solution is shown to be much faster than that of the ADM


To reduce nonpoint source pollution from nutrient, chemical, and sediment runoff, a number of environmental policy standards have been proposed. Such standards could be used to reduce nonpoint source pollution from nutrient, chemical, and sediment runoff to impaired water bodies. State governments can use voluntary approaches to meet nonpoint source pollution reduction goals. However, the practices that lower net returns will not be voluntarily adopted by farmers. Crop rotations and tillage practices may help producers to comply with the environmental standards while minimizing losses in farm profits. This study compares runoff from crop rotation practices and conventional continuous row cropping systems in Mississippi. The results are compared for different tillage systems in order to examine robustness of results. Nutrient runoff and sediment runoff are simulated using the Erosion Productivity Impact Calculator (EPIC). Sensitivity analysis of the sediment and nitrate reductions at 15 percent, 25 percent, and 35 percent are conducted. Under these scenarios, net returns are optimized under environmental constraints, and the marginal cost of sediment reduction ranges from US$1.61 to US$9.63 per ton depending on soil conditions, while the corresponding nitrate and phosphorus reductions costs range from US$1.21 to US$7.08 per kg and from US$0.09 to US$31.91, respectively. The empirical results from this study indicate that a nitrate reduction policy is relatively less costly than a sediment reduction policy. The results also demonstrate the importance of geophysical conditions and policy costs, which vary across regions.