Getting medical education in Russia is becoming more and more popular among foreign students every year. The need to study foreign students' social and psychological adaptation in medical universities is caused by the increased need to train high-qualified doctors not only in our country, but also in the world community. The goal was to identify the features of social and psychological adaptation of foreign first-year students of the medical University. Methods. The study involved 131 first-year students, including 56 Indian students studying at the international faculty of General medicine of the Northern state medical University (31 boys and 25 girls); and 75 Russian students of the pediatric and medical faculties (25 boys and 50 girls). The diagnostic approach in the interethnic and gender aspects based on the methodology of socio-psychological adaptation of K.Rogers-R. Diamond, modified by A. K. Osnitsky Main results. The parameters of social and psychological adaptation of foreign first-year students corresponded to the average normative indicators, Russian students were at high level of adaptation. Foreign students, in General, had a positive attitude to themselves and others, including opportunities to contact colleagues and patients, experience average emotional comfort in interpersonal relationships and were quite active in activities. The results of the assessment of Russian students indicated a high degree of acceptance of themselves and other people, as well as emotional comfort, responsibility and high activity. Conclusions the applied aspect of the problem can be implemented in the development of programs for psychological and pedagogical support of foreign students at the initial stage of study at the Medical University.


In this paper we present a novel algorithm to identify LPV systems with affine parameter dependence. Ideas from closed-loop LTI subspace identification are used to formulate the input-output behavior of an LPV system. From this input-output behavior the LPV equivalent of the Markov parameters can be estimated. We show that with this estimate the product between the observability matrix and state sequence can be reconstructed and an SVD can be used to estimate the state sequence and consequently the system matrices. The curse of dimensionality in subspace LPV identification will appear and the kernel method is proposed as a partial remedy. The working of the algorithm is illustrated with two simulation examples.


Neighbor discovery is an essential step for the self-organization of wireless sensor networks. Many algorithms have been proposed for efficient neighbor discovery. However, most of those algorithms need nodes to keep active during the process of neighbor discovery, which might be difficult for low-duty-cycle wireless sensor networks in many real deployments. In this paper, we investigate the problem of neighbor discovery in low-duty-cycle wireless sensor networks. We give an ALOHA-like algorithm and analyze the expected time to discover all n – 1 neighbors for each node. By reducing the analysis to the classical K Coupon Collector's Problem, we show that the upper bound is ne(log2 n + (3 log2 n – 1) log2 log2 n + c) with high probability, for some constant c, where e is the base of natural logarithm. Furthermore, not knowing number of neighbors leads to no more than a factor of two slowdown in the algorithm performance. Then, we validate our theoretical results by extensive simulations, and explore the performance of different algorithms in duty-cycle and non-duty-cycle networks. Finally, we apply our approach to analyze the scenario of unreliable links in low-duty-cycle wireless sensor networks.


United Kingdom No Smoking Day (NSD), now celebrating its tenth year, is the leading smoking cessation campaign in the United Kingdom. The aim of the UK NSD, encouraging smokers to quit for part or all of the day or longer, is pursued through a two-part strategy: a national media campaign and local activity. Interesting lessons for how such national campaigns can stimulate and support local collaborations have emerged from the UK experience. The UK's top 10 box-office films of 1993 were surveyed to estimate the prevalence of smoking. In addition to identifying the role of smoking for characters and the frequency of the depiction of smoking, the research established the general patterns of the activity, its functions in the screenplay, and the connotations associated with it. The findings not only suggest that smoking is used to reinforce traditional sex roles but also as a rhetorical device to emphasize critical points in the plot. Contemporary cinema perpetuates a positive representation of smoking without reflecting the activity's real-life consequences. The project "The Smoking Epidemic" is aimed at achieving maximum media publicity to add to the changing climate of public opinion on smoking and to increase the priority for action to reduce smoking at both national and local levels. Reports that provided the most up-to-date estimates of the number of deaths attributable to smoking in the United Kingdom and of the burden smoking places on health services and society in general were developed, produced, and disseminated over a period of 3 years. A survey in antenatal clinics in a UK hospital in 1993 found that most women try to stop smoking because of pregnancy. Those who succeeded had quit before becoming pregnant or early in their pregnancy and before seeing health care professionals. Most continuing smokers had considerably reduced their consumption. Countries that have had a long history of successful action for tobacco control run the risk of campaign burnout. The United Kingdom reviewed its tobacco control activities with the aid of international experts. This led to a year-long process of redefining strategy and broadening the tobacco control alliance. Submitted by Greet Peersman. England. A new voluntary organization was recently founded in London with the moral support of the Internal Hospital Federation and the World Health Organization. Its aim is to protect, preserve, and improve the health of hospital personnel and patients from the hazards of smoking. A comprehensive strategy to reduce smoking prevalence is produced in Birmingham. Examples will include generating media cooperation; creating positive role models principally through sports sponsorship; and specific targeting of ethnic minorities, women, and parents. Particular emphasis will be placed on work done to secure a safe and supportive environment for young people. The United Kingdom was one of the first countries that banned cigarette advertising on television and radio. However, the United Kingdom govermnent was resistant to a ban on all tobacco advertising. W. Fidler of the Keith Durrant Project for cancer prevention in Oxfordshire conducted the first research study aimed at finding out whether very young children, aged 3 to 5 years old, are aware of smoking issues and passive smoking and are influenced by an adult role model who smokes. The data show that these very young children do have an understanding of the health risks of smoking. However, 25% state they wish to smoke when they grow up. More than 50% of the children play at smoking, 12% of whom say they do so because they want to appear grown-up. Twenty-five percent of the children use the readily available sweet candy-stick cigarettes. The Health Education Authority (HEA) Helios Project strives to help and encourage local tobacco control workers to be media advocates to promote the health risks of smoking. They made an annual Smoking Prevention Year Planner that lists at least 80 dates to create topical tobacco stories (i.e., give up for Mum for Mothers Day). Their main strategy involves selling national news stories and campaigns to local health workers to localize the story for local news. To keep pace with current events, a new media strategy is being tried, offering grants with guidelines for small, innovative media-worthy projects around current issues such as advertising, poverty, taxation, and young people. A new style of cigarette advertising, using downmarket imagery and tongue-in-cheek humor was recently introduced in Britain. One particularly prominent advertising campaign for Embassy Regal cigarettes used a character named "Reg." The style of this campaign was humorous and deliberately unsophisticated. The cam-


A structural methodology is shown on the example of design of the industry fastest CMOS OpAmp implemented on the 0.6 um single n-well process. This OpAmp has rail-to-rail input/output, 250 MHz unity gain bandwidth, 350 V/us slew rate, >100 dB open-loop gain with 150 Ohm load, 6 nV/√Hz noise and consumes 5 mA from 2.5-5.5 V supply. Considered are the constant-g m rail-to-rail input stage, DC gain boost, slew rate boost, folded cascode implementation, overload recovery improvement.


Giant cell arteritis (GCA), also called temporal arteritis, is a large- and medium-sized blood vessel systemic vasculitis characterized by the granulomatous involvement of the aorta and its major branches. This vasculitis mainly occurs in white individuals older than 50 years. Due to the progressive aging of the population in Western countries, GCA has emerged as relatively common disease in the elderly. Clinical manifestations of GCA are the result of inflammation of the arterial wall, leading to a series of structural changes, such as intimal hyperplasia and fragmentation of internal elastic laminae and luminal occlusion. Headache is the most typical and common clinical expression of this vasculitis. Visual ischemic manifestations, in particular permanent visual loss, constitute the most feared complications of GCA. Management of GCA is still fraught with challenges. Corticosteroids are the cornerstone of the therapy in GCA. The use of corticosteroids has dramatically reduced the frequency of blindness in patients with GCA. The initial dose of prednisone or its equivalent ranges between 40-60 mg/day, either as single or divided dose for 3-4 weeks. GCA patients without severe ischemic complications experience rapid disease improvement with an initial prednisone dose of 40 mg/day. In GCA patients who present with severe visual ischemic complication, higher steroid doses, generally an initial dose of 60 mg/prednisone/day or methylprednisolone pulse therapy (1g daily for 3 consecutive days) are given. There are data showing that not the absolute dose but the time from the onset of symptoms to the first administration of corticosteroids is predictive of improvement of visual loss. Regrettably, in most cases once established the prognosis for significant visual recovery in GCA patients despite corticosteroid therapy is poor. Immunosuppressive agents may be considered for use in large vessel vasculitis as adjunctive therapy. In this regard, alternative-corticosteroid sparing drugs, in particular methotrexate (MTX), should be considered in GCA patients with severe corticosteroid-related side effects and/or in those patients who require prolonged corticosteroid therapy due to relapses of the disease. However, a meta-analysis of randomized placebo-controlled trials in patients with newly diagnosed GCA disclosed modest efficacy of MTX (10-15 mg/week) in reducing relapse rate and lowering the cumulative corticosteroid therapy. No clear benefit of anti-TNF-alpha therapy in patients with GCA has been reported. Nevertheless, recent reports indicate that anti-IL6 receptor monoclonal antibody therapy may an effective and relatively safe therapy in patients with inflammatory aortitis refractory to corticosteroids or to other biologic immunosuppressive drugs. Disclosure of Interest None declared DOI 10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-eular.6113


Abstract
 Based on analyses of an extensive set of field data collected by the US Forest Service, we identified trends in range expansion of Ligustrim sinense (Chinese Privet) and L. vulgare (European Privet), the most prevalent invasive shrubs within forestlands of eastern Texas. Chinese and European privets increased markedly in northeastern Texas from 2004 and 2012. The number of sample plots in which Chinese and European privets were detected increased from 79 (in 25 counties) to 300 (in 40 counties), and the mean percent coverage within those sample plots already invaded in 2004 increased significantly by 2012. The number of sample plots in each of 3 percent-coverage categories (<10, 10–20, >20) increased in each of 2 longitudinal bands (>95°W and ≤95°W) from the first to the second survey. Our empirical results support the general trend of westward and southeastward expansions predicted by existing models, which were based on less -recent data.


An improvement of the perfectly matched layer multilevel fast multipole algorithm (PML-MLFMA) for simulating large planar microwave structures is presented. By exploiting the low-rank property of the PML-MLFMA multimodal aggregation and disaggregation matrices, considerable reductions in memory usage and computation time are obtained. The method has been extensively validated, demonstrating complete error controllability when simulating large planar microwave structures. Reductions in memory requirements and CPU time of more than 60% and 40% have been achieved.


The effect of large-scale application of phosphate-solubilizing microorganisms (PSMs) on the promotion of crop growth varies. Usually the solubilization of tricalcium phosphate is considered as the standard for screening most PSMs. This study aimed to establish a common method for screening and testing true PSMs. The isolated fungus's phosphate-solubilizing ability, adaptation to corn root exudates, organic acids secreted, and colonization ability were analyzed. And the microorganism's diversity and ability to promote corn growth were also tested through plot experiment. The isolated fungus Aspergillus niger H1 (A-H1) was isolated and identified from plant rhizosphere that could solubilize phosphate, utilize corn root exudates as sources, and propagate well in vitro and soil. Lactic acid was excreted and reached 377.9 ?g mL -1 at 30 h in culture by A-H1, which decreased the pH of culture to 1.73. The amount of A-H1 increased by 41-fold in 28 d and was maintained for 49 d. PSM showed selectivity on the transformation of different forms of P.However, a wide range of insoluble phosphates, such as Ca 8 H 2 (PO 4 ) 6 ·5H 2 O, AlPO 4 , FePO 4 , and Ca 10 (PO 4 ) 6 (OH) 2 , was converted to soluble CaHPO 4 in soil.CaHPO 4 was also inhibited from being converted into insoluble phosphate by A-H1. Corn yield increased by 10.71% that remarkable higher than the control after A-H1inoculation. Data show that A - H1 could propagate well, solubilize phosphate in soil, and promote corn growth. A common method was created to screen and test a true phosphate-solubilizing fungus that enhances plant growth.


We present a study of the usability and induced workload of a new head-mounted display (HMD) which allows the wearer to more easily switch between tasks in the virtual and real world using multiple optical channels dynamically at the press of a button. Most HMDs provide full immersion by occluding the real world from the view of the user, and replacing it with a computer-generated virtual environment. One trade-off, however, is that such HMDs make it difficult to interact with real-world objects and people, or to react to events while being immersed. Tasks that are simple in the unmediated real world, such as taking a drink or responding to a text, become nearly impossible while wearing an occlusive HMD, and normally require the user to take off the HMD. To address this limitation, we propose an HMD which provides optical channels to view the near-field real world in the periphery of the HMD while still wearing the HMD by pressing a button. We call our approach Multi-channel Dynamic Immersion (MDI). We embedded transparency controllable LCD panels around the periphery of an HMD and installed a fish-eye lens in front of its forward-facing camera. We then compared MDI to three other methods of switching from working in VR to real world activities: (a) a front camera video-see-through method, (b) using dynamic LCDs only, and (c) taking off the HMD. Participants had to interrupt their work in a VR office to carry out typical real world daily activities, such as picking up a mug, responding to a phone call, or replying to a text message. Our results show no significant differences in task execution time between the four conditions. However, we observed a tendency favouring MDI as the easiest to use among the HMDs. In addition, we found a significantly higher rated ease of use for the two HMDs with controllable LCDs compared to the two occlusive HMDs. Our data also underscores that a substantial amount of time is lost when switching between work contexts in occlusive HMDs and the real world.


Immigrants face barriers in seeking and accessing mental health and addiction services. Health professionals are crucial in providing and promoting healthcare and it is important to understand their experiences in order to enhance the access of mental healthcare. The aim of this paper is to explore and describe health professionals' experiences with treatment engagement among immigrants with co-occurring substance use disorders (SUD) and mental health disorders (MHD) in Norwegian mental health and addiction services. Within a collaborative approach, 3 focus group interviews were conducted with health professionals, who had provided various mental health and addiction care services to immigrants with co-occurring SUD and MHD. The focus group interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using systematic text condensation. The analysis resulted in 5 main categories: (1) difficulties due to language barriers, (2) difficulties due to lack of culturally competent services, (3) difficulties due to social factors, (4) being curious and flexible improves the user-provider relationship, and (5) increasing access to mental health and addiction services. This study provides an enhanced understanding of how health professionals' experienced treatment engagement among immigrants with co-occurring SUD and MHD in the Norwegian context. Implications of the findings for clinical practice and future research are discussed.


Autonomous driving in public roads requires precise localization within the range of few centimeters. Even the best localization systems based on GNSS cannot always reach this level of precision, especially in an urban environment, where the signal is disturbed by surrounding buildings and artifacts. Recent works have shown the advantage of using maps as a precise, robust, and reliable way of localization. Typical approaches use the set of current readings from the vehicle sensors to estimate its position on the map. The approach presented in this paper exploits a short-range visual lane marking detector and a dead reckoning system to construct a registry of the detected back lane markings corresponding to the last 240 m driven. This information is used to search in the map the most similar section, to determine the vehicle localization in the map reference. Additional filtering is used to obtain a more robust estimation for the localization. The accuracy obtained is sufficiently high to allow autonomous driving in a narrow road. The system uses a low-cost architecture of sensors and the algorithm is light enough to run on low-power embedded architecture.


By studying the behavior of programs in the SPECint95 suite we observed that six out of eight programs exhibit a new kind of value locality, the frequent value locality, according to which a few values appear very frequently in memory locations and are therefore involved in a large fraction of memory accesses. In these six programs ten distinct values occupy over 50% of all memory locations and on an average account for nearly 50% of all memory accesses during program execution. This observation holds for smaller blocks of consecutive memory locations and the set of frequent values remains quite stable over the execution of the program.In the six benchmarks with frequent value locality, on an average 50% of all cache misses occur during the reading or writing of the ten most frequently accessed values. We propose a new data cache structure, the frequent value cache (FVC), which employs a value-centric approach to caching data locations for exploiting the frequent value locality phenomenon. FVC is a small direct-mapped cache which is dedicated to holding only frequently occurring values. The value-centric nature of FVC enables us to store data in a compressed form where the compression is achieved by encoding the frequent values using a few bits. Moreover this simple compression scheme preserves the random access to data values in a cache line.Our experiments demonstrate that by augmenting a direct mapped cache (DMC) with a direct mapped FVC of size no more than 3 Kbytes we can obtain reductions in miss rates ranging from 1% to 68%. In fact we observed that higher reductions in miss rates can he achieved by augmenting a DMC with a small FVC as opposed to doubling the size of DMC for the 124.m88ksim and 134.perl benchmarks.


A comparative study of American alligator (Alligator mississippiensis) growth rates was made in estuarine and palustrine wetlands in southwestern Louisiana. In the estuarine wetlands, where characteristic salinity levels were <5%0o, alligators grew faster and therefore reached sexual maturity earlier than did those in palustrine wetlands, which are characterized by shallow, freshwater marsh vegetation. Slower growth rates in palustrine wetlands appeared to be related to prey density, indicated by previous studies to be lower than in estuarine wetlands. Males grew faster than females and therefore reached sexual maturity at an earlier age in both habitats. This study revealed a major limitation in using total lengths as an index upon which population age structure can be based even when alligators are in the same geographic region.


Objective: To find out the accuracy of lung ultrasound to diagnose transient tachypnea in neonates

Methodology: Cross-sectional study at Neonatology Department, Sadiq Abbasi (Civil) Hospital Bahawalpur from January 2019 to October 2022 and comprised of neonates diagnosed as transient tachypnea of newborn admitted and were divided into 2 groups based on Chest radiograph findings comparable to each other in demographics. Lung Ultrasonography examinations were performed in all patients in a peaceful condition. Each lung was split up in three zones bounded by anterior axillary and posterior axillary lines as anterior, posterior and lateral. Lung Ultrasonography results compared with CXR findings.
Results: Out of 148, Lung Ultrasonography diagnosed transient tachypnea of newborn in 74% while Chest radiograph was suggestive in 39% however, Lung Ultrasonography was also diagnosed i.e. 61% transient tachypnea of newborn in neonates having normal Chest radiograph examination. The commonest Lung Ultrasonography indexes of transient tachypnea of newborn were A-lines abnormalities 100%, B-lines abnormalities 94.5 %, interstitial syndromes 81.6%, white lungs 36.6%, double lung point 86.77%, consolidation 21% and pleural effusions 10%. The sensitivity of LUS to diagnose transient tachypnea of newborn was 86.5% and the sensitivity and the specificity of Double Lung Point to diagnose transient tachypnea of newborn were 92.2% and 80% respectively.
 Conclusion: Lung Ultrasonography is a noninvasive way of bedside neonatal examination. It has analytic value to diagnose lung disease in neonates but also helps in differentiation of different lung diseases with no radiation hazard.
Keywords: Neonatology, Fetal lung fluid, transient tachypnea of newborn, Dyspnea, Neonatal Lung Ultrasound


Tidal power is an emerging field of renewable energy, harnessing the power of regular and predictable tidal currents. However, maintenance of submerged equipment is a major challenge. Routine visual inspections of equipment must be performed onshore, requiring the costly removal of turbines from the sea bed and resulting in long periods of downtime. The development of condition monitoring techniques providing automated fault detection can therefore be extremely beneficial to this industry, reducing the dependency on inspections and allowing maintenance to be planned efficiently. This paper investigates the use of deep learning approaches for fault detection within a tidal turbine's generator from vibration data. Training and testing data were recorded over two deployment periods of operation from an accelerometer sensor placed within the nacelle of the turbine, representing ideal and faulty responses over a range of operating conditions. The paper evaluates a deep learning approach through a stacked autoencoder network in comparison to feature-based classification methods, where features have been extracted over varying rotation speeds through the Vold-Kalma filter.


A Burton–Miller-type integral equation for time domain exterior acoustic radiation and scattering problems is considered as a way of overcoming the well-known stability problems associated with collocation-based time domain boundary element methods. The stability of the method is considered and justified using an argument based on the associated frequency domain integral equation. This allows for the justification of a choice of coupling coefficient that is in some sense optimal for the time domain formulation for acoustic radiation and scattering by spheres. Finally, computational results are given in support of these observations and the impact of choosing the optimal parameter in the computations is discussed. Results for non-spherical bodies are also considered to see whether the results may be more widely applicable.


The central idea behind this paper is to propose a means to filter out vibration signals of interest from a fault detection perspective without actually having knowledge about the kinematics of the machine. In other words, this paper investigates blind filters that do not require a-priori knowledge about the fault frequencies, e.g. of a bearing or gear. This kind of approach opens the door for the condition monitoring of complex machines where insufficient information is available about the inner components or where replacements have been carried out that changed characteristic frequencies and that were not logged. This feat is achieved by employing the squared envelope as a metric for the blind filter. The main assumption of the proposed method is that when a fault occurs, it introduces a second-order cyclostationary (CS2) component in the vibration signal which manifests itself in the squared envelope (SE) as a harmonic sine modulation at its corresponding fault frequency. This modulation correspondingly also increases the sparsity of the envelope spectrum. To avoid interfering influences of CS1 components, the signal is typically pre-whitened, e.g. through linear prediction filtering, cepstrum editing, etc. The paper investigates the minimization of the relative prediction error of the linear prediction of the squared envelope for use in the iterative updating procedure of the blind filter.


The low temperature electronic specific heat as a function of Au content in Cu-Au alloys shows interesting features. The specific heat coefficient of disordered alloys lies on a smooth curve below the linearly interpolated elemental metal values. Ordering reduces the value of this coefficient in all cases except that of the CuAu I alloy. It is shown that this behaviour of the electronic specific heat is due to the specific structure of the electronic density of states around the Fermi level. The position and shape of the large dip the authors found at the Fermi level varies with changes in the chemical composition or the crystal structure of the alloy. The singular property of the specific heat of CuAu I can be explained by the lattice contraction in the c direction. Besides these Fermi level properties, the electron density of occupied states, resolved into the total and Au part, is discussed for the case of Cu3Au I, CuAu I and CuAu3. Characteristic d-band energies (top, centre and bottom) are also presented. The calculations were performed using the linear-muffin-tin-orbital method.


It is now apparent that democratic transition does not automatically bring about effective rule. In fact, many of the recently democratised nations have encountered problems of rule and governance. Among those problems, the impact of democratisation on the state bureaucracy, especially the continuity or rupture of government administration, has been a major concern. In many democratised countries, notably the former communist countries, lustration and organised purge of bureaucrats who had connection with the old regimes have raised serious questions about the declining state capacity for effective rule and economic management.


Among the patients with early stage (I/II) non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), there are those who, due to medical comorbidities, advanced age, or refusal, never undergo surgery. For them, exclusive radiation therapy (RT) has been the treatment of choice, achieving median survival times of 30 months and 5-year survival of up to 42%. Doses of > or =65 Gy with standard fractionation (or its radiobiological equivalent when altered fractionation is used) are necessary for long-lasting local control of the disease, with smaller tumors having a more favorable prognosis. The issue of elective nodal irradiation (ENI) remains controversial, since failure patterns identified local failure as the predominant pattern. None of the potential pretreatment patient- and tumor-related prognostic factors has been shown to clearly influence survival. Toxicity is generally mild to moderate, although high doses (e.g., 80 Gy) may carry a risk for an excessive rate of side effects. Conformal treatment and consideration of comorbidities such as altered lung function may be essential, since simultaneous supportive treatment of acute sequelae (mainly acute esophagitis) is necessary. RT is an effective treatment modality in technically operable, but medically inoperable patients with early stage NSCLC and offers a long-lasting cure.


The two human hepatoma cell lines, HepG2 and Hep3B, have been demonstrated to metabolize ethanol efficiently even in the absence of alcohol dehydrogenase. By using specific metabolic inhibitors, it was found that the microsomal ethanol-oxidizing system (MEOS) plays a significant role in ethanol metabolism in these two cell lines. There is a strong positive correlation between the rates of ethanol metabolism and the total cytochrome P-450 levels in the hepatoma cells. The involvement of the cytochrome P-450 system was further supported by the induction of aniline p-hydroxylase activity after ethanol treatment. However, the 3- to 4-fold elevation in aniline p-hydroxylase activity was not accompanied by an increase in cytochrome P450IIE1 mRNA level. Exposure of HepG2 and Hep3B cells to ethanol resulted in an increase of accumulation of apoA-I (15%-45% over control) in a dose-dependent manner (from 5 to 50 mM) of ethanol over a 24-hr period. All other major apolipoproteins which included apo CII, apo CIII and apoE, with the exception of apoB, were not affected by these treatments. At a concentration of ethanol of 25 mM or greater, accumulation of apoB, VLDL and LDL triglyceride were increased by 20% to 25% over the control level. Elevation of HDL cholesterol (40%-70% over control) was observed when the cells were exposed to an ethanol concentration of > or = 10 mM. Metyrapone, which inhibited the MEOS, was capable of blocking the induction of apoAI caused by ethanol treatment.


When the prior distributions for the grand mean, row effects, column effects and interaction effects are all independent, with that for the grand mean being flat, the posterior expectation and covariance matrix of the cell means (under a Gaussian model) in a 2-way MANOVA may be obtained via a special matrix inversion technique which offers a great saving in storage and computation time. An APL program and example are presented.


Internet users in Bangladesh have increased rapidly over the last couple of years. Marketers are taking advantage of this trend by opening up online stores to attract customers to shop online. However, translating internet users to online shoppers is still a challenge for marketers. The objective of this paper is to review the existing literature in order to identify the various key individual factors that influence customer's intention to shop online and propose an integrated model that will explain the customer's intention to adopt online shopping. The key factors that were identified are cultural, social influence, demographics (gender, age, education, and income), motivation, perceived risk, trust, and attitude. This study will provide implication to researchers and professionals alike who intend to study consumer behavior in relation to the adoption of online shopping.


Abstract Background PYRAMID was an international post‐marketing registry that aimed to collect data on the long‐term safety and effectiveness of adalimumab treatment per local standard of care in patients with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease (CD). Here, we present post hoc analyses of observational data from patients who became pregnant while participating in this registry and receiving adalimumab. Methods From the subpopulation of patients receiving adalimumab who became pregnant while taking part in PYRAMID, data on patient characteristics, pregnancy outcomes, and complications of pregnancy were analysed retrospectively. Results Across the PYRAMID registry, 293 pregnancies occurred in patients who had gestational adalimumab exposure (average disease duration at last menstrual period: 8.6 years), resulting in 300 pregnancy outcomes. A total of 197 pregnancies (67.2%) were exposed to adalimumab in all trimesters per physician's decision. Of the known reported outcomes (96.3%), 81.7% (236/289) were live births, 10.4% (30/289) were spontaneous abortions, 4.8% (14/289) elective terminations, 2.8% (8/289) ectopic pregnancies, and 0.3% (1/289) was a stillbirth. Congenital malformations (pulmonary valve stenosis and tricuspid valve incompetence) were reported in one infant. In addition to the pregnancy outcomes described above, 23 complications of pregnancy were reported in 20 patients. Conclusions This analysis showed that adalimumab treatment in patients with CD, who became pregnant whilst participating in the PYRAMID registry, contributed no additional adverse effects during the pregnancy course or on pregnancy outcomes.


This is the final version. Available from the University of Exeter Energy Policy Group via the link in this record


Background: The 1st year medical students are in a daily habit of attending college and being utterly preoccupied with lectures, practicals, studies, and examinations. This year with the introduction of new concept of competency-based medical education students was exposed to hospital set up by early clinical exposure. Since the news of a nationwide lockdown was announced from March 26, 2020, in response to the spread of the coronavirus disease-19 virus, not only it created a drastic change in the functioning of the country but also imparted a great impact on the 1st year medical students. To complete scheduled curriculum, online teaching-learning sessions were initiated by medical colleges. Students tried their best to cope up with new online learning sessions, completing assignments, and appearing for vivas. This situation was completely unexpected and they had to attend online sessions with family members around them.

Aims and Objectives: The study was planned in, first MBBS (Phase I) students to analyze study pattern, perception toward various aspects of online teaching and daily activities during nationwide lockdown period.

Materials and Methods: This study was undertaken among the 1st MBBS (Phase I, Block III) student volunteers in a local medical college. After approval by the Institutional Ethical Committee, a Google Form was designed, specifically based on the daily routine, perception toward various aspects of online teaching, time spent on studying and study pattern of Phase I students. The data was represented as mean±standard deviation. The responses were tabulated in percentage.

Results: About 93.9% of the students were primarily engaged in studies and 79.2% of students were involved in exercise at home. About 84% of students were satisfied with online teaching sessions. About 70.5% and 59.7% of the students felt an increased sleep duration and screen time on mobile respectively, while only 26.2% of the students felt that their study time was increased. They were involved in various health related activities and hobbies and had quality time with parents.

Conclusion: This lockdown had a positive effect toward the optimistic thought processes of the students while engaging in family bonding and revisiting hobbies for a short duration. It is seen to be effective and helpful to the students having online lectures.


Summary: The biomass and residual limiting substrate profiles of chemostat grown Trichoderma aureoviride were typical of carbon- and of nitrogen-limited micro-organisms. Maintenance energy requirements partly accounted for the discrepancy between observed and predicted values of biomass concentration at low dilution rates under glucose limitation. At such low dilution rates the fungal mycelium became differentiated and sporulation occurred. The steady state glucose concentrations in glucose-limited cultures were higher than those predicted by chemostat theory; much closer agreement between observed and predicted values was achieved when a corrected μmax term (Pitt & Bull, 1982 a) was used to calculate the residual glucose concentration. The measured growth parameters (μmax, μman, K
s, Y and m) for T. aureoviride had values similar to those reported for other species of filamentous fungi. The biomass concentration of fed-batch cultures increased linearly with time but glucose supplied at a rate three times higher than the maintenance requirement was insufficient to prevent sporulation. Mycelial RNA and protein concentrations increased with increasing dilution rate and were 30 and 40% lower under nitrogen limitation than under carbon limitation. DNA concentration was not influenced by dilution rate. The molar ratio of RNA: Mg2+ : K+ was 8:1:8 and was dilution rate independent. Only two polyamines, spermine and spermidine, were detected in T. aureoviride; they increased in concentration and proportion of the biomass as the dilution rate was raised but there was no evidence of their functional interchange ability with Mg2+ ions as reported for other fungi.


The current study assessed the anticoccidial efficacy of chitosan nanoencapsulated bromelain (CNB) against coccidiosis in goats. Bromelain was extracted from the pineapple peels using standard methods while oral solution of CNB was prepared using standard manufacturing methods. The in vivo study was done on fifteen healthy male goats naturally infected with coccidia. The goats were divided into three groups consisting of three treatment groups (90 and 270 mg/Kg CNB, Diclazuril, 5 mg/Kg). The drugs were administered orally for 3 days. Fecal Oocyst Counts (FOC) determined using the modified McMaster technique. The goats were observed for clinical signs on daily basis while body weight was recorded weekly. The level of packed cell volume (PCV), aspartate aminotransferases (AST), alanine aminotransferases (ALT), urea, and creatinine were assessed weekly. At the end of the study, goats were euthanized and gross pathology and histopathology conducted. The results showed that at day 28 post-treatment there was a significantly reduction of FOC of 98.42 and 82.30% for Diclazuril and 270 mg/Kg treatment groups, respectively. The reduction of FOC percentage was significantly higher (p ≤ 0.01) in Diclazuril group than that in 270 mg/Kg. During the monitoring period, there was no mortality or clinical signs observed in the goats. The PCV, AST, ALT, creatinine and urea were in normal ranges for goats. There were no pathological lesions on the goat organs. In conclusion, CNB had high anticoccidial efficacy and was safe for use in goats. Strategies to improve the efficacy of this potential drug should be further investigated.


Purpose: Recent clinical studies have demonstrated that immunotherapeutics, such as checkpoint inhibitors are a promising approach to the treatment of cancer; however, strategies to improve its clinical efficacy are still required. Axl and Mer, member of the TAM receptor tyrosine kinase family are known to be over-expressed in various types of hematological and solid tumor cancers and have been reported as poor prognostic factors. ONO-9330547 is a highly potent and selective oral Axl/Mer inhibitor. Previous study with ONO-9330547 demonstrated both increase proportion of CD8+ T cell and alternation of immunosuppressive microenvironment in syngeneic tumor graft model (Tanaka AACR 2015). Thus, we next went on to examine whether combining ONO-9330547 with anti-PD1 antibody has the potential to improve efficacy in a mouse colon cancer MC38 syngeneic model. Methods: MC38 tumor cells, a mouse colon cancer cell line, were implanted into female C57/B6 mice. Randomization of mice occurred when mean tumor volume reached 150 mm3. ONO-9330547 was fed in a diet containing 0.0013 or 0.013% ONO-9330547 (equivalent to 2 or 20 mg/kg/day). Anti-mouse PD-1 Ab (4H2) was administered intraperitoneally at a dose of 10 mg/kg every 6 days for 28 days. Tumor volumes were determined using the formula volume ( = width2 x length)/2. Animals were euthanized when the tumors reached a maximum volume of 2,000 mm3. QPCR was used to determine the TAM ligands, Gas6 and Pros1. Results: Treatment with ONO-9330547 combined with 4H2 resulted in a significantly improved inhibition of tumor growth in the MC38 syngeneic model. In contrast, treatment of 4H2 monotherapy showed inferior anti-tumor activity compared with combination therapy. In particular, ONO-9330547 at 2 or 20 mg/kg/day combined with 4H2 resulted in tumor remission in 3/9 or 6/9 animals at day 28, respectively, whereas each monotherapy resulted in tumor remission in only 1/9 animals. Interestingly, the treatment with 4H2 significantly increased TAM ligands mRNA levels, Gas6 and Pros1 in tumor. Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that ONO-9330547, a highly potent dual Axl/Mer inhibitor, shows synergistic anti-tumor effect when combined with anti-PD-1 antibody which induces the expression of TAM ligands. These data support the concept that the immunomudulatory effect of ONO-9330547 is further enhanced when ONO-9330547 is combined with immunotherapy. Rational combination with immunotherapeutics is worth further investigation in the clinical setting. Citation Format: Toshio Yoshizawa, Kohei Tanaka, Tomoko Yasuhiro, Ryu Fujikawa, Suiho Ri, Kazuhito Kawabata. Development of Axl/Mer inhibitor, ONO-9330547: preclinical evidence supporting the combination with immunotherapeutics. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-218.


The application of Remazol dyes as a synthetic dye for textiles has been known for a long time; in addition, some synthetic dyes are also used for staining histological sections. These dyes have different chemical structures but they have the same chemical bonding principle with materials like cells or textiles. The aim of this study is to determine for Human Blood Cells (HBCs) through dyeing with some reactive dyes. For this purpose, we used four Remazol dyes of different colors like Rot R, Dark Blue, Schwarz RL, and Blue BB. Application of these dyes to HBCs on slides carried out at different times like 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes and altering temperatures like 25°C, 60°C, and 100°C, respectively. The slides were then washed with distilled water, air dried and viewed at 1000 magnification by light microscopy (Leica microsystems D30). As a result, we found that, HBCs were dyed in pale and light color by all Remazol dyes at 100°C for 60 minutes with soda-sulfate mordant. HBCs partially denaturated at all temperatures and times. However, HBCs were dyed a darker red color at 100°C for 60 minutes by Remazol Rot R and alum. We conclude that Remazol Rot R, Dark Blue, Schwarz RL, and Blue BB dyes have potential for dyeing HBCs with alum at 100°C for 60 minutes. Keywords : Human Blood Cells, Histological stains, Reactive dyes, Remazol, Textiles, Synthetic dyes DOI : 10.7176/JSTR/5-2-07


The R-matrix method is used to calculate differential cross sections for the transitions 11S to 23S and 23P in helium by electron impact at incident energies 100 and 200 eV. An 11-state and a polarized pseudo-state calculation are performed. Present results are compared with the experimental results of Sakai et al. (1990) for the transition 11S-23S and with theoretical results of Fon et al. (1979) who included five states in an R-matrix calculation. It is seen that the present theoretical calculations for 11S-23S at 200 eV do not fully reproduce the large cross sections found at low angles in the experiments, although the present results are in good agreement with those at large angles.


Introduction White spot lesion is a demineralization of the enamel that appears as a white spot on the surfaces of the tooth. The cause of this spot is determined by the activity of the bacterial plaque and it represents the initial stage of a carious lesion. This lesion is a common side effect for patients with fixed orthodontic appliances mainly because of the brackets' position that favors the accumulation of plaque that ultimately leads to the formation of the white spot. Methods We conducted a search on a single database, PubMed. "Orthodontic", "white spot lesions", "enamel demineralization treatment" and "remineralization" were the search terms used. We found 324 articles, but we took in consideration only the ones from the last 10 years, which resulted in 223 articles. Results The first step after research was article selection: first by scrutinizing the title and secondly by reviewing the abstracts or full texts. The exclusion criteria were: meta-analysis, reviews, original articles regarding prevention of white spot lesions and their prevalence or incidence. We included the articles that seemed relevant for the treatment of white spot lesions, made either on extracted teeth either on orthodontic patients. We found 75 articles to be eligible for this research and we eliminated 5 because of the lack of an abstract or full text and a further 22 were rejected because they did not fit the aforementioned criteria. Conclusion Although some traditional methods for the treatment of white spot lesions seem to have undesirable results, nowadays with new technologies and thorough investigations in nanotechnology, the eradication of the lesion appears to be short term.


Abstract In industry, formalin and urea formaldehyde condensates (UFC) are used for the preparation of urea-formaldehyde adhesives. The aim of this study was to evaluate the characteristics of a UF resin prepared with formalin (42% concentration) and two kinds of UFC with various urea content (F/U ∼ 5 and 4.3 malar ratio). The resins were prepared with final molar ratio F/U = 1.1. The UF resin with formalin showed better mechanical properties than those with UFC. The 13C NMR and FT-IR results indicated that methylene, methylene ether and urons groups in a UF resin prepared with formalin were present in higher proportion than observed in industrial UF resins. The DSC (differential scanning calorimetry) results showed that the curing temperature of a UF resin prepared with formalin is lower than that of a UF resin prepared with UFC. The mechanical properties of MDFs prepared with the three types of adhesives showed that MDFs bonded with a UF prepared with formalin yields a better mechanical properties than MDFs prepared with a UF resin based on UFC. Moreover, resin synthesized with UFC (F/U = 5) result in higher IBS (internal bond strength) MOR (modulus of rupture), MOE (modulus of elasticity), TS (thickness swelling) and formaldehyde emission (FE) than resin synthesized with UFC (F/U = 4.3). The MDF bonded with the UF2 resin presented poor results, with the highest TS and the lowest IBS, MOE, MOR and FE.


Inflammation linked to various diseases is the biological response to certain stimuli. The pro-inflammatory potential of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) as potential inducers of inflammation bound to the Toll-like Receptor 4 (TLR4) and the anti-inflammatory capacity of A. paniculata (AP) phytocompounds as prospective inhibitors of the Nuclear Factor Kappa B (NF-κB) p50 transcription factor are investigated via in silico techniques. The molecular docking of the PAHs and AP phytocompounds is performed in AutoDock Vina by calculating their binding energies. The molecular dynamics simulations (MDS) of the apo and ligand-bound complex of the top binding ligands were performed in CABS-flex. The agonists, which included the PAHs indeno(1,2,3-cd)pyrene (IP), and dibenz(a,h)anthracene (DahA), had the highest binding energies of −10 kcal/mol and −9.2 kcal/mol, respectively. The most stable antagonists in the binding site with binding energies to the NF-κB p50 were the AP phytocompounds with −5.6 kcal/mol for ergosterol peroxide and −5.3 kcal/mol for 14-deoxy-14,15-dehydroandrographolide. The MDS of the apo human TLR4 and PAH-bound TLR4, and the apo p50 and the AP phytocompound-bound NF-κB p50 showed minimal fluctuations. These results reveal that IP and DahA are significant inducers of inflammation, whereas ergosterol peroxide and 14-deoxy-14,15-dehydroandrographolide are inhibitors of the NF-κB pathway. Furthermore, the study theorizes that any inflammatory activity induced by PAH can be potentially inhibited by A. paniculata phytocompounds.


Abstract— Domestic IoT devices have been registering extremely high adoption rates as new generations increase their purchasing power and the promises of value expressed by the manufacturers of these devices are becoming increasingly attractive and necessary for users. Related to this, the user's privacy surface attack is expanding directly, and its protection is limited by diverse factors, for instance design, device utility or even manufacturers profitability. Therefore, in this paper we propose to develop a risk management model for privacy in IoT domestic devices. However, as the protection of privacy is an individual perception, generalization is not practical given the difference in perception of privacy from individual to individual, our proposal is a framework that guides the elaboration of a specific individual model. In this paper we present the steps to develop the model and establish the action plan to manage privacy risks.


Trying all simple changes (first order mutations) to executed C, C++ and CUDA source code shows software engineering artefacts are more robust than is often assumed. Of those that compile, up to 89% run without error. Indeed a few mutants are improvements. Program fitness landscapes are smoother. Analysis of these programs, a parallel nVidia GPGPU kernel, all CUDA samples and the GNU C library shows many lines of code and integer values are repeated and may follow Zipf's law. no change 1 10 10


The results of treatment of 36 patients injured during the earthquake in Armenia are analyzed. The patients had severe traumas: open injuries to the limbs, complicated by nephro- and hepatopathies. The periods of the limb crushing with fragments of ruined buildings varied from 3 hours to 3 days. The treatment modalities included conservative and operative detoxication (hemoperfusion, hemodiafiltration, hemofiltration, prolonged endolymphatic infusions of drugs), active surgical strategy, rehabilitation of patients. Seven amputations, 7 reamputations, and 21 necrectomies were performed in 36 patients by vital indications; no lethal outcomes were recorded. Restorative skin plasty was performed in 14 patients with 19 limb stumps, with good functional outcomes. The patients were directed to the Central Research Institute of Prosthetics to be supplied with prostheses. Only in 3 patients with the upper limb crushing the development of stable ischemic contractures could not be prevented.


1 We have previously reported that vasodilator headache due to isosorbide dinitrate (ISDN) can be circumvented by using small 'priming' doses for an induction period of 1-2 weeks, after which it is possible to increase to dose rapidly to 360-720 mg, daily without recurrence of headache and without toxicity. The present study corroborates this earlier finding. 2. Chronic oral administration of doses of ISDN of this order of magnitude results in prolonged high plasma concentrations of the parent compound, as well as higher levels of the metabolites 2-ISMN and 5-ISMN. 3. It is our thesis that chronic high oral dosage of ISDN saturates the intrahepatic biotransformation process, and allows high concentrations of ISDN and its metabolites to enter the systemic circulation.


Two different products have been developed based on gridded satellite data. The first one at low resolution is calculated from a combination of satellite absolute dynamic topography geostrophic currents, and blended wind driven currents following the methodology initially proposed by Sudre and Morrow (2008) [1]. An upgraded version of this approach has been developed recently including: the precise consideration of the equatorial singularity through the semi-geosptrophic methodology (which is also derived from the absolute dynamic topography), and a variable wind mixing depth as a function of latitude for the wind driven currents [2]. The second ocean dynamics product at high resolution is established using a radically new method. It is based on an approximation of the energy cascade, expressed in a microcanonical formulation, and associated to turbulent signal provided by SST MODIS-Aqua product at 1/24°. The basic idea is to use optimal cascading to decrease the spatial resolution of SST MODIS-Aqua product at 1/24°, then use the motion information available at lower resolution coming from the first product described above, transmit that information along the scales back to higher spatial resolution using the cascade to obtain a 1/24° resolution motion field [3]. [1] J. Sudre and R. A. Morrow, 2008. Global surface currents: a high-resolution product for investigating ocean dynamics, Ocean Dynamics, vol. 58, DOI 10.1007/s10236-008-0134-9. [2] J. Sudre and C. Maes, in prep. [3] H. Yahia, J. Sudre, C. Pottier and V. Garcon, 2010, Motion analysis in oceanographic satellite images using multiscale methods and the energy cascade, Pattern Recognition, DOI: 10.1016/J.patcog.2010.04.011.


In this paper we extend the available experimental data for breakdown delay times as a function of the afterglow time to short afterglow times for a pulsed obstructed discharge in nitrogen. Measurements were performed at 6.6 mbar in research grade nitrogen by application of a high-vacuum procedure. The delay times are separated into formative and statistical time lags and their dependence on the afterglow time is discussed. A model is developed that is able to reproduce the breakdown delay time behaviour for short afterglow times which is based on ion density decay through the diffusion. A transition from the effective diffusion coefficient of to the free diffusion of ions is observed at times of the order of 20 ms. The model was applied both in a simple approximate analytical form and in a numerical form with accurate representation of the geometry of the tube. When applied in conjunction with our earlier model of the breakdown delay appropriate for longer afterglow times the theory can predict the behaviour of the breakdown delay times between 0.5 ms and several hours.


The National Virtual Observatory (NVO) will provide on-demand access to data collections, data fusion services and compute intensive applications. The paper describes the development of a framework that will support two key aspects of these objectives: a compute engine that will deliver custom image mosaics, and a "request management system," based on an e-business applications server, for job processing, including monitoring, failover and status reporting. We will develop this request management system to support a diverse range of astronomical requests, including services scaled to operate on the emerging computational grid infrastructure. Data requests will be made through existing portals to demonstrate the system: the NASA/IPAC Extragalactic Database (NED), the On-Line Archive Science Information Services (OASIS) at the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA); the Virtual Sky service at Caltech's Center for Advanced Computing Research (CACR), and the yourSky mosaic server at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).


For a reading tutor, the reference content which the reader reads is known beforehand. This apriori information is very important in automatic detection of reading miscues. This paper proposed two methods to incorporate the reference information into LVCSR framework to improve the performance of miscue detection. The two methods both tune the n-gram language model (LM) probabilities dynamically in the decoding process based on the analysis of current reference sentence. The first method weighs the LM probability directly if current n-gram exists in the reference, and the second method takes a liner combination of the original LM probability and the reference probability. The experiments on a Chinese Mandarin reading corpus proved the effectiveness of both methods. The detection error rate and false alarm rate are decreased by 33.1% and 35.5% respectively for the best method.


Introduction. The investigation of metal substituted organic compounds as potential antitumor drugs is one of the promising areas of research in experimental and clinical oncology.Objective. The pre-clinical study of the original antitumor drug aurum polyacrylate (aurumacryl) which belongs to such new for oncology group of compounds as polyacrylates of metals was the aim of this work.Materials and methods.  Aurumacryl antitumor activity was determined as the tumor growth inhibitory effect against some of the murine solid tumors (Lewis lung carcinoma, Acatol adenocarcinoma and Ca-755 adenocarcinoma). Drug cytotoxic effect against some of the human tumor cells (Mel-Mo melanoma, A549 lung carcinoma, MCF-7 breast carcinoma, HCT116 colon adenocarcinoma) was evaluated with standard МТТ-test. The aurumacryl pharmacokinetics in tumor bearing mice (Lewis lung carcinoma) was studied. The inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry method was used for the estimation of the aurum maintenance in the tested tissues (tumor, blood, kidneys, liver, lungs, spleen, brain).Results. The 80–90 % tumor growth inhibitory effect of aurumacryl against some solid tumors in mice had been revealed in vivo as well as the death of the 60–90 % human tumor cells of various origins in vitro. Beside this the strong decrease of the number of proliferating MCF-7 tumor cells had been shown. The distribution of aurumacryl in the body of the mice with the solid tumor had been revealed.Conclusion. On the base of the data obtained the further study of the aurumacryl as a potential antitumor agent seems rather promising.


Abstract Modelling of Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) is usually carried out by means of the 1D focused transport equation and the same approach is adopted within several SEP Space Weather forecasting frameworks. We present an alternative approach, based on test particle simulations, which naturally describes 3D particle propagation. The SPARX forecasting system is an example of how test particle simulations can be used in real time in a Space Weather context. SPARX is currently operational within the COMESEP Alert System. The performance of the system, which is triggered by detection of a solar flare of class >M1.0 is evaluated by comparing forecasts for flare events between 1997 and 2017 with actual SEP data from the GOES spacecraft.


Focus groups were conducted with young Arab/Chaldeans (N = 82) from different ethno-religious groups (Chaldeans, Orthodox Christians, and Muslims) to explore the potential risk and the protective factors associated with the high level of binge (or episodic heavy) drinking among Arab/Chaldeans reported by general population surveys. Most of the participants were aware of and knowledgeable about the problem in their community. Themes identified as contributory factors consistent across ethno-religious groups included the availability of alcohol, the importance of family, conformity to group behavior, and social reasons. Differences included the context for drinking and gender roles. These findings can be used to tailor culturally appropriate interventions.


ABSTRACT Obesity is an independent risk factor for stroke, although several clinical studies have reported that obesity improves stroke outcome. Obesity is hypothesised to aid recovery by protecting against post-stroke catabolism. We therefore assessed whether obese mice had an altered metabolic and inflammatory response to stroke. Obese ob/ob mice underwent a 20-min middle cerebral artery occlusion and 24-h reperfusion. Lipid metabolism and expression of inflammatory cytokines were assessed in the plasma, liver and adipose tissue. The obese-specific metabolic response to stroke was assessed in plasma using non-targeted ultra-high performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (UHPLC-MS) metabolomics coupled with univariate and multivariate analysis. Obesity had no effect on the extent of weight loss 24 h after stroke but affected the metabolic and inflammatory responses to stroke, predominantly affecting lipid metabolism. Specifically, obese mice had increases in plasma free fatty acids and expression of adipose lipolytic enzymes. Metabolomics identified several classes of metabolites affected by stroke in obese mice, including fatty acids and membrane lipids (glycerophospholipids, lysophospholipids and sphingolipids). Obesity also featured increases in inflammatory cytokines in the plasma and adipose tissue. Overall, these results demonstrate that obesity affected the acute metabolic and inflammatory response to stroke and suggest a potential role for adipose tissue in this effect. These findings could have implications for longer-term recovery and also further highlight the importance of considering comorbidities in preclinical stroke research, especially when identifying biomarkers for stroke. However, further work is required to assess whether these changes translate into long-term effects on recovery. Summary: Obesity, a co-morbidity for stroke, affected the acute metabolic and inflammatory response to stroke, highlighting the importance of considering comorbidities in preclinical stroke research, especially when identifying biomarkers.


Background Today, more than 50% of persons with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) are over 65 years of age (1). Little is known about the effects of physical exercise in this age group (>65 years). Objectives The aim of this randomized controlled study is to investigate the effects of a person-centred progressive aerobic and resistance exercise program, led by a physiotherapist. Methods Seventy-four with persons with RA (24% men), mean age 70 years (SD 2.5), were recruited and randomized to an exercise interventions group or an active control group. The intervention consisted of a 20-week individual person-centered exercise program, performed three times a week with guidance from a physiotherapist. Both aerobic and resistance exercise was performed on a high intensity level. The control group followed a home exercise program twice a week. Muscle strength and endurance were assessed by the Chair Stands test, the Timed up and Go and a Bicycle endurance test. Maximal aerobic capacity (VO2 max) was assessed with ergo spirometry. Activity limitations were assessed by SF36 Physical subscale and the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ). Results All participants in the intervention group completed the intervention. The participants had a low disease activity with a mean Clinical Disease Activity Index of 5.4 (SD 3.9). Significant improvements were found for VO2 max, the Chair Stands test, the Timed up and Go, the Bicycle endurance test on bicycle (p<0,001) and the SF36 physical (p=0.018) in the intervention group, when compared to the controls. No significant differences between groups were seen on HAQ. Conclusions Intensive progressive aerobic and resistance exercise is a feasible intervention for elderly persons with RA. Despite old age and RA the participants gained significant improvements in physical capacity. References Eriksson JK, Neovius M, Ernestam S, Lindblad S, Simard JF, Askling J. Incidence of rheumatoid arthritis in Sweden: a nationwide population-based assessment of incidence, its determinants, and treatment penetration. Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken). 2013;65(6):870–8. Disclosure of Interest None declared


This paper describes the implementation of OCTAVE Allegro method to evaluate several aspects related to information security risks of the information technology applied in a health institution. The evaluation was conducted at RSUD XYZ and referred to five impact areas: reputation and customer confidence, finance, productivity, security and health, and also penalties and punishment. The results show that the impact area of reputation and customer confidence has the highest risk assessment result among other areas. The overall result and discussion presented in this paper certainly does not violate the code of ethics for RSUD XYZ.


Crop of Pare (Momordica charantia) representing drug crop able to be used as traditional drug. One of them used as by dysentery drug effect infection of Shigella dysentrieae. Leaf of Pare can be used as by resistor growth of Shigella dysentrieae, this matter is caused by at leaf of pare pregnant compound of flavonoid which by farmakologi can be useful as dysentery drug because having ability of and bakteriostatik of bakterisidal. Bacterium of Shigella dysentrieae is bacterium cause of disease of dysentery of basiler with stomach pain in bone symptom, stomach spastic, fever and diarrhoea, liquid faeces, one day or few days later;then the amount of faeces mount because infection of ileum colon. But amount of faeces decrease wateryly of him and contain mucus and blood. Disease of contagious dysentery impure water by patient dirt, impure food by carrier and fly or of carrier. Target of this research is to know influence various concentration of filtrat leaf of pare in pursuing growth of Shigella dysentrieae and to know concentration of filtrat leaf of pare most effective in pursuing growth of Shigella dysentrieae. Research type the used eksperiment true by using Complete Random Device (RAL), with six treatment (15 %, 30 %, 45 %, 60 %, 75 %, and 90 %) and repeated 5 times. This research population bacterium of Shigella taken away from dysentrieae is Microbiological Laboratory of University of Brawijaya Malang. Technique intake sampel is Simple Random Sampling. This research is done on 27 until 13 November 2007 in Biological Laboratory of UMM. Indicator Research that is zona diameter pursue Shigella dysentrieae. Obtained data to be analysed with Anava 1 direction, and continued with Test of Duncan with level of signifikansi 5%. Result of research indicate that giving various concentration of filtrat leaf of pare have an effect on to growth of Shigella dysentrieae. While concentration of filtrat leaf of pare effective to pursue growth of Shigella dysentrieae is concentration 75 %. download


Self-fertilization in hermaphroditic species might or might not be advantageous based on the level of inbreeding or outbreeding depression and the opportunity to outcross. This study examined whether chemoattractants can influence selfing rates through changes in sperm swimming behavior in the hermaphroditic tunicate Ciona robusta. The first set of experiments tested sperm preference in a dichotomous choice chamber by allowing the sperm to choose between wells with no eggs and wells with eggs, while the second experiment gave sperm a choice between self eggs and non-self eggs from another C. robusta individual. We found that sperm were about 5 times more likely to be captured in wells with eggs than in empty wells (P < 0.001) and that they were about 1.6 times more likely to be captured in wells with non-self eggs than in those with self eggs (P = 0.002). Additionally, we found that although sperm were activated by water pretreated with eggs, there was no difference in sperm swimming speed and motility in water treated with pooled-egg water compared to self-egg-treated water (P = 0.636 and P = 0.854, respectively). Our results indicate that while chemoattractant identity does not affect the basic mechanics of sperm activation and thus fertilization ability, it can cause sperm to aggregate near non-self eggs in greater numbers. This may allow for sperm to fertilize non-self eggs in greater numbers when available while still retaining the ability to fertilize self eggs.


As the second greatest producer and largest exporter of wine, Italy has been impacted by the global economic crisis. This study investigates a long established and highly successful family owned and operated business in the wine sector and their ability to continuously innovate products, processes and target markets. This research is aimed at ascertaining whether effective firm management in the wine sector depends on the combination of internal and external innovation.


This case reports on a critically ill patient (Male, 74) with severe subcutaneous emphysema which progressed to causing respiratory distress. We document both the severity of the condition we observed and then present a novel intervention. In this case, we decompressed the patient at the intensive care unit-bedside and resolved the condition. While subcutaneous emphysema is relatively common, the severity of the condition we observed, and the lack of definitive treatment guidance have prompted us to present this case as a plausible treatment guide.


Thresholds for the detection of 500-ms tones in noise at either 0.25 or 4 kHz and either interaurally in-phase (NoSo) or out-of-phase (NoS pi) were measured as a function of the bandwidth of a diotic masking noise (with total noise power held constant). NoSo thresholds followed the classic trend indicative of an effective critical band in noise masking. NoS pi thresholds also indicated critical-band filtering, but with a wider effective critical bandwidth. At subcritical masker bandwidths, for both 0.25 and 4 kHz, NoS pi thresholds increased with an increase in noise bandwidth, despite the fact that total noise power was constant. This latter finding is attributed to binaural insensitivity to rapid fluctuations in the interaural cues that subserve detection in the NoS pi condition. These results suggest a new interpretation for the small difference between NoSo and NoS pi thresholds measured with high-frequency tones in a broadband noise masker. This interpretation is based partly on the inability to utilize rapidly varying interaural cues, partly on out-of-band interference effects, and partly on loss of information related to stimulus fine structure.


Increasing trade deficits and other economic problems have forced many countries, as well as regions and states, to develop policies and strategies to encourage non-exporting firms to enter the export field. For example, the state of Wisconsin is considering a variety of export stimuli to help infrequent exporters increase the number and value of their shipments (Wisconsin Export Strategy Commission 1995). Several studies have been conducted on the many aspects of export stimulation programs. They have shown that smaller-sized firms in particular could benefit from export assistance programs (Olson 1975; Pointon 1978; Czinkota 1982; Cavusgil 1983; Gronhaug and Lorentzen 1983; Reid 1984; Denis and Depelteau 1985; Seringhaus 1984, 1987; Cavusgil and Naor 1987). However, this conclusion assumes that policy-makers have a complete knowledge of the determinants and inhibitors of export entry and a clear understanding of the export decision-making process. Unfortunately, small and medium-sized manufacturing firms do not constitute a single homogeneous group (Tesar 1976). Therefore, it is essential that policy-makers fully understand the kinds of differences that occur among them if they are to provide programs that effectively move these firms into successful exporting. One important way in which firms differ is where on the "internationalization process" continuum they fit. It is proposed here that firms in one stage of this development process may have different needs and interests to be met by government assistance programs than firms in another stage. The study specifically examines government assistance programs designed to stimulate exporting activity among small and medium-sized manufacturing firms and addresses some recurring questions about the impact of these programs on the export activity of firms and their performance: What is awareness of these programs among small and medium-sized firms? Which programs are most effective? What factors influence the effectiveness of government export assistance programs? In what ways does a firm's level of exporting activity impact the effectiveness of these programs? Review of The Literature Substantial research has attempted to identify and explain exporting decisions of businesses. Growing evidence suggests that firms pass through several stages on the way to becoming actively involved in export activity. Therefore, export assistance programs should vary in nature to provide the type of assistance best suited for a particular group of firms. The first major study dealing with the stages of export development among manufacturing firms was conducted by Bilkey and Tesar (1977). They believe that firms gradually move through six levels of commitment to exporting, ranging from complete unwillingness to export to a full, large-scale commitment. Czinkota and Johnston (1981) also identified a six-stage model of the export development process, ranging from unwilling firms to larger experienced exporters. Bilkey (1978) has suggested that for maximum success export stimulation programs should be tailored to the export development position of the firms to be stimulated. He argues that if export assistance programs are formulated in terms of the export internationalization process, then: (1) experienced exporters would be stimulated to increase exports by devaluating the currency and by removing perceived obstacles to exporting; (2) non-exporters would be stimulated to begin exporting by being provided with export orders (perhaps by developing Japanese-type trading companies) and with managerial assistance (such as export extension programs and export consulting services); (3) firms that have not attempted to export would be stimulated to explore the feasibility of exporting by programs promoting the attractiveness of exporting (trade association meetings, advertising, public meetings) and through international education within schools (such as foreign language training, student exchange abroad, international business education, and so on). …


Introduction: El Paso, TX is a large American-Mexican border city of population around 900,000, 85% Hispanic of Mexican origin. Limited cancer research has been conducted in this population. The relative homogeneity of this Hispanic population lends a unique opportunity to study the prevalence of BRCA mutations among Hispanic patients of Mexican origin, to identify reported Mexican founder or recurrent mutations, and to study the breast cancer characteristics in mutation carriers. Methods: Hispanic women with a personal history of breast cancer, who presented consecutively for genetic cancer risk assessment, were enrolled in an Institutional Review Board –approved registry and underwent BRCA testing bases on NCCN guidelines. The characteristics of tumors and patients with positive BRCA mutation were analyzed. Descriptive statistics were utilized . Results : 59 patients were screened; 13 patients (22%) tested positive. Mean age was 50 years; 8 patients (62%) had stages I or II, 2 patients stage III, and 3 unknown. 10 (77%) ductal, 1 (7%) lobular and 2 undetermined; 30% had ER positive tumors versus 61% ER negative; 69% had HER2 –neu negative tumors and 23% HER2-neu positive; 62% were triple negative. Nine patients (69%) were diagnosed with breast cancer at younger than 50 years. Median BMI was 31.78. Ten patients had BRCA1 mutations and 3 BRCA2 mutations. A total of 9 unique deleterious BRCA Mutations were observed, BRCA1 R71G (330A>G);del exons 1-2;C1787S(5478T>A) and G1788D(5482 G>A); C1225X (3794 C>A); A 1708E(5242 C>A); R1751X(5370C>T; and del exons 9-12 and BRCA2 Q742X (2452 C>T); and 3492 insT Conclusion: This study confirms that breast cancer patients with BRCA mutations in the El Paso, TX present at a younger age, and have predominantly triple negative tumors. Of particular interest is 44% (4 of 9) BRCA mutations (BRCA1 exon 9-12 del; C1787S & G1788D and BRCA 2 3492insT; Q742X) identified have been reported as recurrent mutations in Hispanic individuals from Mexico as the country of origin, including BRCA1 ex9-12del, the 1st Mexican founder mutation and 100% of the BRCA2 mutations. A more cost-effective approach to initial screening of Hispanic individuals based on country of origin may be desirable and would potentially decrease the number of cases requiring complete sequencing. Increasing breast cancer awareness and encouraging genetic counseling among high risk younger patients of Mexican descent is also needed.

Citation Information: Cancer Res 2013;73(24 Suppl): Abstract nr P3-07-06.


This contribution will report on the use of a student design project for enhancing learning about renewable energy solutions on separate first year modules in electrical engineering at the author's college. The project objective, as outlined to the students, was to design and build a, possibly innovative, everyday device that can generate electricity from sources of free energy. As background to the project, students were made aware of some examples of devices available commercially, such as an energy generating rucksack and a clockwork radio; they were also shown examples of projects completed by previous student cohorts. The project could be done individually, or as part of a team of two persons. The finished project was demonstrated by the student(s), and formed part of the student's continuous assessment grade. From a learning viewpoint, the project objective was to encourage first year engineering students to use their natural design creativity in a freeform, brainstorming manner, in an area of pressing interest to society. The benefits of the design project are as follows: • it allows young engineering students to use their creativity and to further develop their academic interests; • it establishes a balance between students' expectations of their programme, and the nature of the academic work; • it assists with student engagement and retention; • it introduces competitiveness in a fun and undemanding form; • it allows students to interact and associate with one another through a common interest; • it gives students an opportunity to show interesting work to their friends and family. The author has used the design project as part of a suite of learning and assessment options in two first-year modules for five academic years. Examples of student project work will be detailed in the accompanying poster presentation.


Dibutyryl adenosine 3′,5′-monophosphate (cyclic AMP), but not sodium butyrate or adenosine 5′-monophosphate (5′-AMP) produced a dose-dependent epidermal mitotic inhibition. Previously we showed that isoproterenol inhibits epidermal mitosis, stimulates adenyl cyclase activity in broken epidermal cells, and stimulates cyclic AMP formation in intact epidermis. This data and results from the present study strongly suggest that cyclic AMP is one and possibly a major mediator of epidermal mitotic control. Our findings together with recent evidence that cyclic AMP inhibits cell growth rate while promoting differentiation in cultured cells suggests the following: (1) the rate of epidermal proliferation may be inversely proportional to the intraepidermal cyclic AMP level; (2) the 12-fold accelerated proliferation rate and glycogen accumulation of psoriatic epidermis might be due to low intraepidermal cyclic AMP concentrations.


The spatiotemporal evolution of daily southern Africa precipitation characteristics, and associated atmospheric circulation, related to El Niño and La Niña is examined across the region's November–April wet season. Precipitation characteristics are examined in terms of monthly changes in daily average precipitation, the number of precipitation days, and the number of heavy precipitation days in three independently constructed estimates of observed precipitation during 1983–2018. Mechanisms related to precipitation changes, including contributions from mass divergence, water vapor transports, and transient eddies, are diagnosed using the atmospheric moisture budget based on the ERA5 reanalysis. El Niño is related to precipitation anomalies that build during December–March, the core of the rainy season, culminating in significantly below average values stretching across a semiarid region from central Mozambique to southeastern Angola. A broad anticyclone centered over Botswana drives these precipitation anomalies primarily through anomalous mass divergence, with moisture advection and transient eddies playing secondary roles. La Niña is related to significantly above average daily precipitation characteristics over all Africa south of 20°S in February and much less so during the other five months. February precipitation anomalies are primarily driven through mass divergence due to a strong anomalous cyclonic circulation, whereas a similar circulation is more diffuse during the other months. The spatiotemporal evolutions of anomalies in daily precipitation characteristics across southern Africa related to El Niño and La Niña are not equal and opposite. The robustness of an asymmetric evolution, which could have implications for subseasonal forecasts, needs to be confirmed with analysis of additional empirical data and established with climate model experimentation.


Here we introduce a multimodal framework to identify subspaces in the human brain that are defined by collective changes in structural and functional measures and are actively linked to demographic, biological and cognitive indicators in a population. We determine the multimodal subspaces using principles of active subspace learning (ASL) and demonstrate its application on a sample learning task (biological ageing) on a Schizophrenia dataset. The proposed multimodal ASL method successfully identifies latent brain representations as subsets of brain regions and connections forming co-varying subspaces in association with biological age. We show that Schizophrenia is characterized by different subspace patterns compared to those in a cognitively normal brain. The multimodal features generated by projecting structural and functional MRI components onto these active subspaces perform better than several PCA-based transformations and equally well when compared to non-transformed features on the studied learning task. In essence, the proposed method successfully learns active brain subspaces associated with a specific brain condition but inferred from the brain imaging data along with the biological/cognitive traits of interest.


We present a comprehensive suite of high-resolution (parsec-scale), idealised (non-cosmological) galaxy merger simulations (24 runs, stellar mass ratio ~2.5:1) to investigate the connection between interaction-induced star formation and the evolution of the interstellar medium (ISM) in various temperature-density regimes. We use the GIZMO code and the second version of the 'Feedback in Realistic Environments' model (FIRE-2), which captures the multi-phase structure of the ISM. Our simulations are designed to represent galaxy mergers in the local Universe. In this work, we focus on the 'galaxy-pair period' between first and second pericentric passage. We split the ISM into four regimes: hot, warm, cool and cold-dense, motivated by the hot, ionised, atomic and molecular gas phases observed in real galaxies. We find that, on average, interactions enhance the star formation rate of the pair (~30%, merger-suite sample average) and elevate their cold-dense gas content (~18%). This is accompanied by a decrease in warm gas (~11%), a negligible change in cool gas (~4% increase), and a substantial increase in hot gas (~400%). The amount of cold-dense gas with densities above 1000 cm^3 (the cold ultra-dense regime) is elevated significantly (~240%), but only accounts for 0.15% (on average) of the cold-dense gas budget.


With the acceleration of urbanization, air pollution, especially PM2.5, has seriously affected human health and reduced people's life quality. Accurate PM2.5 prediction is significant for environmental protection authorities to take actions and develop prevention countermeasures. In this article, an adapted Kalman filter (KF) approach is presented to remove the nonlinearity and stochastic uncertainty of time series, suffered by the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. To further improve the accuracy of PM2.5 forecasting, a hybrid model is proposed by introducing an autoregressive (AR) model, where the AR part is used to determine the state-space equation, whereas the KF part is used for state estimation on PM2.5 concentration series. A modified artificial neural network (ANN), called AR-ANN is introduced to compare with the AR-KF model. According to the results, the AR-KF model outperforms the AR-ANN model and the original ARIMA model on the predication accuracy; that is, the AR-ANN obtains 10.85 and 15.45 of mean absolute error and root mean square error, respectively, whereas the ARIMA gains 30.58 and 29.39 on the corresponding metrics. It, therefore, proves that the presented AR-KF model can be adopted for air pollutant concentration prediction.


Abstract Background Evidence-based recommendations regarding the influence of diet on inflammatory conditions of the pouch after restorative proctocolectomy with ileal pouch–anal anastomosis (IPAA) are limited. Methods We analyzed dietary patterns at enrollment in a prospective registry of patients with 1 of 4 inflammatory conditions of the pouch (acute pouchitis, chronic antibiotic-dependent pouchitis, chronic antibiotic refractory pouchitis, and Crohn's disease of the pouch). We analyzed dietary intake by disease activity at enrollment and then compared dietary patterns among patients who remained in remission throughout the 12-month follow-up to those patients who experienced a disease relapse. We also compared dietary patterns among patients with inflammatory conditions of the pouch to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recommended daily goals. Results Among 308 patients, there were no differences in dietary patterns among patients with 1 of the 4 disease states at enrollment. Additionally, among the 102 patients in remission at baseline, there were no significant differences noted among patients who went on to experience a disease flare in the 12 months after enrollment compared to those patients who remained in remission. However, patients with inflammatory conditions of the pouch demonstrated decreased intake of several food groups and macronutrients including dairy, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and fiber when compared to USDA recommendations. Conclusions In a prospective cohort, we demonstrated no impact of dietary patterns on disease activity. The relative deficiencies in several food groups and macronutrients among patients after IPAA indicate the potential role of targeted nutritional counseling in this population.


Background: Remote ischemic preconditioning (RIPC) represents an attractive therapy for myocardial protection, particularly when ischemic events can be anticipated. Although several hypothetic mechanisms have been proposed, no definite molecular pathways have been elucidated. Objective: We evaluated the effect of brachial circulation cuff occlusion on myocardial ischemic tolerance, necrosis, and nitric oxide (NO) in patients with ischemic heart disease undergoing elective percutaneous coronary interventions (PCI). Methods: 46 patients were randomly allocated into two groups: control and RIPC before PCI procedures. Electrocardiographic analysis, serum concentrations of troponin I (cTn-I) were measured at baseline and 24 hours after PCI. A blood sample from the atherosclerotic plaque was drawn to determine nitrate and nitrites. Results: RIPC increased the availability of NO in the stented coronary artery. Control patients presented a small but significant increase in cTn-I, whilst it remained unchanged in preconditioned group. The preconditioning maneuver not only preserved but also enhanced the sum of R waves. Conclusions: RIPC induced an intracoronary increase of NO levels associated with a decrease in myocardial damage (measured as no increase in cTn-I) with electrocardiographic increases in the sum of R waves, suggesting an improved myocardium after elective PCI.


The following article is devoted to the miniature paintings of the oldest manuscript of so called Serbian Alexandride, destroyed in 1941. The author focuses attention on some characteristic iconographical details of manuscript illustrations, particularly on peculiar costumes of protagonists, the analogies of which are found in Constantinopolitan courtly costume and in some Serbian medieval wall paintings. One can conclude that some Byzantine manuscript was certainly a prototype for the manuscript, but that conclusion refers only to some of the miniatures. Observation on Western influences on miniatures cannot be maintained. Further arguments can be offered on behalf of earlier hypothesis of creation of manuscript in scriptorium of Archangel monastery near Prizren in the end of the 14th c.


Expression of a murine interleukin 3 gene in murine fibrosarcoma cells (FSA-JmIL-3) did not alter their survival after in vitro irradiation. However, FSA-JmIL-3 tumors established in vivo were much more sensitive to irradiation than was the parental tumor. Following 25 Gy of irradiation, parental fibrosarcoma tumors regrew after a growth delay of 10 days, but FSA-JmIL-3 tumors continued to regress. Examination of the cellular composition of tumors following irradiation revealed that, instead of tumor cell repopulation, the FSA-JmIL-3 tumors became heavily infiltrated with lymphocytes, indicating that the effect of irradiation was to allow the IL-3-elicited cellular immune response to infiltrate the tumors and mediate rejection. This study indicates that combining gene immunotherapy approaches with radiotherapy might increase the effectiveness of both, and it seems logical to pursue such treatment options.


This study displays results of carbothermal reduction researches of titanоmagnetite concentrate obtained during complex apatite-titanomagnetite-ilmenite ore dressing. The mineral composition was analyzed and the structural and textural features of the titaniferous ore of Kropivensky deposit and the titanomagnetite concentrate obtained from it were revealed. The mechanism of solid-phase carbothermal the titanomagnetite concentrate reduction is investigated. Temperature-time parameters have been discovered to ensure the formation of both products with the maximum yields of iron and titania from metal and slag-phase during titanomagnetite concentrate reduction. One-stage resource-saving flow chart of titanomagnetite concentrate processing with mass fraction up to 25% TiO2 is developed.. It allows to obtain two marketable products: granular cast iron (92-96.5% Fe, 3.4-3.7% C, 0.5% V) in 57% yield and titaniferous slag (50-55% TiO2, up to 7.4% FeO) in 43% yield.


Abstract. Sajan KC, Sapkota A. 2022. Additional distribution records of butterflies (Lepidoptera: Rhopalocera) with seven species new to Nepal. Biodiversitas 23: 2711-2743. New distribution records of some butterflies of Nepal are given in terms of geographical area, season and elevation based on our observations since early 2017 to late 2021. Seven new species: Hasora taminatus (Hübner, 1818), Hasora vitta (Butler, 1870), Celaenorrhinus pyrrha de Nicéville, 1889, Seseria sambara (Moore, [1866]), Coladenia agni (de Nicéville, [1884]), Erionota thrax (Linnaeus, 1767) and Tarucus balkanicus (Freyer, 1844), one new subspecies: Pelopidas conjuncta narooa (Moore, 1878) are added to the known butterfly fauna of Nepal along with two other species which need further confirmation: Rohana tonkiniana Fruhstorfer, 1906 and Neptis capnodes Fruhstorfer, 1908. Six species: Gerosis sinica (C. & R. Felder, 1862), Aeromachus kali (de Nicéville, 1885), Aeromachus pygmaeus (Fabricius, 1775), Niphanda cymbia de Nicéville, [1884], Tarucus nara (Kollar, 1848) and Discophora timora Westwood, [1850] have been reported for the second time in Nepal. This paper provides an updated distribution record of close to 200 species of butterflies in Nepal while discussing the possible causes of change in their distribution.


The temperature dependence of water confined in the ordered cylindrical nanopores of MCM-41 and SBA-15 materials is studied by means of Raman scattering for different pore sizes covering a diameter range from 2.0 to 8.9 nm. The liquid--solid phase transition temperature of water in confinement can be determined by the analysis of the mode contribution in the OH-stretching region. For pore sizes down to 3 nm, the freezing/melting point depression with decreasing pore size can be consistently described by a modified Gibbs-Thomson equation, with a nonfreezable water layer of 0.6 nm (about two monolayers) close to the pore walls. When the pore size is 2.5 nm or smaller, indication for a first-order phase transition can no longer be found that is in agreement with previously reported differential scanning calorimetry measurements on the same samples. The Raman data further suggest that two spatially separated water phases exist in the smallest pores, i.e., the nonfreezable wall layer and a structurally different water phase in the core of the pores. A distinct tetrahedral hydrogen-bonded network of water molecules is found only in the core part of the pores. In the weakest confinement (8.9-nm pore diameter), the core water is shown to be compatible with crystalline ice with a spectral fingerprint similar to bulk ice. In strong confinement (2.0-nm pore diameter), the core water shows a spectral fingerprint identical to low-density amorphous ice, and there is a gradual transition between these two extremes. These findings suggest that the core part of confined water undergoes considerable structural changes with decreasing pore size, leading us to question recent proposals that aim to extract information about the state of bulk liquid water in the ``no man's land'' from water in confinement.


TGR(mREN2)27 is a new monogenetic rat model with fulminant hypertension, low kidney renin, and high extrarenal renin gene expression. This study characterizes and compares expression of the Ren-2 gene in TGR(mREN2)27 with that in DBA/2 mice and with renin gene expression in rats. Except in the submandibular gland, the tissue-specific expression of Ren-2 is similar in TGR(mREN2)27 and DBA/2. This demonstrates maintenance of tissue specificity. Organs that are involved in cardiovascular regulation, such as the adrenal gland, kidney, and brain, express the Ren-2 gene before hypertension has developed, consistent with the possibility of a causal relationship between transgene expression in these tissues and hypertension. Because these tissues express the renin gene in nontransgenic rats as well, we suggest that this model can be used to study the regulation of renin gene expression and its role in hypertension at these sites. In addition, as an indication that interactions may exist between blood pressure and renin gene expression, we describe reciprocal changes in blood pressure and Ren-2 mRNA levels in the kidney and brain.


Despite the remarkable performance of large-scale generative models in open-domain conversation, they are known to be less practical for building real-time conversation systems due to high latency. On the other hand, retrieval models could return responses with much lower latency but show inferior performance to the large-scale generative models since the conversation quality is bounded by the pre-defined response set. To take advantage of both approaches, we propose a new training method called G2R (Generative-to-Retrieval distillation) that preserves the efficiency of a retrieval model while leveraging the conversational ability of a large-scale generative model by infusing the knowledge of the generative model into the retrieval model. G2R consists of two distinct techniques of distillation: the data-level G2R augments the dialogue dataset with additional responses generated by the large-scale generative model, and the model-level G2R transfers the response quality score assessed by the generative model to the score of the retrieval model by the knowledge distillation loss. Through extensive experiments including human evaluation, we demonstrate that our retrieval-based conversation system trained with G2R shows a substantially improved performance compared to the baseline retrieval model while showing significantly lower inference latency than the large-scale generative models.