Private extra academic support, also referred to as shadow education has experienced growth, in Asian nations, such as Indonesia. However, despite its use this type of education often receives attention from the government compared to formal schooling. This research aims to explore the motivations that influence university students ' choices to seek academic support specifically for TOEFL preparation — a vital step towards achieving an internationally recognized English proficiency score. Involving 60 university students for the data collection using questionnaire, this study identified factors that drive the demand for private TOEFL tutoring among Indonesian graduate students. Despite concerns about the absence of standardization and potential student exhaustion resulting from tutoring it continues to provide personalized instruction and assistance. This study highlights the role that private supplementary tutoring plays in meeting the growing demand for success and its impact on students ' academic and career paths, in Indonesia.


Denpasar city is a Capital City of Bali Province and one of the leading tourist destinations in Indonesia. Denpasar area is relatively flat with high rain fall intensity with the domince of settlement. This makes Denpasar City becomes prone area of flood. The aim of this research is to find out the spatial distribution flood hazard and the risk of population which are affected to the flood hazard. Weighting, scoring and overlaying method were used in this research. Six indicators were used to analyze the flood hazard: landuse, rainfall, type of soil, slope, altitute and drainage density. The vulnerability is analyzed per Desa or Kelurahan (Rustic/Neighborhood) with the indicator of age, education and population density. Risk was calculated by multiplied hazard with vulnerability and divided with coping capacity. In this research, coping capacity is determined by the amount of internal budget for each Desa or Kelurahan for development purpose. Flood risk in Denpasar city is divided into five classes, very low risk, low risk, medium risk, high risk and very high risk. Total population with very high risk reached 202478 people or 13.16% of total population. The total area is 780.7 ha or 16.02% from total settlement in Denpasar city. Total population with high risk reached 202478 people or 13.16% of total population. The total area is 780.7 ha or 16.02% from total settlement in Denpasar city. The number of population with medium risk reached 202478 people or 33.51% of total population which occupied 22.95% of total settlements or 1118.18 ha. The total number of population with low risk reached 79435 people or 13.14% of total population with area of low flood risk is 716.89 ha or 14.71% of total settlements in Denpasar City. Very low flood risk with total population at risk reached 19184 people or 31.74% of total population and occupied 2003.54 areas or 41.12% of total areas of settlements.


The objective of this study was to determine the suitability of carprofen, flunixin meglumine and meloxicam for use in emergency contraception. Forty-eight pregnant Sprague-Dawley rats were used as material. Five groups were subjected to treatments while one group served as a control. The numbers of animals in each group were equal (n = 8). Treatment groups were administered carprofen (10 mg/kg, single or double dose, s.c.), flunixin meglumine (5 mg/kg, single or double dose, i.m.) and meloxicam (2 mg/kg, a single dose, s.c.) on the third day after mating. The control group received saline. The rats were sacrificed on Day 7 of gestation. Luteal spots and implantation sites were recorded. Pre-implantation loss was calculated by subtracting the number of luteal spots from the number of implantation sites. Compared with the control, the administration of flunixin meglumine (double dose), carprofen (double dose) and meloxicam highly significantly decreased the implantation rate (P < 0.001). Single dose administration of flunixin meglumine and carprofen led to significant decreases (P < 0.01). In conclusion, this study indicates that carprofen, flunixin meglumine and meloxicam treatment cause a decline in implantation rate in rats.


Proceedings: AACR 104th Annual Meeting 2013; Apr 6-10, 2013; Washington, DC

Cancer cell invasion has been traditionally studied in three-dimensional (3D) models composed of rat or mouse extracellular matrix (ECM) proteins. These models remain artificial due to the lack of various human ECM components and cell types that are present in the tumor microenvironment in vivo. Uterine leiomyoma (myoma) is a benign smooth muscle neoplasm with an incidence of 50% of all women over the age of 30 years in Finland. Due to its neoplasmic characterization myoma tissue provides an optimal microenvironment for studying cancer cell invasion and metastasis. Large amounts of myoma tissue are constantly removed from patients in routine operations and discarded, providing an unlimited amount of myoma tissue available for cancer research. We have previously characterized a novel fully human organotypic model where tongue squamous cell carcinoma cells (HSC-3) were cultured on myoma tissue, and demonstrated that the model was useful for studying HSC-3 cell invasion. We have now studied the model further by culturing various human breast and prostate cancer cell lines, including the breast cancer cell line MDA-MB-231 and the prostate cancer cell line PC-3 on myoma tissue. The myoma tissues were obtained from routine surgery after informed consent of the patients. HSC-3 cells were used as a reference cell line to confirm that the model works as expected. The cancer cells were cultured on top of human uterine leiomyoma tissue discs for 14 days, and invasion was assessed by histomorphometric analysis of the myoma tissue and measuring the release of appropriate biomarkers, such as degradation products of type I and type III collagen. A set of potential reference compounds, including inhibitors of matrix metalloproteinases, such as 1,10-phenanthroline, and cysteine proteases, such as E64, was tested for their effects on invasion capacity of the tested cancer cell lines. The results demonstrated that the tested breast and prostate cancer cell lines were highly invasive in the myoma tissue, and the used reference compounds inhibited the invasion of the cancer cells into the myoma tissue. Our results indicate that the myoma model can be applied for several cancer cell lines. We conclude that the established fully human organotypic 3D model is a reliable tool for demonstrating the efficacy of known reference compounds capable of inhibiting cancer cell invasion and metastasis, and it has the potential to be developed as a clinically predictive large scale method for identifying novel cancer drug candidates and confirming their efficacy in early preclinical phase of cancer drug development.

Citation Format: Jukka P. Rissanen, Katja M. Fagerlund, Johanna M. Tuomela, Mari I. Suominen, Jussi M. Halleen, Tuula A. Salo. Culturing cancer cells on myoma tissue: Development of a novel fully human organotypic 3D invasion model applicable as a preclinical tool for cancer drug development. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 104th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2013 Apr 6-10; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 3842. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2013-3842


The selection of variables with high-dimensional and missing data is a major challenge and very few methods are available to solve this problem. Here we propose a new method -- adaptive Bayesian SLOPE -- which is an extension of the SLOPE method of sorted $l_1$ regularization within a Bayesian framework and which allows to simultaneously estimate the parameters and select variables for large data despite missing values. The method follows the idea of the Spike and Slab LASSO, but replaces the Laplace mixture prior with the frequentist motivated "SLOPE" prior, which targets control of the False Discovery Rate. The regression parameters and the noise variance are estimated using stochastic approximation EM algorithm, which allows to incorporate missing values as well as latent model parameters, like the signal magnitude and its sparsity. Extensive simulations highlight the good behavior in terms of power, FDR and estimation bias under a wide range of simulation scenarios. Finally, we consider an application of severely traumatized patients from Paris hospitals to predict the level of platelet, and demonstrate, beyond the advantage of selecting relevant variables, which is crucial for interpretation, excellent predictive capabilities. The methodology is implemented in the R package ABSLOPE, which incorporates C++ code to improve the efficiency of the proposed method.


The study of leisure is one of the most significant phenomena studied by sociology and other social sciences in recent decades. Leisure time can be defined as the time that a person has after fulfilling all his/her professional, familiar, social and physiological obligations, and creates it according to his/her own desires, possibilities and abilities. It is a particularly important segment of the daily life of young people as they are expected to arrange the most of their free time for their own growth and development. Most authors who study the concept of leisure time emphasize that it must satisfy three functions in the life of young people: rest, leisure and personal development. Thus, leisure is the time that is set aside to fulfill one's personal needs and choices, which does not include the fulfillment of formal obligations. It should provide young people with fun, opportunities to socialize, to learn new skills, and to be active in the life of their local community. Therefore, most of them emphasize that leisure is an important distraction from stress and allows people to rest from everyday worries. The aim of this research is to examine the ways in which students spend their leisure time and activities and how they arrange them according to their obligations at the faculty. Activities are divided into: sports, entertainment, cultural and educational. The specific aim of the research is to determine if there are statistically significant differences between male and female. The survey was conducted on a sample of 428 students of the University of Split at 12 different faculties during April 2019. Most respondents have up to four hours of leisure time per day. There is a slightly higher percentage of those expressing dissatisfaction with the amount of free time. Almost all respondents surf the internet daily and spend time on social networks, while only a third of them watch television every day. Among other activities, students attend night clubs and cafes in the largest percentage, while almost half of the respondents attend cultural events (usually sport events, cinemas and concerts) only 1 to 2 times a year. A significant number of respondents are engaged in sports activities (such as recreational activities and going to the gym) daily or several times a week. There is also a significantly small number of respondents who spend their free time being engaged in additional educational activities (courses, workshops...). Leisure time also includes interactions with other people. Respondents thus spend most of their free time interacting with friends on a daily basis and are extremely satisfied with their relationships with them. Finally, research has shown that leisure activities affect students' quality of life and their satisfaction with it.


This study examines the subjective experiences of Muslim and Hindu women in Leicestershire who have suffered domestic violence. It is based on in-depth semistructured interviews with ten Asian women and self-completion questionnaires completed by sixty women victims living in refuges. The guiding research questions are: age, marital status, religion, identity of the abuser, period of the abuse, forms of abuse, involvement of the police, family member awareness, agencies approached for help, frequency of medical assistance, state of mind of the abuser, thoughts of leaving and reasons for not doing so.


'l'he orthopeedtc section by Osmond-Clarke tells of the great reduction in amputationsand describes our Tobruk splint. The tremendousstrides in our knowledgeand treatment of burns, peripheral nerve injuries, rehabilitation, plastic and facio-maxillary injuries, the crush syndrome and the effects of blast make fascinating reading. This is also true of the effective organization of spinal cord and head injuries and the lesson that these patients can be moved early without any decline in condition to mobile units and segregatedspecial hospitals. The story ッ セ ッ オ イ improving knowledge is perhaps best shown in thoracic surgery, when Brock and d'Abreu write of a clotted hremothorax, and thoraco-abdominal wounds.The traumaticeffects of the atomic bomb are only lightly touchedon with its burn, blast and radioactive effects.


A strategy for modelling impact on woven fabric reinforced laminates at intermediate velocities using the framework of the explicit finite element method is presented such that the energy absorption of the laminate can be predicted and assigned to individual failure mechanisms. Thereby a "stacked shell" approach is utilized where each ply of the laminate is discretized by an individual layer of shell elements. The damage and failure behaviour of the plies is modelled using an energy based continuum damage mechanics approach. Tensile and compressive ply damage along the fibre directions, as well as shear damage are considered. Additionally plastic deformations due to shear loads are captured. Delamination is accounted for by modelling the interfaces between individual plies using cohesive zone elements in combination with a traction-separation based constitutive law. Element deletion is utilized to cope with fully damaged elements and, furthermore, contact definitions between delaminated plies are included. Hence, the approach is capable of predicting the impact response of laminated composites up to complete perforation. In order to show the predictive capabilities of the presented modelling approach, a rectangular carbon fabric/epoxy reinforced laminated plate with quasi-isotropic layup in a drop tower test setup is modelled. The predicted energy absorption of the plate, as well as the deformation behaviour and the damage and failure behaviour are compared to equivalent experimental results. Additionally, the contributions of individual failure mechanisms to the total energy absorption are predicted. The described modelling strategy is particularly advantageous in terms computational efficiency, while maintaining detailed and quantitative predictions.


Recent work showed that there is a significant difference between the statistics of amino acid triplets and quadruplets in sequences of folded proteins and randomly generated sequences. These statistics were used to assign a score to each sequence and make a prediction whether a sequence is likely to fold. The present paper extends the statistics to higher multiplets and suggests a way to handle the treatment of multiplets that were not found in the set of folded proteins. In particular, foldability predictions were done along the line of the previous work using pentuplet statistics and a way was found to combine the quadruplet and pentuplets statistics to improve the foldability predictions. A different, simpler, score was defined for hextuplets and heptuplets and were used to predict the direction of stability change of a protein upon mutation. With the best score combination the accuracy of the prediction was 73.4%.


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Osteoarthritis (OA) is one of the most common joint disorders in the Western population, which causes pain, stiffness, loss of function and disability. In patients with OA the cartilage, located at the ends of long bones, is damaged. OA is most prevalent in the knee joint. In case of varus malalignment the medial compartment of the knee is most commonly affected. The initial treatment of varus medial knee OA is non-operative, and consists of patient education, weight reduction, physical therapy, use of orthoses, intra-articular steroid injections and if needed pain medication. Orthoses are intended to unload the medial compartment of the knee. Not all patients experience benefit of orthoses and therapeutic effect vary between studies. Therefore the first aim of this thesis was to evaluate the therapeutic effect of orthoses in the treatment of varus medial knee OA. When non-operative treatment fails surgical treatment will mostly be considered.
The surgical treatment consists of valgus high tibial osteotomy (HTO), unilateral knee arthroplasty (UKA) or a total knee arthroplasty (TKA). In case of isolated medial knee OA, a HTO or UKA is mostly the preferred intervention. OA is a chronic disease which could progress over years. One of the goals of a HTO is to slow down disease progression and to postpone the need for a TKA as long as possible, by unloading the diseased compartment. Multiple studies comparing different HTO techniques are published with a 1 or 2 year follow-up, however there is a lack of prospective long term results, especially for the relatively new opening-wedge technique. Therefore the second aim of this thesis was to study the long term results of both closing- and opening-wedge HTO. In general, results after TKA and HTO are good. However, a subset of patients has suboptimal improvement in pain, physical functioning, and quality of life and are not satisfied with their postoperative result. The explanation of these suboptimal results is not always completely physical. Psychological factors, such as anxiety and depressive symptoms or preoperative expectations, could be related to these suboptimal results. The ultimate goal of all orthopaedic procedures is patient satisfaction. Identification of modifiable risk factors for dissatisfaction could contribute to optimization of this important outcome. Therefore the final question addressed in this thesis is whether the different psychological factors are related to patient satisfaction after TKA. In Chapter 2 we summarized the literature about the therapeutic effect of orthoses in the treatment of knee OA. In this Cochrane review 13 studies including 1356 patients were included. Overall, quality of evidence found in these studies was moderate or low. The follow-up time varied from 1 – 24 months. No long term follow-up study determining the influence on progression of OA has been performed. We concluded that a valgus knee brace and a laterally wedged insole both have small beneficial effects in terms of improvement of pain, symptoms and functional outcome in patients with varus medial knee OA. No certain difference between both interventions was seen in this Cochrane review. The long term adherence was low for both intervention, especially the knee brace group. Moreover, there might be no difference in therapeutic effect between a laterally wedged insole and a neutral insole. In Chapter 3 we present the results of our biomechanical evaluation of the valgus knee brace and laterally wedged insole. In this study we performed gait analysis of patients with varus medial knee OA treated with one of these two interventions for six months. Gait analysis was performed at baseline and after six weeks of wearing the intervention. In this study we found that wedged insoles only unload the medial compartment at baseline. At baseline a reduction of the peak Knee Adduction Moment (surrogate measure of the medial load) of 3.6% was seen. No biomechanical alteration was seen after 6 weeks of wearing the insole. Valgus brace therapy did not result in any biomechanical alteration at baseline and after 6 weeks. So in this study we could not confirm that the beneficial effects of orthoses can be explained by a certain dynamical alteration, in other words a changed gait pattern. In Chapter 4 the six year results of our RCT comparing closing and opening-wedge HTO are presented. After six year opening-wedge HTO was associated with more complications (37% vs 9%), however closing-wedge HTO was associated with more early conversions to TKA (25% vs 8%). Of the patients who had no conversions to a TKA, no difference in clinical outcome and radiological alignment was seen. We present in Chapter 5 the results of a retrospective assessment of all patients who underwent a HTO in our clinic. We found in this study of 412 patients more adverse events in a closing-wedge group than in an opening-wedge group (28% versus 14%). Hardware was removed in 48% of the closing-wedge HTO's and 71% of the openingwedge
HTO's. Another major adverse event was iliac crest pain, caused by harvesting the bone for spongiosaplasty (19,7% of the patients in the opening-wedge group). The survival of the opening-wedge group was significantly better than the closing-wedge group, when conversion to a prosthesis was taken as endpoint, however an equal number of patients were in need for a UKA or TKA in both groups. We summarized the literature about the influence of preoperative expectations on patient satisfaction after TKA in Chapter 6. In this systematic review 3 high and 5 low quality studies were included. Although it is a frequently assumed relation, we conclude in this review that there is only limited or conflicting evidence that high expectations lead to more dissatisfaction. However, moderate evidence was found that unfulfilled expectations lead to more dissatisfaction. In Chapter 7 we present the results of our multicenter study, in which we examined the prevalence of two important psychogical symptoms, namely depressive and anxiety symptoms in patients with end-stage OA of the knee. These psychological symptoms were measured with the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, a widely used validated questionnaire. Besides, we determined the influence of these symptoms on the outcome of TKA. We found in this study a high prevalence of anxiety (20.3%) and depressive symptoms (22.7%) in a population with end stage knee OA. After surgery a significant decrease of the prevalence of these symptoms was seen. The prevalence of anxiety symptoms decreased to 14.8% and of depressive symptoms to 11.7%. Preoperative depressive symptoms predicted lower patient reported outcomes after surgery. Patients with preoperative anxiety or depressive symptoms were less satisfied postoperatively. The main topics of this thesis are placed in a broader perspective in Chapter 8. The limitations of this thesis and some recommendations for future research are discussed in this chapter.


For open quantum systems, the Gaussian environmental dissipative effect can be represented by statistical quasi-particles, namely, dissipatons. We exploit this fact to establish the dissipaton thermofield theory. The resulting generalized Langevin dynamics of absorptive and emissive thermofield operators are effectively noise-resolved. The system-bath entanglement theorem is then readily followed between an important class of nonequilibrium steady-state correlation functions. All these relations are validated numerically. A simple corollary is the transport current expression, which exactly recovers the result obtained from the nonequilibrium Green's function formalism.


: The outbreak of insurgency in Maiduguri in 2009 and the subsequent targeted attacks on the lives and property of innocent civilians including livestock farmers has had a severe disruptive effect on Agriculture in northeast Nigeria. Efforts aimed at economic recovery and rehabilitation of the conflict ravaged regions requires information and an understanding of how the insurgency affected the communities so that aid aimed at financial inclusion could be appropriately directed. Thus, this study was designed to highlight the traditional feedlot cattle management in Maiduguri. The price of the cattle and feed materials as well as profit in 2008 and 2015 were compared. It was found that the preferred choice of feedlot cattle is the non- indigenous Ambala cattle breed. Compared with 2008, the cost of the bulls and feed materials had significantly increased in 2014 and 2015 but the average profit remained unchanged. The farmers earned up to ₦40,000 profit per head of cattle. It is recommended that financial inclusion strategies intended for post-insurgency socio-economic recovery in Maiduguri and other affected areas of north-eastern Nigeria should include building of secure feedlot cattle enclosures with proper facilities for tethering, feed storage, and waste disposal. Quality assurance and hygienic management of such places should be according to global best practices. In addition, establishment of a meat processing plant as well as provision refrigerated transportation trucks can help the farmers to maintain their profit margin and avoid stress associated with road transport of live animals. The government should design and implement a program to breed Ambala cattle using Assisted Reproductive Technology for the development Nigeria's beef industry.


Serine Palmitoyltransferase SPT is the key enzyme in the de novo sphingolipids biosynthesis pathway in eukaryotes, including the intracellular parasite Leishmania. Previous studies showed that this enzyme SPT is expressed only in divided promastigote forms and it is non-essential in the amastigotes form of Leishmania major, which is known as the old world leishmaniasis. In this study we have studied the viability of new world lesihamniasis, Leishmania mexicana. Cytotoxicity test used to determine the effect of the SPT inhibitor myriocin which did not significantly affect the viability of the two forms of the in vitro cultures of the parasite p<0.05, procyclic promastigotes and amastigotes, in which cell viability for miltefosine treatment 100, 50, 25, 12.5, 6.25µM against procyclic promastigotes form was 133.7, 115.8, 103.7, 94.98, 94.78 respectively for 24 hours incubation, while for amastigotes, cell viability for miltefosine treatment was 114.77, 114.34, 104.21, 132.95, 102.74 respectively for the 24 hours incubation and was 81.46, 81.25, 71.40, 68.38, 66.51 respectively for the 48 hours incubation and was 78.99, 90.22, 85.59, 95.18, 84.43 respectively for the 72 hours incubation. While in the old world leishmaniasis, Leishmania major, it has been found that ceramide production is absent and non-essential for the proliferation of intra-amastigotes.


Bronchial responsiveness to methacholine was measured in 60 swine confinement building workers selected from 461 subjects who participated in a recent epidemiologic survey on the respiratory impact of exposure to this environment. Subjects were divided into the following four groups: group 1, asymptomatic with normal spirometry (n = 16); group 2, asymptomatic with forced expiratory volume in one second/forced vital capacity (FEV1.0/FVC) < 95% predicted (n = 17); group 3, presence of chronic bronchitis with normal respiratory function (n = 13); and group 4, both symptomatic and FEV1.0/FVC < 95% predicted (n = 14). Each subject answered a questionnaire and had a physical examination, PA and lateral chest films, lung volumes and DLCO measurements, and a methacholine bronchoprovocation test. Ages were similar in each group. Physical examination, chest x-rays, and DLCO were normal in all subjects. Values of total lung capacity (TLC) for subjects in group 4 were higher than those of subjects in group 3, and respiratory volume (RV) values of group 4 subjects were higher than those found for all other groups. The provocation dose of methacholine (PC20) was lower for group 4, and the number of subjects with PC20 < 16 mg/ml was greater in this group than in the other groups. We conclude that only swine confinement building workers with both symptoms of chronic bronchitis and abnormal spirometry have an increased bronchial responsiveness to methacholine; however, it is uncertain whether the bronchial responsiveness demonstrated is directly related to the subjects' employment.


Among the many issues facing the world, the issue of traffic accidents, many security facilities have developed research on fingerprints, palmistry biometrics and other biometrics. In modern technologies, facial and eye detection algorithms have been developed and identified. This paper includes comparisons of face and eye tracking methods, which are extremely useful for identifying individuals in a variety of situations. Facial biometrics are more stable due to their distinct features, which gives them an advantage over other biometrics such as palmistry and fingerprint. This work dealt with 74 studies of face and eye detection and a comparison of algorithms that were used in previous researches, where the Viola-jones algorithm was identified as the best facial algorithm in terms of accuracy up to 98% for different types of face databases because this algorithm depends on geometry of face and also able to detect all faces in the same image, Furthermore, it has been determined that SVM is the best eye detection algorithm due to the accuracy of its characteristics and the speed of execution in real time so, the highest accuracy achieved was 98% accurate .


It was common that software vendors sell licenses to their clients to use software products, such as Enterprise Resource Planning, which are deployed as a monolithic entity on clients' premises. Moreover, many clients, especially big organizations, often require software products to be customized for their specific needs before deployment on premises. While software vendors are trying to migrate their monolithic software products to Cloud-native Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), they face two big challenges that this paper aims at addressing: 1) How to migrate their exclusive monoliths to multi-tenant Cloud-native SaaS; and 2) How to enable tenant-specific customization for multi-tenant Cloud-native SaaS. This paper suggests an approach for migrating monoliths to microservice-based Cloud-native SaaS, providing customers with a flexible customization opportunity, while taking advantage of the economies of scale that the Cloud and multi-tenancy provide. Our approach shows not only the migration to microservices but also how to introduce the necessary infrastructure to support the new services and enable tenant-specific customization. We illustrate the application of our approach on migrating a reference application of Microsoft called SportStore.


The fatty acid-acylated enzyme pullulanase is normally found in either of two locations in Escherichia coli, depending on whether or not the producing strains also express the genes specifically required for the second step in pullulanase secretion. When they are expressed, the enzyme is localized to the cell surface, while in their absence, it is directed to an unidentified location in the cell envelope which, upon lysis, forms vesicles whose density is intermediate between those of outer and cytoplasmic membrane vesicles. In order to test the role of the putative lipoprotein sorting signal, Asp2, in pullulanase sorting and secretion, the structural gene (PULA) was subjected to site-directed mutagenesis. Replacement of the Asp2 residue by Asn, Glu, or Ser caused the enzyme to fractionate with outer membrane-derived vesicles rather than with intermediate density vesicles from E. coli cells devoid of pullulanase secretion genes. A pronounced secretion defect was observed in a two-step secretion assay in which the first (sec gene-dependent) and second (pul gene-dependent) secretion steps were uncoupled. We propose that the Asp residue increases the efficiency of pullulanase secretion by allowing the enzyme to be initially sorted to a region of the cell envelope wherein most of the pullulase-specific secretion factors are located.


Epithelial cell scattering encompasses the dissolution of intercellular junctions, cell-cell dissociation, cell spreading, and motility. The Rac1 and ARF6 GTPases have been shown to regulate one or more of these aforementioned processes. In fact, activated Rac1 has been shown to promote cell-cell adhesion as well as to enhance cell motility, leading to conflicting reports on the effect of Rac1 activation on epithelial cell motility. In this study, we have examined the activation profiles of endogenous Rac1 and ARF6 during the sequential stages of epithelial cell scattering. Using Madin-Darby canine kidney cells treated with hepatocyte growth factor/scatter factor or cell lines stably expressing activated v-Src, we show that Rac1 and ARF6 exhibit distinct activation profiles during cell scattering. We have found that an initial ARF6-dependent decrease in the levels of Rac1-GTP is necessary to induce cell-cell dissociation. This is followed by a steady increase in Rac1 and ARF6 activation and cell migration. In sum, this study documents the progression of ARF6 and Rac1 activities during epithelial cell scattering.


An accurate three parameter approximate solution of fundamental mode, to describe different propagation parameter of graded-index optical fiber has been presented. Due to three parameter optimization of the fundamental modal solution, the results are much more accurate for a wide range of optical fiber specifications. Employing variational technique, an estimation of effective area and effective index with proposed fundamental modal field are carried out. It has been shown that the results match identically with the exact available results for step and parabolic refractive index profile optical fiber. The accurate analytical expressions for the evaluation of effective area and effective index are formulated. Optimization of three parameters has been carried out for a wide range of normalized frequencies. Data for these parameters are also provided, which can be used directly while calculating different design parameters of an optical fiber.


BACKGROUND
The importance of the role of monocytes in coronary artery disease (CAD) is well documented. An increased number of circulating monocytes is associated with higher incidence of CAD. Both environmental and genetic factors influence monocytosis. The latter have been extensively studied since the development of high-throughput genome-wide association studies. Several associations between polymorphisms and monocytosis were found among healthy individuals; the first example was rs7023923. The magnitude of the association of studied polymorphisms with the trait of interest is often confounded by environmental factors and may therefore differ between patient and healthy populations. It is very important to determine the magnitude of the association among patients to predict outcome of the disease, e.g. myocardial infarction.

AIM
To determine whether the magnitude of association of rs7023923 with monocytosis, previously reported among healthy volunteers, is similar in patients in whom diagnosis of CAD was determined during elective coronarography.

METHODS AND RESULTS
Leucocytosis and neutrophilocytosis were higher among patients with CAD, while thrombocytosis was lower. Monocyte count did not differ among the studied groups (p = 0.25). We confirmed the association of rs7023923 with monocytosis among healthy blood donors (p = 0.0156) but not among patients admitted for elective coronarography (p = 0.61). Inclusion of the age and sex of patients in the statistical model did not modify the results.

CONCLUSIONS
Our data suggest that translation of the results of genetic association with the studied traits from healthy to patient population should be implemented with caution. It is possible that numerous environmental factors, which discriminate healthy volunteers from CAD patients, confound the magnitude of genetic associations and make interpretation of the data in patients less clear.


Aim of the Ph.D. thesis was the detection of the canopy water mass and temperature, as well as the aerial biomass and nitrogen uptake of several tropical maize hybrids (Zea mays L.) experiencing different drought stress treatments, and also detecting the contributions of the different leaf levels of maize canopies on spectral reflectance. IR-temperature as well as spectral indices displayed a high correlation with canopy water mass and could also accurately estimate the aerial biomass and above ground nitrogen uptake of maize, while differentiating the drought stress levels and also classifying consistently the hybrids. The sensor could also detect the aerial biomass and nitrogen uptake of the lowest leaf levels and furthermore the vertical distribution of chlorophyll, aerial biomass and nitrogen uptake in maize canopies was demonstrated.


The Dictionnaire de la Pensée Medicale, was published by the Presse Universitaire de France (6 Avennue Reille 75014 Paris), in January 2004, under the coordination of Dominique Lecourt, Professor of the University of Paris VII. The scientific board is composed by François Delaporte, Patrice Pinell, and Christiane Sinding, respectively from the University of Picardie-Jules-Vernes and from the research directory of Inserm. This publication is undoubtly a masterpiece of the history and philosophy of medicine in the beggining of the XXI century. Written by famous physicians, biologists, surgeons, pediatricians, nutritionists, veterinaries, psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, antropologists, philosophers, historians, jurists, and economists from France and other foreign countries, including Brazil, it will be a work of reference for several years, due to its extent, depth, and diversity in the medical and biomedical areas, not only for its scientific, historical, and phylosophical aspects but mainly for the evolution of ideas, ethicts, and culture in the "world of health". Containing 1270 pages written by nearly 200 authors from the most varied specialties, this dictionary is composed of 295 notes/articles, from three to four pages, and more than 2000 key words. Only three Brazilian researchers participated in this work: Ana Lucia Risson dos Santos, Associate Professor of the University of Picardie-JulesVernes, who wrote about Obesity; Fernando Dias de Ávila Pires, from Fiocruz and Univesity of Santa Catarina, who wrote about Ecology; and José Rodrigues Coura, from the Department of Tropical Medicine, Oswaldo Cruz Institute-Fiocruz, who wrote about Epidemiology, focusing its evolution from Hippocrates and Aristotle to our days.


England's ageing population has resulted in grandparents playing an increasingly important role in the lives of their grandchildren. Exploring the dynamics of these relationships is crucial in order to create a complete understanding of various behaviours across the life course.This report explores new research on the levels and patterns of financial support from grandparents found in the 2010 wave of the English Longitudinal Study on Ageing (ELSA).The new research carried out by the International Longevity Centre-UK (ILC-UK), and supported by Key Retirement Solutions and Partnership, highlights how grandparents are playing a vital role in supporting the financial wellbeing of future generations.Headline findings of the research include:One-fifth of grandparents in England aged 50+ gave money to grandchildren – totalling over £647 million in 2010Across England, grandparents gave a cumulative total of almost £333.8 million to their grandchildren in 2010. Contributions to Child Trust Funds were of a similar amount, at £313.8 million in total.


Objective: To investigate whether regulatory problems, i.e., crying and feeding problems in infants older than 3 months of age, predict cognitive outcome in preschool children born at risk even when controlled for confounding factors. Methods: A prospective longitudinal study of children born in a geographically defined area in Germany. N = 4427 children of 6705 eligible survivors (66%) participated at all 4 assessment points (neonatal, 5, 20, and 56 months of age). Excessive crying and feeding problems were assessed at 5 months. Mental development was measured with the Griffiths Scale at 20 months, and cognitive assessments were conducted at 56 months. Neonatal complications, neurological, and psychosocial factors were controlled as confounders in structural equation modeling and analyses of variance. Results: One in 5 infants suffered from single crying or feeding problems, and 2% had multiple regulatory problems, i.e., combined crying and feeding problems at 5 months. In girls, regulatory problems were directly predictive of lower cognition at 56 months, even when controlled for confounders, whereas in boys, the influence on cognition at 56 months was mediated by delayed mental development at 20 months. Both in boys and girls, shortened gestational age, neonatal neurological complications, and poor parent–infant relationship were predictive of regulatory problems at 5 months and lower cognition at 56 months. Conclusion: Excessive crying and feeding problems in infancy have a small but significant adverse effect on cognitive development.


The use of an inspiratory impedance threshold valve (ITV) during active compression-decompression (ACD) cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) improves perfusion pressures, and vital organ blood flow. We evaluated the effects of positive end-expiratory pressure (PEEP) on gas exchange, and coronary perfusion pressure gradients during ACD + ITV CPR in a porcine cardiac arrest model. All animals received pure oxygen intermittent positive pressure ventilation (IPPV) at a 5:1 compression-ventilation ratio during ACD + ITV CPR. After 8 min, pigs were randomized to further IPPV alone (n = 8), or IPPV with increasing levels of PEEP (n = 8) of 2.5, 5.0, 7.5, and 10 cm H2O for 4 consecutive min each, respectively. Mean ± sem arterial oxygen partial pressure decreased in the IPPV group from 150 ± 30 at baseline after 8 min of CPR to 110 ± 25 torr at 24 min, but increased in the PEEP group from 115 ± 15 to 170 ± 25 torr with increasing levels of PEEP (P <0.02 for comparisons within groups). Mean ± sem diastolic aortic minus diastolic left ventricular pressure gradient was significantly (P < 0.001) higher after the administration of PEEP (24 ± 0 vs 17 ± 1 mm Hg with 5 cm H2O of PEEP, and 26 ± 0 vs 17 ± 1 mm Hg with 10 cm H2O of PEEP), whereas the diastolic aortic minus right atrial pressure gradient (coronary perfusion pressure) was comparable between groups. Furthermore, systolic aortic pressures were significantly (P < 0.05) higher with 10 cm H2O of PEEP when compared with IPPV alone (68 ± 0 vs 59 ± 2 mm Hg). In conclusion, when CPR was performed with devices designed to improve venous return to the chest, increasing PEEP levels improved oxygenation. Moreover, PEEP significantly increased the diastolic aortic minus left ventricular gradient and did not affect the decompression phase aortic minus right atrial pressure gradient. These data suggest that PEEP reduces alveolar collapse during ACD + ITV CPR, thus leading to an increase in indirect myocardial compression.


Novel polystrene-bound Schiff bases and their Pt(IV) complexes have been prepared from condensation reaction of polystyrene-A-NH2 with 2-hydroxybenzaldehyde and 5-fluoro-3bromo-2-hydroxybenzaldehyde. The structures of Pt(IV) complexes with polystyrene including Schiff bases have been determined by elemental analyses, magnetic susceptibility, IR, H-NMR, UV-vis, TG/DTA and AAS. The antibacterial and antifungal activities of the synthesized compounds have been studied by the well-diffusion method against some selected microorganisms: (Bacillus cereus spp., Listeria monocytogenes 4b, Micrococcus luteus, Staphylococcus aureus, Staphylococcus epidermis, Brucella abortus, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas putida spp., Shigella dysenteria type 10, Salmonella typhi H). Keywords—Polymer-bound Schiff bases, polystyrene-A-NH2, Pt(IV) complexes, biological activity.


In this paper we offer a bibliographical survey of the papers presented at GT20 - Educational Psychology of ANPEd (AssociacaoNacional de Pos-Graduacao e PesquisaemEducacao - National Association of Post-Graduation and Research in Education) from 2000 to 2010. The aim is to track the most recent scientific studies which discuss the affection and its relation to the teaching and learning processes. We present the theoretical perspectives in which the studies about affection were addressed and the extents to which such studies discuss the influences between the affective aspects and the teaching and learning processes. The papers were selected according to the methodological procedures of the content analysis based on Bardin (1977). The results allowed constructing an overview of affection studies, pointing tendencies out, periods in which the discussions on the theme were more intense and, above all, demonstrating that such an issue has been more and more raised in discussions of ANPEd's Annual Meetings.


In this paper, a model for diffusion of nuclide in backfilled material is introduced, and discrete schemes presented, too. The algorithm to accomplish the simulation is given, to avoid error and exception that may occur during calculation, the check mesh algorithm is introduced. To implement a numeric solver for the simulation of diffusion of nuclide, several classes are designed, such as runtime class, mesh data class, environment class, calculation parameter class and calculation class. And then this solver is implemented with finite element method. Finally, the solver is used to calculate one case built for a 10000-years simulation of diffusion of nuclide in backfilled materials . The simulating result is satisfying, and the curve of nuclide concentration over time shows the nuclide concentration field becomes a stable one after about 3000 years.


Hand hygiene compliance remains the cornerstone of infection prevention and control (IPC) in healthcare facilities. However, there is a paucity of information on the level of IPC in veterinary health care facilities in South Africa. Therefore, this study evaluated hand hygiene compliance of healthcare workers and visitors in the intensive care unit (ICU) at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Academic Hospital (OVAH). Method: A cross-sectional study was conducted among healthcare workers (HCWs) and visitors in the ICU using the infection control assessment tool (ICAT) as stipulated by the South African National Department of Health. Direct observations using the "five hand hygiene moments" criteria as set out by the World helath Organisation were also recorded. The level of compliance and a 95% confidence interval were calculated for all variables. Results: Individual bottles of alcohol-based hand-rub solution and hand-wash basins with running water, soap dispensers, and paper towels were easily accessible and available at all times in the ICU. In total, 296 observations consisting of 734 hand hygiene opportunities were recorded. Hand hygiene compliance was also evaluated during invasive (51.4%) and non-invasive (48.6%) procedures. The overall hand hygiene compliance was 24.3% (178/734). In between patients, most HCWs did not sanitize stethoscopes, leashes, and cellular phones used. Additionally, the majority of HCWs wore jewellery below the elbows. The most common method of hand hygiene was hand-rub (58.4%), followed by hand-wash (41.6%). Nurses had a higher (44%) level of compliance compared to students (22%) and clinicians (15%). Compliance was also higher after body fluid exposure (42%) compared to after patient contact (32%), before patient contact (19%), after contact with patient surroundings (16%), and before an aseptic procedure (15%). Conclusion: Hand hygiene compliance in this study was low, raising concerns of potential transmission of hospital-acquired infections and zoonoses in the ICU. Therefore, it is essential that educational programs be developed to address the low level of hand hygiene in this study.


Selecting appropriate texts for L2 (second/foreign language) learners is an important approach to enhancing motivation and, by extension, learning. There is currently no tool for classifying foreign language texts according to a language proficiency framework, which makes it difficult for students and educators to determine the precise difficulty/complexity levels of an unclassified text. Taking the Chinese language as an example, this study aimed to create a readability assessment system, called the Chinese Readability Index Explorer for Chinese as a Foreign Language (CRIE-CFL), in order to level-that is, to sort by proficiency level-texts that will be used for instructional purposes. The framework of choice in this project is the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR). A team of expert CFL teachers first classified 1,578 CFL texts into their appropriate CEFR levels. A set of 30 CFL readability features was then developed or drawn from previous research, and sorted according to importance using F-scores. In addition, a support vector machine model was trained by sequentially integrating the features into the model to optimize accuracy. The empirical evaluation of CRIE-CFL revealed average exact- and adjacent-level accuracies of 74.97% and 99.62%, respectively, for predicting the expert classification of a text. The functionalities of CRIE-CFL are introduced and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


Malaria, are-emergent vector-borne disease, has always had a deep impact on the health and economy of a large percentage of the world population. In areas where malaria vectors also feed on animals, the presence of livestock impacts the risk of disease transmission to humans. Treatment of livestock, with insecticides that are fatal to the vector, has been proposed as a novel approach in malaria control. Promising results have been observed from trials in Pakistan. However, several factors underlying the effectiveness of insecticide treated livestock remain poorly understood. This study looks at the relevance of some of these factors including coverage treatment levels and vector preference. We expand on the Ross-Macdonald framework through the incorporation of vector feeding behaviours. The main focus of this research is to understand the circumstances under which a policy that involves the systematic use of insecticides on livestock will. decrease the prevalence of human malaria.


Magnonics is a rapidly developing subfield of spintronics, which deals with devices and circuits that utilize spin currents carried by magnons - quanta of spin waves. Magnon current, i.e. spin waves, can be used for information processing, sensing, and other applications. A possibility of using the amplitude and phase of magnons for sending signals via electrical insulators creates conditions for avoiding Ohmic losses, and achieving ultra-low power dissipation. Most of the envisioned magnonic logic devices are based on spin wave interference, where the minimum energy per operation is limited by the noise level. The sensitivity and selectivity of magnonic sensors is also limited by the low frequency noise. However, the fundamental question "do magnons make noise?" has not been answered yet. It is not known how noisy magnonic devices are compared to their electronic counterparts. Here we show that the low-frequency noise of magnonic devices is dominated by the random telegraph signal noise rather than 1/f noise - a striking contrast to electronic devices (f is a frequency). We found that the noise level of surface magnons depends strongly on the power level, increasing sharply at the on-set of nonlinear dissipation. The presence of the random telegraph signal noise indicates that the current fluctuations involve random discrete macro events. We anticipate that our results will help in developing the next generation of magnonic devices for information processing and sensing.


A complex guided spectral transform Lanczos (cGSTL) algorithm is proposed to compute both bound and resonance states including energies, widths, and wavefunctions. The algorithm comprises of two layers of complex-symmetric Lanczos iterations. A short inner layer iteration produces a set of complex formally orthogonal Lanczos polynomials. They are used to span the guided spectral transform function determined by a retarded Green operator. An outer layer iteration is then carried out with the transform function to compute the eigen-pairs of the system. The guided spectral transform function is designed to have the same wavefunctions as the eigenstates of the original Hamiltonian in the spectral range of interest. Therefore, the energies and/or widths of bound or resonance states can be easily computed with their wavefunctions or by using a root-searching method from the guided spectral transform surface. The new cGSTL algorithm is applied to bound and resonance states of HO2, and compared to previous calculations.


BACKGROUND
HAPPY (Humanity Assurance Protocol in interventional radiotherapy) reports the necessity for gynecological cancer patients to undergo interventional radiotherapy (IRT, also called brachytherapy). The present paper has evaluated how some precautions may improve the psychological well-being of the patients during IRT.

METHODS
Patients with gynecological cancer undergoing IRT-HDR were analyzed. Patients answered three questionnaires before the IRT procedure (T0) and at the end of IRT (T1): Distress Thermometer (DT), Numerical Rating Scale for IRT procedure distress (NRS), and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Correlations have been calculated pairwise through pandas. corrwith with a Pearson algorithm, and the p-values have been calculated through scipy.stats.pearsonr. Plots have been generated through seaborn and matplotlib. A Wilcoxon test was used.

RESULTS
55 patients were selected for this study. The median age of the patients was 64 (range, 39-84) years. 52 patients were with stage I endometrial cancer, whereas 3/3 patients with cervical cancer had locally advanced stages (IIB-IVA). 26 patients had a high education level (47.3%), and 38 were married or with a partner (69.1%). Only 14/55 (25.45%) patients were working. The HADS, DT, and NRS averages before the IRT procedure (T0) were 10.2, 3.8, and 4.3, respectively. After applying the HAPPY protocol, the HADS, DT, and NRS averages after IRT (T1) were 9.4, 3.4, and 2.6, respectively. The Wilcoxon signed rank test analysis showed a significant improvement in NRS (p < 0.00001) and HADS (p = 0.034). Living with a partner, parents or relatives was the only parameter statistically significantly associated with better DT pre-IRT (p = 0.04), HADS pre-IRT (p = 0.01), DT post-IRT (p = 0.01), and HADS post-IRT (p = 0.04).

CONCLUSION
In our study, the HAPPY protocol was associated with a significant reduction in patients' distress, anxiety, and discomfort.


Results: IL-33 and IL-1β levels were higher in hypertensive patients (p<0,001), independently of BMI. Cluster analysis was made to reveal both cytokines' levels impact on CCA geometry (see picture). IL-33≥73 pg/ml, IL1β≥25 pg/ml was associated with 80,0% prevalence of normal CCA geometry and 20,0% of its concentric hypertrophy. IL-1β≥20 pg/ml with IL-33<71 pg/ml was characterized by 80,0% prevalence of normal geometry, 10,0% of nonhypertensive concentric remodeling of CCA, 5,0% of concnetric and 5,0% of eccentric hypertrophy. IL-33≥71 pg/ml with IL-1β<25 pg/ml was associated with decrease of normal CCA geometry prevalence to 50,0% with increase of concentric hypertrophy rate to 41,7%; other 8,3% patients had eccentric hypertrophy of CCA. IL-33<71 pg/ml, IL-1β<20 pg/ml (p>0,05 vs control group) had 57,9% of normal geometry, 15,8% of concentric remodeling, 15,8% of concnetric hypertrophy and 10,5% of eccentric hypertrophy of CCA.


In this paper, a real-time Internet of Things (IoT) monitoring system is considered in which the IoT devices are scheduled to sample associated underlying physical processes and send the status updates to a common destination. In a real-world IoT, due to the possibly different dynamics of each physical process, the sizes of the status updates for different devices are often different and each status update typically requires multiple transmission slots. By taking into account such multi-time slot transmissions with non-uniform sizes of the status updates under noisy channels, the problem of joint device scheduling and status sampling is studied in order to minimize the average age of information (AoI) at the destination. This stochastic problem is formulated as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP). The monotonicity of the value function of the MDP is characterized and then used to show that the optimal scheduling and sampling policy is threshold-based with respect to the AoI at each device. To overcome the curse of dimensionality, a low-complexity suboptimal policy is proposed through a semi-randomized base policy and linear approximated value functions. The proposed suboptimal policy is shown to exhibit a similar structure to the optimal policy, which provides a structural base for its effective performance. A structure-aware algorithm is then developed to obtain the suboptimal policy. The analytical results are further extended to the IoT monitoring system with random status update arrivals, for which, the optimal scheduling and sampling policy is also shown to be threshold-based with the AoI at each device. Simulation results illustrate the structures of the optimal policy and show a near-optimal AoI performance resulting from the proposed suboptimal solution approach.


Many solid materials exhibit stress–induced phase transformations. Such phenomena can be modelled with the aid of the nonlinear elasticity theory with appropriate choices of the strain–energy function. It is known that if a two–phase deformation (with gradient F) in a finite elastic body is a local energy minimizer, then given any point p of the surface of discontinuity, the piecewise–homogeneous deformation corresponding to the two values F±(p) of F(p) is a global energy minimizer. Thus, instability of the latter state would imply instability of the former state. In this paper we investigate the stability properties of such piecewise–homogeneous deformations. More precisely, we are concerned with two joined half–spaces that correspond to two different phases of the same material. We first show how such a two–phase deformation can be constructed. Then the stability of the piecewise–homogeneous deformation is investigated with the aid of two test criteria. One is a kinetic stability criterion based on a quasi–static approach and on the growth/decay behaviour of the interface in the undeformed configuration when it is perturbed; the other, referred to as the energy criterion, is used to determine whether the deformation is a minimizer of the total energy with respect to perturbations of the interface in both the current and undeformed configurations. We clarify the differences between the two criteria, and provide a compact formula which can be used to establish the stability/instability of any two–phase piecewise–homogeneous deformations.


Solar-driven hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) production presents unique merits of sustainability and environmental friendliness. Herein, highly efficient solar-driven H2O2 production through dioxygen reduction is achieved by employing polymeric carbon nitride (PCN) framework with sodium cyanaminate moiety (PCN-NaCA), affording a superior H2O2 production rate of 175 μmol/h on 10 mg photocatalyst and a notable apparent quantum yield of 27.6% at 380 nm. The overall photocatalytic transformation process is systematically analyzed using various steady-state/transient spectroscopic and computational methods. The presence of sodium cyanaminate moiety in PCN-NaCA induces the following multiple effects: enhancing photon absorption, creating the coexistence of p-type and n-type domains, strengthening surface adsorption of dioxygen, and favoring highly selective 2e− ORR. In particular, the adsorption of dioxygen on PCN-NaCA enhances the population and lifetime of trapped electrons in the ps-ns time regime, which should have a notable synergic effect on oxygen reduction process.


Spectroscopic tools such as NMR can be applied to the quantitative analysis of active pharmaceutical ingredients with relative ease and accuracy. Here, we demonstrate the quantification of clindamycin phosphate (CLP) in a conventional tablet formulation, performed using potassium hydrogen phthalate (KHP) as the internal standard and deuterium oxide (D2O) as the NMR solvent. The methyl protons signal of CLP at 0.72 ppm (triplet) relative to the signal of KHP at 7.37–7.40 ppm (multiplet) was used for quantification purposes using 1H NMR. This method was shown to be specific and linear (r = 0.9997) within the CLP concentration range from 7.2 to 23.1 mg per 0.5 ml of D2O. The maximum relative standard deviation (RSD) of accuracy and precision was calculated at 0.39% and 0.64%, respectively. The limits of detection (LOD) and quantification were 0.04 and 0.11 mg/ml, respectively. The method was highly stable with a calculated RSD of 0.03%. The robustness of the method was demonstrated by changing four different parameters, and the difference among each parameter was ≤ 0.78%. The findings of this work were in good agreement with previously reported conventional HPLC‐based approaches, highlighting its applicability in the determination of other active pharmaceutical ingredients in conventional formulations for quality control purposes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Zhang et al. (1) carried out a large prospective naturalistic study on patients who underwent percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) evaluating the role of thyroid hypo-function on major clinical outcomes from in-hospital stay up to 10 years of follow up with a median observation of 3 years. The enrolled population was representative of adult patients (mean age of the whole cohort 64.6 years) with several traditional risk factors (previous cardiovascular events or coronary artery disease, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity, dyslipidemia and smoking status), which accounted for high risk of cardiovascular events.


This paper proposes a structured method for scaling both the supply voltage as well as the body bias voltage for CMOS embedded static memory with the aim of achieving a controllable and dynamic probability of failure with minimum power consumption for each memory block. The target error probability is managed according to the time varying error tolerance attributes of the application using the memory at a certain instant in time. This approach enables system designers to abstract the concepts of power awareness, yield and reliability as design tradeoffs-that incorporate application knowledge-early in the design cycle. The paper develops a formal theoretical and practical foundation based on the underlying device statistics upon which both system and circuit designers can investigate error aware design.


Circuit speed, power dissipation, physical area, and system reliability are the four performance criteria of primary concern in tapered buffer design. Each places a separate, often conflicting constraint on the design of a tapered buffer. This paper presents a unified design methodology for CMOS tapered buffers which permits trade-offs to be easily made among these four performance criteria. The methodology utilizes analytical expressions for each of the performance criteria. A process dependent look-up table is constructed based on these expressions and is used in conjunction with application-specific performance constraints to efficiently determine the optimal implementation for each particular buffer instantiation.


Traffic represent problems faced by Indonesian cities, which start from decreasing of road performance until generate traffic jam in the end. The problems caused by some factors, like urbanization, rapid growth of population, growth of economics and growth of number of vehicles. These factors also influence growth of a city. To see how the increase of intensity of housing-building at settlement area influence the traffic volume and decreasing of road performance, hence conducted by analyze the movement systems. Movement systems analysis covers traffic volume and traffic composition, continued with road capacity analysis yielding indicators of Q/C and travel speed. While to see the growth of settlement in study area during the last five year done by using overlay method. This method applied to the 1999 and 2004 land use map. This map shows that the artery road encumbered by local traffic, which come from housing at study area. Minimization of conflict to movement system by regulate the land usage on both side of the street needed to overcome this condition together with limitation of settlements growth in Kecamatan Medan Johor, done by maintain the RUTRK Medan 2005 strategy, which arranged that Kecamatan Medan Johor is specified to become the catchment area and low density settlement.


Ti foams are attractive for orthopaedic applications due to reduced Young's modulus and ability of bone ingrowth. However, poor corrosion behaviour and lack of bioactivity are yet to be overcome. In the present work, highly porous Ti samples were processed by powder metallurgy with space holder technique and bio-functionalized by micro-arc oxidation, resulting in nano/micro structured TiO2 surfaces containing bioactive elements. The electrochemical behaviour of these bio-functionalized highly porous Ti surfaces was evaluated through potentiodynamic polarization and EIS in physiological solution at body temperature. Results showed that biofunctionalization improved the corrosion behaviour of highly porous Ti. However, increased macro-porosity led to an increased corrosion rate.


The goal of the article is to explore fish consumption in the cuisine of Sigismund Augustus, Grand Duke of Lithuania. The tasks set for the research are the following: 1) to examine the sources of fish stocks; 2) to study the supply of fish to the ruler's cuisine, and 3) to find out the periodicity and the menu of the fasts. The main sources for the research were court records books of Sigismund Augustus, Grand Duke of Lithuania, and especially the manuscript of the ruler's steward who kept daily records of Sigismund Augustus's menu in 1566.
 Analysis of sources shows that there were several sources of fish stocks: the lakes and rivers of the ruler's manors, the ponds that composed large systems in the Sigismund Augustus' manors, and from markets. The supply of fish to the ruler's cuisine was well organized, and the ruler's steward who responsible for this. At the time when Sigismund Augustus stayed in his Vilnius residence, most of the fish, in particular pikes, were supplied from the ponds of Viršupis manor near Vilnius. Some fish, for example, salted bream, bass, roach, and catfish were supplied by the administrators of the ruler's manors. Additionally, various species of fish were bought to Vilnius market. When the ruler went hunting and stayed in a particular hunting manor in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, fish were supplied from local lakes, rivers, and ponds by the administrator of that manor. Some fish were bought in surrounding places. The administrator or the ruler's steward also bought fish from the markets in Vilnius or Kaunas and sent to the hunting manor.
 The book of the ruler's steward of 1566 shows that Sigismund Augustus fasted every Friday and Saturday, and also on the feast days. About two hundred fish of several different species were consumed on each fast day in the ruler's cuisine. Expensive large pikes usually served for dinner and supper. Other expensive fish such as salmon, sturgeon, and eel were consumed not so often. Carp, crucian carp, tench, bass, roach, bream, trout, ide, herring and other fish also were eaten on the fast days. The ruler's cuisine was varied, plentiful and luxurious even on the fast days.


Receptor tyrosine kinase-like orphan receptor 1 (ROR1) is expressed on a variety of difficult to treat solid and hematological malignancies. Several therapeutic concepts targeting ROR1 are currently in clinical studies, including antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs), chimeric antigen receptor engineered T cells, as well as a bispecific T cell engager. In contrast to ADCs, T cell engagers have the capacity to induce tumor cell depletion irrespective of tumor cell mitotic activity. For the therapy of ROR1 expressing tumors, we engineered a T cell engager with prolonged half-life to support convenient administration schemes.NM32-2668, a ROR1-targeting T cell engager with prolonged serum half-life was engineered by joining three humanized rabbit antibody variable region (Fv) fragments specific for ROR1, CD3ɛ, and serum albumin, into our tri-specific scMATCHTM3 format. Each Fv fragment was stabilized using the ʎ-capTM technology. NM32-2668 was tested in assays for specific tumor lysis, induction of T cell proliferation, and cytokine release. These studies were performed using human T cells co-cultured with tumor cell lines and human tumor samples expressing various levels of ROR1. In vivo xenograft mouse studies were conducted using a human mantle cell lymphoma model in NCG mice engrafted with human PBMCs.Here we report the design and the promising preclinical activity of the scMATCHTM3 ROR1/CD3/hSA T cell engager NM32-2668 in vitro and in vivo. Importantly, we demonstrate potent and specific cytotoxic activity in the sub-nanomolar range on tumor cell lines expressing different levels of ROR1. NM32-2668 also mediates ROR1 dependent T cell activation and cytokine release. We observe robust tumor cell killing activity of NM32-2668 over an extended time period and at multiple ratios of effectors to targets in a real time imaging-based cytotoxicity assay. This molecule also mediates T cell proliferation in response to target cell binding. NM32-2668 mediates in vitro lysis of CLL patient tumor cells, T cell activation, and cytokine release, with minimal IL-6 involvement. In an in vivo mantle cell lymphoma model (Jeko-1) engrafted with human PBMCs, we observe tumor regression and eradication.Collectively, these data demonstrate robust anti-tumor efficacy by NM32-2668, a scMATCHTM3 ROR1/CD3/hSA. Our results demonstrate that NM32-2668 promotes ROR1 dependent T cell activation and proliferation, as well as T cell-mediated tumor cell lysis. The activity of NM32-2668 has the potential to provide significant benefit to patients with ROR1+ malignancies on a convenient dosing schedule. We intend to rapidly progress NM32-2668 to clinical development.


Although theoretical accounts of adaptation in the terminally ill suggest that realistic acceptance of one's disease is adaptive, some investigations suggest that such responses are associated with increased mortality. This prospective psychobiological investigation involved 74 gay men with AIDS. Six scores reflecting responses to disease were derived from a detailed psychosocial questionnaire. One pattern of response, Realistic Acceptance, was a significant predictor of decreased survival time. Median estimated survival time for participants with low Realistic Acceptance scores was 9 months greater than for participants with high Realistic Acceptance scores. This effect was not accounted for by time since diagnosis with AIDS, self-reported health status, number of CD4 T lymphocyte cells, psychological distress, age, education, initial diagnosing condition, use of AZT, smoking, or alcohol and drug use.


Two human tissue culture cell lines, LI-1 derived from a patient with acute myelogenous leukemia and IM-1 from a patient with lymphoblastic lymphoma, were compared with donor tissues. Morphologic and functional features were assessed to determine if there were significant differences between the culture lines and the malignant tumor cells of the corresponding patients.

The LI-1 line contained mostly large primitive cells which did not resemble the myeloblasts of the donor. The IM-1 cell line was composed of similar primitive cells, lymphocytes, and a few macrophages, whereas the source of this line was a lymphoid tissue composed of a mixture of plasma and lymphoid cells.

The two cell lines produce electrophoretically discrete immunoglobulins in culture. Cell line LI-1 synthesized IgG-κ and IgG-λ. Cell line IM-1 produces electrophoretically discrete IgM-κ, IgG-κ, and κ light polypeptide chains. Electrophoretically discrete immunoglobulins comparable to the immunoglobulins synthesized in culture, however, were not detected in the patients' serum or synthesized by their tissues.

These studies indicate that cell lines established in culture differ significantly from the major portion of malignant cells seen in vivo in these patients. Designation of such cell lines as leukemia cell lines seems inappropriate until further observations can be made on the relationship between the cells in culture and the normal and malignant cells of donor patients.


We consider the L → Lσ boundedness of a model restricted X-ray transform in R, associated to a rigid line complex. We discuss some necessary conditions and, assuming a finite type condition, we show that the sharp L → Lp1−1/p result holds for p > 1 close to 1.


Recommender systems provide personalized suggestions for every individual user in the system. Many recommender systems use collaborative filtering approach in which the system collects and analyzes users' past behaviors, activities or preferences to produce high quality recommendations for the users. Among various collaborative recommendation techniques, model-based approaches are more scalable than memory-based approaches for large scale data sets in spite of large offline computation and difficulty to update the model in real time. In this paper, we introduce Alternating Least Squares with Incremental Learning Bias (ALS++) algorithm to improve over existing matrix factorization algorithms. These learning biases are treated as additional dimensions in our algorithm rather than as additional weights. As the learning process begins after regularized matrix factorization, the algorithm can update incrementally over the preference changes of the data set in constant time without rebuilding the new model again. We set up two different experiments using three different data sets to measure the performance of our new algorithm.


The authors present a review of the 2002 career development literature. The literature review is divided into the following areas: career theory, career assessment, career counseling interventions and practice, career counseling training and professional issues, and international issues in career counseling. The authors discuss the implications of the findings in this literature for career counseling practice.


Forty million living Americans have quit smoking.1While not as catchy, perhaps, as "Fifty million Frenchmen can't be wrong" or "Millions have read the book, now see the movie," the principle is the same—this is a massive number of people focused on one activity. Unfortunately, until now we have known very little, or have had to surmise,howso many smokers have achieved their goal of quitting. The article by Fiore et al2in this issue ofThe Journal, however, finally provides some answers and, even more important, guidance on this issue. Among the important findings presented by Fiore et al are the following: More than 90% of successful quitters do so on their own, without participation in an organized cessation program. Quit rates (defined as smoking abstinence for ≥1 year) are twice as high for those who quit on their own compared with those who participate in


In the last weeks in June, 2015, as the present term of the U.S. Supreme Court drew to a close, many controversial and important decisions were handed down by the Court. The substance of the decisions has been written about extensively. Two of the decisions in particular, though, caught my eye as a teacher of legal techniques, not for the importance of the subject of the particular decision, but for what they may illustrate in a teachable fashion about at least some opinion writing. The two cases are Ohio v. Clark (June 18, 2015) interpreting the Confrontation Clause of the U.S. Constitution, and King v. Burwell (June 25, 2015) interpreting a critical provision of the Affordable Care Act (known as Obamacare, establishing national health care insurance in the U.S.). In my "excursions" into these opinions here, I am not directly concerned with the merits or desirability of the decisions.


Recent developments in network neuroscience suggest reconsidering what we thought we knew about the Default Mode Network (DMN). Although this network has always been seen as unitary and associated with the resting state, a new deconstructive line of research is pointing out that the DMN could be divided into multiple subsystems supporting different functions. By now, it is well known that the DMN is not only deactivated by tasks, but also involved in affective, mnestic, and social paradigms, among others. Nonetheless, it is starting to become clear that the array of activities in which it is involved, might also be extended to more extrinsic functions. The present meta-analytic study is meant to push this boundary a bit further. The BrainMap database was searched for all experimental paradigms activating the DMN, and their activation maps were then computed. An additional map of task-induced deactivations was also created. A Multidimensional Scaling indicated that such maps could be arranged along an anatomo-psychological gradient, which goes from midline core activations, associated with the most internal functions, to the involvement of lateral cortices in more external tasks. Further investigations suggested that such extrinsic mode is especially related to reward, semantic, and emotional functions. However, an important finding was that the variability of task-induced DMN anatomic redistribution was hard to recapitulate, as none of the maps, or any linear combination of them, could represent the whole space of its dynamical reconfiguration. Altogether, our findings suggest that the DMN may be characterized by a richer functional diversity and a more spatial complexity than previously suggested.


ZnO films were deposited on c-plane sapphire substrates in Ar atmosphere by rf magnetron sputtering and were post-annealed at 400 degrees C in green gas (95% N2 + 5% H2). The properties of the as-grown and annealed films have been characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Rutherford backscattering (RBS), elastic recoil detection analysis (ERDA), Hall measurement and photoluminescence spectra. XRD studies confirmed the variation in strain and an improvement in crystallinity. From RBS and ERDA analysis, the presence of H atoms on the surface of the as-grown ZnO films was evidenced. Annealing in green gas increased the amount of H in the film. Compared with the as-grown films, the ultra exciting intensity obviously decreases in the annealed films and new optical active centres in the blue/violet (approximately 3.0 eV) and red (approximately 1.9) regions are emerged in the PL spectrum. The positive sign of Hall coefficient confirmed the low p-type conductivity in the as grown films, which was improved after annealing. However, the p-type conductivity was not stable, especially for the annealed sample it changes from p type to n type after 9 days.


Steganography is the discipline of invisible communication by hiding the exchanged secret information (message) in another digital information media (image, video or audio). The existence of the message is kept indiscernible in sense that no one, other than the intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message. The majority of steganography techniques are implemented either in spatial domain or in frequency domain of the digital images while the embedded information can be in the form of plain or cipher message. Medical image steganography is classified as a distinctive case of image steganography in such a way that both the image and the embedded information have special requirements such as achieving utmost clarity reading of the medical images and the embedded messages. There is a contention between the amount of hidden information and the caused detectable distortion of image. The current paper studies the degradation of the medical image when undergoes the steganography process in the frequency domain.


Background Headaches affect different proportions of many populations and are experienced by any age, gender or ethnicity group. There is a paucity of data on the prevalence of headaches in South Africa, particularly amongst the university student population. Previous studies have suggested that headaches impact on daily activities as well as family and/or social activities. Studies on the impact of headaches on students are limited. Aim of Study The aim of this research study was to determine the prevalence and impact of primary headaches amongst students at the Durban University of Technology (DUT). Methodology A quantitative descriptive cross sectional survey was used to determine the prevalence of primary headaches in the student population at DUT. A minimum sample size of 384 was calculated using a confidence level of 95% and confidence interval of five percent. All six faculties were included. The course programmes and levels were chosen by multi-stage sampling. Each willing participant was required to sign a written consent form prior to enrolment in the study. Subsequently a self-administered questionnaire was filled out. The International Classification of Headache Disorder Criteria was used to classify primary headaches. All data was captured on an Excel spreadsheet and subsequently analysed using SPSS version 23.0. Results The total of 471 completed questionnaires was received. The prevalence of primary and secondary headaches was similar (50.2%; n = 222 versus 49.8%; n = 220, p = 0.92). More participants suffered from tension type (68.5%; n = 152) headaches compared to migraines (16.2%, n = 36) and mixed migraine and tension type headaches (15.3%, n = 34; p < 0.001). None of the study participants suffered from cluster headaches. Poor vision and stress increased the risk of a headache occurrence. The main relieving factor identified was the use of medication. Other relieving factors reported were sleep and relaxation. There was no correlation between suffering from headaches across the different faculties (p = 0.65), age of the participant (p = 0.77), ethnicity (p = 0.40), marital status (p = 0.84) and gender (p = 0.35). Headaches had a negative impact on the academic activities of the affected participants, including limited concentration and a complete halt to studies. Conclusion Tension type headaches were more prevalent amongst the study population. The impact of headaches limited concentration during tests and examination periods. An increased frequency and intensity of headaches was reported during this period. Family, social or leisure activities were also neglected when a headache occurred. This study adds to the current literature on headache prevalence in the student population. It also highlights that chiropractors are not consulted for headaches by students in the South African context. The chiropractic profession can benefit by tapping into this population.


The electronic structure of the arsenic terminated silicon (100) surface is calculated using the tight binding method in the extended Huckel approximation. The results are compared with the reconstructed silicon (100) surface, and the passivation of the silicon surface is discussed in context of the authors results.


At any given moment there are thousands of surveys and polls being conducted on the web, yet surprisingly little scholarly research is reported about this new technique. After a summary review of the comparative literature on e-mail and "snail mail" and a more extensive review of research involving web-based methods, this article contrasts e-mail and web-based survey techniques used in an ongoing study of the web presence provider industry. Practical issues of web-surveying methods are highlighted, such as programming pitfalls, sample-building, and incentives.


Mesenteric panniculitis is an inflammatory process that represents the second stage of a rare progressive disease involving the adipose tissue of the mesentery. Imaging methods used in the diagnosis of mesenteric panniculitis include barium studies, ultrasonography, computed tomography and magnetic resonance imaging. Computed tomography is important for both, diagnosis and evaluation of the extension of the disease and treatment monitoring. Computed tomography findings may vary according to the stage of the disease and the amount of inflammatory material or fibrosis. There is also good correlation between the computed tomography and anatomical pathology findings. The authors studied 10 patients with mesenteric panniculitis submitted to computed tomography. Magnetic resonance imaging was also performed in one patient. In all patients, computed tomography revealed a heterogeneous mass in the mesentery with density of fat, interspersed with areas of soft tissue density and dilated vessels.


Abstract. Despite causing permanent hearing loss by damaging inner ear sensory cells, aminoglycosides (AGs) remain one of the most widely used classes of antibiotics in the world. Although the mechanisms of cochlear sensory cell damage are not fully known, reactive oxygen species (ROS) are clearly implicated. Mitochondrial-specific ROS formation was evaluated in acutely cultured murine cochlear explants exposed to gentamicin (GM), a representative ototoxic AG antibiotic. Superoxide (O2·−) and hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) were measured using MitoSOX Red and Dihydrorhodamine 123, respectively, in sensory and supporting cells. A 1-h GM exposure significantly increased O2·− formation in IHCs and increased H2O2 formation in all cell types. At the same time point, GM significantly increased manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) levels while significantly decreasing copper/zinc superoxide dismutase (CuZnSOD) in cochlear sensory cells. This suggests (1) a rapid conversion of highly reactive O2·− to H2O2 during the acute stage of ototoxic antibiotic exposure and (2) that the endogenous antioxidant system is significantly altered by AGs. Fluorescence intensity-based measurements of reduced nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (phosphate) [NAD(P)H] and mitochondrial membrane potential were measured to determine if increases in GM-induced ROS production were correlated with changes in mitochondrial metabolism. This project provides a basis for understanding the mechanisms of mitochondrial ROS production in cochlear cells exposed to ototoxic antibiotics. Understanding the nature of ototoxic antibiotic-induced changes in mitochondrial metabolism is critical for developing hearing loss treatment and prevention strategies.


Sclerochronology and analysis of oxygen isotopes reveal the age, growth rate, and growth patterns of Chione (Chionista) cortezi and Chione (Chionista) fluctifraga. Chione (C.) cortezi grows more quickly than Chione (C.) fluctifraga, but has a shorter life span (8 years versus 16 years). Microgrowth increments form with tidal periodicity, and their width is mostly influenced by temperature. Microincrement patterns reveal that maximum growth occurs from April to June and again in October. Growth is reduced during the hottest part of the summer and the coldest part of the winter. Growth breaks often occur in December/January and August. Timing of shell growth and environmental conditions were verified by high-resolution oxygen isotope measurements.


With the rise of the web 2.0 and the Internet of things, it has become feasible to track all kinds of information over time, in particular fine-grained user activities and sensor data on their environment and even their biometrics. However, while efficiency remains mandatory for any application trying to cope with huge amounts of data, only part of the potential of today's Big Data repositories can be exploited using traditional batch-oriented approaches as the value of data often decays quickly and high latency becomes unacceptable in some applications. In the last couple of years, several distributed data processing systems have emerged that deviate from the batchoriented approach and tackle data items as they arrive, thus acknowledging the growing importance of timeliness and velocity in Big Data analytics. In this article, we give an overview over the state of the art of stream processors for low-latency Big Data analytics and conduct a qualitative comparison of the most popular contenders, namely Storm and its abstraction layer Trident, Samza and Spark Streaming. We describe their respective underlying rationales, the guarantees they provide and discuss the trade-offs that come with selecting one of them for a particular task.


The book includes a number of new data obtained in recent years, in particular material relating to the recently discovered new structures in spiral galaxies: giant anticyclones, cyclones and slow bars. New methods for the detection of these structures are described. Types of vertical motions of stars and gas in the galaxies, whether due to the presence of spiral arms, or hose instability are discussed. An important place is given to modern numerical methods for describing the dynamics of galaxies, stellar as well as gas components. Algorithms of numerical models and a number of important results are presented. Other topics discussed include: the role of vertical motions in the disk systems and a new two-dimensional model of the gas disk, the theory of turbulence; a simple self-consistent model of the inhomogeneous differentially rotating hot stellar disk of finite thickness; conditions for stability of stellar disks, taking into account the worse stabilizability of non-axisymmetric disturbances compared to axisymmetric one; technique of construction of numerical dynamical models of gas and collisionless stellar disks; gravitational-hydrodynamic concept of spiral structures; problems in the dynamics of disks taking into account non-linear factors; a method of reconstruction of the three-dimensional velocity field of gas from the observational data; dynamic role of various components: the bulge, bar, halo, spirals; the dynamics of accretion disks; comprehensive analysis of large-scale processes in the accretion disk of binary stars, etc.


Background Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) is a common form of heart disease that is considered a serious health problem in society. Atherosclerosis is widely recognized as a chronic inflammatory disease of the vessels and can lead to CAD and myocardial infarction. The aim of the present study was to investigate serum levels of connexin-37 and stromelysin-1 as significant biomarkers of CAD and their correlation with the extent of CAD. Methods and results Sixty CAD patients with one-vessel (1VD), two-vessel (2VD), and three-vessel (3VD) disease were enrolled in this study. For comparison with the results, 20 healthy control subjects were also included in this study. Serum concentrations of connexin-37 and stromelysin-1 were determined using commercial ELISA kits. Serum connexin-37 concentrations were not significantly different between the patient and control groups (p < 0.05). The analysis showed a statistically significant difference between subjects with one-vessel disease, subjects with two-vessel disease, and subjects with three-vessel disease. Serum Stromelysin-1 concentration was significantly higher in the patients than in the control group (p < 0.05). Conclusions The results of our study indicate that serum levels of stromelysin-1, but not connexin-37, may contribute to the prediction of the occurrence and progression of CAD.


Article History: Received 03.12.2016 Received in revised form 07.06.2017 Accepted 20.06.2017 Available online 29.07.2017 The vocabulary teaching which one of the oldest fields in educational researches is is viewed as an activity which contributes to the development of social and communicational skills as well as the comprehension and speech skills of individuals. The fact that the traditional approaches in education were abandoned especially in the 21th century resulted in the utilization of different methods, techniques or materials in vocabulary teaching as it is in different fields of language teaching. In this respect, the aim of the research is to determine the overall effect of the said vocabulary teaching methods, techniques and materials on the vocabulary development of the students with reference to the conducted studies. Results of 31 quasi-experimental/experimental studies conducted between 2000-2016 in the field of Turkish language teaching were synthesized within the scope of the research in which meta-analysis methods were used. The effect size (Hedge g) calculations, heterogeneity and publication bias tests and intervening variable analyses of the studies included in the meta-analysis were carried out by using the Comprehensive Meta-Analysis v2.0 (CMA) software. It was determined as a result of the study that the overall effect size on the vocabulary development was wide and statistically significant (g=1.133; p<.05). Adjusted effect size of the studies were estimated to be g=.79. On the other hand, while the conducted intervening variable analyses suggested that the effect size values differed depending on the number of words taught and vocabulary teaching methods, techniques or materials used, it was determined that the level of teaching, publication type, sample size, field of study and the taught vocabulary categories were not variables that affected the effect size significantly. © 2017 IOJES. All rights reserved


After participating in 32 small, interpersonal learning groups, 258 young adult, U.S. students twice rated each same-group member's conduct on brief, bipolar measures of self-acceptance and acceptance of others. These ratings had medium effect-size shifts toward the expressive, shows feelings, dominant, active, and warm anchors of the bipolar subscales. Separate principal components analyses of how the men and women were rated at each time by both aggregated others and self revealed very similar factorial structures, despite the shifts, the gender and status (leader vs. member) effects, the largely positive intermeasure correlations, and the intervening discussions of the first sets of ratings. Wholly composed of subscales addressing self-acceptance, Factor 1 was best marked by active vs. passive, and the Accepts Others vs. Rejects Others subscale best marked Factor 2. These measures appear to have a robust internal structure and to represent the 2 salient dimensions of interpersonal behavior.


Micro/nanostructures have been extensively studied to amplify the intrinsic wettability of materials to create superhydrophilic or superhydrophobic surfaces. Such extreme wetting properties can influence the heat transfer performance during phase-change which is of great importance in a wide range of applications including thermal management, building environment, water harvesting and power production. In particular, superhydrophilic surfaces have been of interest to achieve thin film evaporation with high heat fluxes. Meanwhile, superhydrophobic surfaces with dropwise condensation promises higher heat transfer coefficients than typical filmwise condensation. My thesis work aims at improving fundamental understanding as well as demonstrating practical enhancements in these two areas. A key challenge to realizing thin film evaporation is the ability to achieve efficient fluid transport using superhydrophilic surfaces. Accordingly, we developed a semi-analytical model based on the balance between capillary pressure and viscous resistance to predict the propagation rates in micropillar arrays with high aspect ratios. Our experimental results showed good agreement with the model, and design guidelines for optimal propagation rates were proposed. For micropillar arrays with low aspect ratio and large spacing between pillars, however, we identified that the microscopic sweeping of the liquid front becomes important. We studied this phenomenon, explained the effect of such microscale dynamics on the overall propagation behavior, and proposed a strategy to account for these dynamics. While these propagation studies provide a means to deliver liquid to high heat flux regions, we investigated a different configuration using nanoporous membrane that decouples capillarity from the viscous resistance to demonstrate the potential heat dissipation capability. With nanoporous membranes with average pore diameters of 150 nm and thicknesses of 50 jtm, we achieved interfacial heat fluxes as high as 96 W/cm 2 via evaporation with isopropyl alcohol. The effect of membrane thickness was studied to offer designs that promise dissipation of 1000 W/cm 2 . Meanwhile, we developed new metrology to measure transient heat transfer coefficients with a temporal resolution of 0.2 seconds during the evaporation process. Such a technique offers insight into the relationship between liquid morphology and heat transfer behavior. Finally, for enhanced condensation, we demonstrated immersion condensation using a composite surface fabricated by infusing hydrophobic oil into micro/nanostructures with a heterogeneous coating. With this approach, three key attributes to maximize heat transfer coefficient, low departure radii, low contact angle, and high nucleation density, were achieved simultaneously. We specifically elucidated the mechanism for the increase in nucleation density and attribute it to the combined effect of reduced water-oil interfacial energy and local high surface energy sites. As a result, we demonstrated approximately 100% enhancement in heat transfer coefficient over state-of-the-art superhydrophobic surfaces with the presence of non-condensable gases. This thesis presents improved fundamental understanding of wetting, evaporation, and condensation processes on micro/nanostructures as well as practical implementation of these structures for enhanced heat transfer. The insights gained demonstrate the potential of new nanostructure engineering approaches to improve the performance of various thermal management and energy production applications. Thesis Committee Chair: Prof. Evelyn N. Wang, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Thesis Committee Members: Prof. Bora Mikic, Department of Mechanical Engineering, MIT Prof. Jacopo Boungiorno, Department of Nuclear Engineering, MIT