In this study the degradation behavior of different types of commercial T type bags has been investigated. The bags tested according to their commercial description are: LDPE plastic, oxo-biodegradable plastic and paper. The investigation was performed over a period of 32 weeks under real conditions. The composting essays were inoculated with fresh commercial humus and the humidity was controlled over the complete period, while the temperature was kept at the low mesophilic regime at room temperature, without direct contact to sunlight. The determination of the degradation was based on the analyses of total solids and organic total solids, as well as visual observations. The results show that only the paper bags were biodegraded appropriately, leaving no residue after 32 weeks. While neither the LDPE nor the oxo-biodegradable plastic bags show any signs of disintegration or degradation over the entire period. These results were expected for the LDPE bags, but not for the oxo-biodegradable plastics. As conclusion the low biodegradability of these bags is explained by the fact that even if the bags are commercially distributed as biodegradables, they are normal LDPE bags with an oxo additive. Actually, according to the definition, they cannot be considered as biodegradable, since they can only be degraded by few microorganisms in a very slow rate. The degradation of their chemical structure occur by the action of heat or ultraviolet light. And since non of these conditions were found during this investigation, the bags suffer no disintegration.


Abstract This qualitative case study sets out to explore how "born-free" students constitute, negotiate and represent their identities in South African schools twenty years after the advent of democracy. The meta-theoretical paradigm of social constructivism and the methodology of narrative inquiry was used. Data comprised a mix of semi-structured interviews and field notes. Inductive thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Findings reveal that the demographic diversity of "born-free" students seemed to extend towards many competing views of identity. "Born-free" students did not possess distinctive views about their generations" identity. Racial identity still seemed to play a pivotal role. Some "born free" students expressed optimism with the freedom their identity provided, while others felt constrained by the enduring historical legacy of apartheid, transmitted through knowledge in the blood. Although "born-free" students themselves did not live through apartheid, the physical legacies of apartheid –such as its geographical contours – served as a daily reminder of its presence. "Born-free" students are not only well aware of the social and political dynamics of the country, but are also beginning to question externally imposed identities.


In the context of constructing regional education and talent hub, Macao's higher education talent development strategy impacts the creation of a regional talent hub and the process of industrial diversification. This study adopts a text analysis approach. Through the analysis of 118 texts and the construction of the game model, it reveals that Macao's talent development has been passing through a "market-controlled" and "policy-driven" stage due to the uniqueness of economic and social development. The model of cooperative game based on endosymbiosis implicates that the talent attraction strategy of higher education can play a leading role in socio-economic development to form a cooperative and symbiotic equilibrium with the region as a whole through the "climbing period" when the "actual state" catches up with the "expected value." This paper proposes some policy recommendations, including: prospective discipline layout, breaking down of institutional barriers, cooperation and exchange of talent cultivation, and the creation of a talent-sharing mechanism for promoting the construction of a regional talent hub.


A high potential iron-Sulphur protein (HiPIP) Iron Oxidase (E.C 188.8.131.52) was isolated from Acidithiobacillus species obtained from Ironstones of Agbaja Mines of Kogi State, Nigeria. The aim was to study the biochemical characteristics of the enzyme so as to find out its catalytic contribution to the rate of bioleaching of the studied organism. A simple partial purification profile consisting of cell homogenization, ammonium sulphate precipitation, Ion-exchange using Carboxyl methyl cellulose, and sephadex G-200 chromatography were used. The biochemical and kinetic properties of the enzyme were thereafter studied. The Iron oxidase had its highest specific activity of 14.70 μmole/ml/mg of protein and yield of 89% with a purification fold of 1.43 after size exclusion chromatography. Optimum temperature and pH were found to be 50°C and 6.0 with Km and Vmax of 0.03mM and 12 mMole/min respectively. Inhibition studies conducted shows that tween 20 and SDS had the maximum rates. Other characteristics of the enzyme show that it might be a novel member of HiPIP coming from the isolated Acidithiobacillus of Agbaja Iron ore Mines.


Director, Institute of Plastic Surgery, New Orleans, Louisiana With all the recent hullabaloo currently surrounding lipo-suction surgery, I would like to share with you some of my conclusions, confusions, and convictions that have emerged from personal experience, seminars, workshops and arguments over the past two years. In short, after a lot of chewing the fat and sucking of the fat, here is my bottom line recipe flavored with good old-fashioned common sense. Historically speaking, our European counterparts are responsible (1-10), in a congratulatory way, for our introduction to this body contouring adjunct. These brave pioneers made many of the mistakes for us thus paving our way to apply 1980 technocracy and technique allowing us to discover never before considered complications such as shock and fat embolism. Surgical trail blazers of the 60's and 70's had already enumerated the more mundane types of complications such as pain, necrosis, amputation, infection, contour defects, seromas, hematomas, pseudo bursas, numbness, bruising and swelling. Undoubtedly, however, lipo-suction surgery does avoid the need for the large unsightly scars of past procedures with which we were all so displeased.


Lonicera japonica is not only an important resource of traditional Chinese medicine, but also has very high horticultural value. Studies have been performed on the physiological responses of L. japonica leaves to chilling, however, the molecular mechanism underlying the low temperature-induced leaves morphological changes remains unclear. In this study, it has been demonstrated that the ratio of pigments content including anthocyanins, chlorophylls, and carotenoids was significantly altered in response to chilling condition, resulting in the color transformation of leaves from green to purple. Transcriptomic analysis showed there were 10,329 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) co-expressed during chilling stress. DEGs were mainly mapped to secondary metabolism, cell wall, and minor carbohydrate. The upregulated genes (UGs) were mainly enriched in protein metabolism, transport, and signaling, while UGs in secondary metabolism were mainly involved in phenylpropaoids-flavonoids pathway (PFP) and carotenoids pathway (CP). Protein-protein interaction analysis illustrated that 21 interacted genes including CAX3, NHX2, ACA8, and ACA9 were enriched in calcium transport/potassium ion transport. BR biosynthesis pathway related genes and BR insensitive (BRI) were collectively induced by chilling stress. Furthermore, the expression of genes involved in anthocyanins and CPs as well as the content of chlorogenic acid (CGA) and luteoloside were increased in leaves of L. japonica under stress. Taken together, these results indicate that the activation of PFP and CP in leaves of L. japonica under chilling stress, largely attributed to the elevation of calcium homeostasis and stimulation of BR signaling, which then regulated the PFP/CP related transcription factors.


Personalization and adaptation to the user profile capability are the hottest issues to ensure ambient assisted living and context awareness in nowadays environments. With the growing healthcare and wellbeing context aware applications, modeling security policies becomes an important issue in the design of future access control models. This requires rich semantics using ontology modeling for the management of services provided to dependant people. However, current access control models remain unsuitable due to lack of personalization, adaptability and smartness to the handicap situation. In this paper, we propose a novel adaptable access control model and its related architecture in which the security policy is based on the handicap situation analyzed from the monitoring of userss behavior in order to grant a service using any assistive device within intelligent environment. the design of our model is an ontology-learning and evolving security policy for predicting the future actions of dependent people. This is reached by reasoning about historical data, contextual data and user behavior according to the access rules that are used in the inference engine to provide the right service according to the users needs.


This paper reports the preliminary results of experiments on listening to several sounds at once. Two issues are addressed: segregating speech streams from a mixture of sounds, and interfacing speech stream segregation with automatic speech recognition (ASR). Speech stream segregation (SSS) is modeled as a process of extracting harmonic fragments, grouping these extracted harmonic fragments, and substituting some sounds for non-harmonic parts of groups. This system is implemented by extending the harmonic-based stream segregation system reported at AAAI-94 and IJCAI-95. The main problem in interfacing SSS with HMM-based ASR is how to improve the recognition performance which is degraded by spectral distortion of segregated sounds caused mainly by the binaural input, grouping, and residue substitution. Our solution is to re-train the parameters of the HMM with training data binauralized for four directions, to group harmonic fragments according to their directions, and to substitute the residue of harmonic fragments for non-harmonic parts of each group. Experiments with 500 mixtures of two women's utterances of a word showed that the cumulative accuracy of word recognition up to the 10th candidate of each woman's utterance is, on average, 75%.


The first three words of Isa 13:18 have never been satisfactorily explained. The problems (especially semantic) that they raise are discussed before the proposal is made that their content fits much more closely with vv. 15-16. It is thus probable that they are some form of misplaced gloss or comment on those verses, now reworked (even if unsuccessfully) to try to make them fit their new setting.


The failure rate model of External Environment Maintenance(EEM) for a system under severe environment is investigated. EEM, which is recently introduced concept, is a maintenance activity controlling external environment factors that potentially cause system failure such as cleaning equipment, controlling temperature (humidity) and removing dust inside of electronic appliances. EEM can not have any influence on the inherent failure rate of a system but reduce the severity of the external environment causing failure since it deals with only external environment factors. Therefore, we propose two failure rate models to express the improvement effect of EEM: The intensity reduction model and age reduction model. The intensity and age reduction models of EEM are developed assuming the quality of improvement effect is proportioned to an extra intensity or age respectively. The validation of proposed failure rate models is performed in order of data generation, parameter estimation and test for goodness-of-fit.


Monogenic diseases, including hemophilia, represent ideal targets for genome-editing approaches aimed at correcting a defective gene. Here we report that systemic adeno-associated virus (AAV) vector delivery of zinc finger nucleases (ZFNs) and corrective donor template to the predominantly quiescent livers of adult mice enables production of high levels of human factor IX in a murine model of hemophilia B. Further, we show that off-target cleavage can be substantially reduced while maintaining robust editing by using obligate heterodimeric ZFNs engineered to minimize unwanted cleavage attributable to homodimerization of the ZFNs. These results broaden the therapeutic potential of AAV/ZFN-mediated genome editing in the liver and could expand this strategy to other nonreplicating cell types.


Tactile spatial acuity on the fingerpad was measured using a grating orientation task. In this task, subjects are required to identify the orientation of square-wave gratings placed on the skin. Previous studies have shown that performance varies as a function of the width of the grooves in the gratings. In the present study, both groove width and the overall size and configuration of the contactors were varied. Sensitivity improved with wider grooves and with larger contactors. Additional measurements showed that the improved sensitivity is not the result of the increase in total area contacted, but rather is due to two other factors associated with larger contactors. One is the greater linear extent of the larger contactors. The other appears to be due to the reduction in the interference produced by the outer edge of the contactor. Specifically, as the contactor increases in size, the distance between the outer edge and the center portion of the grooves also increases. It was also shown that subjects are more sensitive to a single, continuous groove as compared with two grooves of the same total length but spatially discontinuous. Similarly, subjects are more sensitive to a contactor with a continuous groove than to a contactor in which just the end points of the groove are presented. The results are generally consistent with the results of peripheral, neurophysiological recordings. The results are discussed in terms of the way in which both spatial and intensive factors may affect sensitivity to grating orientation.


Introduction . The location of intracranial neoplasms and the process of treating these lesions itself can significantly affect the quality of life of patients. Hence, the aim of the study was to investigate the impact of the location of the brain tumour on the quality of life of surgically treated patients. Aim . The aim of the study was to investigate the influence of the location of the brain tumour on the quality of life of surgically treated patients. Material and Methods . The study included 236 patients with brain tumours operated at the Department of Neurosurgery of the 10 th Military Clinical Hospital with the SP ZOZ Polyclinic in Bydgoszcz. Patients with different tumour locations were included: in the temporal lobe, in the frontal lobe, in the parietal lobe, in the ventricles of the brain and in the extra-cerebral locations. The following questionnaires were used to assess the quality of life: EORTC QLQ-C30 and EORTC QLQ-BN20, in which the patients were tested three times: on the day of admission to the Clinic, on the fifth day after brain tumour surgery and 30 days after the surgery. Results . Patients' quality of life decreased in the early postoperative period in all groups in terms of tumour location, especially in patients with tumours of the frontal lobe (-0.104) and ventricular neoplasms (-0.109) (p > 0.05). On the 30 th day, however, an improvement in the quality of life was achieved in all groups, the highest improvement was obtained in patients with tumours located extra-cerebrally (0.115) and tumours of the temporal lobe (0.097) (p > 0.05). Conclusions . There was no effect of the location of the brain tumour on the quality of life of the studied patients. In the early postoperative period, the quality of life decreased, while it improved 30 days after the surgery. (JNNN 2020;9(3):91–96)


The progress of Staphylococcus aureus infection from inoculation to the early chronic stage was examined in 12 Israeli-Holstein cows (four primiparous and eight multiparous) for up to 48 d after inoculation. Before inoculation, the primiparous cows were free from any infection and the multiparous cows were infected by coagulase-negative staphylococci. Two quarters in each cow were inoculated intracisternally following milking with 2000 cfu of a local prevailing Staph. aureus strain, VL-8407. Infection was established in 21 out of 24 quarters. The control quarters remained free from infection during the study, with no significant change in function. No statistically significant differences were found between primiparous and multiparous cows in the responses examined. Somatic cell count (SCC) increased within 24 h of inoculation and remained high for the duration of the study. In the infected quarters mean ln (SCC) increased within 24 h from 9.9 +/- 0.5 before inoculation to 13.0 +/- 0.2 after inoculation; most of the cells were neutrophils. N-acetyl-beta-glucosaminidase activity, expressed as ln (nnmol/min per l), was increased from 0.9 +/- 0.6 to 2.4 +/- 0.2 by inoculation, and was highly correlated with SCC. The Staph. aureus count fluctuated with no particular relationship with SCC. The phagocytic activity of neutrophils was significantly lower in the inoculated than in the control quarters and this difference increased with time after inoculation. CD8+ T lymphocytes were the main subpopulation of lymphocytes found in inoculated quarters. After inoculation, maximum but not minimum electrical conductivity (EC) recorded during milking increased significantly. The rises in maximum EC varied significantly among cows. The rises in SCC were associated with a persistent increase in EC in only one of the eight cows examined. No clinical signs were observed, and milk yield and composition were not affected during the study period. The results suggest that some strains of Staph. aureus may induce a relatively mild response in mammary glands of cows in mid lactation, and that the concomitant development of such chronic Staph. aureus infections in two quarters may not be detected by changes in the EC of composite milk and in the yield of the cow.


The accelerated aging test consists of evaluating the vigor of the seeds under conditions of high temperature and humidity, with the purpose of identifying the physiological quality of lots with similar germination. The objective of this study was to evaluate the efficiency of the accelerated aging test for classifying seed lots of P. moniliformis at different levels of vigor. Initially, the seed lots were assessed by means of seedling emergence, life velocity index, shoot length and root length, total dry mass of seedlings and determination of water content, before and after each period of aging. The experimental design for the whole world was based on a 3 × 4 factorial scheme (three seed lots and four periods of 24, 48, 72 and 96 h duration), with separate evaluations at temperatures of 38 °C and 41 °C. The accelerated aging test conducted at a temperature of 41 °C for 24 h was a more suitable combination for separating batches of P. moniliformis according to different levels of vigour, and made it possible to obtain results similar to the classification of lots in relation to the initial quality.


Using specifi c bio-techniques of compared medicine contribute to the improvement of animal health, to increase the produci vity of animal products, to the conservai on of various animal species and also advances in human health. Transgenic animal organisms can be used for fundamental research (ideni fying genes, elucidai ng the funci ons of genes, controlled modifi cai on of genes); for pharmacological studies, especially chemicals that can act on tumour cells, to obtain recombinant proteins; bioreactors; food biotechnology etc. Bio-food is an alternai ve source for the future's generai on and economy. All professionals and specialists in this fi eld must have a prevision, they must take into account the current bio-food possibilii es and sizes depending on the market needs, toconserve and develop new resources of food.


Multi-unit residential building (MURB) occupants often express dissatisfaction with their suites' acoustic conditions despite existing building acoustic standards and regulations as well as growing research on noise control and building acoustics. Reasons for this include the lack of
 proper characterization of acoustic comfort in MURBs and lack of comprehensive and stringent regulations. To better understand factors that impact acoustic comfort and explore strategies to improve the acoustic performance of MURBs, investigations of acoustic conditions were carried out. This
 work presents the results of the investigations which include subjective and objective evaluations of acoustic conditions in two MURBs. Impact sound insulation measurements using both a tapping machine and a rubber ball as well as 24-hour indoor noise monitoring were carried out in unoccupied
 suites. An online survey was then used to collect subjective assessments of the noise conditions in the buildings and the effects on occupants' comfort post occupancy. Results of the data analysis suggest that occupants are more sensitive to low-frequency impact sounds than mid- and high-frequency
 impact noise.


The opinion mining and the sentiment analysis of the network comment are the key points of the text analysis. By excavating the comment information of the online products, the real demand of the customers can be obtained, however it does not reflect the differences among the requirements. In this paper, we come up with the ideal to combine the data mining technology with the Kano model, first we discover the feature theme of the product by establishing the comment mining model, and analysis the sentiment of the comment through machine learning to acquire the parameters of Kano model such as the initial importance. Finally obtain the real demand of multiple customers as well as the weight of demand. Although we take research on mobile phone products on the net market to proved its feasibility and effectiveness.


Reconfigurable solar converter is a new converter configuration which uses single phase single stage topology to perform inverter(dc-ac), chopper(dc-dc) and rectifier (ac-dc) operations. This converter solution minimises the number of conversion stages, which increases the efficiency and reduces the overall cost of the converter. Hence this converter solution is appealing for PV-battery-grid tied applications. This topology helps to reduce the harmonics by isolating the dc and ac loads to the dc supply side and ac supply side respectively. Reconfigurable converter is the basic building block for the future hybrid homes.


The empirical relationship between economic diversity and economic stability varies when it is measured at different geographical scales. This paper evaluates the role of geographical scales in assessing this diversity-stability relationship among counties, states, Economic Areas (EAs), metropolitan counties and metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) in the contiguous U.S. When choosing geographical units to analyze regional economic structure, it is necessary that the geographical units be large enough in population and employment to quantify effectively the regional economic structure. In addition, this paper proposes that geographical units also should be functionally aggregated regions as they better represent spatial interactions than formal regions do, and they consider the possible temporal variations in the boundaries of regional economic structures.


The effects of testing procedures and material characteristics on the cyclic triaxial strength of cohesionless soils were reviewed with the intent of categorizing the significance of these factors for cognizance in futuretesting standards. It was found that specimen preparation methods, differences between intact and reconstituted specimens, density, and prestraining have major effects on cyclic strength. Intermediate but significant effects influencing cyclic strength are confining stress, loading wave form, material grain size (D 5 0 ) and gradation, overconsolidation ratio (OCR), and consolidation stress ratio (K c ). Other factors having minor effects are freezing intact specimens, loading frequency, specimen size, and frictionless caps and bases. Future testing programs or standards should consider these factors and their effects on test results.


This paper focuses on wireless powered 5G dense cellular networks, where base station (BS) delivers energy to user equipment (UE) via the microwave radiation in sub-6 GHz or millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency, and UE uses the harvested energy for uplink information transmission. By addressing the impacts of employing different numbers of antennas and bandwidths at lower and higher frequencies, we evaluate the amount of harvested energy and throughput in such networks. Based on the derived results, we obtain the required small cell density to achieve an expected level of harvested energy or throughput. Also, we obtain that when the ratio of the number of sub-6-GHz BSs to that of the mmWave BSs is lower than a given threshold, UE harvests more energy from an mmWave BS than a sub-6-GHz BS. We find how many mmWave small cells are needed to perform better than the sub-6-GHz small cells from the perspectives of harvested energy and throughput. Our results reveal that the amount of harvested energy from the mmWave tier can be comparable to the sub-6-GHz counterpart in the dense scenarios. For the same tier scale, mmWave tier can achieve higher throughput. Furthermore, the throughput gap between different mmWave frequencies increases with the mmWave BS density.


Objective: To evaluate the behavior of coagulation-related tests like prothrombin time (PT) and activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) in chronic diabetic patients. Study Design: Cross-sectional study Place and Duration of Study: Department of Hematology, Aziz Bhatti Hospital, Gujrat, Pakistan from 1st July 2022 to 31stDecember 2022. Methodology: One hundred and seventy nine patients were enrolled. Prothrombin time and activated partial Thromboplastin time were performed from the patient's samples. Results: Forty four patients were with good glycemic control and 135 were with poor glycemic control. It was revealed that patients with type 2 diabetes with poor glycemic control had lower levels of PT concentration 10.95±1.67 and prothrombin time was 11.50±1.331 in good glycemic control patients (P=0.04).APTT result was insignificant with 33.40±2.889 in poor glycemic control patients and while in good glycemic control APTT 34.08±1.348 (p=0.389). Conclusion: Prothrombin time was low if diabetes is uncontrolled. Early detection of lower PT may indicate that micro or macrovascular coagulopathies are in progress. APTT analysis shows insignificant results in diabetic patients and did not find a special role in coagulopathies disorders. Keywords: Coagulopathies, Prothrombin time, Activated partial thromboplastin time, Chronic diabetic patients


In this paper cross-relaxation between nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers and substitutional nitrogen in a diamond crystal was studied. It was demonstrated that optically detected magnetic resonance signals (ODMR) can be used to measure these signals successfully. The ODMR were detected at axial magnetic field values around 51.2~mT in a diamond sample with a relatively high (200~ppm) nitrogen concentration. We observed transitions that involve magnetic sublevels that are split by the hyperfine interaction. Microwaves in the frequency ranges from 1.3 GHz to 1.6 GHz ($m_S=0\longrightarrow m_S=-1$ NV transitions) and from 4.1 to 4.6 GHz ($m_S=0\longrightarrow m_S=+1$ NV transitions) were used.
To understand the cross-relaxation process in more detail and, as a result, reproduce measured signals more accurately, a model was developed that describes the microwave-initiated transitions between hyperfine levels of the NV center that are undergoing anti-crossing and are strongly mixed in the applied magnetic field. Additionally, we simulated the extent to which the microwave radiation used to induce ODMR in the NV center also induced transitions in the substitutional nitrogen via cross-relaxation.
The improved understanding of the NV processes in the presence of a magnetic field will be useful for designing NV-diamond-based devices for a wide range of applications from implementation of q-bits to hyperpolarization of large molecules to various quantum technological applications such as field sensors.


This paper presents a new control scheme for an active front-end rectifier using model-based predictive control. The control strategy minimizes a cost function, which represents the desired behavior of the converter. Future values of currents and power are predicted using a discrete-time model. The active and reactive powers are directly controlled by selecting the optimal switching state. The main advantages of this method are that there is no need of linear current controllers, coordinates transformations or modulators. The rectifier operates with sinusoidal input currents and unity power factor. Simulation and experimental results are presented to verify the performance of the proposed power control scheme.


In electron beam assisted physical vapour deposition (EB-PVD) technique, the online characterization of the evaporator is essential for process optimisation and control. In applications such as decorative and corrosion resistance coating, the knowledge of time average distribution of vapour is essential, whereas in some real time applications such as isotope purification, surface hardening and alloying etc., real time knowledge of vapour distribution and vapour propagation is important. The online characterization of various parameters related to the evaporator and associated processes using least expensive techniques is necessary to know the process throughput. Measurement of atom flux using quartz crystal thickness monitor can be one such techniques. The experimental studies were carried out to characterize the evaporator using thickness monitor by measuring copper vapour propagation and distribution over the two dimensional source. The experimental data measured at two heights corresponding to aspect ratio 2 and 3 are presented and the behaviour of expanding vapour is discussed. This technique can also be used to estimate the source temperature from the deposition rate data, which is discussed in the paper with its validation using measured temperature using two-colour pyrometer.


Limiting distribution results are obtained for the sufficient statistics of an asymmetric Ising model on a torus. Applications are discussed.


SUMMARY Sexual identity is an individual being aware of his/her sexuality and acting in a manner appropriate to it. With or without intellectual disability, every individual is born with his/her gender. For centuries, it was thought that individuals with intellectual disabilities were inhuman, asexual, or childish, or that they were over fond of sex and that they could not control their sexuality. However, these individuals were perceived as such because they did not know where, when and in which situations sexual behaviors were appropriate. In other words, they could not control their sexual behaviors. Just like healthy individuals, those with intellectual disabilities also have sexual needs and desires. Sex education starts at birth. It continues until reaching adulthood or beyond. Parents are the best guides for all children, either those with intellectual disability or not. The most accurate information about sex, which is an issue when there are conflict ing messages from different sources, should be first provided by parents. There is no suitable model of sex education for all children with intellectual disabilities and information should be appropriate to the child's level of understanding. Those with intellectual disabilities are more at risk of sexual abuse than others in society and for this reason, it is important to adopt a multidisciplinary team (doctor, nurse, midwife, psychologist and social services specialist e.g.) approach towards the sexual health of the intellectually disabled. The most accurate information sharing about sex depends on good communication between families, schools and individuals, and by receiving professional support when needed. This review emphasizes the importance of sexual education for children with intellectual disabilities and the role of nurses in sexual education.


Recognition of facial expression is a challenge when it comes to computer vision. The primary reasons are class imbalance due to data collection and uncertainty due to inherent noise such as fuzzy facial expressions and inconsistent labels. However, current research has focused either on the problem of class imbalance or on the problem of uncertainty, ignoring the intersection of how to address these two problems. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a framework based on Resnet and Attention to solve the above problems. We design weight for each class. Through the penalty mechanism, our model will pay more attention to the learning of small samples during training, and the resulting decrease in model accuracy can be improved by a Convolutional Block Attention Module (CBAM). Meanwhile, our backbone network will also learn an uncertain feature for each sample. By mixing uncertain features between samples, the model can better learn those features that can be used for classification, thus suppressing uncertainty. Experiments show that our method surpasses most basic methods in terms of accuracy on facial expression data sets (e.g., AffectNet, RAF-DB), and it also solves the problem of class imbalance well.


In today's information age, data is immensely valuable. Data is so valuable that many companies are willing to give away products and services in order to generate that data. Once these companies have this data, they are able to monetize it typically via advertising or licensing access to their vast database. But, what if the products or services these companies give away infringe upon a valid patent? What is the correct remedy to an injured patentee against a defendant whose accused product or service generates no direct revenue? A royalty that reaches through to the final product enabled by the patented technology, analogous to the reach-through royalty used in the biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries seems applicable in these cases and can be supported by a correct application of the Georgia-Pacific reasonable royalty factors. Valuing this enabling technology as a building block and analogous to the basic research tools of the biotechnology industry in constructing damage remedies will achieve an equitable result while still maintaining the incentives of the patent system.


Land use and land cover are essential for maintaining and managing the natural resources on the earth surface. A complex set of economic, demographic, social, cultural, technological, and environmental processes usually result in the change in the land use/land cover change (LULC). Pokhara Metropolitan is influenced mainly by the combination of various driving forces: geographical location, high rate of population growth, economic opportunity, globalization, tourism activities, and political activities. In addition to this, geographically steep slope, rugged terrain, and fragile geomorphic conditions and the frequency of earthquakes, floods, and landslides make the Pokhara Metropolitan region a disaster-prone area. The increment of the population along with infrastructure development of a given territory leads towards the urbanization. It has been rapidly changing due to urbanization, industrialization and internal migration since the 1970s. The landscapes and ground patterns are frequently changing on time and prone to disaster. Here a study has been carried to study on LULC for the last 18 years (2000-2018). The supervised classification on Landsat Imagery was performed and verified the classification through computing the error matrix. Besides, the water bodies and vegetation area were extracted through the Normalized Difference Water Index (NDWI) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDWI) respectively. This research shows that during the last 18 years the agricultural areas diminishing by 15.66% while urban area is increasing by 13.2%. This research is beneficial for preparing the plan and policy in the sustainable development of Pokhara Metropolitan.


This paper studies how cities' industrial structure shapes their life and death. Our analysis exploits the large heterogeneity in the early composition of English and Welsh cities. We extract built-up clusters from early historical maps, identify settlements at the onset of the nineteenth century, and isolate exogenous variation in the nature of their rise during the transformation of the economy by the end of the nineteenth century. We then estimate the causal impact of cities' population and industrial specialization on their later dynamics. We find that cities specializing in a small number of industries decline in the long run. We develop a dynamic spatial model of cities to isolate the forces which govern their life and death. Intratemporally, the model captures the role of amenities, land, local productivity and trade in explaining the distribution of economic activity across industries and cities. Intertemporally, the model can disentangle the role of aggregate industry dynamics from city-specific externalities. We find that the long-run dynamics of English and Welsh cities is explained to a large extent by such dynamic externalities à la Jacobs.


Among individuals of African and Latinx descent compared to those of European background, there is a higher prevalence, earlier onset, more rapid progression of primary open angle glaucoma and greater incidence of blindness. Although some suggest that outreach, education and screening programs may expand earlier diagnosis, and attention to access, cost of treatment, and adherence will improve outcomes, there is increasing evidence of genetic and physiologic differences which may be associated with these disease disparities.


Diethylstilbestrol (DES) can induce a recruitment into the proliferative pool of previously resting breast cancer cells in vivo. In order to verify if estrogenic recruitment could result in a larger tumor cell killing by chemotherapy, 117 patients with metastatic breast cancer were randomized to receive CEF (cyclophosphamide, 600 mg/m2; epidoxorubicin, 60 mg/m2; and 5-fluorouracil, 600 mg/m2 on day 1); DES-CEF (cyclophosphamide, 600 mg/m2 on day 1; DES, 1 mg orally on days 5, 6, and 7; and epidoxorubicin, 60 mg/m2, and 5-fluorouracil, 600 mg/m2, on day 8) every 21 days. No significant difference in objective response rates, survival, or progression-free survival was seen between the two regimens. Patients in the DES-CEF arm experienced a higher complete response (CR) rate (24.1% v 16.1%), which reached statistical significance in the case of soft-tissue metastasis (48% v 27.3%; P less than .05) and estrogen receptor-negative tumors (35.7% v 11.1%; P less than .025). Survival and progression-free survival of patients refractory to treatment were not worsened by estrogenic recruitment. In the subset of patients failing after adjuvant polychemotherapy, DES-CEF unexpectedly induced a significantly longer survival (greater than 802 days v 375 days; P = .029) and progression-free survival (239 days v 192 days; P = .041) than CEF. The DES-CEF regimen was more myelotoxic, and 43.3% of the DES-CEF cycles had to be delayed because of leukopenia in comparison with 11.8% of the CEF cycles (P less than .0001). In conclusion, chemotherapy with estrogenic recruitment was able to induce more CRs in certain subsets of patients and a significant prolongation in survival and progression-free survival of patients failing after adjuvant polychemotherapy. These results have been achieved despite a significantly lower dose intensity of chemotherapy.


This study aimed to evaluate the use of mineral and mineral protein supplement in finishing phase Nellore, grazing Brachiaria brizantha during the rainy season, and its implications for forage intake, animal performance and nutrient digestibility. The fieldwork was located in an area of 26 ha, divided into four paddocks of approximately 6.5 hectares (ha), formed with Brachiaria brizantha Marandu. We used 18 Nellore with 28 months live weight of 400.5 ± 7.5kg and castrated in two treatments: mineral supplementation until the termination, and mineral supplementation of low protein intake to termination. There was no effect on the consumption of pasture, neutral detergent fiber, crude protein, ether extract, non-fiber carbohydrates, ash and total digestible nutrients. The animal performance and feed conversion were not affected by supplementation. There was no effect on the coefficient of digestibility of dry matter, organic matter, crude protein, ether extract and neutral detergent fiber. There was an effect of protein salt supplementation on the digestibility of non-fiber carbohydrates. In the rainy season the utilization of mineral salt allows the use of animals in pastures.


Pulmonary emphysema and chronic bronchitis together are referred to under the acronym COPD. It is estimated that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affects approximately 6% to 15.8% of the population aged above 40 years, as the data obtained by the PLATINO study for Sao Paulo are generalized for the whole Brazilian population. Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is the fifth leading cause of admission of patients above the age of 40 to the public health system in Brazil – 196,698 admissions into hospital per year, and expenditures of approximately 72 million Reais. The chronic inflmmatory process related to COPD may produce alterations affecting from bronchi (chronic bronquitis), bronchioles (obstructive bronchiolitis) to the lung parenchyma (pulmonary emphysema). Such anatomopathological alterations which are caused principally by smoking are found in varibale proportions among individuals affected by the disease, in correlation with clinical manifestations. Pulmonary emphysema (an injury that predominates in the lung parenchyma) and chronic bronchitis (injury affecting principally bronchi and bronchioles) represent the extreme manifestations of such alterations. The correlation between pathological anatomy and radiology in the investigation of enphysema is based on the concept that "excessive transparency at radiology results from an increased volume of air in relation to the amount of pulmonary tissues and blood which X-ray bemams encounter on its way". The performance of plain radiography in the investigation of COPD is quite limited since in the absence of air trapping abnormalities cannot be detected on the image. In such cases, the main alteration corresponds to decreased vasculature which is only noticeable very belatedly in the natural course of disease, besides representing an extremely subjective criterion. In the presence of air trapping, the most reliable criteria include: 1. lowered or rectified diaphragm, below and anterior to the


We wish to address the question of whether iron plays a regulatory role in the Bradyrhizobium japonicum/soybeam symbiosis. Iron may be an important regulatory signal in planta as the bacteria must acquire iron from their plant hosts and iron-containing proteins figure prominently in all nitrogen-fixing symbioses. For example, the bacterial partner is believed to synthesize the heme moiety of leghemoglobin, which may represent as much as 25--30% of the total soluble protein in an infected plant cell. For this reason, we have focused our attention on the regulation by iron of the first step in the bacterial heme biosynthetic pathway. The enzyme which catalyzes this step, 5-aminolevulinic acid synthase, is encoded by the hemA gene which we had previously cloned and sequenced. Specific objectives include: to define the cis-acting sequences which confer iron regulation on the B. japonicum hemA gene; to identify trans-acting factors which regulate the expression of hemA by iron; to identify new loci which are transcriptionally responsive to changes in iron availability; and to examine the effects of mutations in various known regulatory genes for their effect on the expression of hemA.


Background: Neuron-specific enolase (NSE) is a useful indicator of neuronal injury in acute cerebral infarction. We investigated the changes in serial serum NSE levels in patients with acute cerebral infarction. Methods: We measured serial serum NSE levels at 24, 48, 72, and 96 hours, and 2 weeks after the onset of cerebral infarction in 30 patients (15 territorial and 15 lacunar infarctions). We also measured the NSE levels in age-matched controls (n=15) who had no evidence of acute stroke or other neurological disorders. The NSE level was measured using a radioimmunoassay. Results: The initial serum NSE level was significantly higher in the cerebral infarction group than in the control group (6.62 vs 4.71.6 ng/mL [meanSD], p=0.006). This difference was also observed between the territorial and lacunar infarction groups until 72 hours after the cerebral infarction. The serum NSE level peaked at 72 hours after the infarction in both lacunar and territorial infarction groups. The correlation between the NSE level and the score on the NIH Stroke Scale was strongest at 48 hours after the cerebral infarction (r=0.469).Conclusions: Serum NSE level can be a good indicator for distinguishing lacunar from territorial infarction during the acute stage of cerebral infarction.


Robust automation of analysis procedures capable of handling diverse data sets is critical for high data throughput experiments at the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS). One challenge encountered in this process is determining the number of clusters required for the execution of conventional clustering algorithms. It is demonstrated here that bi-cross validation of the inverted and regularized Laplacian, used in the spectral clustering algorithm, yields a robust minimum at the predicted number of clusters and kernel hyper parameters. These results indicate that the process of estimating the number of clusters should not be divorced from the process of estimating other hyper parameters. Applying this method to LCLS xray scattering data demonstrates the ability to identify clusters of dropped shots without manually setting boundaries on detector fluence and provides a path towards identifying rare events.


Background: In Ethiopia despite many interventions, 74% of mothers are delivered outside of health facilities. The gap between institutional delivery (26%) and antenatal care booked women (62%) is huge. Even if, respectful delivery care is the best and key strategy to increase institutional delivery, little is known about the implementation. The objective of this study was to assess the proportion and associated factors of respectful delivery care among mothers delivered in Debre Berhan town public health facilities, Ethiopia, 2019.Methods: Facility-based cross-sectional study design was conducted among 413 consecutively selected mothers delivered in Debre Berhan town public health facilities from November 15 to December 30, 2019. Pretested structured interview-administered questionnaire was used. Respectful delivery care was assessed using twenty dichotomous items. Mothers who were reported yes for all of the items were considered to have received respectful maternity care. Data were entered into Epi-data version 3.1 and bivariable and multivariable logistic analyses were computed by using SPSS version 25 software. The Adjusted Odds ratio along with a 95% confidence interval was used to assess the magnitude and direction of the association. A statistically significant association was declared at a P-value of less than 0.05.Result: The proportion of respectful delivery care in this study was 35.7% (95% CI: 31%, 40.3%). Day time delivery [AOR=2.48; 95% CI (1.55, 3.99)], secondary or more educated mothers [AOR= 3.59; 95% CI (1.53, 8.42)], having a companion during delivery care [AOR=2.45; 95% CI (1.47, 4.07)], and Antenatal care visits [AOR= 2.54; 95% CI (1.60, 4.01)] were the significantly associated factors. Conclusion: The proportion of respectful delivery care in this study is low. Hence, health administrators and health workers should allow mothers to have a companion during delivery care. Furthermore, improve antenatal care visits and education has to be the direction of the health administration and education sectors.


In the twenty-first century, the problem of ecological environment and sustainable development has been paid the most attention. However, Wujing Industrial Zone in Shanghai has serious environmental pollution. By introducing the case of ecological greening construction in old industrial areas, both the domestic and foreign ones, and researching the greening status of factories which are in this area, it is pointed out that the factory greening in Wujing Industrial Zone has some shortcomings, such as bad landscaping ratio, trees planting in inappropriate area, simplex plants, and so on, while analyzing the reasons why these happened. At the same time, some countermeasures are put forward to make the ecology better, such as linking up with the industrial structure adjustment to optimize the ecology, improving the ecological environment, and perfecting the regulations and policies for the green space system in old industrial zones.


The aim of this study was to determine whether children's perceptions of their own competence levels reflected their actual strengths and weaknesses (Specificity Hypothesis) or transcended these (Generality Hypothesis). Harter and Pike's measure of self-perception was administered to 163 prematurely born 6-year-olds with or without motor co-ordination and/or reading problems. Associations between children's self-perceptions and their scores on standardised tests of motor co-ordination and reading were assessed in three distinct ways. These analyses produced converging results: self-perceptions of physical competence were associated specifically with performance on the Movement ABC Test, and self-perceptions of cognitive competence were associated specifically with performance on the BAS Word Reading Scale. Our results support the Specificity Hypothesis.


As an important concept in the logistics disciplines, Logistics Volume is significant to the forecast of regional logistics quantity, the ratification of the logistics scale and the constitution of logistics strategy. In previous research, there was no unified definition and calculation method of logistics volume, which brought obscures to the conception and difficulties in practice. This paper gave reasonable definition to logistics volume, and made deep analysis of its connotation, considering logistics volume as the summation of the quantity of logistics operation, but not the simple superposition of the operation quantity. Logistics volume was defined as a multidimensional vector group, and the module of the vector group stands for the logistics scale while the value stands for logistics structure. On the base of these definitions, a general formula for the calculation of logistics volume was obtained, and a simplified calculation method was further derived upon reasonable deletion of complications in actual computations. The purpose of this research is to carry out useful explorations and to obtain helpful results and conclusions in the theoretical research of Logistics Volume.


In 1992 the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was adopted at the Rio Conference. In 1994 the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS Agreement) was adopted in Marrakech. From the outset, questions were raised as to whether there are conflicts or potential conflicts between the objectives and rules of these two international undertakings. These questions have been on the agenda of the WTO TRIPS Council and the Committee on Trade and Environment, they have been raised in the context of work programs and negotiations at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), they have been considered by the Conference of the Parties of the CBD, and they are the subject of numerous studies and reports by governments, intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations. This study attempts to clarify the issues at stake in analysis of the relationship between the TRIPS Agreement, related international patent system rules and the CBD. It examines the conflicts or potential conflicts between the objectives and rules of these international undertakings, and it makes certain recommendations regarding the promotion of complementarity among these systems. In terms of subject matter, this study considers only genetic resources and does not address "traditional knowledge". This study first identifies the objectives of the international patent system as it is embodied in the TRIPS Agreement and WIPO Conventions, and how these objectives are implemented. Second, it identifies the objectives of the CBD and its method of implementation. Third, it identifies conflicts or potential conflicts between the objectives and methods of implementation of the two rule systems. Fourth, it examines proposals that have so far been made to ameliorate or resolve conflicts. Fifth, it suggests means for promoting complementarity between the two systems, including rule changes where necessary or appropriate.The study concludes that promotion of the objectives of the CBD would be furthered by multilateral adoption of a mandatory requirement for the disclosure of the source and origin of genetic resources in patent applications. Such a requirement is appropriate to protect the interests of developing and developed countries which house genetic resource stocks. This requirement would be consistent with existing rules of the TRIPS Agreement. However, to give it effect it should be adopted as a new TRIPS Agreement rule. While national action to give effect to such a requirement is permitted under existing WIPO administrative treaties, establishing a mandatory multilateral standard under such treaties would also require amendment. The strength of any set of legal rules is dependent upon its enforceability. Therefore, it is important that states be obligated to provide for the effective enforcement of a mandatory disclosure requirement.Existing patent law standards among advanced legal systems impose upon patent applicants affirmative duties with respect to the disclosure of information and establish penalties which include determinations of invalidity or provision for revocation of patents. Because the failure to disclose information regarding the source and origin of genetic resources may be relevant to the issue of patentability, including inventorship, it is appropriate that existing equitable doctrines that protect the integrity of the international patent system be extended to this area. It should not be an objective of prospective remedial measures to introduce insecurity into the international patent system, recognizing that patents are inherently insecure. Rather, the objective of prospective remedial measures should be to effectively encourage compliance with agreed upon rules, in this case designed to promote the objectives of the CBD.


Neuromorphic computing and spiking neural networks (SNN) mimic the behavior of biological systems and have drawn interest for their potential to perform cognitive tasks with high energy efficiency. However, some factors such as temporal dynamics and spike timings prove critical for information processing but are often ignored by existing works, limiting the performance and applications of neuromorphic computing. On one hand, due to the lack of effective SNN training algorithms, it is difficult to utilize the temporal neural dynamics. Many existing algorithms still treat neuron activation statistically. On the other hand, utilizing temporal neural dynamics also poses challenges to hardware design. Synapses exhibit temporal dynamics, serving as memory units that hold historical information, but are often simplified as a connection with weight. Most current models integrate synaptic activations in some storage medium to represent membrane potential and institute a hard reset of membrane potential after the neuron emits a spike. This is done for its simplicity in hardware, requiring only a "clear" signal to wipe the storage medium, but destroys temporal information stored in the neuron.In this work, we derive an efficient training algorithm for Leaky Integrate and Fire neurons, which is capable of training a SNN to learn complex spatial temporal patterns. We achieved competitive accuracy on two complex datasets. We also demonstrate the advantage of our model by a novel temporal pattern association task. Codesigned with this algorithm, we have developed a CMOS circuit implementation for a memristor-based network of neuron and synapses which retains critical neural dynamics with reduced complexity. This circuit implementation of the neuron model is simulated to demonstrate its ability to react to temporal spiking patterns with an adaptive threshold.


The present article investigates experimentally and theoretically thermal and optical characteristics of thin film structures through measurement of thermal conductivity of Pyrex 7740 and reflectance in silicon thin film. The method is used to measure thermal conductivity of very thin film with high accuracy and the optical characteristics in thin films are studied to examine the influence of incidence angle of light on reflectance by using the CTM(Characteristics Transmission Method) and the 633 nm He-Ne laser reflectance measurement system. It is found that the estimated reflectance of silicon show good agreement with experimental data. In particular, the present study solves the EPRT(Equation of Phonon Radiative Transport) which is based on Boltzmann transport equation for predicting thermal conductivity of nanoscale film structures. From the results, the measured thermal conductivity is in good agreement with the previous published data. Moreover, thermal conductivities are estimated for different film thickness. It indicates that as film thickness decreases, thermal conductivity decreases substantially due to internal scattering.


In this paper, we present an end-to-end convolutional neural network (CNN) for depth completion. Our network consists of a geometry network and a context network. The geometry network, a single encoder-decoder network, learns to optimize a multi-task loss to generate an initial propagated depth map and a surface normal. The complementary outputs allow it to correctly propagate initial sparse depth points in slanted surfaces. The context network extracts a local and a global feature of an image to compute a bilateral weight, which enables it to preserve edges and fine details in the depth maps. At the end, a final output is produced by multiplying the initially propagated depth map with the bilateral weight. In order to validate the effectiveness and the robustness of our network, we performed extensive ablation studies and compared the results against state-of-the-art CNNbased depth completions, where we showed promising results on various scenes.


4D image construction of thoracic dynamic MRI data provides clinicians the capability of examining the dynamic function of the left and right lungs, left and right diaphragms, and left and right chest wall separately. For the method implemented based on free-breathing rapid 2D slice acquisitions, often part of the acquired data cannot be used for the 4D image reconstruction algorithm because some patients hold their breath or breathe in patterns that differ from regular tidal breathing. Manually eliminating abnormal image slices representing such abnormal breathing is very labor intensive considering that typical acquisitions contain ~3000 slices. This paper presents a novel respiratory signal classification algorithm based on optical flow techniques and a SVM classifier. The optical flow technique is used to track the speed of the diaphragm, and the motion features are extracted to train the SVM classification model. Due to the limited number of abnormal samples usually observed, 118 abnormal signals were generated by simulation by appropriately transforming the normal signals, so that the number of normal and abnormal signals reached 160 and 160, respectively. In the process of model training, our goal is to reduce the error rate of false negative abnormal signal detection (FN) as much as possible even at the cost of increasing false positive misclassification rate (FP) for normal signals. From 10 experiments we conducted, the average FN rate and FP rate reached 5% and 26%, respectively. The accuracy over all (real and simulated) samples was 85%. In all real samples, 82% of the abnormal data were correctly detected.


textabstractLymphatic filariasis (LF) is a mosquito borne parasitic disease of the tropics. Of the three species of parasites causing the disease, W. bancrofti transmitted by Culex quinquefasciatus is the most widely prevalent. Infection can lead to disabling chronic manifestations: lymphoedema, elephantiasis, and hydrocele. Transmission can be interrupted either by controlling the vector or parasite. Parasite control through mass drug administration (MDA) of antifilarial drugs seems to be more cost-effective than vector control. MDA can reduce the parasite load in the population, reduce transmission and hence prevent disease. Several countries initiated elimination programmes. Recommending a specific control strategy should be based on prospects of its favourable impact on the epidemiology and disease burden. Mathematical models are invaluable in helping to understand parasite population dynamics, aid decision-making about control strategies and evaluate long-term effects of control measures. This thesis contributed to (i) knowledge and quantification of the population dynamics of W. bancrofti, and (ii) to use this knowledge in the development and application of a simulation model (LYMFASIM). This model is based on the results of an integrated vector management study in Pondicherry, India. Epidemiological analyses indicated that prevalence of microfilaria (mf) in younger population is a better indicator of effectiveness of vector control than overall prevalence or intensity of mf. Assessment based on this indicator demonstrated the superiority of the integrated vector management programme over conventional method of vector control. Both field and experimental transmission studies demonstrated that parasite development in the vector is density-dependent. Simulation model based analysis of longitudinal data indicated that observed epidemiological patterns in Pondicherry are immune mediated. Variations between persons in exposure to vector biting and eliciting immune response are found to be plausible explanations for the observed variability in mf-density in the population. Model predicted trend in prevalence agreed with observations made during pre- and post control periods as well as three and seven years after stopping control. Predictions beyond the period of observations suggested that prevalence would reach the pre-control level 25 years after stopping control. Further application of the model to predict how long MDA to be continued to achieve elimination, showed that six annual MDA with diethylcarbamazine and albendazole would be sufficient if population coverage is 65% per round. The required duration of mass treatment increases with endemicity level.


Deletions of 2p11.2-p12 are exceedingly rare with few reported cases.1,2 Most patients display a mild-to-moderate developmental delay and intellectual disability. Additional manifestations are happy disposition, tendency to obesity, and minor dysmorphic features, such as short stature, prominent forehead, hypertelorism, broad nasal bridge, or large low-set ears. Occasionally congenital malformations are present, such as chest and spine abnormalities, urogenital malformations, or atrial septal defect.1 In this study, we report a patient presenting with early-onset atypical parkinsonism carrying a heterozygous 3.9-Mb deletion on 2p11.2.


Validating competency to meet accreditation and safety demands is a major challenge many organizations face. Traditional testing methods may only reflect guessing and may not capture the amount of misinformation nurses are using for critical decision making. Using a confidence-based learning methodology allows learners to correct misinformation and gain confidence and competency.


*1. OBJECTIVE This work presents a Bottom-Up strategy implementing methods of soft chemistry followed by processes of notconventional compaction for making of CoFe2O4 spinel nanostructured materials. The optimization of the process routes to obtain bulk and dense materials will be described in details along with the material nanostructures and magnetic properties. Initially, the nanopowders (10 nm) are obtained in solution by hydrolysis forced in polyol medium. CoFe 2O4 nanoparticles have been obtained starting from ionic salts (cobalt acetate and iron chlorate) dissolved in a polyol and heated at a boiling point. The chemical reactions are made possible by several properties of polyols, including high boiling point, dissolving, complexing, hydrolysing and protective properties. This route enables to synthesize particles of size and morphology controlled. These powders prove to have interesting magnetic properties in comparison with those worked out by other ways of soft chemistry [1] : high saturation magnetization near to the bulk materials and temperature of blocking higher than the ambient one.


With the increasing number of cores in chip multiprocessors, the design of an efficient communication fabric is essential to satisfy the bandwidth and energy requirements of multi-core systems. Scalable Network-on-Chip (NoC) designs are quickly becoming the standard communication framework to replace bus-based networks. However, the conventional metallic interconnects for inter-core communication consume excess energy and lower throughput which are major bottlenecks in NoC architectures. On-chip wireless interconnects can alleviate the power and bandwidth problems of traditional metallic NoCs. In this paper, we propose an adaptable wireless Network-on-Chip architecture (A-WiNoC) that uses adaptable and energy efficient wireless transceivers to improve network power and throughput by adapting channels according to traffic patterns. Our adaptable algorithm uses link utilization statistics to re-allocate wireless channels and a token sharing scheme to fully utilize the wireless bandwidth efficiently. We compare our proposed A-WiNoC to both wireless/electrical topologies with results showing a throughput improvement of 65%, a speedup between 1.4-2.6X on real benchmarks, and an energy savings of 25-35%.


For the first time, noninvasive measurements in pulp suspensions at consistencies ranging from 0.74%(w/w) up to 7.8%(w/w) have been performed simultaneously using ultrasound velocity profiling (UVP) and laser doppler anemometry (LDA) in an experimental pipe flow loop. Results show that both techniques can be used to determine the plug flow velocity with good agreement in much more concentrated pulp suspensions than what has been reported so far in the literature. Instantaneous velocity profiles have been obtained noninvasively in pipe flow using the UVP technique, and it is shown that combined with simultaneous pressure drop measurements, the UVP technique can be used to determine the yield stress in-line. Results further show that LDA works, with limited penetration depth of up to several millimeters, even in strongly opaque systems, such as in 7.8%(w/w) pulp. Deviating results were however obtained in the near wall region and more work is needed. © 2005 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2006


ABSTRACT:The Belmont Report has provided a useful and virtually universal framework for protecting human subjects from research abuses. However, it provides little to no guidance on the substance of human research. In an environment where major decisions concerning health-care access, funding, and regulation hinge on human research, this omission leaves downstream users of human research virtually unprotected and with few tools or frameworks to protect against a variety of practices that compromise the social value of human research. This essay advocates for the addition of a fourth principle to the Belmont three: "scientific integrity." Such a principle would seek to train human research on important social objectives while maximizing the accessibility, credibility, and generalizability of findings.


Protein structure alignment is a fundamental problem in computational and structural biology. While there has been lots of experimental/heuristic methods and empirical results, very few results are known regarding the algorithmic/complexity aspects of the problem, especially on protein local structure alignment. A well-known measure to characterize the similarity of two polygonal chains is the famous Fréchet distance, and with the application of protein-related research, a related discrete Fréchet distance has been used recently. In this paper, following the recent work of Jiang et al. we investigate the protein local structural alignment problem using bounded discrete Fréchet distance. Given m proteins (or protein backbones, which are 3D polygonal chains), each of length O(n), our main results are summarized as follows: * If the number of proteins, m, is not part of the input, then the problem is NP-complete; moreover, under bounded discrete Fréchet distance it is NP-hard to approximate the maximum size common local structure within a factor of n(1-epsilon). These results hold both when all the proteins are static and when translation/rotation are allowed. * If the number of proteins, m, is a constant, then there is a polynomial time solution for the problem.


AIMS
To estimate the health utilities and quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) in patients with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) receiving reldesemtiv versus placebo in FORTITUDE-ALS.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
We performed a post hoc analysis of clinical trial data from FORTITUDE-ALS (NCT03160898). This Phase IIb, double-blind, randomized, dose-ranging, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, 12-week trial evaluated reldesemtiv in patients with ALS. Health utilities from the five-level version of the EuroQol five-dimensional questionnaire (EQ-5D-5L) were estimated using ALS Functional Rating Scale-Revised (ALSFRS-R) scores collected during the trial. QALYs were estimated using the area under the curve method.

RESULTS
The full analysis set consisted of 456 patients (reldesemtiv n = 342, placebo n = 114), who received at least one dose of the double-blind study drug, and had ALSFRS-R assessed at baseline and at least one post-baseline assessment. The difference in EQ-5D-5L utility least-squares (LS) mean change from baseline to week 12 for reldesemtiv versus placebo, adjusted for baseline values, was statistically significant (0.03, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.01, 0.05; p = .0008). The incremental QALY of reldesemtiv versus placebo adjusted for baseline utility values showed a modest, but statistically significant difference (0.004, 95% CI: 0.001, 0.007; p = .0058).

CONCLUSIONS
This post hoc analysis of FORTITUDE-ALS suggests that reldesemtiv showed a modest but significant benefit in health utilities and QALYs compared with placebo. Future long-term studies that include direct collection of EQ-5D-5L data will be needed to confirm our findings.ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03160898.


Klebsiella pneumoniae clonal complex (CC) 258/11, comprising sequence types (STs) 258, 11 and closely related STs, is associated with dissemination of the K. pneumoniae carbapenemase (KPC). Hospital outbreaks of KPC CC258/11 infections have been observed globally and are very difficult to treat. As a consequence there is renewed interest in alternative infection control measures such as vaccines and phage or depolymerase treatments targeting the K pneumoniae polysaccharide capsule. To date, 78 immunologically distinct capsule variants have been described in K. pneumoniae. Previous investigations of ST258 and a small number of closely related strains suggested capsular variation was limited within this clone; only two distinct ST258 capsular synthesis (cps) loci have been identified, both acquired through large-scale recombination events (>50 kbp). Here we report comparative genomic analysis of the broader K. pneumoniae CC258/11. Our data indicate that several large-scale recombination events have shaped the genomes of CC258/11, and that definition of the complex should be broadened to include ST395 (also reported to harbour KPC). We identified 11 different cps loci within CC258/11, suggesting that capsular switching is actually common within the complex. We also observed several insertion sequences (IS) within the cps loci, and show further diversification of two loci through IS activity. These findings suggest the capsular loci of clinically important K. pneumoniae are under diversifying selection, which alters our understanding of the evolution of this important clone and has implications for the design of control measures targeting the capsule.


Ni‐based catalysts supported on TiO2, ZrO2 and SiO2 (in the form of mesoporous Santa Barbara Amorphous 15 (SBA‐15) and amorphous dense nanoparticles), were employed in the steam reforming of glycerol. Each sample was prepared by liquid phase synthesis of the support followed by impregnation with the active phase and calcination at 800 °C or by direct synthesis through flame pyrolysis. Many techniques have been used to assess the physical chemical properties of both the fresh and spent catalysts, such as atomic absorption, N2 adsorption/desorption, XRD, SEM, TEM, temperature‐programmed reduction (TPR), X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Micro‐Raman and FTIR spectroscopy. The samples showed different textural, structural and morphological properties, as well as different reducibility and thermal resistance depending on the preparation method and support. Some of these properties were tightly bound to catalyst performance, in terms of H2 productivity and stability towards coking and sintering. A key parameter was the metal–support interaction, which strongly depended on the preparation procedure. In particular, the stronger the interaction, the more stable the metallic Ni clusters, which in turn lead to a higher catalytic activity and stability. Surface acidity was also taken into account, in which the nature of the acid sites was differentiated (silanols, titanols or Lewis acid sites). The characterisation of the spent catalysts also allowed us to interpret the deactivation process. The formation of multi‐walled nanotubes was observed for every sample, though it was only in some cases that this led to severe deactivation.


Streptomyces mobaraensis DSM40847 has been identified by genome mining and confirmed to be a new bleomycin (BLM) producer. Manipulation of BLM biosynthesis in S. mobaraensis has been demonstrated, as exemplified by the engineered production of 6'-deoxy-BLM A2, providing a biotechnology platform for BLM biosynthesis and engineering. Comparison of DNA cleavage efficiency and kinetics among 6'-deoxy-BLM A2 and selected analogues supports the wisdom of altering the disaccharide moiety to fine-tune BLM activity.


A basic premise in graph signal processing (GSP) is that a graph encoding pairwise (anti-)correlations of the targeted signal as edge weights is exploited for graph filtering. However, existing fast graph sampling schemes are designed and tested only for positive graphs describing positive correlations. In this paper, we show that for datasets with strong inherent anti-correlations, a suitable graph contains both positive and negative edge weights. In response, we propose a linear-time signed graph sampling method centered on the concept of balanced signed graphs. Specifically, given an empirical covariance data matrix $\bar{\bf{C}}$, we first learn a sparse inverse matrix (graph Laplacian) $\mathcal{L}$ corresponding to a signed graph $\mathcal{G}$. We define the eigenvectors of Laplacian $\mathcal{L}_B$ for a balanced signed graph $\mathcal{G}_B$ -- approximating $\mathcal{G}$ via edge weight augmentation -- as graph frequency components. Next, we choose samples to minimize the low-pass filter reconstruction error in two steps. We first align all Gershgorin disc left-ends of Laplacian $\mathcal{L}_B$ at smallest eigenvalue $\lambda_{\min}(\mathcal{L}_B)$ via similarity transform $\mathcal{L}_p = \S \mathcal{L}_B \S^{-1}$, leveraging a recent linear algebra theorem called Gershgorin disc perfect alignment (GDPA). We then perform sampling on $\mathcal{L}_p$ using a previous fast Gershgorin disc alignment sampling (GDAS) scheme. Experimental results show that our signed graph sampling method outperformed existing fast sampling schemes noticeably on various datasets.


Copper telluride nanocubes, nanosheets, and nanoparticles were prepared by a solvothermal method under the protection of an inert atmosphere. The influence of reaction parameters, including precursor concentration, precursor ratio, precursor type, reaction time, reaction temperature, solvent, and organic ligands, on the size, morphology, crystalline structure, and composition of the resultant copper telluride nanostructures was comprehensively investigated. The results showed that the crystal structure and composition of the resultant nanostructures varied case by case, demonstrating the complexity of copper tellurides, despite their simple molecular formula. The obtained copper telluride nanostructures were tested as anodes in lithium ion batteries. The assembled Li/LiPF6/CuxTe cells exhibit extremely high cycling stability (up to 5000 cycles) and their highest specific capacity is 280 mA h g−1. The results also showed better performance of the Cu2−xTe nanosheet electrodes than those of electrodes made from nanoparticles and nanocubes, demonstrating the importance of controlling the morphology of copper telluride during preparation.


The Birman–Murakami–Wenzl algebra (BMW algebra) of type D n is shown to be semisimple and free of rank (2 n + 1)n!! − (2 n−1 + 1)n! over a specified commutative ring R, where n!! =1·3…(2n − 1). We also show it is a cellular algebra over suitable ring extensions of R. The Brauer algebra of type D n is the image of an R-equivariant homomorphism and is also semisimple and free of the same rank, but over the ring ℤ[δ±1]. A rewrite system for the Brauer algebra is used in bounding the rank of the BMW algebra above. As a consequence of our results, the generalized Temperley–Lieb algebra of type D n is a subalgebra of the BMW algebra of the same type.


Although numerous psychotropic medications have a reported efficacy in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), treatment of the condition remains largely empirical. The animal model of inescapable stress (IS) produces many physiological changes similar to PTSD in humans. The azapirones (e.g., buspirone, gepirone) are effective in alleviating the signs of IS in animals and should theoretically be effective in alleviating the symptoms of PTSD in humans. An open trial of buspirone in 8 patients meeting DSM-III-R criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder was conducted. Measurement tools included the Structured Interview for PTSD (SI-PTSD), Impact of Life Events Scale (ILES), and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI). Seven out of 8 patients exhibited a significant reduction in symptoms as measured by the SI-PTSD and BDI. The response was less significant on the ILES. Buspirone may be effective in alleviating the symptoms of PTSD. Further clinical trials to confirm this apparent efficacy appear warranted.


temporal lobe. Medially it was limited by ependyma, and laterally a small site of cortical rupture and communication with the subarachnoid space was in evidence. Satellite hannorrhages were present in the vicinity of the main hremorrhage. Secondary areas of hremorrhage measuring 3 to 5 mm. in diameter were found in the lower part of the mid-brain and the upper part of the pons. The cerebellum was normal.


Vertical and horizontal measurements were made of the widths of the internal auditory canals of 435 histologically prepared temporal bones. The mean vertical width, measured at the porus acusticus, was 3.68 mm (range 2.10 to 5.26 mm), and the mean horizontal width, measured in the middle region of the canal, was 3.72 mm (range 2 to 5.8 mm). The 144 ears selected for study because they exhibited slowly progressive sensorineural hearing loss showed a distribution of canal widths similar to that of the group as a whole. Histological examination of the internal auditory canals failed to show any type of soft tissue lesion which might have contributed to narrowing of the canals. The study provides no anatomical or histological evidence for the existence of a small internal auditory canal syndrome.


The choline acetyltranferase activity underwent marked changes during the life span: in the submaxillaries, the total enzyme activity increased 70-fold from birth up to the age of 3 months and it then remained constant throughout the rest of the observation period, i.e. up to 28-29 months; in the parotids, in contrast, it continued to rise beyond the age of 3 months and the highest value was reached at 24 months. The weights of the glands increased markedly up to 3 months. The gain in weight was less pronounced thereafter.


This article examines Dickinson's influence upon the development of Northern Irish poetry, with particular emphasis on the work of John Hewitt and Tom Paulin. Such engagement with Dickinson is connected to longstanding cultural debates surrounding standard English and its variants: in the case of Hewitt and Paulin, Irish English, in the case of Dickinson, American English. This context of intertwining national narratives concerning poetic idiom, dialect, and vernacular dissent provides a means of understanding the continued resonance of Dickinson's lyric voices within the charged cultural politics of Northern Ireland. Particular attention is given to Paulin's ongoing reassessment of the place of a dissenting Protestant tradition within a wider narrative of Irish literature and Dickinson's presence as a resonant and vibrant resource in this project.


Adaptive modulation and coding( AMC) which depends on channel state information( CSI) can make the modulation and coding scheme( MCS) for the sender changed, and make the spectrum efficiency enhanced. The traditional method of AMC establishes a lookup table of MCSs at first,and then the sender chooses the proper MCS according to the CSI from feedback channel. However,this method is not suitable for frequency selective and fast fading channel. Thus, a method based on fuzzy logic cognitive engine is proposed in this paper. The type of channel is recognized by the fuzzy logic cognitive engine,then the MCSs are modified to suit for the channel type. The simulation results show that the proposed method is more suitable for frequency selective and fast fading channel. And it is more reliability under the condition of meeting the bit error rate( BER).


This study recognizes the need for providing a tool to facilitate learning British Sign Language (BSL). Virtual reality coupled with gamification holds exciting prospects to accommodate this need. This paper presents a work-in-progress study that focuses on evaluating the impact of combining scaffolded instruction with gamification to design a 3D interactive game to support learning the BSL alphabet. The paper outlines the project motivations, its aims and objectives, the proposed research methodology, and the expected contributions to knowledge.


Detection of object anomalies is crucial in industrial processes, but unsupervised anomaly detection and localization is particularly important due to the difficulty of obtaining a large number of defective samples and the unpredictable types of anomalies in real life. Among the existing unsupervised anomaly detection and localization methods, the NF-based scheme has achieved better results. How-ever, the two subnets (complex functions) 𝑠 𝑖 ( 𝑢 𝑖 ) and 𝑡 𝑖 ( 𝑢 𝑖 ) in NF are usually multilayer perceptrons, which need to squeeze the input visual features from 2D flattening to 1D, destroying the spatial location relationship in the feature map and losing the spatial structure information. In order to retain and effectivelyextractspatialstructureinformation, wedesigninthisstudyacomplexfunctionmodelwith alternating CBAM embedded in a stacked 3∙3 full convolution, which is able to retain and effectively extract spatial structure information in the normalized flow model. Extensive experimental results on the MVTec AD dataset show that CAINNFlow achieves advanced levels of accuracy and inference efficiency based on CNN and Transformer backbone networks as feature extractors, and CAINNFlow achieves a pixel-level AUC of 98 . 64% for anomaly detection in MVTec AD.


Four patients with fulminant hepatic necrosis and coma were treated with daily 10-liter plasma exchanges for periods of 3 to 36 days. Three of the patients recovered. Two of the four patients developed acute pulmonary edema not attributable to volume overload on two and four occasions during or following exchange. One of the three surviving patients was in coma for 37 days. In 12 to 16 months of follow-up, all three patients showed evidence of further active hepatic disease. In two, this was a single mild episode at 70 and 56 days after plasma exchange. In the third patient, followed up for 27 months, there have been continuing episodes of mild, active hepatitis.


We study theoretically the quantum dynamics and spectroscopy of rovibrational polaritons formed in a model system composed of a single rovibrating diatomic molecule, which interacts with two degenerate, orthogonally polarized modes of an optical Fabry-Pérot cavity. We employ an effective rovibrational Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian in length gauge representation and identify three-state vibro-polaritonic conical intersections (VPCIs) between singly excited vibro-polaritonic states in a two-dimensional angular coordinate branching space. The lower and upper vibrational polaritons are of mixed light-matter hybrid character, whereas the intermediate state is purely photonic in nature. The VPCIs provide effective population transfer channels between singly excited vibrational polaritons, which manifest in rich interference patterns in rotational densities. Spectroscopically, three bright singly excited states are identified when an external infrared laser field couples to both a molecular and a cavity mode. The non-trivial VPCI topology manifests as pronounced multi-peak progression in the spectral region of the upper vibrational polariton, which is traced back to the emergence of rovibro-polaritonic light-matter hybrid states. Experimentally, ubiquitous spontaneous emission from cavity modes induces a dissipative reduction of intensity and peak broadening, which mainly influences the purely photonic intermediate state peak as well as the rovibro-polaritonic progression.


BACKGROUND
Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a common and highly heritable arthropathy, but the pathogenesis of which is poorly understood, especially the mechanisms in genomics.

AIM
Our work is aim to study the mechanisms of AS in genomics.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
we used microarray dataset GSE11886 from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). According to our GSEA approach on the microarray datasets related to AS, we have identified the significantly associated pathways with this disease respectively dependent and independent to the factor of interferon-gamma (IFN-γ).

RESULTS
As a result, we have identified 9 most significant pathways in the comparison of AS patients to control under none treatment, including 5 up-regulated and 4 down-regulated pathways in IFN-gamma-independent study. On the contrary, 11 most significantly up-regulated pathways such as renin-angiotensin system, O-Glycan biosynthesis and gap junction in the comparison of AS patients to control under the treatment of IFN in IFN-gamma-dependent study.

CONCLUSIONS
These may be helpful for understanding the mechanisms of AS regulation under interferon-gamma treatment in genome wide.


The use of T. S. Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions as a model for the history of psychoanalysis is addressed. It is shown that his categories have been regularly misapplied in the interest of establishing the scientific status of psychoanalysis, or of proposing a new theoretical structure. It is argued that Kuhn's model may nevertheless be useful for the history of psychoanalysis on condition that its categories are used precisely, and their correspondence to the data is tested rather than assumed.


We present an approach for cataloging an organization's skill assets based on electronic communications. Our approach trains classifiers using messages from skill-related discussion groups and then applies those classifiers to a different distribution of person-related e-mail messages. We present a general framework, called cross training, for addressing such discrepancies between the training and test distributions. We outline two instances of the general cross-training problem, develop algorithms for each, and empirically demonstrate the efficacy of our solution in the skill-mining context.


More than seventy strains of aerobic bacteria showing beta-glucosidase activity were isolated from a ginseng field, using a newly designed Esculin-R2A agar, and identified by their 16S rRNA gene sequences. Of these microorganisms, twelve strains could convert the major ginsenoside, Rb(1), to the pharmaceutically active minor ginsenoside Rd. Three strains, Burkholderia pyrrocinia GP16, Bacillus megaterium GP27 and Sphingomonas echinoides GP50, were phylogenetically studied, and observed to be most potent at converting ginsenoside Rb(1) almost completely within 48 h, as shown by TLC and HPLC analyses.


In this research, a low-cost and precision autofocus laser probe system was developed. Modified from the pickup head of a commercially available DVD as a basis, it can detect the focus error signal (FES) of the object with a built-in four-quadrant photodiode. The FES will feed back to the developed controller, through which the objective lens can be adjusted in position automatically to remain in focus, driven by a voice coil motor (VCM). The driving current (converted from servo-FES) of the VCM and the objective lens displacement are one to one linearly related within several hundred micrometres. Because of this relationship, the surface profile and the surface roughness of the tested object can be realized. Calibrated results showed that the designed probe has 200 µm linearity range, 0.2 µm accuracy, 0.1 µm resolution and standard deviation of 0.2 µm on average. Some examples are given to show the applicability of this probe system.


The Last Planner System (LPS) constitutes a systematic method for planning and control based on the generation of short-term commitments by the workforce and the weekly control of their accomplishments in search of continual improvement. This approach allows for the stabilization of workflow and uncertainty reduction in short-term plans, which are assessed using the Plan Percent Complete (PPC) indicator and the systematical collection of Reasons for Non-Compliance (RNC). Our research goal is to contribute to the understanding of how PPC and RNC metrics can be used for early assessment of project performance concerning schedule accomplishment. We used a sample of 25 Chilean projects with weekly information regarding progress, PPC, RNC and time deviation, that was categorized into two groups according to their schedule accomplishment results, using a clustering algorithm. We compared the PPC and RNC indicators from the two groups across project execution to detect significant differences. We found that successful projects evidence a statistically significant increase in the PPC, compared to the less-than successful group, lower PPC variability and a lower number of RNC per week, since early project execution. The results allowed us to conclude that these metrics can help perform early assessments of project performance.


In previous research I have theorised that there is a three-step motivational sequence that drives fertility behaviour, beginning with motivational traits, continuing with fertility desires and concluding with fertility intentions. In this article I focus on four properties of fertility desires and intentions, examining some recent research findings that bear on the similarities and differences between these two constructs. The four properties include the degree to which either construct has direct genetic antecedents, the degree to which either construct directly predicts behaviour, what type of dimension is used to measure each construct, and the effects that each construct has on the individual's satisfaction with being pregnant. The findings regarding these four properties suggest that fertility desires are intermediate between two evolutionally distinct motive systems that drive reproductive behaviour. The findings also suggest additional research questions that require further pursuit. Finally, the findings inform certain fertility-related policy issues, in particular the gap between desired or intended fertility and actual fertility.


The role of organizational culture on employee performance has been a subject of interest. The purpose of the study was to establish the effects of organizational ownership and culture on employee performance. The study was guided by Social cognitive theory. Explanatory research design was used. The target population comprised of 403 employees drawn from 12 Commercial Banks in Kenya. Stratified and random sampling techniques were used to obtain sample size of 141 employees. The study used questionnaires as a tool for data collection. In order to test the reliability of the instrument, Crobanch alpha test was used. The study adopted both descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Pearson correlation and multiple regression analysis were employed to estimate the causal relationships between organization culture and performance, and other chosen variables. Findings indicate that involvement culture (β1 = 0.230, p-value<0.05) and consistency culture (β2 = 0.286, p< 0.05) has a positive and significant effect on employee performance. Ownership thus has positive and significant moderating effect of bank ownership on the relationship between involvement culture and employee performance (β = 0.26, ρ<0.05) and (β= -0.2, ρ<0.05) respectively hence concluding that consistency culture and involvement culture improves employee performance. The study recommends that organizations that aim at improving employee performance need to ensure that employees have inputs into issues that affect both their work and the organization in general. Moreover, information needs to be widely shared so that each and every employee can get the information they require to make the appropriate decisions.


Currently available antidepressants interact with several types of receptors, which may explain both wanted and unwanted effects of these drugs. These effects are different and distinctive, and knowledge about them may help clinicians understand differences between compounds in terms of their tolerability profiles. Given roughly comparable efficacy, tolerability profile is the critical determinant in selecting an antidepressant medication for a particular patient. In addition, tolerability is inseparably linked to patient compliance, both in acute and long-term treatment, and ultimately to overall success of treatment. Refinement in pharmacologic profiles of all newly introduced antidepressants resulted in overall advantages in tolerability in comparison with older tricyclic compounds. However, differences in receptor interactions between antidepressants are directly reflected in tolerability (adverse event) profiles. Among new antidepressants, mirtazapine and the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors share favorable overall tolerability and safety, especially with respect to low premature termination rates because of adverse events, cardiac safety, and safety in overdose. However, the different pharmacologic profile of mirtazapine is reflected in its different tolerability profile. Because of interactions with the histamine (H1) receptor, mirtazapine may be related to transient initial somnolence and weight gain in some patients. Its serotonin-2 (5-HT2)-blocking properties may account for lack of sexual dysfunction, insomnia, nervousness, and agitation. Mirtazapine's 5-HT3-blocking properties are unique among all currently available antidepressants and may account for lack of gastrointestinal adverse events.


Diddle et alii (1956) drew attention to the importance of nutrition in the irradiation treatment of cervical carcinoma. They found that varying degrees of proctosigmoiditis occurred temporarily in all patients who weighed less than 150 pounds and in most of those who weighed more than 150 poundsnear the end of treatment or shortly after it was completed. Thosewho weighed 100 pounds or less suffered most. They concluded that wellnourfshed patients tolerated irradiation treatment better than those on substandarddiets.


Serum galactosyltransferase isoenzyme II (GT-II) was assayed in 409 coded serum samples obtained from the National Cancer Institute Tumor Serum Bank using a monoclonal antibody-based immunoassay. The serum panel consisted of samples from patients with confirmed, metastatic ovarian, breast, stomach, esophageal, pancreatic, lung, colorectal, bladder, prostate, and cervical cancer, as well as benign disease controls corresponding to each cancer type, and confirmed healthy normal controls. The serum panel was matched for age and sex; 176 of 179 cancer patients had metastatic disease, and many had undergone previous therapy. GT-II was significantly elevated (P less than 0.01) in all pairwise tests (Wilcoxon) comparing cancer cases with normals and cancer cases with benign disease cases of the same site. A cutpoint of 200 milliunits of GT-II activity/ml of serum was selected, and only one of 50 normal control sera was elevated above this value, yielding a specificity of 98%. The overall sensitivity of the GT-II assay was 55.3%, with higher sensitivity shown by pancreatic (77%), prostate (65%), esophageal (64%), cervical (59%), and bladder cancer (58%).