Inhibition of the axis CXCR4/CXCL12 can affect tumor growth and metastases. Moreover, CXCR4 inhibition increases hematopoietic stem cell mobility in patients undergoing autologous transplantation for myeloma and non-Hodgkin lymphoma. Although several inhibitors were described neither one reached satisfactory efficacy, bioavailability and acceptable toxicity. To develop new CXCR4 inhibitors through a rationale design approach, comparative studies were undertaken evaluating the N-terminal structure of the ligand CXCL12 and v-MIP II, an inhibitory chemokine like produced by the herpes virus 8-Kaposi associated. A common amino acidic motif (RFF) was identified in both structures although in inverted orientation. Having as a core this small domain, a new library (20 units) of cycle-peptide molecules was generated. 20 units of cycle-peptide molecules were synthesized that consists of 5 and 7 amino-acid residues cycled by a S-S bridge designed to interact with the receptor CXCR4. The peptides were characterized for functionally CXCR4 interaction through: 1. inhibition of CXCR4 binding; 2. inhibition of migration CXCL12-induced; 3. inhibition of calcium CXCL12-induced; 4. Inhibition of P-Erk CXCL12-induced. Four peptides were identified as possible CXCR4 inhibitors. These four CXCR4 inhibitory peptides were further evaluated for the in vivo efficacy through inhibition of metastasis formation. B16 mouse melanoma cells transfected with CXCR4 were injected in the vein tail in C57 Bl mice and peptide treatment followed for 10 days. Dramatic reduction in number and size of lung metastases were registered in mice peptides-treated. Moreover, xenograft of human renal cancer cells SN12C-EGFP were subcutaneously injected and systemic peptides treatment followed for 10 days. Statistically significant decrease in tumor growth was showed in peptides treated mice. Taken together the data define three new CXCR4 inhibitory peptides, designed through innovative strategy, effective in " in vivo " deserving further development. Citation Information : Clin Cancer Res 2010;16(7 Suppl):B50


Background: A successful root canal (RC) treatment depends upon creation of a fluid impervious seal that is commonly built by using a RC sealer along with gutta-percha. The bond strength of the RC sealer is a hallmark as it will minimize the risk of treatment failure by reducing the possibility of filling detachment from dentin. Aim: To evaluate and compare the push-out bond strength of AH-Plus and MTA-Fillapex with Gutta-Percha and Epiphany Self Etch/Resilon system using the Universal Testing Machine. Materials and Method: About 60 mandibular premolars with single canals were prepared apically with Hyflex CM files upto size #30. Out of total, 20 teeth were obturated with AH-Plus/GP (group 1), 20 with MTA-Fillapex/GP (group 2), and other 20 with Epiphany Self Etch/Resilon system (group 3). Teeth were sectioned into three slices of 2 mm each and were subjected to Universal Testing Machine. Statistical Analysis: The data obtained were tabulated and statistically evaluated using SPSS version 21.0 statistical analysis software (IBM, Chicago, Illinois, USA). Results: The mean push-out bond strength was highest for AH–Plus (14.32 MPa) followed by MTA-Fillapex (12.18 MPa) and then Epiphany SE (8.44 MPa). The results were statistically significant. Conclusion: Significantly, higher push out bond strength was displayed by AH-Plus sealer than MTA-Fillapex and least being Epiphany SE sealer. The push out bond strength was significantly highest at apical third and lowest at coronal third.


A case of tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) was found in a farming area located in the southern part of Hokkaido, Japan, in 1993. TBE viruses were isolated from sentinel dogs in the area where the human case occurred in 1995. Ticks were collected in the area by 2 collection methods in 1995 and virus isolation was conducted on ticks in 1995 and 1996. Ixodes ovatus Neumann was found to be the predominant tick species in the area. In 1996, 2 virus strains were isolated from 600 I. ovatus ticks (300 females and 300 males), giving the minimum infection rate of 0.33% (2 of 600). The 2 virus strains were identified as TBE virus by antigenic analysis using monoclonal antibodies and the indirect immunofluorescent antibody test. The results showed that I. ovatus was a suspected vector of the emerging TBE virus in Hokkaido.


BACKGROUND
This study analysed the content of ascorbic acid, phenolic acids and flavonoids in aqueous and ethanol extracts of pepino (Solanum muricatum Ait.), and examined the protective effects of pepino aqueous extract (PAE) in a mouse model of diabetes. PAE at 1, 2 and 4% was supplied for 5 weeks.

RESULTS
Aqueous and ethanol extracts had similar levels of total phenolic acids, but PAE had a higher content of ascorbic acid and total flavonoids than the ethanol extract. PAE treatments at 2% and 4% significantly lowered plasma glucose level (P < 0.05); however, only the 4% PAE significantly elevated plasma insulin level at week 5 (P < 0.05). PAE treatments significantly decreased the levels of malonyldialdehyde and reactive oxygen species in kidney (P < 0.05); however, only the 2% and 4% treatments significantly reduced oxidised glutathione formation, increased glutathione level, and retained renal glutathione peroxidase and catalase activities (P < 0.05). PAE treatments at 2% and 4% significantly lowered renal interleukin (IL)-6 and tumour necrosis factor-α levels (P < 0.05); however, only the 4% treatments significantly diminished renal IL-1β and levels of monocyte chemoattractant protein-1 (P < 0.05). PAE treatments at 4% significantly decreased aldose reductase activity and sorbitol production in kidney (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION
These findings support the suggestion that pepino aqueous extract could attenuate the progression of diabetes via its antioxidative, anti-inflammatory and antiglycative effects.


We summarize outcomes from KidRec 2020, the 4th edition of the workshop on International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Children & Recommender and Information Retrieval Systems; which this year was co-located with the ACM Interaction Design and Children conference. In addition to lessons learned from the keynote address by Professor Marcia C. Linn, accepted contributions, and collaborative work during the workshop, we offer insights related to hosting KidRec as a virtual meeting during the COVID-19 pandemic.


In order to generate high-resolution Doppler profiles a radar needs to emit a large number of pulses within a coherent processing interval (CPI). For a radar operating in demanding scenarios it can be difficult to sustain a long CPI across search directions. In this work, an application of small neural networks is proposed to augment the Doppler resolution beyond the one detailed by basic radar parameters. A specific neural network structure is proposed which can be trained to operate on complex valued time-domain data and yield a frequency transformed output with an increased Doppler bin resolution. It is shown that by making use of these techniques a radar can improve its ability to detect targets and to distinguish closely spaced targets. A limited increase in the Doppler bin resolution can be sustained with little to no negative impact on the false alarm rate.


The effect of parathyroid hormone (PTH) on egg-shell calcification has been investigated in egg-laying Japanese quail. Lilly parathyroid extract (PTE) when injected into quail within 2-6 h of oviposition caused a significantly increased deposition of a chronic 45Ca label into the sequential egg-shell compared with the previous egg in the clutch, indicating increased mobilization of bone Ca and its subsequent incorporation into the egg-shell. At the same time egg-shell weight/unit area and egg-shell Ca/unit area were significantly decreased. Parathyroid extract injected 12-16 after oviposition had none of these effects. Purified PTH also caused a significant decrease in egg-shell weight/unit area if injected within 2-6 h of oviposition. This result indicated an action of PTH either directly or indirectly on the avian oviduct limiting egg-shell calcification. The loss of responses in the 12-16 h treated birds may reflect high endogenous PTH levels with subsequent saturation of target organ receptors.


The composition of the organic matter oxidized within the thermocline of the Atlantic and Indian oceans has been estimated from the chemical data along the σθ 27.0 and 27.2 horizons. These estimates are based on the differences between the preformed and observed concentrations of PO4, NO3, total inorganic CO2, alkalinity, and O2. Since these isopycnal horizons are ventilated both from the north and the south, the preformed concentration estimates take into account the relative contributions of these two end-members. The proportions of these end-members are estimated on the basis of the potential temperature of the water, assuming that no cross-isopycnal mixing occurred. Except for the northern Indian Ocean, the composition of the waters entering the isopycnal horizons is established through linear extrapolation of the property-oxygen trends to oxygen saturation. The σθ 27.0 and 27.2 waters do not outcrop in the northern Indian Ocean, and these horizons receive waters spilling into the Indian Ocean from the Red Sea. Therefore the composition of the Red Sea overflow water with these densities is taken to be the northern Indian end-member. The results of this study indicate that the accepted Redfield P:N:C: −O2 ratio of 1:16:106:138 requires revision. Our analysis yields a ratio of 1:16:103:172 if the carbon value is represented by the observed increase in the total CO2 concentration. On the other hand, if the carbon value is assumed to be represented by the oxygen utilization minus the oxygen used for oxidation of NH3 with two moles of O2 per nitrogen atom, a ratio of 1:16:140:172 is obtained. Thus the P: −O2 ratio lies between 1:103 and 1:140. This discrepancy may be accounted for by the increased CO2 concentrations in the source waters as a result of the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 or by an excess demand of oxygen for oxidation of hydrogenated organic molecules. Therefore, without a firm knowledge of either the corrections for the anthropogenic CO2 effect or the hydrogen content of the biological residues, the true P:C ratio cannot be obtained. The ratio of P:CaCO3 dissolution has been estimated to be about 1:12. This indicates that the CO2 produced by the oxidation of organic carbon to that derived from the dissolution of CaCO3 is bout 10:1 at these density horizons.


Summary Background: Therapeutic pain is one of the most important outcome measures in surgery. Comparative studies investigating ketorolac efficiency in ambulatory surgery have generally been restricted to IV administration. We compared analgesic effectiveness of sublingual ketorolac and metamizole in shortstay surgery. Methods: This was a randomized single-blind clinical trial. All patients received either a three-dose (30 mg) of sublingual ketorolac or 1 g of IV metamizole, respectively. We evaluated pain with a visual/analog scale (VAS). Side effects were also recorded. Statistical analysis included t-test or Mann-Whitney U test and Fisher exact test or χ 2 . Absolute risk reduction (ARR), odds ratio (OR), confidence interval (CI), relative risk ratio (RRR) and numbers needed to treat (NNT) were also evaluated. Results: Rescue doses of analgesics were greater in patients receiving metamizole, although the difference was not significant (p = 0.286). Mean VAS score was lower in the ketorolac group at 8 h after surgery, with no statistical difference (p = 0.06). ARR for severe pain score was almost 5% (OR = 1.78). Adverse effects did not show differences between groups (p = 0.642). Conclusions: Ketorolac and metamizole have comparable effects and can be safely used in ambulatory settings.


It is generally known that averaged models are inadequate in describing the effects of leading-edge and trailing-edge pulsewidth modulation (PWM) on the stability of dc–dc converters. In this paper, using discrete-time models of the buck, boost, and buck–boost converters and considering the effects of leading-edge and trailing-edge PWM, the general expressions of the duty-cycle-to-output-voltage transfer function, Gvd(z), in the discrete-time domain are derived. Based on the low-pass characteristics of the dc-dc converters and related properties of the matrix functions, approximate expressions of Gvd in the frequency domain are derived, which are simple and accurate up to half the switching frequency. Using the approximate Gvd, the stability of the three basic dc–dc converters under leading-edge and trailing-edge PWM is analyzed. It is shown that the stability of the buck converter is unaffected by the type of PWM, while the leading-edge modulated boost and buck–boost converters have better stability than the trailing-edge modulated ones. Since the trailing-edge modulation is commonly available in PWM controller integrated circuits, the modulation signal zero-order holding (ZOH) method and the inductor current feedback control method are proposed for use in the trailing-edge modulated boost and buck–boost converters to achieve the same effect of leading-edge modulated converters. Experimental buck and boost converters were constructed for verification of the accuracy of the proposed model and the validity of the proposed control schemes.


BACKGROUND
Historically, infective endocarditis (IE) in South Africa (SA) was associated with the viridans group of streptococci affecting patients with underlying rheumatic heart disease (RHD). A changing IE bacteriological profile raises the question of whether the profile of underlying valvular abnormality has changed.

OBJECTIVES
To investigate the prevalence of underlying structural valve abnormalities and their aetiologies associated with IE in SA, and describe the typical imaging findings.

METHODS
The Tygerberg Endocarditis Cohort study prospectively enrolled patients with IE between November 2019 and April 2021. Patients underwent detailed transthoracic and transoesophageal echocardiography to assess their underlying cardiac and valvular structure.

RESULTS
Among 71 patients included, a predisposing endocardial abnormality was detected in 49.3%, with RHD the most common single identifiable aetiology (16.9%). The in-hospital mortality rate was similar in patients with and without a predisposing endocardial abnormality (20% v. 16.7%; p=0.72), as was the rate of embolic events (20% v. 27.2%; p=0.58). Significantly more patients with a predisposing endocardial abnormality had an indication for surgery (94.3% v. 69.4%; p<0.01). The viridans group of streptococci was more prevalent in patients with a predisposing endocardial abnormality (25.7% v. 2.7%; p<0.01). Left-sided linear vegetation size >10 mm was associated with an increased risk of in-hospital mortality (24% v. 5%; p=0.05).

CONCLUSION
We observed a marked decrease in the prevalence of RHD in this cohort of patients with IE. The viridans group of streptococci was an uncommon cause of IE in patients with no predisposing endocardial abnormality detected. The presence of a predisposing endocardial abnormality was not associated with an increased risk of in-hospital mortality or embolic events. Linear vegetation length >10 mm was associated with an increased risk of in-hospital mortality in patients with left-sided IE.


Vehicle management is a very important application area of GPS/GIS. Each customer has its special requirements on GIS system when he installs it. We discuss a common structure of our GPS/GIS implementation, and present a case study on bulk concrete trucks management for bulk concrete producers. With GPS/GIS system, bulk concrete producers can improve their performance in scheduling and management.


Clinical application of tissue-expansion techniques began with the work of Neumann, 1 who in 1956 described implantation of an expandable balloon prosthesis beneath the temporal region for reconstruction of an ear. While his work was considered anecdotal, Neumann clearly anticipated the advantages of tissue-expansion techniques. He drew parallels to breast growth, superficial tumors and hernias, and the traditional practices of many societies that expand various anatomic parts for cosmetic purposes. He noted that theoretical advantages of tissue expansion "would include the securing of skin which would be high in quality of match of color and texture with nearby skin, the avoidance of the need for a donor area in the usual sense of the term, and the possible reduction in the number of stages for a particular reconstructive effort." 1 In 1957, a dramatic example of "physiologic" tissue expansion of the scalp was described in which a sebaceous cyst at the


Turkey entered a customs union (CU) with the EU in January 1996. Agricultural trade is not covered by this CU but it is subject to extensive preferential trade rules. In this article, the effects of an inclusion of agricultural products in the CU as well as alternative policy options on the Turkish agricultural sector are analysed. To this aim, a comparative-static, partial equilibrium model of the Turkish agricultural sector is developed. The complete liberalization of the agricultural sector is found to lead to significant comparative static welfare gains of about €670 million as compared to the status quo. It appears that for most products, with few but significant exceptions, the inclusion of agriculture in the CU with the EU is very similar to the complete liberalization of agricultural trade.


Aldol reactions play an important role in organic synthesis, as they belong to the class of highly beneficial C-C-linking reactions. Aldol type reactions can be efficiently and stereoselectively catalyzed by the enzyme 2-Deoxy-D-ribose-5-phosphate aldolase (DERA) to gain key intermediates for pharmaceuticals like atorvastatin. The immobilization of DERA would open the opportunity for a continuous operation mode which gives access to an efficient, large-scale production of respective organic intermediates. In this contribution, we synthesize and utilize DERA/polymer conjugates for the generation and fixation of a DERA bearing thin film on a polymeric membrane support. The conjugation strongly increases the tolerance of the enzyme towards the industrial relevant substrate acetaldehyde while UV-crosslinkable groups along the conjugated polymer chains provide the opportunity for covalent binding to the support. First, we provide a thorough characterization of the conjugates followed by immobilization tests on representative, non-porous cycloolefinic copolymer supports. Finally, immobilization on the target supports constituted of polyacrylonitrile (PAN) membranes is performed and the resulting enzymatically active membranes are implemented in a simple membrane module setup for a first assessment of biocatalytic performance in continuous operation mode using the combination hexanal/acetaldehyde as substrate.


We propose an evaluation method to judge the fitting extent to ophthalmic lens for the individual wearer. An Eye-Lens-Object optical system is set according to wearer's visual performance and the characteristic of ophthalmic lens assembly. A visual reference surface is proposed to calculate the object distance. The RMS radius of the spot diagram and MTF average value from optical design software Zemax are regarded as the criterion of assessing the image quality on the retina. Three cases are simulated to verify that our method is effective. The wearers can experience a comfortable wearing feeling when the evaluation method is used during the design of ophthalmic lens. The validity of our method is demonstrated to instruct designing the progressive addition lens with the freeform surface.


A high performance micro-tomography (micro-CT) system for insect or small animal imaging has been developed. The system consists of an x-ray source with small focus spot and high brightness, a high precision rotation stage with an object chuck to achieve a cone-beam mode scan, and an x-ray imaging detector. The core of the system is a cooled x-ray imaging detector with high spatial resolution, high sensitivity and ultra-low noise. Since imaging performance of the detector is mostly responsible for the resultant image quality and eventually determines the quality of a tomogram, we have evaluated the imaging characteristics of the detector in terms of modulation-transfer function (MTF), noise-power spectrum (NPS) and give some high quality x-ray digital radiation (DR) and 3D rendered CT images of some insects and a small fish.


Twelve West African dwarf goats weighing between 4.5kg to 5.5kg were used to study the effect replacement of Tridax and Siam weed in Ficus based diet. The goats were divided into three dietary treatments with attention to the body weights with four replicate per treatment. The diets were fed for a period of 25days in order to investigate the influence of the replaced forage mixture on feed intake and nutrient digestibility, also on the level of the serum metabolites as factor of influence. Goats maintained on Ficus-Tridax forage mixture consumed more dry matter than goats fed Ficus only and Ficus-Siam mixture. The average values were 186.57g/day for Ficus, 202.56g/day for Ficus-Tridax mixture, and 145.0g/day for Ficus-Siam mixture per goat. The nature of the feed influence the digestibilities of the nutrients, the relative values of which  were statistically (p<0.05) significant. The values of crude fiber digestibility in the treatment were not significantly different (p<0.05). The result of serum metabolites anaylsed showed no statistical difference (p<0.05), so all the forage feeds tested could cause no harm of significant measure to the animals, results of this study suggest that Tridax can be effectively used to feed small ruminant most especially the WAD goat and it serves as alternative browse plant for the scarce forages during the dry season.


The WEEL for triethylenetetramine (TETA; CAS No. 112-24-3) was originally established in 1991 and updated in 1998 and 2009. Recent literature searches to identify new toxicity information were performed in 2016 and January 2021. No new studies or data relevant to the WEEL were identified. TETA is used in manufacturing; the hydrochloride salt of TETA is used as a copper-chelating drug in the treatment of Wilson's disease. TETA is severely irritating to the skin and eyes and produces skin sensitization; however, it is of low to moderate acute toxicity via the oral and dermal routes of exposure. In subchronic studies, signs of toxicity included multi-organ effects (lung, liver, and spleen) in mice, but not rats. TETA was genotoxic/mutagenic in short-term in vitro assays but not in in vivo assays. No data on reproductive toxicity were available. Embryo/fetal toxicity occurred at maternally toxic doses and was associated with copper deficiency. In humans, the use of TETA·2HCl for treatment of Wilson's disease during pregnancy resulted in no miscarriages or fetal abnormalities. No evidence of carcinogenicity was noted in a lifetime dermal study in mice. Based on a subchronic drinking water study in mice, 600 ppm (95 mg/kg-day) was determined to be the no-observed-adverse-effect level (NOAEL) and the point of departure (POD). This NOAEL was converted to an equivalent inhalation concentration by adjusting for respiratory rate, interindividual variability, and uncertainty. The resulting 8-h time-weighted average WEEL value of 1 ppm is expected to provide a significant margin of safety against any potential adverse health effects in workers exposed to airborne TETA.


Hermilio Valdizán published several papers on what was called psychiatric folklore, understood as the ways of understanding and treating mental illnesses by indigenous people, both from the colonial and pre-Hispanic past and from the author's present. In this article, we analyze Valdizán's texts on the psychiatric and psychological characteristics of indigenous Peruvians. From the perspective of this psychiatrist, contemporary indigenous people were archaeological remains of the ancient Inca empire, ruins in the process of degeneration. In a context marked by indigenism, in which it was sought to integrate the Indians, psychiatry played a conservative and racist role that reproduced evolutionary models of the nineteenth century.


Two recombinant hirudins (r-hirudin), natural hirudin and hirudin in combination with heparin or acetylsalicylic acid (ASA) have been studied in a thrombosis model in which rat mesenteric venules of a diameter of 20-30 microns were injured by well-defined argon laser lesions. In the animal model all hirudins showed significant and dose-dependent antithrombotic effects in doses between 0.05 and 0.1 mg/kg after single intravenous and subcutaneous injections. The antithrombotic effect of single (0.2 mg/kg i.v. or 0.1 mg/kg s.c.) injections lasted longer than 4 h (i.v.) or 6 h (s.c.). Hirudin at a dose of 0.1 mg/kg and heparin at doses of 0.05 mg/kg showed a significant antithrombotic effect 2 h after subcutaneous injection. When heparin and hirudin were injected together at this dosage, the effect of the combination was in the same range as that of unfractionated heparin or hirudin alone. An additive antithrombotic effect was observed if a low dose of r-hirudin (0.1 mg/kg) was combined with a moderate dose of ASA (10 mg/kg).


In statistical machine translation, an alignment defines a mapping between the words in the source and in the target sentence. Alignments are used, on the one hand, to train the statistical models and, on the other, during the decoding process to link the words in the source sentence to the words in the partial hypotheses generated. In both cases, the quality of the alignments is crucial for the success of the translation process. In this paper, we propose an algorithm based on an Estimation of Distribution Algorithm for computing alignments between two sentences in a parallel corpus. This algorithm has been tested on different tasks involving different pair of languages. In the different experiments presented here for the two word-alignment shared tasks proposed in the HLT-NAACL 2003 and in the ACL 2005, the EDAbased algorithm outperforms the best participant systems.


Samboangan contains a wealth of historical information on Zamboanga's geography, groups of people, history, and culture, as well as personalities and events. The novel also contains social and moral issues. Enriquez shapes his subjects' lives and actions around historical events. The novel is best described as a rewriting of the past and, as such, its setting plays an important part in understanding the exhibited traits, perspective, ideas, emotions and reactions, and decisions made by each of the characters. Enriquez imagines Samboangan's setting in a unique way to capture Zamboanga's cultural nuances. By referring to a particular setting where events take place for the characters, Enriquez has produced an atmosphere, one that he envisions will create an impact.


A polyphasic study was carried out to clarify the taxonomic positions of three Gram-positive isolates from the Catacombs of Domitilla, Rome (Italy). 16S rRNA gene sequence comparisons placed these strains within the genus Agromyces. The morphological and chemotaxonomic characteristics of these isolates were consistent with the description of the genus Agromyces. The three isolates could be readily distinguished from one another and from representatives of all Agromyces species with validly published names by a broad range of phenotypic characteristics and DNA-DNA relatedness studies. Therefore, these isolates are proposed to represent three novel species of the genus Agromyces, Agromyces italicus sp. nov. (type strain CD1(T)=HKI 0325(T)=DSM 16388(T)=NCIMB 14011(T)), Agromyces humatus sp. nov. (type strain CD5(T)=HKI 0327(T)=DSM 16389(T)=NCIMB 14012(T)) and Agromyces lapidis sp. nov. (type strain CD55(T)=HKI 0324(T)=DSM 16390(T)=NCIMB 14013(T)).


The Bayhorse base and precious metal district is situated east of the Idaho batholith in south-central Idaho. The ores occur near the Nevada Mountain granitic stock as veins cutting the lower Paleozoic Ramshorn Slate and the Garden Creek Phyllite, and as fillings around breccia fragments within the Bayhorse Dolomite. The veins are dominated by siderite and tetrahedrite, with lesser quartz and galena, whereas the breccia ores dominantly comprise only quartz and galena. Mineralization and intrusive activity were contemporaneous during Cretaceous time. Fluid inclusion and stable isotope data indicate that mineralization formed from hot (ca. 375 degrees -225 degrees C), CO 2 -rich (< or =8.3+ or -1.4 mole %) brines (5-20 wt % NaCl equiv) at confining pressures between 1.1 and 1.7 kbars. Fluid cooling and the resulting CO 2 effervescence were the most important causes of ore deposition.Whole-rock delta 18 O and delta D values from the Garden Creek Phyllite define an isotopically depleted zone (60 km 2 ) around the Nevada Mountain stock and are the result of high-temperature interactions with ancient meteoric waters at water/rock ratios (mass fractions) ranging from 0.002 to 0.09. The delta 18 O (sub H 2 O) and delta D (sub H 2 O) values of the ore fluids ranged from 11.2 to 3.9 per rail and from -55 to -146 per mil, respectively. Comparison of the ore fluid delta 18 O (sub H 2 O) and delta D (sub H 2 O) values with hypothetical waters equilibrated with the Garden Creek Phyllite intricates that the hydrothermal fluids must have also interacted with the basal dolomite of Bayhorse Creek, which underlies the phyllite. Early delta 13 C (sub CO 2 ) values calculated in equilibrium with siderite ranged from -9.1 to -7.4 per mil, whereas later delta 13 C (sub CO 2 ) values obtained from quartz-hosted fluid inclusion extracts range from -4.0 to -1.8 per mil. The delta 13 C (sub CO 2 ) values for the hydrothermal fluids thus also record a transition from early water/rock interactions that were dominated by the Garden Creek Phyllite (organic matter delta 13 C = -23.6 to -20.9ppm) to later interactions that were influenced significantly by the basal dolomite of Bayhorse Creek (delta 13 C = -2.3 to -2.2ppm). The delta 34 S values of main-stage hydrothermal sulfides range from 3.0 to 28.3 per mil and display a distinct mode at approximately 10 per mil. The range of values may be interpreted as either a heterogeneous sedimentary source or mixed sedimentary-magmatic sources. On the basis of mass balance considerations, it is likely that all of the fluid salinity and the dissolved metals were derived from the Garden Creek Phyllite. The paragenetic sequence developed in the ores appears to be related to: (1) processes at the site of deposition, most notably cooling and CO 2 effervescence, and (2) water-rock interactions within the Garden Creek Phyllite in the 60-km 2 isotopically altered area surrounding the Nevada Mountain stock.


Purpose of reviewColorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Although most colorectal cancers are sporadic, approximately 25% have a familial predisposition, and 5 to 7% are hereditary and occur in genetically distinct high-risk families. This review focuses on four hereditary colon cancer syndromes: familial adenomatosus polyposis, hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer, juvenile polyposis syndrome, and Peutz-Jeghers syndrome. Recent findingsThe management of the inherited colorectal cancer syndromes has progressed substantially over the past years because of advancement of genetic understanding and testing options, which have led to the possibility of preclinical diagnosis and early surveillance and treatment. Genetic testing is based on identification of specific abnormalities and should be combined with counseling of affected families. SummaryRecent advances have contributed to the understanding of the molecular basis of various types of colorectal cancer, and among these, the inherited colorectal cancer syndromes have attracted much attention. Expanding recognition of clinical characteristics, targeted surveillance strategies and new methods of treatment have led to improved clinical management of these syndromes.


According to legal requirements, the therapeutic benefit of medical treatments has to be assessed from the patients' point of view. So far, patient benefit has usually been determined by means of quality of life questionnaires. In the newly-developed standardized questionnaire "Patient Benefit Index" (PBI), patients rate predefined treatment goals at two points in time: before therapy, they rate the goals' importance; after therapy, they rate the extent to which the goals have been achieved. The questionnaire has been developed using a multistage method including open patient questioning, expert discussion, feasibility testing, and validation. Patient-relevant treatment benefit can be quantified with the PBI global score and its 5 subscales. There are a range of disease-specific PBI versions usable in clinical trials, in health care studies, and in health-related economic evaluation. Currently, a generic version of the PBI is under development, and the underlying concept of benefit evaluation is further investigated in quantitative and qualitative studies.


We will combine linear successive overrelaxation method with nonlinear
monotone iterative scheme to obtain a new iterative method for solving nonlinear equations. The
basic idea of this method joining traditional monotone iterative method (known as the method
of lower and upper solutions) which depends essentially on the monotone parameter is that by
introducing an acceleration parameter one can construct a sequence to accelerate the convergence.
The resulting increase in the speed of convergence is very dramatic. Moreover, the sequence can
accomplish monotonic convergence behavior in the iterative process when some suitable acceleration
parameters are chosen. Under some suitable assumptions in aspect of the nonlinear function and
the matrix norm generated from this method, we can prove the boundedness and convergence of
the resulting sequences. Application of the iterative scheme is given to a logistic model problem
in ecology, and numerical results for a test problem with known analytical solution are given to
demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the present method.


OBJECTIVE
The aim of this study was to determine the reliability of the Box and Block (B&B) Test of Manual Dexterity for upper-extremity function in patients with fibromyalgia and to compare their results with those of healthy control participants.

METHOD
We assessed reliability of the B&B Test within and between testers using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). We compared fibromyalgia patient (n = 30) and control group (n = 30) scores using analysis of variance and population-based normative data.

RESULTS
The B&B Test was reliable with ICCs of .90 to .85. Fibromyalgia patients' B&B Test scores were significantly lower (more impaired) than those of the control group and standardized norms.

CONCLUSIONS
The B&B Test is a reliable measure of upper-extremity function in fibromyalgia patients and is able to reveal a reduction in upper-extremity function in these patients compared with both healthy control participants and normative scores.


Oceanic turbulence is described by the oceanic refractive-index spectrum (ORIS), which considers several important hydrodynamic parameters. Based on ORIS, many optical oceanic quantities can be calculated using numerical integration. However, it is difficult to calculate the analytical solutions. In this paper, an approximate oceanic temperature spectrum is obtained by multiplying the non-Kolmogorov spectrum with a correction factor. By analogy with the obtained temperature spectrum, an approximate salinity spectrum and an approximate coupling spectrum are obtained. A linear summation of these three approximate spectra forms the approximate form of ORIS. The approximate form of ORIS we obtained helps calculate the analytical solutions of the relevant oceanic optical quantities.


We consider a pair of secondary users that coexist, in a cognitive network, with multiple primary user pairs. The secondary link is supplied with partial network side information (NSI), which comprises message side information and partial channel side information (CSI), available in different levels at both the transmitter and the receiver of the cognitive link. The cognitive transceiver design has to obey predefined quality-of-service (QoS) criteria, that need to be maintained at the primary receivers, and at the same time properly handle the incoming interference from each primary transmitter in order to establish reliable communication. In this framework, we investigate the design and performance of the combined beamforming and orthogonal space-time block coding (BOSTBC) strategy, whose merits are well-documented, as a candidate transmission scheme for the secondary link. We study both aspects, QoS and interference, of the composite problem and characterize how they affect the beamformer design and the cognitive link performance, in the presence of partial NSI. Further, we propose a CSI quality-dependent model for the QoS criteria which yields an interesting trade-off between the cognitive link design and the primary QoS. Numerical results illustrate the system performance in this framework.


A 48-year-old man was admitted with an abnormal shadow on a chest X ray. Chest X ray and CT revealed a solitary nodule in the right lung field. Mycobacterium gordonae was cultured from sputum. Tumorectomy by video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery was done for histological diagnosis, and Dirofilaria worms accompanied with epithelioid cell granuloma with necrosis were found, while no bacteria were cultured from biopsy specimen, thus we diagnosed dirofilariasis. Because a solitary nodule can be caused by either Dirofilaria species or nontuberculous mycobacteria, this case was of interest with regard to the differential diagnosis of a lung solitary nodule.


One of the major hindrances to education access in arid and semi-arid lands is lack of security. In recognition of this challenges, the Kenya government has tried to provide interventions through mobile schools and security services in places like Turkana County. Therefore, the research explored the effectiveness of security interventions on pastoralists' children's participation in regular and mobile primary schooling in Turkana County, Kenya. The research used both descriptive survey and mixed methods. It relied on a sample of 75 school heads, 225 instructors, 375 learners, 85 parents, 3 education officers (1 from every sub-county), 1 County Director of Education and 1 County Commissioner. For data collation, International Journal of Learning and Development ISSN 2164-4063 2020, Vol. 10, No. 4 http://ijld.macrothink.org 51 the research used questionnaires, interview schedules and focus groups. Quantitative data was coded and entered into the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) program. To test for effectiveness of security intervention, regression (inferential statistics) was calculated. The analysed data was presented using tables. Qualitative data from interviews and focused groups was analysed and presented thematically. Hypotheses were analysed using regression analysis. Single and multiple regression were calculated to gauge the relative effect of the security interventions on pupils' participation in schooling. The results of the inquiry showed that insecurity around schools in Turkana County was rampant and some schools had suffered attacks. Incidences of insecurity had led to many pupils not attending school thus making many pastoralists pupils not participate in school in the County. Based on these findings, it is evident that insecurity also contributes to constant displacement which makes it difficult for children to pursue educational opportunities. Therefore, it was recommended that all schools should be provided with security officers, including the KPR comprised of the locals who understand the terrain and the people in the security.


Diabetes affects more than 170 million people worldwide and the number will rise to 370 million people by 2030. About one third of those affected, will eventually have progressive deterioration of renal function. To estimate progression of renal disease among type -2 diabetic population, with Serum Creatinine (SrCr), in the presence of covariates: fasting blood glucose (FBG), systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP) and low density lipoprotein (LDL), duration of disease and age at which diabetes was diagnosed. Retrospective data collected from 132 patients, who were diagnosed as diabetic as per ADA standards with or without diabetic complications. Multiple linear regression (MLR) and logistic regression models are adopted here to estimate and predict SrCr, a well-accepted marker for the progression of diabetic nephropathy (DN). The fitted multiple linear regression models are found to be statistically significant, with p <. 001, Fitted logistic models have 88.5% and 84.7% predictive power to assess the renal disease based on mean values of predictors and last record of predictors, respectively. We conclude from the models, which are based on mean values of records, that high blood glucose and high blood pressure along with duration of diabetes are the main contributors for estimating SrCr and predicting diabetic nephropathy. Similar results are concluded from the models which are based on last records of predictors except that LDL is also a significant factor for estimating renal health and DN.


Polymerase proofreading‐associated polyposis (PPAP) and Lynch syndrome, caused by mutated POLE and mismatch repair (MMR) genes, respectively, are associated with adult‐onset cancer. PPAP and MMR‐deficient tumors are both hypermutated, and each has a unique mutational signature. We describe a 4.5‐year‐old boy with multiple café au lait spots who presented with metastatic Sonic Hedgehog‐activated medulloblastoma, with partial response to intensive chemotherapy and immunotherapy. The tumor showed microsatellite stability, loss of PMS2 nuclear expression, and an exceptionally high tumor mutational burden of 276 Mut/Mb. Germline molecular analysis revealed an inherited heterozygous pathogenic POLE variant and a de novo heterozygous PMS2 pathogenic variant. The tumor featured the MMR, POLE, and POLE+MMR mutational signatures. This is the first description of a di‐genic condition, which we named "POL‐LYNCH syndrome," manifested by an aggressive ultra‐mutant pediatric medulloblastoma with a unique genomic signature.


To the Editor.— The extensive list of skin conditions in which cutaneous horns have been observed includes actinic keratosis, squamous cell carcinoma, keratoacanthoma, Bowen's disease, seborrheic keratosis, basal cell carcinoma, hemangioma, Kaposi's sarcoma, keratotic and micaceous pseudopapillomatous balanitis, sebaceous adenoma, and Paget's disease of the female breast. 1,2 We have recently followed a case in which a gigantic cutaneous horn occurred in a longstanding plaque of chronic discoid lupus erythematosus (DLE) of the nose. Report of a Case.— A 39-year-old white man had had a seven-year history of biopsy-proven DLE, consisting of two large atrophic plaques, with slightly infiltrated borders on the bridge of the nose and the malar area of the face. During the year prior to examination, a hyperkeratotic nodule arose in the DLE plaque on the nose and grew to 3 to 4 cm, despite repeated filings (Fig 1). After surgical removal of the lesion and subsequent


The effect of a small change in any parameter of a realistic Earth model on the periods of free oscillation is computed for both spheroidal and torsional modes. The normalized partial derivatives, or variational parameters, are given as a function of order number and depth in the Earth. For a given mode it can immediately be seen which parameters and which regions of the Earth are controlling the period of free oscillation. Except for _oS_o and its overtones the low-order free oscillations are relatively insensitive to properties of the core. The shear velocity of the mantle is the dominant parameter controlling the periods of free oscillation and density can be determined from free oscillation data only if the shear velocity is known very accurately. Once the velocity structure is well known free oscillation data can be used to modify the average density of the upper mantle. The mass and moment of inertia are then the main constraints on how the mass must be redistributed in the lower mantle and core.


Abstract. Ermenek is one of the curious settlement areas because of its topographical features in Karaman (Turkey). The city is located in northern side of the very steep cliffs formed byjointed limestone which are suddenly increased from 1250 m to 1850 m. Moreover, these cliffs having almost 90° slope dip are the main rockfall source areas due to their lithologicalcharacteristics, climatic effects and engineering properties of rock units. Up to now, depending on rockfall events, almost 500 residences were damaged severely, and losses oflives were also recorded in Ermenek. The rockfall phonemon are initiated by discontinuities, lithological changes, weathering and freeze-thaw process in the study area. In this study,extensive fieldwork including determination of location and dimension of hanging, detached and already fallen blocks, a detailed discontinuity survey, description of geological,morphological and topographical characteristics was performed. Besides, rockfall hazard is evaluated by two-dimensional rockfall analyses along 10 profiles. During the rockfallanalyses; run out distance, bounce height, kinetic energy and velocity of various size of blocks for each profiles are determined by using RocFall v4.0 software. The results obtainedfrom rockfall analyses were used to map the areas possible rockfall hazard zones and rockfall source areas were interpreted. According to rockfall analysis, field study and laboratory testing, protective and preventiverecommendations can be suggested for the areas under rockfall threat. But, the most widely- known remedial measures in literature such as trenches, retaining walls (barrier), wiremeshes, cable/streching nets and rock bolting etc. are not sufficient in the study area, due to topographical, atmospheric and lithological features. For these reasons, firstly total evacuation of the danger zone should be applied and then hanging blocks in the reachablelocations can be removed taking safety measures in this area to make it safer for the living people.


Advice to pigeon breeders from the British Pigeon Fanciers Medical Research website includes methods to reduce dust exposure: as well as increasing loft ventilation, it recommends that a respirator is worn while in the loft. A field survey of the use of masks for this purpose found up to 40% usage amongst breeders (n = 258). Studies in small numbers of HP patients demonstrated reducing symptom response following inhalation provocation tests as well as reducing serum antibody levels (1). Despite the potential benefit of wearing masks, and the apparent willingness of pigeon fanciers to do this, little is known about their protective value in HP. The aim of this study is to compare survey results since 1991, and to examine the relationship between diagnosis of pigeon breeder's disease (PBD), serology, spirometry and mask wearing. Our 1997 survey (n = 252) showed that 51% would use a mask. In our 2013 survey (n = 188), we had a response of 54%. Those wearing a mask have higher IgG (mcg/ml) antibody levels (interquartile range 0.92–16.33 median 4.96 –v- 3.02–17.04 median 8.55, p = 0.047). Questionnaire symptom responses, spirometry, as well as useful radiology (CT scanning) or biopsy were used to grade the likelihood of PBD as unlikely (n = 99), maybe (57) or likely (32). Mask wearing was associated with likelihood of PBD (p = 0.068). Those with symptoms (n = 46) or minimal symptoms (n = 38) performed spirometry. Analysis showed an apparent trend amongst subjects with a restrictive defect to be more marked amongst mask wearers–70% (n = 16) being moderate/severely restricted–compared to 43% non mask wearers (Chi-sq = 2.62, p = 0.105). We interpret these findings as evidence that mask wearing is much more likely after symptoms have appeared in pigeon breeders: not the pattern we expected of mask wearing (or dust avoidance) to prevent the development of the disease. Paradoxically, mask wearing in pigeon breeders may also be an unreported sign of PBD. References Hendrick, D J (1981) Protective value of dust respirator in extrinsic alveolitis: clinical assessment using inhaltion provocation tests. Thorax. 36: 917–921


Background: HIV continues to be a major global public health issue, having claimed more than 35 million lives so far. In 2017, 940,000 people died from HIVrelated causes globally. There were approximately 36.9 million people living with HIV at the end of 2017 with 1.8 million people becoming newly infected in 2017 globally. Previous study reported that there are two types of men: "adventurous" ones and "loyal" ones. The adventurous ones were said to go from work to the street, and to forget their homes. Housewives living with an adventurous type of husband are hypothesized to have a higher risk of HIV infection. This study aimed to examine the effect of maternal knowledge and husband job type on HIV infection among housewives in Balige, North Sumatera. Subjects and Method: This was a case control study conducted at AIDS HKBP Balige committee, North Sumatera. A sample of 90 housewives was selected for this study, consisting of 45 housewives with positive HIV and 45 housewives with negative HIV. The dependent variable was HIV infection. The independent variables were maternal knowledge and husband job type (in-town versus out-of-town job type). Data on HIV infection status were obtained from the medical record. The other data were collected by questionnaire. The data were analyzed by a multiple logistic regression. Results: The risk of HIV infection increased with poor maternal knowledge (OR= 3.43; 95% CI= 1.81 to 6.49; p<0.001) and out-of-town husband job type (OR= 2.50; 95% CI= 0.95 to 6.52; p= 0.063). Conclusion: The risk of HIV infection increases with poor maternal knowledge and out-of-town husband job type.


In the world of healthcare, there is a great deal of passion about productivity. Even mention of the word sparks internal angst and intense discussion--among providers and payers alike. Creating dialogue about productivity and its merits was the motivating force behind a debate at the American Organization of Nurse Executives 31st Annual Meeting in San Diego, California. Payer and provider representatives were given an opportunity to define and elaborate key factors that drive or inhibit productivity and core issues related to an important coexisting variable, that is, quality. The debate was moderated by Ann Van Slyck, MSN, RN, CNAA, FAAN, President of Van Slyck & Associates, Inc., of Phoenix, Arizona.


Eighty-five patients with nonmetastatic, high-grade osteosarcoma of an extremity received intravenous methotrexate and intraarterial cisplatinum and then a definitive surgical resection. The preliminary results suggest that preoperative chemotherapy with a delayed surgical resection is as safe as immediate surgery. More patients are candidates for limb salvage after chemotherapy. The tumor response to the preoperative chemotherapy also has prognostic value. Reducing the postoperative chemotherapy can be dangerous. A high dose methotrexate may not be necessary.


Five different types of vacuolated cells occurring in the gastric mucosa were described. In haematoxylin‐eosin stained preparations, one type was characterized by supranuclear clear vacuoles, the other by supranuclear dark vacuoles, another by usually supranuclear vacuoles and cilia, a fourth type by subnuclear clear vacuoles centered by a lymphocyte, and the fifth type by subnuclear empty vacuoles. In the latter three types, a battery of mucous stains were negative. The significance of some of these vacuolated cell types remains to be elucidated.


Instant nutritional assessment of the hospitalized patient is described based upon admission serum albumin levels and total lymphocyte counts. Abnormalities of these parameters are associated with markedly increased morbidity and mortality in a series of 500 consecutively admitted patient. It is suggested that instant nutritional assessment be performed on all hospitalized patients with appropriate alterations and therapy being made to allow for nutritional repletion.


The reversible binding constant (Ki) for tetramethylammonium ion (TMA) was determined from the decrease in the bimolecular rate constant (ki) observed with each of 21 organophosphate or carbamate inhibitors of acetylcholinesterase (EC 22.214.171.124). The Ki values obtained were reasonably constant (5.8 X 10(-4) +/- 0.38 M), and this is consistent with reports indicating that TMA binds to a single site on the enzyme.


Drug and alcohol abuse lead to neuronal cell loss and altered CNS plasticity that effects one's ability to understand and learn new information, as well as restructure pathways important in abstinence based recovery processes.  Plasticity relies, in part, on stem cells in several regions of the adult brain that expand, migrate, differentiate and establish new neurons and supportive glial cells.  Previous studies suggest that drugs of abuse, including alcohol, methamphetamine and opioids reduce the number of stem cells and affect migration and differentiation processes. Our study examined differentiation of E14 rat neuronal stem cell differentiation after drug insult. In this study, differentiated neuronal stem cells were exposed to single doses of alcohol, methamphetamine, and DAMGO (opioid agonist) to recreate the effects of adult substance abuse.  We examined cells, after 5 days, to determine differentiation processes and cell numbers.  Synaptogyrin-1 antibody was used to determine neuronal connectivity, and Glutamine Receptor Type 1 antibody was used to determine glutamate neurotransmission.  Cells were also stained for synaptic vesicle expression.  We show substantial cell loss with alterations in vesicle packaging and synaptic cleft formation.  Research sponsored by WV-INBRE grant P20GM103434.


The emerging wave of Big Data applications is flooding all branches of scientific knowledge. Economic and statistical applied research carried out in central banks and policy advising institutions is no exception. In this paper we present one of the most promising platform providing a unifying framework for different researchers willing to harness their knowledge of popular and simple computing environment such as R and Python. Along with their Integrated Development Environment (IDE), these are two of the most used numerical computing framework which are open source, provide built-in capabilities for statistical analysis and include a wide array of user contributed packages for an ample set of analytical tools suitable for different scientific applications. In the Big Data framework, we show how to provide researchers with a suitable programming environment allowing them to tame the intrinsic complexity of a High Performance Computing Cluster. Here we provide few empirical applications based on classical econometric and machine learning modeling.


A 61-year-old man presented with a dry cough and dyspnoea. On examination, persistent hypoxaemia without clinical signs of respiratory distress was observed. After the most common causes of hypoxaemia were ruled out, hepatopulmonary syndrome was suspected because of his medical history of liver cirrhosis. Further diagnostic testing including serial arterial blood gas analysis and contrast enhanced transthoracic echocardiography supported the diagnosis. As liver transplantation is currently the only available curative treatment, the patient was referred to a transplantation centre. Hepatopulmonary syndrome is a rare but severe pulmonary complication of several liver diseases, characterised by arterial deoxygenation and intrapulmonary vascular dilatation. When left untreated it has a high mortality rate. Early recognition may increase survival and lower perioperative transplantation risks. Therefore, when encountering a case of unexplained hypoxaemia in a patient with liver disease, the possibility of hepatopulmonary syndrome should be considered.


A hybrid polymer-nanorod (NR) light-emitting diode (LED), consisting of a hole-conducting polymer poly (9-vinyl carbazole) (PVK) and ZnO nanorod (NR) composite, with the device structure of glass/indium-tin-oxide (ITO)/PEDOT:PSS/(PVK + ZnO nanorods)/Al is fabricated through a simple spin coating technique. TEM images shows inhomogeneous deposition and the agglomeration of ZnO NRs, which is explained through their low probability of adsorption on PVK due to two-dimensional structural property. In the current-voltage characteristics, negative differential resistance (NDR) phenomenon is observed corresponding to device structure without ZnO NRs. The carrier transport behavior in the LED device is well described by both ohmic and space-chargelimited-current (SCLC) mechanisms. Broad blue electroluminescence (EL) consisting of two sub peaks, are centered at 441 nm and the other at 495 nm, is observed, which indicates that the ZnO nanorod play a role as a recombination center for excitons. The red shift in the position of the EL compared to that photoluminescence is well explained through band offsets at the heterojunction between the PVK and ZnO NRs.


ABSTRACT A Late Mississippian paleosol satisfying all of the morphological criteria required for classification of Holocene Vertisols provides quantitative paleoclimate information, in addition to the now commonplace interpretation of precipitation seasonality based on the presence of vertic features. Paleoprecipitation was estimated using the empirical relationship between depth to pedogenic carbonate horizon in Quaternary soils. Burial compaction, erosional truncation, and high paleoatmospheric CO2 concentration, all factors that complicate paleoprecipitation estimates, are unusually well constrained for this paleosol. Allowing for 10% compaction, the paleosol had a pre-burial depth of 100 cm for the pedogenic carbonate horizon, yielding a mean annual paleo-precipitation estimate f 648 ± 141 mm. This is comparable to the mean annual precipitation for Brownsville, Texas, where similar soils are found today. A dolomicrite crust, developed in gilgai microlows, is well preserved in the paleo-Vertisol. Higher Late Mississippian paleotemperatures and rates of evapotranspiration associated with a lower-latitude paleogeography for central Tennessee during the Late Mississippian may explain in part why Holocene coastal Vertisols in the Brownsville region lack surficial crusts similar to that of the paleo-Vertisol. We qualitatively define the Late Mississippian climate of central Tennessee as semiarid.


Domestic Hot Water (DHW) storage tanks are identified as a main source of flexible energy use in buildings. As a basis for energy management in apartment buildings, this paper describes the aggregated DHW use in a case building, and analyses the potential for DHW energy flexibility by simulating different control options. The case study for the work is an apartment building in Oslo with 56 apartments and a shared DHW system. Energy measurements are available for consumed hot water, hot water circulation, and energy supplied to the DHW tanks. The measurements are presented with minute, hourly and daily values. Aggregated daily energy use for the consumed hot water is in average 362 kWh, while the energy supplied is 555 kWh. The potential for energy flexibility is analysed for a base case and for four different rule-based control options: Power limitation, Spot price savings, Flexibility sale and Solar energy. Economic consequences of the control options are compared. With the Norwegian tariff structure, maximum hourly power use has the main impact on the cost. Control systems that aim to reduce the maximum power use may be combined with spot price savings or to offer end-user flexibility services to the grid.


Among rapid advances of electrical systems electronic circuit boards have become more compact and heat production rate from their components increased considerably. Such developments raised more attention and tendency in tackling their cooling problems. A wide variety of cooling systems are developed such as various fins for decreasing the circuit board temperature. Extended surfaces or fins are good heat transfer equipments that are used for various industrial applications. The wide industrial applications of fins to enhance heat transfer rate highlighted the need for further research of optimization of fins to increase their thermal performances. Among various fin types, rectangular fins are commonly used due to their simplicity of manufacturing. Fin configurations affect the cooling rate significantly, hence a comprehensive parametric study on the fin geometries may be improve their performance. Rectangular fins show a good performance of increasing heat removal rate, while reducing the manufacturing cost. Moreover the inspiration of putting holes along the flow through the fins may be very helpful in increasing the heat removal and reduction of the needed material.The present study investigates a numerical analysis of three dimensional, turbulent convection heat transfer from an array of rectangular perforated fins with increasing the perforation size from bottom to top. The perforations considered are like circular channels along the length of fins and the number of perforations is 3. For investigation, incompressible air as working fluid is modeled using Navier–Stokes equations. RNG based k-e turbulent model is used to predict turbulent flow parameters. Temperature field inside the fins is obtained by solving Fourier's conduction equation. The conjugate differential equations for both solid and gas phase are solved simultaneously by finite volume procedure using SIMPLE algorithm. Flow and heat transfer characteristics are presented for Reynolds numbers from 2 × 104 to 4 × 104 based on the fin length and Prandtl number of Pr = 0.71. Numerical model is first validated with previous experimental studies and good agreements were observed. Based on the valid simulation model, numerical solution is made to find flow field and temperature distribution for various perforation size. Results show that for a specific type of perforated fins the fin effectiveness is higher than other types and drag coefficient decreases with increasing the perforation size.© 2012 ASME


Trichoboscis Meyrick belongs to the subfamily Lecithocerinae of Lecithoceridae. It is a small, poorly known genus, comprising two known species described from India. In this study, three new species are described: T. multispina Park & Wang, sp. nov. and T. phliuensis Park & Wang, sp. nov. from Thailand, and T. cultriformis Park & Wang, sp. nov. from China. Images of adults and genitalia are provided, along with a key to all the described species in the genus.


Zinc sulfide thin films were grown by using both normal metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and photoassisted MOCVD with diethylzinc and t-butylthiol as sources for the zinc and the sulfur, respectively. The effects of UV irradiation and reactor chamber pressure on the film growth were investigated. The basic physical properties of the ZnS thin films grown by using MOCVD were also investigated with X-ray diffraction, optical absorption, and Raman spectroscopy. The growth rate of the ZnS thin films grown by using photoassisted MOCVD were improved by about 28% compared to that of the films grown by using normal MOCVD. The growth rate also increased with increasing reactor chamber pressure. The energy band gap obtained from the optical absorption spectrum was 3.58 eV. MOCVD-grown ZnS thin films were hexagonal (lattice constants: a = 0.382 nm and c = 0.626 nm). In the Raman spectrum, the A1 and the E1 transverse peaks (A1(TO) and E1(TO)) were observed at 277 cm−1, and the A1 and the E1 longitudinal peaks (A1(LO) and E1(LO)) were observed at 354 cm−1.


The wood anatomy of two varieties of Caesalpinia bonduc (L.) Roxb., that is the staminate and pistillate plants and four varieties of Caesalpinia pulcherrima (Linn).Sw, namely, Red, Yellow, Off-white and Pink petal plants were studied in search of wood anatomical characters that may be useful in the taxonomy of the Caesalpinia genus. Transverse, tangential longitudinal and radial longitudinal sections of the woods were made and some other parts of the woods were macerated. Qualitative and quantitative characters were observed and measured respectively, in all the taxa. The data were subjected to Duncan multiple range test (DMRT), principal components analysis (PCA) and single linkage cluster analysis (SLCA). The results revealed that growth ring is absent in all the taxa studied. They all have diffuse porous woods with heterogenous, uniseriate rays and solitary vessels. Pistillate plant of C. bonduc is the only taxa with multiple ray cells. Apotracheal axial parenchyma type was unique to the staminate plant of C. bonduc while paratracheal type was unique to C. bonduc pistillate. All the varieties of C. pulcherrima lack axial parenchyma. Tylose was absent in the pistillate plant of C. bonduc var. female and C. pulcherrima var. pink but present in all the other taxa. The first three components of the PCA accounted for 95.73% of the total variation among the taxa. It was concluded that quantitative and qualitative wood anatomical characters can be employed in differentiating the species and varieties of Caesalpinia studied. Keywords: Axial parenchyma, Caesalpinia , Fibres, Tylose, Vessels, Wood anatomy


ABSTRACT This article examines the formulation and implementation of American grand strategy under the Obama administration, and how the "pivot to Asia" functions within this strategic context. It argues that President Obama attempts to secure continued American hegemony through a combination of cooperative engagement and restraint. This exposes a fundamental dilemma at the heart of America's rebalancing: increased engagement with US allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific is fueling political, economic, and military competition with China. Sequestration and questions over American strategic coherence and consistency are simultaneously undermining the credibility of the pivot, both at home and abroad. The article concludes that this dilemma makes it unlikely for the pivot to succeed in its stated aims, unless the United States re-emphasizes cooperative engagement with China.


The bioavailability and pharmacokinetics of an oral dopamine prodrug, N-(N-acetyl-L-methionyl)O,O-bis(ethoxycarbonyl)dopamine (1), were examined in dogs, and the mechanism of its absorption and bioactivation was discussed. Compound 1 showed a plasma dopamine concentration that was several times higher than that of dopamine (DA) following oral administration to dogs, while the plasma concentrations of dopamine-30-sulfate (DA-SO4) and 3,4-dihydroxyphenylacetic acid (DOPAC) are lower in comparison with that of DA. The conversion of 1 to DA occurred in proportion to the dose administered. Compound 1 also showed a plasma DA concentration that was several times higher than that of other DA prodrugs reported hitherto. In dog plasma, in vitro, 1 was converted to its deethoxycarbonylated form, N-(N-acetyl-L-methionyl)dopamine (2), while other related compounds, N-(L-methionyl)dopamine (3), N-(L-methionyl)O,O-bis(ethoxycarbonyl)-dopamine (4), and O,O-bis(ethoxycarbonyl)dopamine (5), were rapidly converted to DA (however, 2 was stable in plasma). Bioavailability, based on the AUC of DA, 1, 2, and 5 following oral administration to dogs, increased in the following order: 1, 2, 5, and DA. Thus, it was shown that the two protective groups introduced in 1 served to reduce the first-pass metabolism of the DA moiety in the absorption process. It was also confirmed that 1 is converted to 2 or DA in blood, liver, and intestine.


What is the ethical import of contemporary scientific cosmology? How does our understanding of the universe relate to our most pressing social concerns? How do the disparate fields of theology, ethics, and the sciences relate to each other? Murphy and Ellis offer a coherent construction of these relations and show how a particular moral vision-a "kenotic" ethic-is supported "from below" by the social sciences and "from above" by theology. The theological import of contemporary cosmology, they argue, points ultimately to an ethic that centers on self-sacrifice and nonviolence. In ambition, rigor, and scale, in its search for an integrated and coherent worldview at a time of unprecedented complexity and uncertainty, readers will find this volume daring and important.


Recent high-resolution simulations demonstrate that disks around primordial protostars easily fragment in the accretion phase before protostars accrete less than a solar mass. To understand why gravitational instability generally causes fragmentation so early, we develop a one-dimensional (1D) nonsteady model of the circumstellar disk that takes the mass supply from an accretion envelope into account. We also compare the model results to a three-dimensional (3D) numerical simulation performed with a code employing adaptive mesh refinement. Our model shows that the self-gravitating disk, through which the Toomre Q parameter is nearly constant at Q ∼ 1, gradually spreads as the disk is fed by the gas infalling from the envelope. We further find that the accretion rate onto the star is an order of magnitude smaller than the mass supply rate onto the disk. This discrepancy makes the disk more massive than the protostar in an early evolutionary stage. Most of the infalling gas is used to extend the outer part of the self-gravitating disk rather than transferred inward toward the star through the disk. We find that similar evolution also occurs in 3D simulations, where the disk becomes three times more massive than the star before the first fragmentation occurs. Our 1D disk model well explains the evolution of the disk-to-star mass ratio observed in the simulation. We argue that the formation of such a massive disk leads to early disk fragmentation.


In this paper, we present an adaptive scheme involving heterogeneous delay interactions to suppress synchronization in a large population of oscillators. We analytically investigate the incoherent state stability regions for several specific kinds of distributions for delays. Interestingly, we find that, among the distributions that we discuss, the exponential distribution may offer great convenience to the performance of our adaptive scheme because this distribution renders an unbounded stability region. Moreover, we demonstrate our scheme in the realization of synchronization elimination in some representative, realistic neuronal networks, which makes it possible to deepen the understanding and even refine the existing techniques of deep brain stimulation in the treatment of some synchronization-induced mental disorders.


In this paper we consider the nonlinear transmission problem for the wave equation with time dependent coefficients and linear internal damping. We prove global existence and exponential decay of solution. The result is achieved by considering energy like Lyapunov functionals and suitable unique continuation theorem for the wave equation.


Rationale: Current therapies have had limited effect on structural airway changes in patients with asthma. We recently found that anti-IgE therapy significantly decreased established airway hyperresponsiveness and subepithelial fibrosis in a mouse asthma model (Henderson et al., AJRCCM 183: A4066, 2011). MicroRNA (miRNA or miR)s, small non-coding RNAs, are key regulators of gene expression that may serve as novel biomarkers and therapeutic targets in disease states.

Study Aim: Determine the effect of anti-IgE therapy on miRNA expression in a mouse asthma model with airway remodeling.

Methods: Mice periodically given OVA (days 14-163) were treated with 100 µg monoclonal rat IgG1 anti-IgE (R35-92, Pharmingen) (OVA/anti-IgE group), rat IgG1 isotype control antibody (OVA/IgG1 group), or saline (OVA/Saline group) days 73-75, and then once weekly until day 163 when lung miRNA was isolated. MiRNA transcriptional profiling was carried out using Affymetrix GeneChip miR 2.0 arrays with data analysis by Bioconductor limma package. MiRNAs whose expression was changed >1.5-fold (p<0.05) were considered differentially expressed.

Results: 21 miRNAs were significantly changed in the OVA/Saline group vs saline-treated controls including upregulation of profibrotic miR-21 and miR-155. MiRs 467e, 511, and 744* were downregulated and the antifibrotic miR-16* upregulated in the OVA/anti-IgE group vs the OVA/IgG1 group.

Conclusions: The ameliorating effect of anti-IgE treatment on established airway remodeling in this asthma model is likely mediated by its differential effects on gene expression in the lung. Our data direct attention to key miRNAs that may serve as biomarkers for this remodeling process.


In turbomachines, forced response of blades is blade vibrations due to external aerodynamic excitations and it can lead to blade failures which can have fatal or severe economic consequences. The estimation of the level of vibration due to forced response is dependent on the determination of aerodynamic damping. The most critical cases for forced response occur at high reduced frequencies. This paper investigates the determination of aerodynamic damping at high reduced frequencies. The aerodynamic damping was calculated by a linearized Navier-Stokes flow solver with exact 3D non-reflecting boundary conditions.
 The method was validated using Standard Configuration 8, a two-dimensional flat plate. Good agreement with the reference data at reduced frequency 2.0 was achieved and grid converged solutions with reduced frequency up to 16.0 were obtained. It was concluded that at least 20 cells per wavelength is required. A 3D profile was also investigated: an aeroelastic turbine rig (AETR) which is a subsonic turbine case. In the AETR case, the first bending mode with reduced frequency 2.0 was studied. The 3D acoustic modes were calculated at the far-fields and the propagating amplitude was plotted as a function of circumferential mode index and radial order. This plot identified six acoustic resonance points which included two points corresponding to the first radial modes. The aerodynamic damping as a function of nodal diameter was also calculated and plotted. There were six distinct peaks which occurred in the damping curve and these peaks correspond to the six resonance points. This demonstrates for the first time that acoustic resonances due to higher order radial acoustic modes can affect the aerodynamic damping at high reduced frequencies.


Atrial septostomy (AS) is a palliative treatment for right ventricular failure from severe pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). We sought to investigate the effect of AS, alone or combined with PAH-specific pharmacotherapy, on the survival of patients with PAH. We performed a retrospective analysis of the functional and haemodynamic changes in patients with PAH following AS, and long-term survival characteristics for the whole group and separately for the subgroup who received post-procedural pharmacotherapy. 50 procedures performed in 34 patients (mean±sd age 35±10 yrs) resulted in haemodynamic and symptomatic improvement in most of the patients. Only one (2%) procedure-related death occurred. Due to spontaneous closure of the defect, AS was repeated in 10 patients. In 21 patients, AS was the only form of treatment, while 11 received additional pharmacotherapy after AS. During follow-up (58.5±38 months), 21 patients died; median survival of the group was 60 months (95% CI 43–77 months). Median survival for patients on pharmacotherapy additional to AS was 83 months (95% CI 57–109 months), which was better than that for patients with AS alone (53 months, 95% CI 39–67 months) (log-rank 6.52; p=0.010). In selected patients with PAH, AS is a safe and effective intervention that exerts a beneficial impact on long-term survival. Survival appears to be improved when AS is combined with PAH-specific pharmacotherapy.


Years of research have demonstrated that biofeedback, neurofeedback, and mindfulness, individually and in various combinations, have been employed to effectively improve sport performance. The present article discusses the literature supporting the combination of these techniques, the neurophysiologic measures that support the use of these techniques for performance enhancement, and practical methods for implementing a combination of biofeedback and mindfulness with athletes. Finally, a case study is presented to offer practical steps on implementing mindfulness and biofeedback for the purpose of performance enhancement.


Purpose Carotid artery stenting (CAS) has evolved as a first-line therapeutic option for carotid revascularization in indicated patients for stroke prevention, but there is still a lack of data on its effect on cognitive function (CF), especially among Indian patients. To determine the effect of CAS on CF and to study the immediate and delayed complications of CAS in Indian patients. Materials and Methods This was a prospective, observational, single-center study. CF was assessed using Addenbrooke's cognitive examination version III (ACE) before and 3 months after stenting. The demographic and clinical parameters were also assessed. A follow-up evaluation after 3 months was done to compare CF and to observe the occurrence of any complications. Results Out of 31 patients, 3 were lost to follow up. There were no immediate or delayed procedure-related complications. There was a statistically significant improvement in overall ACE score and memory before and after stenting. On subgroup analysis of those with and without strokes, there was a significant improvement in visuospatial function and mean ACE score. Those with left CAS had significant improvement in memory, visuospatial, language, and ACE scores than right CAS. Conclusion CAS was associated with significant improvement in CF in patients.


BACKGROUND: Child-rearing practices are defined as specific behavioral patterns used during maternal duties. These practices could influence infants' motor development. OBJECTIVE: To verify the influence of daily child-rearing practices on the motor development of healthy infants from their sixth to twelfth months of life. METHOD: Fourteen healthy full-term infants were selected and longitudinally assessed at the ages of six, nine and twelve months using the Alberta Infant Motor Scale. At each assessment, the mothers answered a closed questionnaire about their main daily childcare practices when the infant was awake. The infants' predominant posture, the places where they were usually kept and how mothers carried the infants in their arms were evaluated. RESULTS: Motor performance at the ninth month was positively influenced by predominance of the hands-and-knees crawling posture, in relation to sitting, prone or supine postures, and by staying on the floor in relation to being in a baby buggy. At the twelfth month, it was positively influenced by hands-and-knees crawling and standing postures. The predominant posture at the sixth month and the way of carrying the infants at six, nine and twelve months did not influence motor development in the study group. CONCLUSIONS: The results suggest that practices that stimulate adoption of the hands-and-knees crawling posture, and utilization of the floor as a place to keep the infant, positively influence the motor development of healthy infants from six months of age onwards.


This study, funded by the ARC, was designed to identify the nature of successful teacher education and recruitment strategies that made rural teaching an attractive and long term career option at both primary and secondary levels. A set of 20 rural Australian case studies, outlined in this report, identify and describe features of particular schools and communities where the retention of staff appears to be a successful feature.


The constant advances on scaling have introduced several issues to the design of processing structures in new technologies. The closer one gets to nano-scale devices, the more necessary are methods to develop circuits that are able to tolerate high defect densities. At the same time, beyond area costs, there is a pressure to maintain energy and power dissipation at acceptable levels, which practically forbids classical redundancy. This paper presents a dynamic solution to provide reliability and reduce energy of a microprocessor using a dynamically adaptive reconfigurable fabric. The approach combines the binary translation mechanism with the sleep transistor technique to ensure graceful degradation for software applications, while at the same time can reduce energy by shutting off the power supply of the unused and the defective resources of a reconfigurable fabric.


Groundwater in an industrial belt (namely Upper Kodaganar River basin, Tamilnadu, India) is polluted due to discharge of untreated effluents from 80 operating tanneries. Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) measurements vary in and around the clusters of tanneries from 2,000 mg/l to 30,573 mg/l in open wells. A mass transport model was constructed to study the contaminant migration using Visual MODFLOW and MODPATH. An area of 240 km 2 was chosen to construct the groundwater flow model of the weathered portion of the unconfined aquifers. The shallow groundwater potential field computed through flow model was then used as input to the mass transport model. The mass transport model was calibrated with field observation. Sensitivity analysis was carried out whereby model parameters viz. transmissivity, dispersivity etc. were altered slightly and the effect on calibration statistics is observed. This study indicates that the transmissivity plays a sensitive role than the dispersivity. It shows that the migration phenomenon is mainly through advection rather than dispersion. Particle pathlines also had been computed to trace the movement of contaminants. The contaminant migration is being emanated from the tannery belt and polluted towards eastern side of the Kodaganar river. This modeling study has indicated that even if the pollutant sources were reduced to 50% of the present level, TDS concentration level in the groundwater, even after 20 years, would not be reduced below 50% of it. The study suggests immediate measures for arresting the deterioration in groundwater quality as well as augmentation for restoration of aquifer in some parts of the study area.


This paper reports the design and fabrication of a micromachined Coulter counter. Calculations have been performed to estimate the behaviour of the counter for passing particles. A relative resistance change of 1.8% has been derived for a particle of 1.5 µm radius flowing through a capillary of 5 µm side length and an electrode spacing of 40 µm. The fabrication technology has been based on similar micromachining steps to a micromixer, and allows further design modification to generate other microfluidic devices. Thus, integration of other microfluidic devices is possible with this technology. The fabrication relies on silicon trench etching and subsequent deposition of metal electrodes over the trench edges. Finally, a Pyrex wafer is anodically bonded on top of the silicon to seal the capillaries.


RIT1 is a member of the Ras family of GTPases that direct broad cellular physiological responses through tightly controlled signaling networks. The canonical Ras GTPases are well-defined regulators of the RAF/MEK/ERK pathway and mutations in these are pathogenic in cancer and a class of developmental disorders termed RASopathies. Emerging clinical evidences have now demonstrated a role for RIT1 in RASopathies, namely Noonan syndrome, and various cancers including lung adenocarcinoma and myeloid malignancies. While RIT1 has been mostly described in the context of neuronal differentiation and survival, the mechanisms underlying aberrant RIT1-mediated signaling remain elusive. Here, we will review efforts undertaken to characterize the biochemical and functional properties of the RIT1 GTPase at the molecular, cellular, and organismal level, as well as provide a phenotypic overview of different human conditions caused by RIT1 mutations. Deeper understanding of RIT1 biological function and insight to its pathogenic mechanisms are imperative to developing effective therapeutic interventions for patients with RIT1-mutant Noonan syndrome and cancer.


(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)Visionary Religion and Radicalism in Early Industrial England: From Southcott to Socialism . By Philip Lockley . New York : Oxford University Press , 2013. xvi + 298 pp. $125 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesIn this compelling, archive-driven work, Philip Lockley challenges the dominant interpretations of Southcottian millenarianism. He takes particular aim at E. P. Thompson's dismissal of the movement's followers as "deluded" (vii). The book argues that paying attention to Southcottians' religious experiences and theology between 1815 and 1840 overturns many of historians' assumptions about the relationship between popular religion, radical politics, and agency.Lockley reveals that the two main strands of Southcottianism separately developed a theology of engagement with the political and social realms. Both sought to transform the world. The supposed despair of millenarian religion did not sabotage personal agency and politics. Rather, Southcottian theology came to encourage believers to use human action to improve the world and to participate in social radicalism. Lockley rejects the notion that there was a transition from religious to secular attitudes in politics. Instead, Southcottians' engagement with the world stemmed from their theology. Their actions and motivations are comprehensible only in terms of their own lived religious experience.Lockley builds on Phyllis Mack's Heart Religion in the British Enlightenment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008) to understand how divine and human agency could be understood as inter-relating rather than mutually exclusive concepts. In turn, this prompts him to propose a new heuristic framework for categorizing millennial beliefs. Instead of a simplistic divide between passive premillennialism and active postmillennialism, Lockley emphasizes how believers expected the millennium to come about (evolutionary vs. disruptive) and how they believed that they gained this knowledge about future events (interpretative vs. revelatory). A believer's position on the spectrums between these points shaped their attitude toward human or divine agency. Thus, premillennialists who anticipated an evolutionary chronology might embrace human agency instead of passivity.In addition to Southcottian archives, including an until now inaccessible collection of manuscript and rare printed materials, the book makes use of a creative range of sources such as Home Office spy reports, radical journals, and private correspondence. These sources lead Lockley to assert that the most influential interpretations of Southcottianism by E. P. Thompson, Barbara Taylor, and Iain McCalman are not supported by the evidence of Southcottians themselves. Thoroughly revisionist, the book "challenges components of every other study of Southcottianism" (15).These corrections include insights about the divisions within the movement after Joanna Southcott's death and the geographical spread of its adherents. Through a careful reexamination of membership rolls and the discovery of a major error in their previous interpretation, Lockley also suggests that the movement did not appeal to women in any distinctive way. Outside of a few southern communities, the gender ratio in Southcottianism mirrored that found among Methodists, Congregationalists, and Baptists.The book also argues that Southcottians were not necessarily poverty-stricken victims of the industrial revolution. The movement certainly included poor textile workers, but also attracted aristocrats, merchants, and families with capital and employees. Southcottianism survived in communities across decades and among families of means, countering the notion that millenarian beliefs flourished only temporarily during economic crises. …


[1] We report ozonesonde observations from the following four locations across the United States: Trinidad Head, California; Boulder, Colorado; Huntsville, Alabama; and Wallops Island, Virginia. These ozone profiles clearly indicate evidence of stratosphere-troposphere exchange, boundary layer pollution, and strong seasonal variations. Significant variation at the shortest interlaunch frequencies (typically weekly) appears in all seasons, at all stations throughout the troposphere. Activity near the tropopause dominates in the winter and spring, while boundary layer ozone maximizes in the summer. The vertical extent and maximum values of boundary layer ozone are larger at the eastern stations. Comparisons to the TOMS overpasses indicate agreement to within 2% for the total-column ozone at all stations, with station-to-station mean biases less than 2%. The seasonal variation of the total ozone column is essentially identical at Trinidad Head and Wallops Island, while the summertime values at Boulder are significantly smaller by comparison, and the amplitude of the annual cycle at Huntsville is smaller than the amplitude of the other three stations. The longitudinal character of upper tropospheric ozone shows amounts generally increasing westward from Huntsville, and in the lower troposphere, ozone decreases westward from Huntsville in all seasons. Values to the east of Huntsville increase at all altitudes and seasons, with the possible exception of August when Huntsville's boundary layer and free-tropospheric ozone dominate.


Embodiments of the present disclosure are directed to a method for processing computer readable electronic files in an investigation in a computer system including a processor coupled to a display and an electronic storage device coupled to the processor. The method includes the processor accessing the electronic files and related data from a data source. The accessed files and related data are culled by the processor based on predetermined filter criteria. The processor stores the remaining files and related data in a third-party data repository and maps a set of electronic files and related data stored in the third-party data repository into a predetermined database schema. The mapped files and related data are analyzed by the processor, which applies a status decision on them. The analyzed electronic files and related data are submitted to a third-party e-discovery processing application based on the applied status decision.


Due to the rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, many online web apps (e.g., Google Map and Uber) estimate the travel time of trajectory data collected by mobile devices. However, in reality, complex factors, such as network communication and energy constraints, make multiple trajectories collected at a low sampling rate. In this case, this paper aims to resolve the problem of travel time estimation (TTE) and route recovery in sparse scenarios, which often leads to the uncertain label of travel time and route between continuously sampled GPS points. We formulate this problem as an inexact supervision problem in which the training data has coarsely grained labels and jointly solve the tasks of TTE and route recovery. And we argue that both two tasks are complementary to each other in the model-learning procedure and hold such a relation: more precise travel time can lead to better inference for routes, in turn, resulting in a more accurate time estimation). Based on this assumption, we propose an EM algorithm to alternatively estimate the travel time of inferred route through weak supervision in E step and retrieve the route based on estimated travel time in M step for sparse trajectories. We conducted experiments on three real-world trajectory datasets and demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed method.


Functional recovery in acute renal failure is well known, and the adult kidney is generally recognized to have the capacity to regenerate and repair. Several groups have reported the contribution of bone marrow-derived cells in this process, and others have confirmed the existence of adult stem cells in the kidney, including label retaining cells, slow-cycling cells, side population cells, and rKS506 cells. However, recent data demonstrated that in vivo differentiation of bone marrow-derived cells into renal tubular cells may not occur at all, or is at most a minor component of the repair process. Moreover, it is now generally accepted that stem cells and multipotent cells contribute to the regenerative process by producing protective and regenerative factors rather than by directly differentiating to replace damaged cells. This review will focus on current understanding of kidney regeneration.


Peer-to-Peer (P2P) architectures for Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG) provide better scalability than Client/Server (C/S), however, they increase the possibility of cheating. Recently proposed P2P protocols use trusted referees that simulate/validate the game to provide security equivalent to C/S. When selecting referees from un-trusted peers, selecting non-colluding referees becomes critical. Further, referees should be selected such that the range and length of delays to players is minimized (maximizing game fairness and responsiveness). In this paper we formally define the referee selection problem and propose two secure referee selection algorithms, SRS-1 and SRS-2, to solve it. Both algorithms ensure the probability of corrupt referees controlling a zone/region is below a pre-defined limit, while attempting to maximize responsiveness and fairness. The trade-off between responsiveness and fairness is adjustable for both algorithms. Simulations of three different scenarios show the effectiveness of our algorithms.


Two experiments were carried out to explore the units of analysis used by children to read Dutch bisyllabic pseudowords. Although Dutch orthography is highly regular, several deviations from a one-to-one correspondence occur. In polysyllabic words, the grapheme e may represent three different vowels: /e/, /e/, or /∂/. In Experiment 1, Grade 6 elementary school children were presented lists of bisyllabic pseudowords containing the grapheme e in the initial syllable representing a content morpheme, a prefix, or a random string. On the basis of general word frequency data, we expected the interpretation of the initial syllable as a random string to elicit the pronunciation of a stressed /e/, the interpretation of the initial syllable as a content morpheme to elicit the pronunciation of a stressed /ε/, and the interpretation as a prefix to elicit the pronunciation of an unstressed /∂/. We found both the pronunciation and the stress assignment for pseudowords to depend on word type, which shows morpheme boundaries and prefixes to be identified. However, the identification of prefixes could also be explained by the correspondence of the prefix boundaries in the pseudowords to syllable boundaries. To exclude this alternative explanation, a follow-up experiment with the same group of children was conducted using bisyllabic pseudowords containing prefixes that did not coincide with syllable boundaries versus similar pseudowords with no prefix. The results of the first experiment were replicated. That is, the children identified prefixes and shifted their assignment of word stress accordingly. The results are discussed with reference to a parallel dual-route model of word decoding.


This paper presents the concept of methanol decomposition using engine exhaust heat, and examines its potential for use in the operation of passenger cars, diesel trucks, and diesel-electric locomotives. Energy economy improvements of 10-20% are calculated over the representative driving cycles without a net loss in power. Some reductions in exhaust emissions are also projected.


The process of materials fracture is not yet understood across all levels. This thesis contains detailed description on a model of in-plane fracture along with results obtained using this model. The results from the model are in very good agreement with experimental observations, both with respect to the static scaling of the front (morphology) and a dynamic study of the underlying processes. This is quite remarkable, considering our model is quasistatic, meaning that the dynamics are time independent.Using this model, I have found two scaling regimes which corresponds to the two different regimes found experimentally for in-plane fracture. This is the first model to successfully reproduce these two scaling regimes, allowing us to clearly state the important processes in this constrained form of fracture. Only the geometry is constrained, any material obeying the quite general assumptions in the model should contain the same processes and fracture in the same way.The results indicate that a percolation process is controlling the fracture on small scales. At larger scales, the elastic material properties leads to a stress concentration which eventually constrains damage formation to the immediate area near the fracture front. In the large scale regime I have measured a roughness exponent oflarge = 0.39 ± 0.04 .In the small scale regime, I show data consistent with and present evidence based on several different analyses for a roughness exponent of small = 2/3.


ZnS thin films are prepared by thermal evaporation of high-purity ZnS powder on quartz glass substrates. The samples were annealed in floating argon at temperatures from 300°C to 900°C. The effects of annealing temperature on the structural and optical properties were investigated by x-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and optical absorption. The results show that annealing below 500°C is beneficial to improve the quality of ZnS films. When the annealing temperature exceeds 500°C, ZnS is gradually oxidized into ZnSO4, which has evident influences on the structural and optical properties of ZnS films.