Lecture Capture technologies are becoming widespread in UK Higher Education with many institutions adopting a capture-all approach. Installations of capture devices in all teaching rooms and lecture theatres, scheduled recordings through integration with timetabling and automated distribution through virtual learning environments are swiftly becoming the norm. Capturing lectures has been shown to have a positive impact on student satisfaction, but numerous studies have shown little or no positive impact on student attainment as a result of capturing lectures. This article explores an alternative approach to the use of capture technologies in a pilot study at the University of Wolverhampton. The output of the pilot evaluation is a theoretical model recommending a shift in focus away from the conventional use of the technology for capturing lectures. It advocates a move toward the purposeful use of capture technologies to create content which adds value to student learning and increases engagement, which may ultimately lead to a positive impact on student attainment. The findings have implications for policy and practice around the use of capture technologies. Future work is described in the context of the project findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]


It is very important for the emergency patient or chronic diseased patient to measure and acquire continuously vital sign. However, not only the hospital inside but also outside, the continuous measurement of the vital sign of patient is very difficult and the research about this is insufficient. To solve this problem, we developed the universal and portable monitoring system for continuous measurement of the vital sign of patient. Developed system in this paper is composed of wireless body area sensor network including wireless vital sign measurement device (ECG, SpO2 etc) and the portable gateway device. Especially, the portable gateway device retransmits the vital sign transmitted from body area sensor network to hospital through optionally using WLAN or CDMA 1x EV-DO networks. Moreover, because vital sign is measured and acquired into huge memory card in the region of the limited network, this system can continuously measure vital sign. In addition to this, communication between the wireless vital sign measurement device and the portable gateway device uses TDMA (time division multiple access) method for high reliability of the vital sign which needs transmitting by period.


In this paper, we present an iterated algorithm framework that can be implemented with heuristics in the literature for the minimum energy broadcasting problem in wireless ad hoc networks. We investigate three iterated algorithm implementations, IBIP, IOMEGa, ISOR, that are based on BIP, OMEGa, SOR. The algorithms run iterations to find better solutions of the problem and in each iteration, fixing the source node's transmission power, the algorithm finds the intermediate solutions. And after all the iterations, the algorithm will give the output of the best solution so far. By fixing the source node's transmission power we can get the effect of diverse solution search without hurting the original algorithm's theoretical performance bound. The experimental results confirm that the iterated algorithms significantly improve the solution quality with the help of diverse search.


Human metapneumovirus (hMPV) F protein promotes fusion of viral and cell membranes, and is thought to be a major antigenic determinant that mediates effective neutralization and protection against hMPV infection. In this paper, the development of two mouse monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) by immunization with hMPVinfected cells is described. Immunofluorescence assay (IFA) using hMPV F protein-expressing cells indicated that two MAbs, designated 1G3 and 9B10, recognized hMPV F protein. Both MAbs were found to be reactive to two groups of hMPV by an IFA using two groups of hMPV-infected cells. The 9B10 mAb had strong neutralizing activity against both groups of hMPV, while the 1G3 MAb had only weak neutralization activity. These results indicate that the hMPV F protein is a major antigenic determinant that mediates extensive cross-lineage neutralization and protection. Production of MAbs to the hMPV F protein is critical for development of diagnostic techniques, vaccine research, and studies on viral pathogenesis.


In the present study, effect of some domestic traditional processes such as soaking, germination, boiling and pressure cooking were explored in the seeds of chickpea cultivar for their anti-nutritional composition. The influence of applied water soaking for 12h on chickpea seeds caused maximum reduction in the levels of phytic acid, tannin and trypsin inhibitor by 59.9 %, 10.76 % and 13.98 % respectively as compared to dry seeds. In contrast, total phenolics contents exhibited a conspicuous increase. Boiling of seeds for 40 min caused maximum reduction in contents of phytic acid, tannin and phenolic by 76 %, 90 %, and 77 % respectively. However, cooking for 90 sec completely inactivated the trypsin inhibitor. Autoclaving at 1210C showed the maximum reduction in the contents of tannin, phenolics and phytic acid by 97.11 %, 80.53 % and 76.56% respectively. The germination of seeds for 72 h showed significant reduction (P ≤ 0.05) in the antinutritional factors and showed overall 95% reduction. The present study revealed that under different treatment conditions, germination appeared to be the better practice for lowering anti-nutritional contents in chickpea seeds.


We are reporting an interesting case, where a patient temporarily developed unilateral hypoglossal nerve paralysis following brachial plexus block using interscalene approach. A 15-year-old male patient, who was diagnosed with acute osteomyelitis of right humerus, was posted for emergency incision and drainage of the right upper arm. Preoperative systemic examinations did not find any clinically relevant abnormality. Right-sided brachial plexus block through interscalene approach was chosen to provide anesthesia. The nerve block was accomplished by eliciting paresthesia using a 22-gauge beveled needle followed by injecting 245 mg of lignocaine with adrenaline (7 mg/kg) in 25 ml solution in the interscalene groove at the level of the cricoid cartilage. The direction of the needle was kept caudal and slightly medial. The injected was by dry gauge pieces the head end of the table elevated, with the idea to the drug along the brachial plexus. The nerve block was confirmed by sensorimotor blockade as well as evidence of ipsilateral ptosis. Soon, the patient developed ipsilateral hypoglossal nerve palsy as evident by right-sided deviation of the tongue No noted. The


The aim of this study was to investigate a mutation spectrum of F11 among Korean patients with factor XI (FXI) deficiency and to determine the haplotypes of mutations frequently found in Koreans. Thirteen unrelated patients from non-consanguineous families with FXI deficiency were included in the study. In the mutation analysis, the most frequently found mutations were Q263X (four cases; 31%) and Q226X (three cases; 23%). The frequency of Q263X-bearing haplotype was significantly different between normal and patient groups (p = 0.001), which is consistent with a founder effect of Q263X mutation. Testing for the presence of these two mutations should be the first genetic screening in Korean patients with FXI deficiency.


We report here energetic (>100 keV) negative hydrogen ions (H(-)) generated in the interaction of moderately intense (10(18) W cm(-2)) ultrashort laser pulses (45 fs) with transparent hydrogen containing solid targets. An unambiguous and consistent detection of negative hydrogen ions, with a flux of 8×10(11)H(-) ions/sr, has been observed in every single laser shot, using a Thomson parabola ion spectrograph. Simple estimates based on charge transfer cross sections match well with experimental observations. Our method offers the implementation of an intense, ultrashort laser based negative-ion source at a higher repetition rate, which can be important for various applications.


Recent developments of novel magnetic resonance intravascular contrast agents with low T1 in blood and a long intravascular half-life will rapidly position magnetic resonance coronary angiography (MRCA) at the threshold of clinical application. This article describes the use of one such intravascular contrast agent for noninvasive coronary angiography and comparison with routine invasive x-ray angiography. Six domestic farm pigs with an artificial stenoses at the left circumflex were studied. NC100150 Injection, a new ultra-small superparmagnetic iron oxide (Nycomed Amersham Imaging, Oslo, Norway), was injected using a dose of 5.0 mg Fe/kg body weight. Scanning was done using a 1.5-T Gyroscan ACS-NT. A high-resolution electrocardiogram-triggered scan covering the entire heart was applied. Navigator echoes were used for respiratory triggering. In all animals the location of the stenoses detected with MRCA correlated well with x-ray angiography. The correlation factor between the grade of stenoses determined by MRCA and x-ray angiography was 0.993. MRCA using NC100150 Injection can depict the major coronary arteries and branches well. Decreases in vessel caliber detected by MRCA correlate well with x-ray angiography. The use of such intravascular contrast agents show great promise for clinical applications for noninvasive detection of coronary artery disease in humans.


Five cases of aspergillosis complicating Hodgkin's disease and leukaemia are reported. The organs involved were: lungs (all five cases), stomach (Case 3); brain and meninges (Case 4); heart, kidneys, spleen, thyroid, and liver (Case 2). Cultures of Aspergillus fumigatus were obtained from the post-mortem tissues of three patients. All the lesions in Case 2 were suppurative. The other four cases had non-suppurative lesions characterized by spreading coagulation necrosis with peripheral hyperaemia, exudation, and haemorrhage. Invasion and occlusion of blood vessels occurred frequently. The various factors that may be responsible for the initiation and progression of the fungal infection are discussed. The available evidence suggests that Aspergillus fumigatus can produce toxic metabolites which are able to cause tissue necrosis and vascular damage. In patients suffering from neoplastic conditions of the lympho-reticular system, especially if steroid hormones or radiomimetic drugs are given, spreading, necrotizing lesions can develop unchecked by antibody or cellular defences.


The food of Oreochromis niloticus in Lake Chamo, Ethiopia was studied from the stomach contents of 449 adult (290B570 mm total length, tl) and 145 juvenile (61B115 mm tl) fish. O. niloticus was found to be essentially phytoplanktivores in Lake Chamo, and the composition of the phytoplankton diet varied seasonally. The diet of both adult and juvenile fish consisted of 10 genera of blue greens whereas green algae and diatoms each contributed 8 genera. Blue greens as a group contributed the bulk of the diet of adult fish. The most frequently encountered genera from the blue greens were Anabaena (96B100), Lyngbya (85B100), Microcystis (81B100) and Oscillatoria (41B100). Cosmarium (79B100) from the green algae and Navicula (82B100) from the diatoms were also frequently observed. In terms of percentage composition by number, the blue greens contributed over 60% of the total food ingested. Of these, more than 50% was due to Anabaena, Lyngbya and Microcystis. Zooplankters occurred on rare occasions in the stomach contents of both adult and juvenile fish. The feeding pattern of adult O. niloticus was observed to have a diel rhythm. O. niloticus in Lake Chamo is a continuous feeder during the day and peaked at 16 hr. Daily ingestion of phytoplankton was estimated to be about 3.7% of its wet body weight at an average water temperature of 26E C. SINET: Ethiopian Journal of Science Vol. 23, No. 1 (June 2000), pp. 1-12 Key words/phrases: Ethiopia, Food, Lake Chamo, Oreochromis niloticus


Solitons are coherent structures that describe the nonlinear evolution of wave localizations in hydrodynamics, optics, plasma and Bose-Einstein condensates. While the Peregrine breather is known to amplify a single localized perturbation of a carrier wave of finite amplitude by a factor of three, there is a counterpart solution on zero background known as the degenerate two-soliton which also leads to high amplitude maxima. In this study, we report several observations of such multi-soliton with doubly-localized peaks in a water wave flume. The data collected in this experiment confirm the distinctive attainment of wave amplification by a factor of two in good agreement with the dynamics of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation solution. Advanced numerical simulations solving the problem of nonlinear free water surface boundary conditions of an ideal fluid quantify the physical limitations of the degenerate two-soliton in hydrodynamics.


Introduction: Health and social care in the Netherlands is undergoing a major transition. People receive health and social care at home as long as possible. Informal care has become more important and the municipalities have more legal tasks in providing social care for their citizens. The number of beds in nursing homes and psychiatric hospitals has fallen. After hospitalisation, people go home as soon as possible. Medical care after hospital discharge is given in the home environment. Since 2015 the Dutch Health and Youth Care Inspectorate (IGJ) has explored how to adjust their inspection policy to this transition. Policy context and objective: The transition in health and social care requires IGJ to shift attention from inspecting health care providers to inspecting care networks. The object for IGJ is to: get a basic understanding of what care networks are; decide at what level care networks should be assessed; develop methods to inspect care networks; select items that are key for integrated care. Targeted population: Integrated care is essential for people with multiple care needs, living in home environments. Target groups for IGJ are frail elderly people, people with severe mental health problems or seriously ill children who receive specialist care. Highlights: IGJ has developed a policy for inspecting integrated care. The main points are: -Care networks should be considered from the client perspective. Personal care networks are the starting point for inspecting integrated care; -The inspection framework for personal care networks in home settings poses four key questions concerning whether the care network: provides person-centred care? collaborates with principal carers? collaborates to provide coordinated care? provides safe care? -Results on the level of the personal care networks can be aggregated on a local or regional level. The key question on the local or regional level is: -Do health and social care providers facilitate collaboration in care networks? -The role of IGJ in integrated care is to 'identify, set the agenda and promote'. This role fits in with the changing care landscape in which care networks are still undergoing development. Comments and transferability: IGJ has executed several projects to develop and test a new policy for inspecting integrated care. These projects were small and mainly executed on a local level. To expand this is a main challenge for the next years. The question of who is ultimately responsible for the quality of care networks has not yet been answered. That makes the governance of care networks a major issue in the coming years.   This policy could inspire inspectorates in other countries. It is clear that the policy should be adjusted to the country context. Conclusion: IGJ has developed a new policy for inspecting care networks for people with multiple care needs. This policy is consistent with changes occurring in health and social care in the Netherlands. Further development is needed and the question of accountability for the quality of care networks is on the agenda for the next years.


In this paper, an experimental methodology for the characterization of the impedance of balanced RF identification (RFID) tag antennas is presented, and the application of the proposed method in RFID tag co-design is demonstrated. The balanced tag antenna is considered as a two-port network and the impedance of the antenna is characterized using network parameters. In the measurement, the antenna is connected to the two ports of a vector network analyzer through a test fixture. The influence of the test fixture is deembedded by using a port-extension technique and the antenna impedance can be extracted directly from the measured S -parameters. The proposed method is useful in practical RFID applications for co-designing the RFID tag with the attached platforms for enhancing the tag performance. An example of co-designing an ultra-high-frequency RFID tag with a plastic Sushi plate is demonstrated. The co-designed tag antenna achieves conjugate matching with the application-specific integrated circuit so that the reading range of the RFID tag is greatly enhanced.


This article discusses how the European Commission can achieve the goal of effectively implementing the Digital Markets Act. Based on legal and economic reasoning, we highlight the important role of the gatekeeper's compliance report, and discuss how to incentivize gatekeepers to write useful reports. In addition, we develop recommendations regarding the internal organization of the Commission, the prioritization of cases, and how to effectively use the concurrent enforcement powers of the Digital Markets Act and Article 102 of the TFEU. We illustrate the principles we develop using four different EU antitrust cases. Furthermore, we discuss coordination between the Commission and National Competition Authorities and the need to already develop an independent evaluation process for the Digital Markets Act.


Electrical models for biological cells predict that reducing the duration of applied electrical pulses to values below the charging time of the outer cell membrane (which is on the order of 100 ns for mammalian cells) causes a strong increase in the probability of electric field interactions with intracellular structures due to displacement currents. For electric field amplitudes exceeding MV/m, such pulses are also expected to allow access to the cell interior through conduction currents flowing through the permeabilized plasma membrane. In both cases, limiting the duration of the electrical pulses to nanoseconds ensures only nonthermal interactions of the electric field with subcellular structures. This intracellular access allows the manipulation of cell functions. Experimental studies, in which human cells were exposed to pulsed electric fields of up to 300 kV/cm amplitude with durations as short as 3 ns, have confirmed this hypothesis and have shown that it is possible to selectively alter the behavior and/or survival of cells. Observed nanosecond pulsed effects at moderate electric fields include intracellular release of calcium and enhanced gene expression, which could have long term implications on cell behavior and function. At increased electric fields, the application of nanosecond pulses induces a type of programmed cell death, apoptosis, in biological cells. Cell survival studies with 10 ns pulses have shown that the viability of the cells scales inversely with the electrical energy density, which is similar to the "dose" effect caused by ionizing radiation. On the other hand, there is experimental evidence that, for pulses of varying durations, the onset of a range of observed biological effects is determined by the electrical charge that is transferred to the cell membrane during pulsing. This leads to an empirical similarity law for nanosecond pulse effects, with the product of electric field intensity, pulse duration, and the square root of the number of pulses as the similarity parameter. The similarity law allows one not only to predict cell viability based on pulse parameters, but has also been shown to be applicable for inducing platelet aggregation, an effect which is triggered by internal calcium release. Applications for nanosecond pulse effects cover a wide range: from a rather simple use as preventing biofouling in cooling water systems, to advanced medical applications, such as gene therapy and tumor treatment. Results of this continuing research are leading to the development of wound healing and skin cancer treatments, which are discussed in some detail.


Korean wave is a phenomenon that arises as a result of the swift currents of globalization and has changed the way in a civilized society. Slowly but surely, the local culture started to be eroded by the Korean pop culture hegemony. This makes everything related to Korea becoming a new trend then led to fanaticism which characterized by a growing number of emerging community of Korean pop culture fans called the Korean Lovers. One of them is the Korean Lovers Surabaya community (KLOSS), which not only admire Korean pop culture but also adopted it into the lifestyles of its members. This study used qualitative research methods with Gramsci's approach to hegemony. Perspective hegemony trying to see the process of ideological domination of the dominant groups against subordinate groups through intellectual and moral leadership by consensus. Collecting data using primary data that is participating observation and indepth interview, while secondary data using source books, magazines, articles, journals, theses earlier, and Internet sources. The results showed that the hegemony process of Korean pop culture on KLOSS members occur because of the influence of media and the influence of KLOSS own community. Holder of the reins of power and subordination to the media made by the people behind the media and Korea, while the community is done by admin KLOSS. The subordination is to do with the intellectual and moral hegemony. The pattern of intellectual hegemony generating knowledge and changing intellection of KLOSS members increasingly concerned with Korea, and the use of the Korean language and speaking style. The patterns associated with moral hegemony are internalization of cultural values of Korea, adoption on physical appearance, arise taste to Korean product selection, and consumerist in collecting.


Absorption of [3H]retinol into lymph and bile was studied in unanesthetized rats with cannulated thoracic and common bile ducts. Retinol in a micellar solution was infused into the duodenum. Absorption of retinol into lymph increased when the infusate's taurocholate concentration was increased to 10 mM, when the hydrogen ion concentration was increased, or when octanoic acid was added to the infusate. Absorption of retinol into lymph decreased when the taurocholate concentration was decreased to 5 mM or when long-chain unsaturated fatty acids or retinoic acid were added to the duodenal infusate. Retinol absorption into bile increased following additions of linoleic and arachidonic acids to the infusate, but absorption did not change following modifications of the infusate's taurocholate concentration or pH. These experiments, which demonstrate that intraluminal factors do modify the extrusion of retinol into bile and lymph, enhance our overall understanding of the process of absorption of this lipid nutrient.


We wished to determine whether (a) left ventricular (LV) diastolic chamber compliance and tissue elastic modulus were decreased with hypertrophy and improved after reversal of hypertension and regression of hypertrophy and whether collagen concentration was a major determinant of LV chamber compliance during hypertrophy or aging. Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and Wistar-Kyoto rats (WKY), aged 8 months at time of study, were used for the hypertension-regression experiments. The aging study was based on 14- and 24-month-old Fischer-344 rats. LV chamber compliance was measured in isolated perfused hearts arrested in diastole. Length-tension curves (tissue elastic modulus) were obtained from ventricular strips, and hydroxyproline assays were used to estimate LV collagen content. Captopril and hydrochlorothizide were given for an 8-week period to both normotensive and hypertensive rats. Treatment normalized arterial pressure and caused regression of LV hypertrophy in SHR. LV diastolic compliance was less (pressure-volume curve steeper) in SHR than in WKY, but stiffness was similar in the two groups, as indicated by similar slopes when volume was adjusted for heart mass. Treatment significantly decreased ventricular stiffness in both SHR and WKY. Length-tension curves were almost identical in SHR and WKY, but treated SHR demonstrated less tension per given length. These changes occurred although collagen did not decrease in parallel to the decrease in LV mass. Aging was associated with 66 and 60% increases in collagen content and concentration, respectively, but did not alter LV chamber compliance significantly.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)


Interleukin (IL) 1 alpha induced the up-regulation of cell-surfac-expressed epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor on both MDA-MB-468 and BT-20 breast cancer cell lines. IL-1 beta and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) increased the EGF receptor surface expression only on BT-20 breast carcinoma cells. 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol 13-acetate (TPA) induced up-regulation of EGF receptor on MDA-MB-468 cells, and a marginal but significant increase was determined in BT-20 cells and in interferon gamma (IFN-gamma)-treated MDA-MB-468 cells. CD15 (Lewisx) antigen was down-regulated on MDA-MB-468 cells by TNF-alpha, TPA, IL-1 alpha, as well as by IFN-gamma and all-trans-retinoic acid. 1,25(OH)2-vitamin D3 up-regulated the CD15 antigen surface expression on MDA-MB-468 cells.


Work more effectively and gauge your progress along the way! This Study Guide is designed to accompany Pratt's "Financial Accounting In An Economic Context, 6th Edition." It helps students review and apply their understanding of concepts discussed in the main text. Each chapter contains a detailed review of key concepts, multiple-choice questions, practice problems, and solutions. By focusing on three elemental themes - economic factors, measurement issues, and decision-making perspective - Jamie Pratt's "Financial Accounting In An Economic Context, 6th Edition" provides an enlightening coverage of financial accounting from an economic perspective, at once tightening the conceptual framework while enriching the essential contextual relevance of principles every business manager needs to understand.


Formal methods are being advocated for the design of complex software systems, like real-time and distributed systems: they provide clear semantics and allow (possibly automated) calculations to deduce properties from a system description. In practice, especially for requirements specification languages, formally analysing such descriptions may not be easily achievable. We sketch a toolset for assisting the analyst in his/her task of analysing a requirements specification. The basic idea of the approach is to provide automated and intuitive support for exploring the specifications and gaining an initial understanding of them before it is possible to reason formally about them (if it really pays-off as, in the exploration process, errors may already be uncovered).


Summary
A new temperature sensitive mutant of adenovirus type 2 was isolated and characterized. H2ts48 is DNA positive but fails to synthesize stable 95K, 80K and Va (Pre-VI) polypeptides. In addition, many polypeptides exhibit reduced stability during pulse-chase experiments. No virion particles of any type are assembled although a new type of intranuclear core-like structure was observed in thin sections by electron microscopy. Hexon polypeptides (120K) are synthesized as demonstrated by SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, but immunofluorescence, immunodiffusion and sucrose velocity gradient analyses show that no hexon capsomere antigens (360K) are assembled. Similarly, fibre polypeptides are synthesized normally, but the immunological and sedimentation properties of fibre are abnormal. Because this mutant failed to complement several complementing adenovirus mutants, and depressed the growth of wild type virus, it was concluded that ts48 may be a novel, trans-dominant mutation.


An informal description is given of three fault-tolerant clock-synchronization algorithms. These algorithms work in the presence of arbitrary kinds of failure, including "two-faced" clocks. Two of the algorithms are derived from Byzantine Generals solutions.


An overabundance of nitrogen (N) in marine and freshwater ecosystems has been linked to diverse, usually negative, effects on human health and the environment. One natural process that reduces N loads to downstream waters is denitrification, the microbially mediated reduction of NO3 to N2, NO, or N2O gas; however, it is difficult to quantify denitrification rates and even harder to extrapolate them spatially and temporally to generate landscape-scale estimates of denitrification. Additionally, we expect that the changes in temperature and precipitation projected for the end of the century may alter the rates and patterns of denitrification. We developed a coupled hydrologic-denitrification model that predicts daily denitrification rates across an agricultural watershed and was parameterized using in-situ denitrification measurements and two types of hydrologic observations (streamflow and upland soil moisture). The model fits well with the observed denitrification (R=0.75), stream discharge (R=0.71) and soil moisture (R=0.85). The modeled values did not match well with areal denitrification observations determined from isotopic analysis of the nitrate and a mixing model, and further work needs to be done to understand this discrepancy. Looking to the future, our results suggest that denitrification rates will increase, particularly in areas with high baseline rates, that the spatial and temporal patterns will not change appreciably, and that temperature increases will be the major driving factor of the projected rate changes.


With the rise of digital computing and visual data processing, the need for storage and transmission of video data became prevalent. Storage and transmission of uncompressed raw visual data is not a good practice, because it requires a large storage space and great bandwidth. Video compression algorithms can compress this raw visual data or video into smaller files with a little sacrifice on the quality. This paper an overview and comparison of standard efforts on video compression algorithm of: MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, MPEG-7


The enormous pre-Nectarian South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin represents a geophysically and compositionally unique region on the Moon. We present and analyze the mineralogical diversity across this basin and discuss the implications for basin evolution. Rock types are derived from Clementine multispectral data based on diagnostic characteristics of ferrous absorptions in fresh materials. Individual areas are characterized as noritic (dominated by low-Ca pyroxene), gabbroic/basaltic (dominated by high-Ca pyroxene), feldspathic (<3–6% FeO), and olivine-gabbro (dominated by high-Ca pyroxene and olivine). The anorthositic crust has effectively been removed from the interior of the basin. The style of volcanism within the basin extends over several 100 Myr and includes mare basalt and pyroclastic deposits. Several areas of ancient (pre-Orientale) volcanism, or cryptomaria, have also been identified. The nonmare mafic lithology that occurs across the basin is shown to be noritic in composition and is pervasive laterally and vertically. We interpret this to represent impact melt/breccia deposits derived from the lower crust. A few localized areas are identified within the basin that contain more diverse lithologies (gabbro, olivine-gabbro), some of which may represent material from the deepest part of the lower crust and perhaps uppermost mantle involved in the SPA event.


Sports insurance is a fire-new topic in China. Now it has made a hopeful step, though there are many problems due to its later and lower beginning. The paper analyzes the developmental background and status quo of Chinese sports insurance and the existing issues about sports insurance in developed countries, and points out that the sports laws and appropriate programming are necessary to ensure the sustained development of Chinese sports insurance.


In a gas-like ether, the duality between the oscillating electric and magnetic fields, which are transverse to the direction of propagation of electromagnetic waves, becomes a triality with the longitudinal oscillations of motion of the ether, if electric field, magnetic field and motion are coexistent and mutually perpendicular. It must be shown, therefore, that if electromagnetic waves comprise also longitudinal condensational oscillations of a gas-like ether, analogous to sound waves in a material gas, then all three aspects of such waves must propagate together along identical wave-fronts. To this end, the full characteristic hyperconoids are derived for the equations governing the motion and the electric and magnetic field-strengths in a gas-like ether, in three space variables and time. It is shown that they are, in fact, identical. The equations governing the motion and the electric and magnetic field-strengths in such an ether, and their common characteristic hyperconoid, are all invariant under Galilean transformation.


We, the Editor and Publisher of The European Journal of Contraception and Reproductive Health Care, have retracted the following article: Ahmed M. Maged, Gamal Youssef, Ashraf Eldaly, Eman Omran, Mohamed El Naggar, Ahmed Abdel Hak, Amal Kotb & Asmaa I. Ogila (2018) Benefits of vaginal misoprostol prior to IUD insertion in women with previous caesarean delivery: a randomised controlled trial, The European Journal of Contraception & Reproductive Health Care, 23:1, 32-37, DOI: 10.1080/13625187.2018.1428297 Since publication, significant concerns have been raised about the integrity of the data and reported results in the article. While the authors have fully cooperated with the investigation and provided information in response to our queries, they have not been able to adequately address the concerns raised. As we cannot verify the validity of the published work, we are therefore retracting the article. The authors listed in this publication have been informed, and they do not agree with the retraction. We have been informed in our decision-making by our policy on publishing ethics and integrity and the COPE guidelines on retractions. The retracted article will remain online to maintain the scholarly record, but it will be digitally watermarked on each page as 'Retracted'.


A study of the distribution of Procambarus clarkii in northern Mexico led to the conclusion that this crayfish is native to Central Rio Bravo and its tributary, Rio Salado, in Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo Le6n, and Tamaulipas. The Sierra Madre Oriental and the Meseta del Norte, with elevations of 1,000 or more m above sea level, provide barriers that have inhibited more western natural dispersion. We point out that P. clarkii is exotic in central-west Tamaulipas, central Nuevo Le6n, western Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California, where its presence has resulted from repeated man-made introductions. The habitat preferred by this crayfish in northern Mexico is lotic (73%), with a mud bottom (62.5%), and aquatic vegetation was present in 50% of the known localities.


Objective –Superficial siderosis of the central nervous system (CNS) is a rare chronic progressive disorder caused by chronic subarachnoid hemorrhage. We present four patients with superficial siderosis of the CNS to describe the characteristic symptoms, and to discuss the pathogenetic heterogeneity and possible new therapeutic approaches. Results– The causes of chronic subarachnoid bleeding in superficial siderosis were different. In two patients surgical treatment of ependymoma or cerebral cavernomas were the underlying diseases. No cause was detected in one patient. For the first time, we present one patient with vasculitis of the central nervous system associated with systemic hemochromatosis in superficial siderosis. Therapeutic approaches included exstirpation of cavernomas as the source of chronic bleeding in one patient, immunosuppressive therapy and venupunctures in the patient with vasculitis and hemochromatosis, and symptomatic treatment with chelating agents and antioxidants. The patients remained clinically stable for the follow‐up period of up to 2 years. Conclusions– Our cases underline the pathogenetic heterogeneity of superficial siderosis and favor the early diagnosis for prompt initiation of therapy. Besides treatment of the underlying condition, antioxidants and radical scavengers may be effective in halting the progression of the disease.


BACKGROUND:Sore throat is a common complication after surgery. Postoperative cough and hoarseness can also be distressing to patients. We sought to determine the effect of an inhaler steroid on sore throat, cough, and hoarseness during the first 24 hours of the postoperative period. METHODS:We enrolled 120 women with ASA physical status I or II and term singleton pregnancy who were scheduled for elective cesarean delivery under general anesthesia. Patients were randomized into 2 groups: in the sitting position, group F patients received 500 &mgr;g inhaled fluticasone propionate via a spacer device during 2 deep inspirations, after arrival in the operating room, and group C had no treatment. The patients were interviewed by a blinded investigator for postoperative sore throat, cough, and hoarseness at 1 and 24 hours after surgery. RESULTS:There were no significant differences in age, height, weight, body mass index, duration of surgery, intubation, and grade of laryngeal exposure between the 2 groups. The incidence of sore throat, cough, and hoarseness was significantly lower in group F (3.33%, 3.33%, and 3.33%) compared with the control group (36.67%, 18.33%, and 35%) (P < 0.05 for all comparisons), not only in the first postoperative hour but also 24 hours after surgery (13.33%, 13.33%, and 25% in group F vs 40%, 41.67%, and 50% in the control group). The incidence of moderate and severe hoarseness in group F at the first hour was significantly less than the control group (P < 0.05). CONCLUSIONS:Inhaled fluticasone propionate decreases the incidence and severity of postoperative sore throat, cough, and hoarseness in patients undergoing cesarean delivery under general anesthesia.


The French historical electricity supplier EDF has lost its monopoly on electricity supply, opening the way for other energy companies to take over their market. In order to take advantage of such a measure, energy efficiency companies, such as COFELY Services, are developing offers for electricity supply with energy efficiency commitment. This commitment allows the final user to reduce its bill via energy-efficient improvements and financial engineering on contracts.A hospital has huge electricity consumption due to its internal process and surgeries, and it has often a non optimum use of their building management system, because the manager focuses first on the process. This thesis will deal with the other electricity consuming posts: the one related to comfort.Such a work needs to have a good understanding of the site. It involves regular audits and exchanges with people on site as well as with suppliers and companies in charge of controlling the very strict hospital norms.Electricity use is more complex than it can seem at first sight. It is not only about lighting, but also about heating and cooling and more generally thermal comfort. Such a study then implies modelling of air handling units and their impact on the overall energy use.Results shown in this thesis show that a better use of the building management system allows savings on both electricity and thermal energy use. In addition to this kind of action, a better control of a state of the art lighting system help reducing the electricity use of this kind of building without damaging the surgeries while respecting norms and surgeons comfort.Such a study shows that energy improvements come from works with investments but also from a better use of existing resources, coming from a good understanding of a building. Measures proposed in this thesis can be duplicated for other buildings, not necessarily with the same use, but have to be adapted to both the building and its users.


Recurrent urinary tract infection (UTI) might be one of the most common problems in urological clinics. Recent research has revealed novel evidence about recurrent UTI and it should be considered a different disease from the first infection. The pathogenesis of recurrent UTI might include two mechanisms, bacterial factors and deficiencies in host defense. Bacterial survival in the urinary bladder after antibiotic treatment and progression to form intracellular bacterial communities might be the most important bacterial factors. In host defense deficiency, a defect in pathogen recognition and urothelial barrier function impairment play the most important roles. Immunodeficiency and urogenital tract anatomical abnormalities have been considered the essential risk factors for recurrent UTI. In healthy women, voiding dysfunction and behavioral factors also increase the risk of recurrent UTI. Sexual intercourse and estrogen deficiency in postmenopausal women might have the strongest association with recurrent UTI. Traditional lifestyle factors such as fluid intake and diet are not considered independent risk factors now. Serum and urine biomarkers to predict recurrent UTI from the first infection have also attracted a wide attention recently. Current clinical evidence suggests that serum macrophage colony-stimulating factor and urinary nerve growth factor have potential predictive value for recurrent UTI. Clinical trials have proven the efficacy of the oral immunoactive agent OM-89 for the prevention of UTI. Vaccines for recurrent UTI are recommended by the latest guidelines and are available on the market.


Joaquin de Arredondo was the most powerful and influential person in northeastern New Spain from 1811 to 1821. His rise to prominence began in 1811 when the Spanish military officer and a small royalist army suppressed Miguel Hidalgo's revolution in the province of Nuevo Santander. This prompted the Spanish government to promote Arredondo to Commandant General of the Eastern Internal Provinces, making him the foremost civil and military authority in northeastern New Spain. Arredondo's tenure as commandant general proved difficult, as he had to deal with insurgents, invaders from the United States, hostile Indians, pirates, and smugglers. Because warfare in Europe siphoned much needed military and financial support, and disagreements with New Spain's leadership resulted in reductions of the commandant general's authority, Arredondo confronted these threats with little assistance from the Spanish government. In spite of these obstacles, he maintained royalist control of New Spain from 1811 to 1821, and, in doing so, changed the course of Texas, Mexican, and United States history. In 1813, he defeated insurgents and American invaders at the Battle of Medina, and from 1817 to 1820, his forces stopped Xavier Mina's attempt to bring independence to New Spain, prevented French exiles from establishing a colony in Texas, and defeated James Long's filibustering expedition from the United States. Although unable to sustain Spanish rule in 1821, Arredondo's approval of Moses Austin's petition to settle families from the United States in Texas in 1820 and his role in the development of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, meant the officer continued to influence Mexico. Perhaps Arredondo's greatest importance is that the study of his life provides a means to learn about an internationally contested region during one of the most turbulent eras in North American history.


A simple and versatile strategy for the directed assembly of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) using side-chain functionalized poly(thiophene)s is presented. Modular variations in the side-chain of the polymers can be used to fine-tune the surface properties of polymer-wrapped CNTs, which yields CNTs soluble in either water or organic solvents. Directed assembly of the CNTs based on electrostatic interactions or metal–ligand interactions can be obtained, depending on the functional group on the side-chain of the polymers. Patterned thin films of CNTs with very high CNT density can be obtained with this approach, and the surface selectivity is extremely high.


In NLP, text classification is one of the primary problems we try to solve and its uses in language analyses are indisputable. The lack of labeled training data made it harder to do these tasks in low resource languages like Amharic. The task of collecting, labeling, annotating, and making valuable this kind of data will encourage junior researchers, schools, and machine learning practitioners to implement existing classification models in their language. In this short paper, we aim to introduce the Amharic text classification dataset that consists of more than 50k news articles that were categorized into 6 classes. This dataset is made available with easy baseline performances to encourage studies and better performance experiments.


Elliot et al. [1989] invoked a haze layer near the surface of Pluto to explain certain features of a stellar occultation by that planet in June, 1988. The primary requirements for this haze layer were that it achieve unity tangential optical depth at a radius of 1174 km and be essentially transparent above 1189 km. We explore here the possibility that aerosols generated through methane photolysis could be responsible for such a haze layer. A comprehensive model of aerosol production, particle growth, sedimentation and condensation is applied to the atmosphere of Pluto using pressures, temperatures and composition derived from the stellar occultation and other data. We test two atmosphere models proposed in the literature, one from Elliot et al. [1989], and one from Hubbard et al. [1989], as well as a range of optical properties for the particles. In order to produce a haze with unity tangential optical depth at 1174 km, we had to use an aerosol mass production rate equal to twice the total methane dissociation rate due to solar UV expected for Pluto and assume that the particles produced were 10 times more absorbing than those in other hazes in the outer solar system. The possibility of condensation in the lower atmosphere was considered but did not result in distinctly different haze optical depths. If a photochemical haze on Pluto was responsible for the occultation lightcurve measured by Elliot et al., operation of a photochemical system different from those on Titan, Uranus or Neptune is indicated. Alternatives include near surface condensation processes driven by circulation, and the possibility that the occultation light curve can be explained in its entirety by temperature effects as proposed by Hubbard et al. [1989].


This paper is devoted to investigate the peristaltic flow of MHD PowellEyring model through porous medium during two dimensional symmetric channels. Slip conditions on the walls are taken into consideration. The basic governing equations; mass and momentum equations modeled with respect to wave frame. Solution technique to find the closed form solution for the resulted dimensionless differential equation is hold depending on long wavelength approximation and low Renold assumption. The influences of various involved parameters are illustrated via graphs in details. All the mathematical results are obtained by applying Mathematica 9 program.


A second-order analytic extension of eigenvalue (AEE) method is presented and investigated for efficiently computing the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${Z}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>- parameters of passive RF circuits over a wide frequency band with full-wave accuracy. The <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${Z}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>- parameters of an RF circuit are first extracted based on a full-wave simulation on sampling frequencies and then decomposed into eigenmodes, whose eigenvalues are analytically extended to all other frequencies within the frequency band of interest based on functional equations constructed from second-order series and parallel <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$RLC$ </tex-math></inline-formula> circuits. An eigenvector-eigenvalue identity is adopted to compute the frequency-dependent eigenvectors from the eigenvalues of the submatrices, which are used in the expansion of the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${Z}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>- parameters. A comparison with full-wave solutions is given for the second-order AEE where four frequencies are employed to accurately approximate the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${Z}$ </tex-math></inline-formula>- parameters and predict the frequency response over the entire band of interest that goes to much higher frequencies than the first-order AEE. With this, the previously developed first-order AEE for a quasi-static analysis is successfully extended to much higher frequencies. Numerical examples are provided to validate the accuracy and demonstrate the capability of the second-order AEE. It is found that the second-order AEE is very accurate for modeling RF circuits with electrical sizes up to one wavelength that possibly contains resonances, as compared to the first-order AEE, which is applicable only to RF circuits with electrical sizes smaller than one-tenth to one-fifth of a wavelength that contains no resonance.


Background: Increased level of pollutions has led to the serious environmental problems and given a way to develop the better biodegradable polymers. Soy-based polymers have been widely developed and used for the packaging purposes, but these polymers were reported to be degraded due to the high moisture absorptivity, which leads to the spoilage of the packed food at a quicker rate. Aim: This research sheds a light on the preparation of soy-based polymer and nanocomposite having a low absorptivity by a wet method using Palmitic Acid (PA). Method: PA was added up to 30% by the weight of soy protein isolate, in addition glycerol was used as the plasticizer and 25% PA was found to be the optimum. The polymer sheets were characterized by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Thermal Gravimetric-DTA and Scanning Electron Microscopy analyses. In addition, the moisture content and tensile studies were monitored. For the preparation of nanocomposite, soy-based nanoparticles were synthesized by grafting. Result: The generated nanocomposite has shown the reduced moisture absorptivity and higher mechanical properties. A R T I C L E H I S T O R Y Received: February 26, 2018 Revised: May 22, 2018 Accepted: May 23, 2018 DOI: 10.2174/1876402910666180528083246


This study evaluates the performance of permeable reactive materials for phosphorus removal from water by experimental and model development. A one dimensional solute transport model that describes adsorption process in porous media by mass transfer equation and surface area reduction was developed. Validity of the model was evaluated using several data sets from batch and column experiments. The marble dust, standard sand and volcanic ash were utilized as permeable reactive barriers and porous materials inside packed columns in this research. It was found that the calcium (Ca) content was the most important characteristic of the permeable reactive materials and a factor determining their phosphorus removal efficiency. A high Ca content material showed higher removal capacity of phosphorus. The results of this study demonstrated that the marble dust sorbent has a high efficiency to remove phosphorus from aqueous solution. Comparing the performances of three packed columns filled up with different combinations of the three investigated materials, the differences in permeability played an important role in the treatment residence time and its ensuing effect on the removal efficiencies of phosphorus from water. A combination of 70% marble dust and 30% volcanic ash (as porous packed layers in one column) made a reasonable compromise between high steady phosphorus removal efficiency (~80%) and longevity (over 180 days). A suggestion/recommendation in conclusion was proposed based on these results. Keywords— column experiment, marble dust, phosphorus, reactive material, solute transport model.


This article discusses the Dubrovnik Dominican Lectionary (DDL), a Štokavian descendent of Bernardin's Lectionary (1495), which has attracted the least academic attention of all Croatian lectionaries to date, having last been the subject of research in Rešetar's 1933 study of transcriptions of Bernardin's lectionary made in Dubrovnik. The text has not been published, and the manuscript is held in the library of the Dominican monastery in Dubrovnik (no. 39). Its characteristics make the DDL an excellent subject for research on interdialectal differences once present in literary texts, as well as on linguistic variability within a single (Štokavian) textual adaptation and stylization, from the perspectives of both historical dialectology and historical sociolinguistics and stylistics. The paper is not focused on listing all of the lectionary's graphic and linguistic idiosyncracies, but rather on providing a basic description of the manuscript and its text, as well as a discussion on its stepwise linguistic adoption and adaptation (on three levels). The analysis shows layered language usage in which linguistic characteristics do not share the same value or status. The linguistic diversity of the text cannot simply be reduced to the relationship between two dialects (Čakavian and Štokavian), especially pointed out in cases such as its use of the root (nominative) morpheme in genitive plural declination, even in places where no Čakavian source exists. A comparison and analysis of readings repeated in the DDL show that the transcriber chose words unique to his own native linguistic environment, while using (and adapting) words or constructions foreign to it along with them, showing the tolerance of Štokavian transcribers to words and expressions that would likely not have been their first choice. Ključne riječi: Dubrovački dominikanski lekcionar, Bernardinov lekcionar, ćirilica, štokavština, 16. stoljeće, jezična varijantnost, povijesna sociolingvistika, stilistika


This work describes a systematic evaluation of several autofocus functions used for analytical fluorescent image cytometry studies of counterstained nuclei. Focusing is the first step in the automatic fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis of cells. Thirteen functions have been evaluated using qualitative and quantitative procedures. For the last of these procedures a figure‐of‐merit (FOM) is defined and proposed. This new FOM takes into account five important features of the focusing function. Our results show that functions based on correlation measures have the best performance for this type of image.


This study was designed to explore the relationship between sunlight exposure and the mechanical properties of
paragliding fabrics which have different colors, densities, yarn counts, and coating materials. This study exposed
5 different colors of paragliding fabrics (red, turquoise, dark blue, orange, and white) to intense sunlight for 150 hours
during the summer from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. for 5 days a week for 5 weeks. Before and after the UV radiation aging
process, the air permeability, tensile strength, tear strength, and bursting strength tests were performed. Test results
were also evaluated using statistical methods. According to the results, the fading of the turquoise fabric was found to
be the highest among the studied fabrics. It was determined that there is a significant decrease in the mechanical
properties of the fabrics after sunlight exposure. After aging, the fabrics become considerably weaker in the case of
mechanical properties due to the degradation in both the dyestuff and macromolecular structure of the fiber


We have studied TiO2 track thin films grown on Ti films previously deposited over glass substrates. The Ti films were heated in air by a moving laser beam, with different intensities of a pulsed Nd:YAG laser that sweeps the Ti surface at a 2 mm/s constant speed. We observed differences in the photoacoustic (PA) signal amplitude measured on the different TiO2 tracks which are due to differences in the TiO2 thickness for the growth thin films. This result showed that it is possible to follow the qualitative behavior of the oxide films with reasonable accuracy, using the present photoacoustic analysis. On the other hand, micro-Raman spectra measured for these TiO2 samples showed two strong bands at 424 cm and 612 cm 1 associated to the TiO2 rutile structure. These results showed that both, the PA and Raman spectra give us useful information for the TiO2 tracks characterization.


ABSTRACT The French part of the Rhin-Meuse basin is quite heterogeneous due to the broad variability in pH and conductivity ranges of its rivers and streams. Parts of the basin are characterized by the presence of typical natural or anthropogenically induced brackish environments, showing a typical diatom flora. Since many brackish diatom species observed in these particular environments are often only poorly illustrated in literature used for biomonitoring, the present paper tends to fill this gap in our knowledge. Therefore, we illustrate in this work a large number of brackish taxa such as Cyclotella scaldensis, Skeletonema potamos, Thalassiosira gessneri, T. lacustris, T. weissflogii, Achnanthes secretitaeniata, Bacillaria paxillifera, Berkeleya rutilans, Entomoneis paludosa, Halamphora coffeaeformis, Haslea spicula, Nitzschia amplectens, N. aurariae, N. frequens, N. inconspicua and N. thermaloides. Additionally, one new species, Tabularia massenana sp. nov. is described based on detailed LM and SEM observations.


Breast cancer remains a worldwide threat to public health with over one million new cases, and nearly half a million deaths each year. Defining the mechanisms underlying the causes and risks of breast cancer remains a major challenge to global health. Though numerous population-based studies have demonstrated a indisputable link between obesity and breast cancer, the underlying molecular mechanisms and their association with elevated circulating hormones and inflammatory cytokines remain poorly defined. Similarly, the reasons why young women of African descent show a nearly two fold higher frequency of the more aggressive forms of breast cancer including the Triple Negative and basal-like phenotypes, are not understood. Recently we have defined a role for the transcriptional repressor protein CtBP in the control of proteins important for DNA repair including the early onset breast cancer gene BRCA1. In response to elevated levels of the high energy metabolic intermediate, NADH (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide), nuclear levels of CtBP are stabilized and target a transcriptional program that impairs DNA repair in breast cancer cells. Loss of CtBP or growth under calorie restricted conditions increases the ability of breast cancer cells to repair DNA damage. Genome-wide location analysis by chromatin immuno-precipitation combined with deep sequencing (ChIP-Seq) reveals that CtBP targets gene classes that play a significant role in epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition, genome stability and stem cell transcriptional programs. Moreover, by Kaplan-Meier survival analysis of several published gene expression studies, CtBP targeted gene lists distinguish breast cancer patients with worst outcome/survival. Finally, profiling of CtBP protein expression in tissue micro-array studies of breast cancer in African American and Nigerian populations demonstrates elevated levels of CtBP expression in patients with more aggressive disease phenotypes. We explore the role of CtBP and its gene regulatory network (the "CtBP Web") in the population-based association of breast cancer with obesity and racial/ethnic groups at higher risk for triple negative breast cancer. Citation Information: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2011;20(10 Suppl):B41.


Hypertension is the most prevalent cardiovascular disease in the world. Because of associated morbidity and mortality it is in one of the most important public health problems. Hypertension is the most important cause of heart failure with low or preserved ejection fraction. If hypertension develops concomitant with diabetes mellitus treatment problem of the two diseases becomes more complex. It is known that beta-blockers may induce type 2 diabetes, but those of new generation such as Nebivolol do not have this effect. There are many drugs with proven efficacy in lowering blood pressure, but the optimal treatment to prevent progression to heart failure is uncertain. Beta-blockers are a class of drugs with benefits both on hypertension and in heart failure. Drugs of this class have different pharmacological properties in terms hemodynamic and cardiovascular. Nebivolol is a beta-blocker that causes vasodilatation mediated by nitric oxide release. This medicine lowers blood pressure, prevents endothelial dysfunction and improves coronary flow reserve and diastolic function independent of ventricular geometry changes. Action of nebivolol is superior to classic beta blockers by reversibility of subclinical changes in the left ventricle before the onset of heart failure. In the early stages of heart failure with preserved ejection fraction the management is not yet established. Therefore it is important to know that in these situations nebivolol has beneficial ef fects.


The physical and chemical properties of tris(8-hydroxyquinolinato)aluminum (Alq3), one of the organic materials most commonly used as the light-emitting layer of OLEDs, and the interface with possible metal cathodes are investigated by means of first-principles computer simulations. A number of new insights have emerged from this study, and we emphasize the consequences of the properties thus discovered with respect to the functioning of OLED devices. In particular, novel Alq3 derivatives can be designed with the aid of computations that should enhance the intrinsic luminescence of the pristine material.


We introduce unitary quantum gates for photon pair creation in spontaneous parametric down-conversion nonlinear crystals (NLs) and for photon path alignment. These are the two key ingredients for the method of "induced coherence without induced emission" and many ensuing variations thereof. The difficulty in doing so stems from an apparent mixing of the mode picture (such as the polarization of photons) and the Fock picture (such as the existence of the photons). We illustrate utility of these gates by obtaining quantum circuits for the experimental setups of the frustrated generation of photon pairs, identification of a point-like object with undetected photons, and creation of a Bell state. We also introduce an effective nonunitary description for the action of NLs in experiments where all the NLs are pumped coherently. As an example, by using this simplifying picture, we show how NLs can be used to create superposition of given quantum states in a modular fashion.


5-Methyl-(4a), 7-methyl-(4b), and 8-methyl-5, 6, 7, 8-tetrahydro-1, 6-naphthyridine (4c) were synthesized by chemical modification of pyridine derivatives. On the other hand, the synthesis of the compounds (20b, c) having a methyl group in the aromatic ring of 5, 6, 7, 8-tetrahydro-1, 6-naphthyridine was accomplished by the condensation of 1-benzyl-4-piperidinone with the corresponding 3-amino-enones followed by debenzylation. The pathway of the condensation is briefly discussed.


Background: Orthotic interventions for knee osteoarthritis (OA) aim to reduce mechanical loading on the medial compartment of the knee and may lessen the lateral trunk lean as the most important compensatory gait strategy. The lateral wedge insole is a known orthotic intervention for knee OA. However, the question whether the addition of a subtalar strap to the wedge improves its effect has not been addressed in the literature. Objective: To compare the effects of lateral wedge insoles, with and without a subtalar strap, on the lateral trunk lean in patients with knee OA. Methods: Twenty-three patients aged over 40 years, with grade I or II OA of the medial compartment of one knee, based on the American College of Rheumatology criteria, were included in this study. The patients were diagnosed with OA based on a clinical examination, and the diagnosis was confirmed with radiographs. A 3-dimensional motion measurement system was used to collect the gait data for 3 different conditions: (1) with no insole, (2) with a lateral wedge insole, and (3) with a lateral wedge insole and a subtalar strap. The immediate effect of the 3 test conditions on the lateral trunk lean was compared during a gait cycle a stance phase and at the point of midstance. Results: Based on the laboratory coordinate system, the 3 conditions had no significant effect on the lateral trunk lean during a gait cycle and a stance phase and at the point of midstance in patients with knee OA. Conclusion: The results of this study demonstrated that the lateral wedge insoles, with and without a subtalar strap, had no immediate effect on the lateral trunk lean in patients with knee OA. However, the long-term effect of lateral wedge insoles on the lateral trunk lean in these patients requires further investigation.


We hypothesized that women refractory to dietary weight loss may have a type of idiopathic edema. In a study of 200 women, we compared four drugs, used previously for treating idiopathic edema, to determine their efficacy in causing weight reduction. After 6 months of treatment, the percentage of treated groups losing at least 10% of baseline weight was 6% for hydrochlorothiazide, 8% for spironolactone, 68% for dextroamphetamine sulfate, and 4% for captopril. The percentage losing >20% and >30% of baseline weight in the same treatment groups was 28% and 10% for dextroamphetamine therapy but 0% for the other three groups. Of the women who failed to lose weight with one of the nonamphetamine therapies during the first 6 months, 132 were then treated with dextroamphetamine; 68% lost =10% of their baseline weight, and 30% and 7% of patients lost =20% and =30%, respectively. With use of the classic definition of idiopathic orthostatic edema (urinary output of <55% of ingested water load in 4 hours), only 58 of the 200 study patients had this diagnosis; however, 144 patients excreted <75% of the load. Comparison of the efficacy of amphetamine therapy in patients with <75% versus =75% urinary excretion showed 120 of 131 (92%) lost =10% in the former category versus only 4 of 51 (8%) in the latter. Of the 58 patients who excreted <55% of the water load, 52 (90%) lost =10% of baseline weight with amphetamine therapy. The patients noted no effects of therapy on dietary consumption. The responsiveness of the patients to amphetamine therapy during the second 6-month period despite failing to lose weight with the three other therapies suggests that no inadvertent bias was present in the randomization process. Thus, the results suggest that some women who are recalcitrant to dietary weight loss may have a mild type of water retention that is refractory to diuretics but responsive to amphetamines.


Objectives The use of clinical quality indicators (QI) has been shown to raise standards and reduce variability in clinical care. Clinical QI can also be used for benchmarking and for commissioning services. Few occupational health QI are available. This project developed evidence-based QI for the spectrum of activities carried out by NHS occupational health services. Methods A systematic literature search was performed, using a two-step hierarchical search strategy. Evidence-based national audits, national guidelines, Cochrane reviews, and systematic reviews were included. Evidence from the literature was translated into QI. Infeasible or irrelevant indicators and indicators based on low level evidence were excluded. Each indicator was assigned a score, reflecting its likely suitability for use in practice. Results 151 evidence statements were extracted from 44 included publications, resulting in 131 QI. Excluding low grade evidence and irrelevant and infeasible indicators left 65 QI. From these the most suitable 18 QI were developed for activities relating to occupational health clinics, pre-commencement assessments, occupational health monitoring of organisations and occupational health interventions at an organisational level. Conclusions These 18 QI will populate a new UK based occupational health data registry, the aim of which is to establish an evidence-based quality monitoring system for OHS in the NHS. However, many aspects are also applicable to services outside the NHS and outside the UK. Although these indicators were systematically developed and are based on best available evidence, further work needs to be done to validate theses QI in practice.


Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is the most common of the endocrine disorder and chronic hyperglycaemia due to relative or absolute lack of insulin. The aim of the study is to investigate the the body weight profile, decreased of body weight (%) and glucose level of the bitter melon  juice and boiled extract dietin alloxan induced diabetic rats. Therats were divided randomly into three groups with fed AIN-93, the first group is control with water diet only, whereas the second group was given bitter melon juice extract diet, and third group with bitter melon boiled extract diet.  The diet of bitter melon juice and boiled extract were done by oral administration of 2ml/200 g body weight of rats for 8 days. The result showed that diet with bitter melon juice and boiled extract could improve body weight after 4 days. Additionally, the decreased of body weight percentage  afterbitter melon juice (2.68%) and boiled extract (1.89%) diet  were effective than control (8.81%). Bitter melon juice extract may effective in reduced  blood glucose levels than bitter melon boiled extract and control. The research indicate that bitter melon acts recovery body weight and regulating blood glucose level on diabetic rats.


Re-investigation of the chemical composition of the annual plant Mitracarpus scaber Zucc. led to the identification of clarinoside, a new pentalogin derivative containing a rare quinovose moiety, and the known compound harounoside. While the planar structure was fully determined using tandem mass spectrometry (MS) and quantum mechanics (QM) calculations, the tridimensional structure was unravelled after isolation and NMR analysis. The absolute configuration was assigned by comparison of experimental and theoretical synchrotron radiation circular dichroism spectra. Both compounds were tested for anti-inflammatory activity, and compound 1 showed the ability to inhibit the production of interleukin-8 (Il-8) with an IC50 value of 9.17 μM.


In the present work, the identification of two hexagonal phases of germanium oxides (namely GeO2 and GeO) through the vibrational and optical properties is reported using density functional theory calculations. While structural optimizations show that single-layer GeO2 and GeO crystallize in 1T and buckled phases, phonon band dispersions reveal the dynamical stability of each structure. First-order off-resonant Raman spectral predictions demonstrate that each free-standing single-layer possesses characteristic peaks that are representative for the identification of the germanium oxide phase. On the other hand, electronic band dispersion analysis shows the insulating and large-gap semiconducting nature of single-layer GeO2 and GeO, respectively. Moreover, optical absorption, reflectance, and transmittance spectra obtained by means of G0W0-BSE calculations reveal the existence of tightly bound excitons in each phase, displaying strong optical absorption. Furthermore, the excitonic gaps are found to be at deep UV and visible portions of the spectrum, for GeO2 and GeO crystals, with energies of 6.24 and 3.10 eV, respectively. In addition, at the prominent excitonic resonances, single-layers display high reflectivity with a zero transmittance, which is another indication of the strong light-matter interaction inside the crystal medium.


Poststreptococcal reactive arthritis (PSRA) refers to a poststreptococcal arthritic condition that does not fulfill the Jones Criteria for diagnosis of acute rheumatic fever. Clinical features include additive rather than migratory arthritis that responds relatively poorly to salicylates and nonsteroidals; persistence for mean of 2 months; elevated acute phase reactants; and laboratory (usually serologic) evidence of recent group A streptococcal infection. PSRA is not associated with HLA-B27 but rather with HLA-DRB1*01. Because up to 6% of PSRA patients develop mitral valve disease, it is recommended that antistreptococcal prophylaxis be administered for 1 year and then discontinued if there is no evidence of cardiac involvement.


Balita means children under 5 years old. The consumption of good and sufficient nutrition often cannot be fulfilled by a child due to external and internal factors. Therefore, as parents, we must also be democratic in order to serve food that is indeed the child's interest. Good nutrition intake plays an important role in achieving optimal body growth. And optimal body growth also includes brain growth that really determines one's intelligence. The food that consumed by the children can be influenced by the knowledge and attitudes of mothers and the support of family and the environment. The knowledge and attitude of the mother will affect food intake in the family, especially children. The purpose of this community service activity is to provide knowledge related to toddler nutrition to mothers who have toddlers in the Medono Village. The method used is education through lectures, questions and answers and discussions. The results obtained by mothers' knowledge regarding the fulfillment of toddler nutrition increased. Before education, 50% of knowledgeable mothers and 80% after being educated. In this activity a commitment was also reached, namely mothers who have babies and toddlers are willing to provide exclusive breastfeeding and are willing to provide MP-ASI which are rich in nutrition


Researchers have identified the need to develop instruments to measure domestic violence that include both physical and psychological abuse. Drawing from feminist theory, the Abusive Behavior Inventory (ABI) was developed to address a range of abusive behaviors. A validation study included a sample of 100 men and 78 women divided into groups of abusers/abused and nonabusers/nonabused. The study included the evaluation of three types of validity: criterion related, construct, and factorial. Significant differences in scores on the ABI were found between the abuser and nonabuser groups. These differences provide evidence to support the scale's validity in each of these areas.


In an aging society, it is increasingly important to solve problems related to human gait. One of these issues is the relationship between gait and muscle tone. In this study, we propose a neuromusculoskeletal model that can be used to represent and evaluate the movement changes generated by changes in muscle tone in human gait using computational simulations. The model is based using a musculoskeletal model with 70 muscles and a neurological controller model that can represent muscle tone. As a hypothesis to judge the validity of the model, a high muscle tone makes it difficult to maintain gait and makes the stride length narrow. A total of 1470 parameters were optimized for 3 days for each trial with varying muscle tone. As a result under the condition of high muscle tone, the gait maintenance time became shorter, and the stride length became narrow compared with the experimental value. Therefore, the hypothesis used to judge the validity of the model that gait maintenance becomes difficult and stride length becomes narrow under high muscle tone was proved. In addition, the tendency for changes in the angle of the knee joint, the distance traveled by the center of the foot pressure, the number of times the foot touched the ground, the distance the foot swung forward, the regularity and periodicity of each gait, and the bimodality of foot pressure were evaluated and confirmed to be natural. From these results, we conclude that the neuromusculoskeletal model for gait proposed in this study was proper.


Purpose: To resolve a controversy involving the therapeutic impact of antiangiogenic drugs and particularly antibodies targeting the VEGF pathway, namely, a body of preclinical mouse therapy studies showing such drugs can promote invasion and/or distant metastasis when used as monotherapies. In contrast, clinical studies have not shown such promalignancy effects. However, most such clinical studies have involved patients also treated with concurrent chemotherapy highlighting the possibility that chemotherapy may prevent any potential promalignancy effect caused by an antiangiogenic drug treatment. Experimental Design: The impact of antiangiogenic therapy using DC101, an antibody targeting mouse VEGFR-2 with or without concurrent chemotherapy was assessed in multiple human breast cancer xenograft models, where impact on orthotopic primary tumors was evaluated. Metastasis was also assessed during adjuvant and neoadjuvant plus adjuvant therapy, after surgical resection of primary tumors, with the same combination therapies. Results: Antiangiogenic therapy, while blunting tumor volume growth, was found to increase local invasion in multiple primary tumor models, including a patient-derived xenograft, but this effect was blocked by concurrent chemotherapy. Similarly, the combination of paclitaxel with DC101 caused a marked reduction of micro- or macrometastatic disease in contrast to DC101 monotherapy, which was associated with small increases in metastatic disease. Conclusions: Conventional wisdom is that targeted biologic antiangiogenic agents such as bevacizumab when used with chemotherapy increase the efficacy of the chemotherapy treatment. Our results suggest the reverse may be true as well—chemotherapy may improve the impact of antiangiogenic drug treatment and, as a result, overall efficacy. Clin Cancer Res; 21(24); 5488–98. ©2015 AACR.


Although widely debated in broader socioeconomic terms, the Eurozone crisis has not received yet adequate scholarly attention with regard to the impact of alternative political systems. This article revisits the debate on majoritarian and consensus democracies drawing on recent evidence from the Eurozone debacle. Greece is particularly interesting both with regard to its potential "global spillover effects" and choice of a majoritarian political system. Despite facing comparable challenges as Portugal and Spain, the country has become polarized socially and politically, seeing a record number of MP defections, electoral volatility and the rise of the militant extreme right. The article points to the role of majoritarian institutions to explain why Greece entered the global financial crisis in the most vulnerable position while subsequently faced insurmountable political and institutional obstacles in its management.


In the Old Testament Yahweh is frequently called El. The question is raised whether Yahweh was a form of the god El from the beginning or whether they were separate deities who only became equated later. They whom uphold theory Yahweh and El were conceived as separate deities holds that Yahweh was a southern storm god from Seir and so on, which was brought by the Israelites and conflated with the Jerusalem patriarchal deity.On the other side there are scholars who hold and conceived Yahweh and El as one single deity. These scholars defend this position most commonly on the grounds that no distinction between the two can be clearly found in the Hebrew Bible. The methodology used in this paper is literary – historical and social interpretations, with the main method being the "diachronic and dialectical theology of Hegel". The simple Hegelian method is: A (thesis) versus B (anti-thesis) equals C (synthesis). The author analyzes (thesis) by collecting instruments related to ancient Semitic religions; it includes data on El and Yahweh assembly obtained from Hebrew text sources and extra-biblical manuscripts which are then processed in depth. The antithesis is to analyze El's assembly development in Israel – especially in Psalm 82. While the synthesis appears in the nuances of the El's assembly believe in ancient Israel. The focus of this paper's research is to prove 2 things: first, is Psalm 82: 1, is an Israeli Psalm that uses the patterns and forms of the Canaanite Psalms; especially regarding religious systems that use the terminology of the divine council. Second, to prove that El and Yahweh in the context of this Psalm are two different gods, of which this view contradicts several ANET experts such as Michael S, Heisser who sets El and Yahweh in this text as identical gods. The results of this study attempt to prove that Israel and the Canaan contextually share the same religious system, and are seen to be separated in the Deuteronomist era with their Yahwistic reforms.


Interaction between epithelial cells and T cells may initiate autoimmune tissue destruction. Renal tubular epithelial cells may participate in such immune interactions since they: (1) can be induced to express surface molecules which facilitate engagement with T cells; (2) secrete and express membrane bound cytokines; (3) are exposed to peptides from blood and the glomerular filtrate and are capable of processing these potentially immunogenic peptides. We have recently established T cell clones captured from the interstitium of MRL-lpr mice with lupus nephritis. These T cell clones are unique and are regulated by the lpr gene. They express the alpha/beta T cell receptor, and beta cell markers, but do not display CD4 or CD8 on their surface. These T cell clones proliferate to renal tubular cells but not to cells from other tissues and secrete IFN-gamma which induces class II and ICAM-1 on renal tubular epithelial cells. Expression of class II and ICAM-1 induced by IFN-gamma renders these epithelial cells capable of triggering T cell hybridomas to proliferate and secrete IL-2. Therefore, renal tubular epithelial cells are capable of processing and presenting antigen. This review will focus on the dynamic interaction of renal epithelial cells and T cells and discuss its importance in the initiation of autoimmune renal injury.


This paper presents Paralocks, a language for building expressive but statically verifiable fine-grained information flow policies. Paralocks combine the expressive power of Flow Locks (Broberg & Sands, ESOP'06) with the ability to express policies involving run-time principles, roles (in the style of role-based access control), and relations (such as "acts-for" in discretionary access control). We illustrate the Paralocks policy language by giving a simple encoding of Myers and Liskov's Decentralized Label Model (DLM). Furthermore - and unlike the DLM - we provide an information flow semantics for full Paralock policies. Lastly we illustrate how Paralocks can be statically verified by providing a simple programming language incorporating Paralock policy specifications, and a static type system which soundly enforces information flow security according to the Paralock semantics.


Duodenal cavernous haemangiomas are rare, benign disorders, and massive gastrointestinal (GI) bleeding is a rare clinical condition. The present case report describes a 50-year-old male patient who presented with severe, ongoing haematochezia. A peripheral blood smear at the time of admission showed significant anaemia, and haemoglobin level was 52 g/l (normal range, 120–175 g/l). Albumin level was also low at 28 g/l (normal range, 40–55 g/l). Standard computed tomography (CT) showed mural thickening and relative lumen stenosis in the ascending (fourth) portion of the duodenum. Contrast-enhanced CT using hypotonic solution revealed the lesions to be hypervascular haemangiomas. Laparotomy and segmental duodenum resection were performed, and the first jejunal limb was anastomosed using a side-to-end technique. Histopathological examination confirmed the diagnosis of cavernous haemangioma. The patient showed marked improvement during follow-up. The present case findings emphasize that duodenal haemangioma is possible without a history of chronic anaemia, and should remain a consideration in differential diagnosis for patients presenting with massive GI bleeding. CT is useful for preoperative diagnosis of massive bleeding, and surgery with segmental resection is usually curative.


In Siberia, the so-called Khailakh and Manykay Stages of 'pre-Tommotian' age are inferred to be partly coeval with the type Tommotian, and to be based on a misunderstanding about the control of facies on faunal distributions. Evolutionary patterns are being studied through this interval using a variety of approaches; synoptic reviews are presented on diversity changes, on changes in skeletal composition and on archaeocyathan morphology. The latter group appear to have originated on the Siberian Platform just prior to the Tommotian and migrated globally during the Atdabanian and Botomian to form secondary centres of diversification. Olenellid trilobites may have dispersed in a similar pattern but other groups (such as Volborthella and relatives) appear to have had a separate, siliciclastic centre of origin. The decline in diversity of small shelly fossils after the Tommotian, and the coeval expansion in archaeocyathans and trilobites, may be related to basinal changes connected with the break up of Palaeopangea.


On-time delivering of an embedded system solution to market is very crucial because the market is highly competitive and the demands of consumers rapidly change. Virtual development environment increases efficiency of the embedded system development because it enables developers to develop, execute, and verify an embedded system without real hardware. This paper deals with an implementation of a virtual development environment for ARM core-based embedded systems. The environment is developed based on ARMs ARMulator that is an instruction set simulation environment. The developed environment is extended to use SystemC hardware IP's by attaching a SystemC simulation engine to the modeled ASB bus. Therefore, the environment can use both ARMulator-based hardware models and SystemC-based hardware models. By adding hardware IP modules such as Memory controller, LCD controller, Interrupt controller, 1-ch DMA, UART, 2-ch Timer, Watchdog Timer, GPIO Ports and graphical user interface applications, the ARMulator environment is expanded to a virtual development environment for hand-held devices and general applications. In addition, a real-time operating system muC/OS-II is ported to the simulation environment so that the environment can be used to develop muC/OS-II-based application software. A three-task test program verifies the functionality of the hardware IP modules and muC/OS-II operations. Compared to other environments, its construction cost is very low and the environment can be easily modified according to a engineer's needs.


The next section describes hydrogen-fuelled gas turbine solution. Big international programme – WE-NET – is discussed. Several hydrogen-fuelled gas turbine concepts based on those programmes are proposed: Westinghouse, Toshiba, Graz, New Rankine. The section provides description of them all, including specification of possible efficiency values. The development programmes themselves are also reviewed. This part of the text describes also potential combination of a hydrogen-fuelled gas turbine and a nuclear power generation unit which might be used to cover peak load power demands in a power system.


Given N points in a plane, generation of Rectilinear Steiner Minimal Tree (RSMT) is always a challenging problem (NP hard) with numerous applications. As the number of points increases, the complexity of the problem increases exponentially. A neural self organization based method with linear complexity and linear memory requirements has been used for generation of Rectilinear Steiner Minimal Tree in 3D space. The system is initialized by constructing an open curve around the given set of points and each given point is connected to the nearest point generated on the open curve. An energy equation is framed reflecting the length of the system and the total energy of the system is subsequently minimized iteratively using Neural Networks. The nature of the open curve and its other parameters are determined experimentally. The methodology will have significant applications in multilayer VLSI/ULSI interconnection design and for resource connections in any plant design. Keywords-RSTM; self-organizing; neural network; NP hard ;circuit design


Summary The studies on effects of freezing and drying on quercetin content in shallot, as well as storage time of obtained products, were carried out. Two landraces, marked PV-S and PV201, were taken for the studies. The process of drying was carried out using a semi-technological drier operated by forced airflow. Dried slices of shallot were stored in ambient temperature in closed glass containers, and quercetin was determined periodically. The process of drying and further 8 months of storage caused a small decrease (15 16%) of the quercetin level in shallot. During the process of freezing of sliced shallot and its subsequent storage over 8 months in temperature -21°C, the quercetin level declined slightly, too, although the decline was higher than in case of drying and storage of dried shallot.


Telomeres are primarily controlled by a highly specialized DNA polymerase, termed telomerase. In early studies, high levels of telomerase activity were detected in cancer cells, but no activity was found in most normal somatic cells, leading to the speculation that telomerase might be required for tumor growth. Recent studies have demonstrated that introduction of the telomerase catalytic component (TERT) into telomerase- negative cells activates telomerase and extends cell lifespan, whereas mice lacking telomerase activity revealed impaired cell proliferation in some organs as well as reduced tumorigenesis. These findings suggest that telomerase plays an important role in long-term cell viability and cell proliferation. We have recently demonstrated a crucial role of telomerase activation in the regulation of vascular smooth muscle cell (VSMC) proliferation and clarified the mechanisms by which telomerase is activated in the process of VSMC growth. Moreover, increasing evidence suggests that telomerase activity contributes to the vascular pathophysiology. Thus, further understanding of the role of telomerase and telomere function would provide new insights into the treatment of human vascular disorders.


Cell entry of anionic nano-objects has been observed in various types of viruses and self-assembled DNA nanostructures. Nevertheless, the physical mechanism underlying the internalization of these anionic particles across the negatively charged cell membrane remains poorly understood. Here, we report the use of virus-mimicking designer DNA nanostructures with near-atomic resolution to program "like-charge attraction" at the interface of cytoplasmic membranes. Single-particle tracking shows that cellular internalization of tetrahedral DNA nanostructures (TDNs) depends primarily on the lipid-raft-mediated pathway, where caveolin plays a key role in providing the short-range attraction at the membrane interface. Both simulation and experimental data establish that TDNs approach the membrane primarily with their corners to minimize electrostatic repulsion, and that they induce uneven charge redistribution in the membrane under the short-distance confinement by caveolin. We expect that the nanoscale like-charge attraction mechanism provides new clues for viral entry and general rules for rational design of anionic carriers for therapeutics.


In this study, a low energy beam transport (LEBT) channel for the proton linac section of the Turkish Accelerator Center (TAC) has been designed by using TRAVEL code. Commonly used LEBT including two focusing solenoid magnets will transport and match the H - beam from a volume source to RFQ. In the beam dynamics simulations of such a LEBT line, 95% space-charge compensation (SCC) has been considered in this study. We aimed to find out the determination of our RFQ input parameters that gives the best possible beam quality at the entrance of the RFQ using beam collimator in the LEBT line as an alternative way. In this way, we have acquired the best possible beam quality on RFQ input plane as well as optimizing the LEBT line.


the complexities of analysis without leaving the problem-oriented reader at a loss for a useable answer. Despite its mathematical rigor, this text is accessible to the practitioner, with a special effort made in a number of places to distill the theory into a practical solution. Many of the chapters include sections explicitly devoted to the problem-specific concerns encountered when applying the methodology. Some of these practical digressions are found in Sections 3.9 "Which Test?," 4.7 "Which Distribution?," 7.7 "Which Test Should You Use?," 9.3.1 "Which Test—Parametric or Permutation," and 9.4.4 "Which Statistic?". All told, Permutation, Parametric, and Bootstrap Tests of Hypotheses garners high marks for its scope and clarity. Graduate students will appreciate its rigorous treatment of diverse topics and ample exercises to reinforce ideas. And although lay readers may prefer that selected solutions be included, given the book's intended audience, such omission is understandable. In summary, this text deserves a place in any scientific library. Scientists for whom a statistical test is an occasional chore will find it a welcome guide, whereas for the statistical professional, it serves as a quick-reference to a breadth of testing procedures.


This article, Appendix K to the Report of the National Commission on Social Security Reform, presents actuarial cost estimates for possible revisions to the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) and Health Insurance (HI) programs. These projected alternatives cover major options for resolving both the short-range and long-range financing problems of the OASDI program. Long-range costs are expressed as percentages of taxable payroll. (Pages 1 through 55 of Appendix K are reprinted here. Space constraints do not permit the inclusion of the last 34 pages, which are tables of historical data for the OASDI and HI programs. Tables containing much the same information can be found in annual OASDI and HI Trustees Reports and in the 1981 Annual Statistical Supplement to the Social Security Bulletin.)


A cylindrical matrix device with a circular release area with inhomogeneous diffusivity was analyzed using a Laplace transform–based method, using Bromwich integral and residue theorem. The two-dimensional model represented a pharmaceutical agent uniformly distributed in a polymeric matrix with a diffusivity spatially modulated, surrounded by an impermeable layer. The pharmaceutical agent could be transferred only through a small hole centered at the top surface of the cylinder. A closed-form solution was obtained in terms of Bessel functions with the aim to help study the effects of design parameters and geometries on the cumulative amount of pharmaceutical agent released. The cumulative flux of pharmaceutical agent increased with the mass transfer and diffusion coefficients and decreased with any increment in the device's length and variations of the diffusivity coefficients. The delivery rate was described by an effective time constant calculated from Laplace transforms and using Bessel functions and their zeros. Reducing the orifice diameter or fabricating a longer system would delay transport of the medication. Simplified expressions for the release profile and the time constant were derived for special design cases.


Naive Bayesian classiiers which make independence assumptions perform remarkably well on some data sets but poorly on others. We explore ways to improve the Bayesian classiier by searching for dependencies among attributes. We propose and evaluate two algorithms for detecting dependencies among attributes and show that the backward sequential elimination and joining algorithm provides the most improvement over the naive Bayesian classiier. The domains on which the most improvement occurs are those domains on which the naive Bayesian classiier is signiicantly less accurate than a decision tree learner. This suggests that the attributes used in some common databases are not independent conditioned on the class and that the violations of the independence assumption that aaect the accuracy of the classiier can be detected from training data. The Bayesian classiier (Duda & Hart, 1973) is a probabilistic method for classiication. It can be used to determine the probability that an example j belongs to class C i given values of attributes of an example represented as a set of n nominally-valued attribute-value pairs of the form A 1 = V 1 j : If the attributes are independent, this probability is proportional to Equation 23.1 (23:1) Equation 23.1 is well suited for learning from data, since the probabilities ^ P(C i) and ^ P(A k = V k j jC i) may be estimated from the training data. To determine the most likely class of a test example, the probability of each class is computed with Equation 1. A classiier created in this manner is sometimes called a simple (Langley, 1993) or naive (Kononenko, 1990) Bayesian classiier. One important evaluation metric for machine learning methods is the predictive accuracy on unseen examples. This is measured by randomly selecting a subset of the examples in a database to use as training examples and reserving the remainder to be used as test examples. In the case of the simple Bayesian classiier, the training examples are used to estimate probabilities and Equation 23.1 is then used 1996 Springer-Verlag.