Cultures of the redmouth (RM) bacterium, one of the etiological agents of redmouth disease in rainbow trout (Salmo gairdneri) and certain other fishes, were characterized by means of their biochemical reactions, by deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) hybridization, and by determination of guanine-plus-cytosine (G+C) ratios in DNA. The DNA relatedness studies confirmed the fact that the RM bacteria are members of the family Enterobacteriaceae and that they comprise a single species that is not closely related to any other species of Enterobacteriaceae. They are about 30% related to species of both Serratia and Yersinia. A comparison of the biochemical reactions of RM bacteria and serratiae indicated that there are many differences between these organisms and that biochemically the RM bacteria are most closely related to yersiniae. The G+C ratios of RM bacteria were approximated to be between 47.5 and 48.5%. These values are similar to those of yersiniae but markedly different from those of serratiae. On the basis of their biochemical reactions and their G+C ratios, the RM bacteria are considered to be a new species of Yersinia, for which the name Yersinia ruckeri is proposed. Strain 2396-61 (= ATCC 29473) is designated the type strain of the species.


Background Interferon (IFN) is widely used in clinical practice and nebulization inhalation is one of the commonly used routes of administration. However, nebulization drugs such as interferon-α (IFN-α) with large molecular weights may deposit in the membrane of the breathing filters, causing its resistance to gradually increase. Thus, our study explores the effect of IFN-α and other nebulization drugs on the resistance of breathing circuit filters under invasive mechanical ventilation. Methods We divided 96 breathing filters into eight groups. The baseline group was not treated while the blank group was installed but were not nebulized. The remaining groups received jet nebulized or vibrating nebulized with either normal saline, Combivent, Amphotericin B, or IFN-α at a frequency of once every 12 hours separately and were removed from the breathing circuit after 24 hours. The resistance of the filter of each group was then measured and statistical comparisons were made. Results Filter resistance of the IFN-α jet nebulization group was greater than that of the other groups, and there were statistical differences except for the Amphotericin B jet nebulization group. Comparison of the resistance [cmH2O/(L·s)] of the IFN-α jet nebulization group vs. the baseline group showed 2.56 (2.40, 2.68) vs. 2.26 (2.03, 2.40), P=0.037; of the IFN-α jet nebulization group vs. the blank group showed 2.56 (2.40, 2.68) vs. 2.11 (1.98, 2.27), P=0.003; of the IFN-α jet nebulization group vs. the normal saline group: 2.56 (2.40, 2.68) vs. 2.16 (2.08, 2.32), P=0.023; of the IFN-α jet nebulization group vs. the Combivent jet nebulization group: 2.56 (2.40, 2.68) vs. 2.18 (2.14, 2.27), P=0.018; and of the IFN-α jet nebulization group vs. the Amphotericin B jet nebulization group: 2.56 (2.40, 2.68) vs. 2.33 (2.05, 2.45), P=0.221. The effect of jet nebulization and vibrating mesh nebulization on the resistance of breathing filters showed no significant statistical difference. Conclusions Jet nebulization with IFN-α significantly increased the resistance of the breathing filter within 24 hours and there was no significant difference in filter resistance between jet nebulization and vibrating mesh nebulization of IFN-α or Amphotericin B.


This work is located in the field of current reflections on the contributions that the Virtual Digital Technologies (TDVs), especially the technologies of Web 2.0, add to the process of a teacher educator. We take as an empirical field the experience of teaching in a discipline of the curriculum of a program of a Post Graduation Program in Education. Characterized as an activity mediated by a virtual environment of collaborative learning, we sought to provide virtual spaces for interaction, work and production of texts/
hypertext cooperative with the support of wiki technology. The data analyzed come from the interactive records
found in this environment. It is observed that among the political discourse of the daily on the advantages and
flexibility in communication, as provided by environments that are conducive to this, the effects produced are
not exactly those that support the circulating discourses. Facing the simple problems, such as the ownership of
the virtual environment and interaction with the writing of the other, constitute crossings that must be worked
in advance in a work supported by the technology.


Despite of the simplicity of their individuals, social insect societies are structured social organizations that accomplish complex tasks which far exceed the individual capacities of a single insect. These self-organized systems offer possibilities for inspiring new and future solutions and technologies to benefit human construction practice. Biomimetic research of this kind studies systems that have evolved in the natural world in order to imitate and apply them in processes to benefit humans. We present the social insects' main building-behavior principles and their potential to influence the building industry and human building processes, considering process stages and durations, communication and information flow, governance, functional specialization of workers, supply chains and materials. We review existing biomimetic applications in different fields related to construction management with respect to biological swarm systems and social insects in particular. Finally, we identify opportunities for examining and enhancing building construction processes, inspired by the behavioral principles of the social insects.


AIM
To describe Italian nurses quality of life and stress during the Covid-19 outbreak. Introduction: The COVID-19 pandemic was a whispered problem for nurses, causing feelings of anxiety, stress, and burnout. Many studies investigated the pandemic's negative effects on nurses, but the relationship between burnout and the quality of life (QoL) in Italian nurses was lacking.

METHODS
METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study between March 25, 2020, to May 15, 2020. The MBI scale was used to detect burnout, while the SVQI was for nurses' quality of life (QoL). We used descriptive and correlational statistical tests between the scales and risk factors. The significance level was set at P. 0.05.

RESULTS
A total of 384 nurses were assessed, 58.1% (223) were female, 41.9% (161) were male. Depersonalization appeared in 85% of cases, emotional exhaustion in 52.3%, and personal accomplishment in 17.4%. Overall, nurses report a dissatisfaction with the physical, emotional and social QoL. The factors that contribute to onset of the syndrome was: gender (p = 0.003), ward (p = 0.03), care to COVID-19 patients (p = 0.02). Women are dissatisfied with physical (p = 0.001), emotional (p = 0.001) and social (p =0.002) QoL. Statistically significant differences by department (p = 0.01) and geographical area of Northern Italy (p = 0.02).

CONCLUSION
During the COVID-19 outbreak, some factors studied are associated with high-stress levels and low physical and social QoL. Women were the gender most affected by the effects of the pandemic.


Accurate flowrate measurements in petroleum production systems are important for optimization, fiscal metering, and production allocation. Sometimes, Virtual Flow Meters (VFMs) are used for this purpose instead of physical meters to reduce cost. These systems estimate the flowrates using a computational model that represents accurately the production system of interest. Since VFM systems mostly rely on pressure and temperature measurements, it is important to understand how accuracy and degradation of sensors influence the VFM flowrate estimates.
 In this work, a VFM system for a subsea oil well was created using a transient multiphase model built in a commercial software and controlled from an external computational routine. A statistical analysis of VFM simulation results was performed to quantify the effect of pressure sensors degradation on the VFM flowrate estimates. In addition, the effect of temperature matching and a segmented approach to represent the well heat transfer were evaluated.
 The analysis showed that the sensor degradation effect should be considered in VFM systems carefully, especially if a high estimation accuracy is required. Measurement drift was found to be the most critical factor of the sensor degradation but high measurement noise can also cause considerable errors of the flowrate estimates. In addition, it was found that a complex representation of the wellbore heat transfer is not required to obtain accurate flowrate predictions and simplified models can be used instead.


Nathaniel Hawthorne's "Young Goodman Brown" tells the story of a young Puritan who attends a satanic ceremony and ends up permanently afflicted with doubt. This essay analyzes Hawthorne's use of the idea of witnessing throughout the tale, and the scriptural bases on which this spiritual discipline is built. Both aural and visual witnesses inspire spiritual uncertainty in "Young Goodman Brown", an uncertainty that ends in his "dying hour of gloom." Building on the insights of other scholars, including Edmund Morgan's work on the visible church and Michael Colacurcio's work on visible sanctity, this essay examines Hawthorne's use of witnessing as a spiritual discipline and his complex use of scriptural ideas throughout the story.


This paper reports on the use of an epoxidized hyperbranched polymer (HBP) as an additive to an epoxy anhydride resin system. The hyperbranched polymer used was an aliphatic polyester with a molecular weight of around 10 500 g mol−1. The epoxy resin mixture used was a combination of a difunctional diglycidyl ether of bisphenol A (DGEBA) epoxy and an epoxy novolac, and was cured with a catalysed anhydride curing agent. It has been shown that, at a concentration range of 0 to 20 wt% addition, the HBP is able to almost double the fracture toughness, with little evidence of any deleterious effects upon processing and the durability of the cured resin system. The flexural modulus and stress, however, were found to both decrease by about 30% as a result of HBP addition while the Tg was found to decrease by about 10%. The processability of the uncured resin systems has been investigated by using rheological and calorimetric techniques and it was found that the processability window, as determined by the gel time and viscosity changes, was relatively unaffected by HBP addition. The fracture surfaces were evaluated by using scanning electron microscopy which showed that the unique structure of the HBP facilitates an enhanced interaction with the polymer matrix to achieve excellent toughness enhancement of the polymer matrix. The durability of the epoxy network has been investigated via thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and solvent uptake, and the HBP has been shown to have little systematic deleterious effect upon the degradation temperatures and the total amount of solvent absorbed. Copyright © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry


This study aims to examine an effect of stacking sequence and curvature on the penetration characteristic of a composite laminated shell. For the purpose, we manufactured specimens with different stacking sequences and curvatures, and conducted a penetration test using an air-gun. To examine an influence according to stacking sequence, as flat plate and curvature specimen had more plies, their critical penetration energy was higher. Critical penetration energies of specimen A and C with less interfaces somewhat higher than those of Band D with more interfaces. The reason that with less interfaces, critical penetration energy was higher is pre-impact bending stiffness of composite laminated shell with less interfaces was lower than that of laminated shell with more interfaces, but bending stiffness after impact was higher. And it is because interface, the weakest part of the composite laminated shell, was influenced by transverse impact. As curvature increases, critical penetration energy increases linearly. It is because as curvature increases, resistance to in-plane deformation as well as bending deformation increases, which need higher critical penetration energy. Patterns of cracks caused by penetration of composite laminated shells include interlaminar crack, intralaminar crack, and laminar fracture. A 0°ply laminar had a matrix crack, a 90°ply laminar had intralaminar crack and laminar fracture, and interface between 0°and 90°laminar had a interlaminar crack. We examined crack length and delamination area through a penetration test. For the specimen A and C with 2 interface, the longest circumferential direction crack length and largest delamination area were observed on the first interface from the impact point. For the specimen Band D with 4 interface, the longest crack length and largest delamination area were observed on the third interface from the impact point.


Primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH) is still a refractory disease, and patients deteriorate despite any treatment. We hypothesized that neovascularization in the lung could increase the volume of the vascular bed in the pulmonary circulation and thus reduce the development of pulmonary hypertension (PH). Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) might be a potential cell source for neovascularization. We examined the effects of EPC transplantation into the lungs of dogs with dehydromonocrotaline-induced PH. The lung parenchyma of PH model dogs was injected with ex vivo-expanded, autologous EPCs originated from peripheral blood (experiments, n=4) or culture medium (control, n=3), using a bronchoscope. EPC transplantation gave significant improvements in mean pulmonary artery pressure, cardiac output, and pulmonary vascular resistance. Histological evaluation revealed both improvement in the medial thickness of the small pulmonary artery and neovascularization of the lung tissue. These results indicate that EPC transplantation into the lung is effective at preventing the progression of dehydromonocrotaline-induced PH in dogs, and suggest a new therapeutic option for PPH.


To assess the performance of load disaggregation algorithms it is common practise to train a candidate algorithm on data from one or multiple households and subsequently apply cross-validation by evaluating the classification and energy estimation performance on unseen portions of the dataset derived from the same households. With an emerging discussion of transferability in Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM), there is a need for domain-specific metrics to assess the performance of NILM algorithms on new test scenarios being unseen buildings. In this paper, we discuss several metrics to assess the generalisation ability of NILM algorithms. These metrics target different aspects of performance evaluation in NILM and are meant to complement the traditional performance evaluation approach. We demonstrate how our metrics can be utilised to evaluate NILM algorithms by means of two case studies. We conduct our studies on several energy consumption datasets and take into consideration five state-of-the-art as well as four baseline NILM solutions. Finally, we formulate research challenges for future work.


Transformer-based language models usually treat texts as linear sequences. However, most texts also have an inherent hierarchical structure, i.e., parts of a text can be identified using their position in this hierarchy. In addition, section titles usually indicate the common topic of their respective sentences. We propose a novel approach to formulate, extract, encode and inject hierarchical structure information explicitly into an extractive summarization model based on a pre-trained, encoder-only Transformer language model (HiStruct+ model), which improves SOTA ROUGEs for extractive summarization on PubMed and arXiv substantially. Using various experimental settings on three datasets (i.e., CNN/DailyMail, PubMed and arXiv), our HiStruct+ model outperforms a strong baseline collectively, which differs from our model only in that the hierarchical structure information is not injected. It is also observed that the more conspicuous hierarchical structure the dataset has, the larger improvements our method gains. The ablation study demonstrates that the hierarchical position information is the main contributor to our model's SOTA performance.


Proceedings: AACR 102nd Annual Meeting 2011‐‐ Apr 2‐6, 2011; Orlando, FL

CD44+/CD24− subsets of breast cancer cells are enriched in cancer stem-like cells (CSC) and are radiation resistant. We isolated ESA+/CD44+/CD24− or low subsets by flow cytometry from MCF7, MDA-MB231, and HCC1937 breast cancer cell lines and primary cultures of breast cancer cells from two patients. The isolated CD44+/CD24−orlow subsets showed a 50 to 70% increase of sphere formation by in suspension culture in serum-free medium compared to CD44−/CD24high subsets. CD44+/CD24−or low subsets of the cell lines and primary cultures showed a significantly increased radiation resistance compared to the CD44−/CD24high cell line subsets or the unsorted primary cells with > 40% increased survival at 2Gy. Post-radiation survival showed that the radiation resistance was dependent on the CD44+/CD24 −or low cell phenotype. The correlation of CD44/CD24 status with radiation resistance was demonstrated by culture of the subsets. After 2 weeks of culture the following transitions occurred: 1) CD44+/CD24−or low cells changed to CD44−/CD24high cells (MCF-7 and HCC1937) or to CD44+/CD24+ (MDA-MB-231); and 2) CD44−/CD24 high (MCF-7 and HCC1937) and CD44+/CD24+ (MDA-MB-231) cells became CD44+/CD24−or low cells. Cells that lost the CD44+/CD24 −or low phenotype were no longer radiation resistant. The mechanisms of increased radiation resistance in CD44+/CD24−orlow subsets was not a function of non-homologous end joining (NHEJ) as there was no in vivo and in vitro change in NHEJ activity in the resistant cells nor altered expression of the NHEJ related proteins Ku 80, Ku70, PARP-1, and DNA-PK. However, there were differences ATM activity between CD44+/CD24−or low and the CD44−/CD24 high (MCF-7 and primary breast cancer) or CD44+/CD24+ (MDA-MB-231) subsets. Depending on the cell type and radiation dose, ATM phsophorylation increased by 2-5 fold in radiated CD44+/CD24−or low subsets of breast cancer cell lines and primary cultured breast cancer cells compared to the control subsets. The ATM inhibitor 55933 in a dose-dependent manner increased radiation sensitivity of all subsets including significantly abolishing the radiation resistance of CD44+/CD24−or low subsets of cells. After 2Gy of radiation, the survival fractions of cells treated with10μM of 55933 were 8-10 fold lower than that of untreated cells and were now similar between CD44+/CD24−or low subsets and control subsets for the cell lines and primary cultures. In conclusion, ATM is a candidate target for eliminating the radiation resistance of CSC's of breast cancer.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 102nd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2011 Apr 2-6; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2011;71(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 2469. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2011-2469


The aim of this review is to promote the prevention of cervical cancer in Japan. Cervical cancer due to human papillomavirus (HPV) infection is a preventable cause of death, although HPV infection is very common and anyone who has had sexual intercourse can become infected. Cervical cancer is a serious disease that can significantly affect women's lives; it can not only deprive women of their fertility but also lead to death if left untreated.


Silicon photonics interconnects have emerged as a promising way to exceed the capacity limits imposed by copper interconnects, exploiting different multiplexing technologies like wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) and polarization division multiplexing (PDM). However, the bandwidth demand is still growing and new multiplexing technologies like Mode division multiplexing (MDM) are required to overcome these limitations, enabling the transmission and reception of multiple modes through a single multi-mode waveguide. Several architectures have been proposed to perform mode multiplexing like asymmetrical directional couplers and architectures based on conventional MMIs, which show a narrowband performance. Recently, adiabatic and counter-tapered couplers have been presented showing a broader bandwidth, but both architectures suffer from large footprints. For this reason, a compact mode multiplexer with low insertion losses and low crosstalk over a broad bandwidth is still sought after.
In this work, we present an ultra-broadband two-mode division (de)multiplexer (DE/MUX) that overcomes the restrictions imposed by conventional MMIs by means of sub-wavelength grating waveguides (SWG). SWG structures are composed by a disposition of different alternating materials that are repeated periodically with a pitch smaller than the operation wavelength enabling dispersion engineering. The structure of our broadband mode multiplexer is composed by a sub-wavelength engineered MMI, a 90o phase shifter (PS) and a symmetric Y-junction supporting the first two modes (TE0 and TE1) at the stem. By properly choosing the duty cycle (DC) and the pitch (Λ) of the SWG section of the sub-wavelength engineered MMI, an almost flat beat length can be achieved and, subsequently, a broader operation bandwidth. SWG tapers are included in order to perform an adiabatic transition between the non-periodic waveguides and the periodic structures of the SWG-MMI. On the other hand, the PS consists of two parallel waveguides, where the upper arm comprises two tapers in back-to-back configuration, whereas the lower arm is a straight waveguide. The operation principle of the device working as a MUX is as follows: the TE0 mode injected through the lower (upper) port of the SWG-MMI is equally split with the same amplitude and a phase difference of -90o between the two output ports. The PS generates a +90o phase shift between the upper and lower arms. Therefore, the modes arrives in-phase (out-of-phase) at the Y-junction, producing the output TE0 (TE1) mode.
Silicon on Insulator (SOI) platform was considered for the design of the proposed two-mode DE/MUX with 220-nm-thick and 500-nm-wide waveguides surrounded by SiO2 substrate and cover. Full-3D-simulations of the device working as DEMUX show that insertion loss are less than 0.84 dB (0.61 dB) for the TE0 (TE1) mode in the [1.4 - 1.7] μm wavelength range, and less than 0.49 dB within [1.5 – 1.6] μm. The crosstalk of the two modes is below -20.29 dB in the [1.4 - 1.7] μm wavelength range and decreases down to -27.41 dB within [1.5 – 1.6] μm. In conclusion, we have proposed a SWG based ultra-broadband two-mode DE/MUX with a 300 nm bandwidth and a footprint as small as 36 x 3.7 μm.


INTRODUCTION
We evaluated changes in levels of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) and testosterone following discontinuation of long-term hormone therapy for non-metastatic prostate cancer.

PATIENTS AND METHODS
Treatment was discontinued in 31 patients with non-metastatic prostate cancer (clinical stage B-C) after ≥ 5 years of hormone therapy, during which time PSA level had been maintained less than 0.5 ng/ml. PSA and testosterone levels were measured after discontinuation of therapy. PSA > 4.0 ng/ml was defined as PSA relapse in this study.

RESULTS
Mean age at discontinuation of hormone therapy was 78.7 years (range, 66-90). Mean duration of follow-up after discontinuation of therapy was 25.5 months. PSA non-relapse rate was quite high (87.1%). 4 of the 31 patients showed PSA relapse, after 12-24 months. Testosterone level exceeded castration level (< 1.0 ng/ml) in 3 patients, each of whom developed PSA relapse.

CONCLUSIONS
During follow-up, the PSA relapse rate was relatively low. These results suggest that treatment may be safely discontinued in many prostate cancer patients. In addition, rate of testosterone recovery after treatment discontinuation may be associated with PSA relapse. When considered the adaptation of discontinued, or intermittent hormone therapy for aged people, these findings may be useful.


ABSTRACT In (1), a study based on pointed open covers was made in order to solve "the point-countable base problem". In this paper, some extensions of the results in that study is obtained and the problem is transformed into "point≤κ base" problem where κ is an infinite cardinal. Key Words: Point-countable, point≤κ, G-condition.


In vitro studies demonstrated that optineurin, a ubiquitin (Ub)-binding protein, becomes an autophagy cargo receptor upon being phosphorylated on Ser177 by TANK binding kinase 1 (TBK1) in response to cytosolic Salmonella typhimurium. Phosphorylated optineurin then regulates autophagy by delivering ubiquinated bacteria to autophagosomal membranes via light chain 3 (LC3), hence restricting their growth. To test the in vivo relevance of these findings, we used a mouse model with C-terminal optineurin truncation, which lacks the Ub-binding region (Optn470T). No difference was found between WT and Optn470T macrophages in LC3 lipidation during LPS-induced autophagy. Similarly, p62+LC3+ aggresome-like structures generated upon LPS or Salmonella typhimurium stimulation in Optn470T macrophages colocalized with lysosomal marker LAMP1 to the same extent as in WT cells, demonstrating no perturbation in autophagosome fusion to lysosomes. Importantly, upon in vivo infection with Salmonella typhimurium, no difference was found in bacterial replication in WT and Optn470T mice. These results argue against the role of optineurin in Salmonella typhimurium infection in vivo.


This paper describes a high-speed Ethernet-based data and clock network for applications which require an array of multiple sensor nodes distributed over distances of up to 250 m from a central hub. Speeds of up to 100 Mbit/sec and clock skew at the level of 50 ps are achievable using commercially available network-grade twisted pair cables and low-power Ethernet transceiver circuits. No fiber optic components are necessary. A specific application of this technology is presented: the ARA neutrino telescope located at the South Pole.


Chemical etching of high-temperature superconducting films was studied. A new method of rapid etching which combines ion implantation and chemical etching is presented. Using phosphoric acid with concentration higher than , it is found that the etching rate in an ion implanted film is much faster than that in a pure film. Below the threshold concentration of , the acid has no etching affect on a pure film while it still etches an implanted film. This result is utilized in a selective etching process for patterning of superconducting oxide films.


Sound reinforcement systems in music clubs have become the synonym for sound sources that produce excessive noise levels, both in indoor and outdoor facilities. Typical sound insulation measures, such as the box-in-a-box design, cannot be applied for music clubs located outdoors. The only means of sound level control are the frequency equalization of loudspeakers, their proper positioning in space and the overall sound level limitation. Noise barriers can be placed as well, but their efficiency is usually very limited due to the high positioning of loudspeakers. In this paper, the problem of excessive noise levels in the famous bay of Zrće in Croatia will be presented, where five large music clubs attract several thousand visitors each day during summer season. Many complaints have been made by residents of nearby towns and villages over the last couple of years. Noise levels of more than 70 dBA were measured in those settlements during the day, but also in night time. Simulations of sound propagation from the sound reinforcement systems to the nearest settlements will be presented, along with measured noise levels. The proposed and implemented solution for successful coexistence of music clubs and settlements will be discussed.


COVID-19 pandemic has spread to all corners of the world where infection control measures are being implemented. There is now a resurgence of the disease in health care facilities with documented in-hospital transmission and cases becoming positive in areas designated to cater for COVID-19 negative patients. We encountered such an event at our institution where fourteen patients (including health care workers) in the non-COVID zone were found to be COVID-19 positive. This highlights the loopholes in the system and the need for better and systematic infection control measures in hospitals that deal with infectious diseases with high infectivity. Findings also suggests the failure of government's criteria for suspected COVID-19 cases, and therefore needs a rethinking. Keywords:


Protocols are now available for seed harvest, storage and germination of several mesohaline and polyhaline species; however, low seedling survival rates point to the need for an increased understanding of factors affecting seedling establishment. Depth of seed burial in sediments and initial seedling growth rates are shown to be limiting factors for photosynthetic competency of Ruppia maritima and Potamogeton perfoliatus. Seedling emergence is inversely proportional to planting depth on sediments ranging in grain size from coarse sands (850 μm) to silt (63 μm). Less than 6% of the seeds of either species emerged when buried to a depth of 3 cm in test sediments. Germination was greatest for seeds placed on the surface of sediments; however, these seedlings were subject to displacement because of the weak and fragile roots produced during early growth. Fine sediments may be more favorable for R. maritima seedling establishment, because seedling emergence and height decreased with increasing sediment grain size. Potamogeton perfoliatus seedlings seem to be more tolerant of a wider range of sediment grain sizes than R. maritima as indicated by the lack of an effect of sediment grain size on P. perfoliatus seed emergence, seedling height, and biomass. Increasing nutrients stimulated seedlings of both species; however, even at the highest concentrations tested, growth, as determined by shoot elongation and leaf and root formation, slowed within 7–10 days. This suggests factors other than mineral nutrients and light limit growth or that growth shifts from aboveground biomass production to belowground vegetative spread.


The role of growth hormone (GH) in development of the normal mammary gland has been convincingly demonstrated in studies that show dramatically impaired mammary development in spontaneous dwarf rats and growth hormone receptor knock-out (GHR-KO) mice. There is also evidence that GH signaling may have a role in breast cancer. Animals treated with GH develop hyperproliferative lesions in the mammary gland and have increased incidence of spontaneous mammary tumors. Conversely, animals deficient in GH signaling are resistant to carcinogen-induced cancers, including mammary carcinoma. In humans, there is an increased incidence of cancer in patients with acromegaly (syndrome caused by excess GH production by pituitary gland) and a decreased incidence in patients with Laron syndrome (GH deficiency). In this study, we show that GH may increase the risk of breast cancer by stimulating stem and progenitor cells to enter the cell cycle. Using immunohistochemistry and immunostaining coupled with flow cytometry analysis, we found that GHR is expressed in stem and progenitor cells in the normal breast epithelium. We have previously shown that cells with ALDH activity from the human mammary epithelium have functional properties of stem/progenitor cells. Two thirds of these ALDH positive cells express GHR. GHR positive mammary epithelial cells are capable to initiate mammosphere formation in suspension culture and can generate both luminal and myoepithelial cell lineages in vitro. GH treatment increased mammosphere formation in a dose dependent manner. Although the total number of progeny was increased in these conditions, cell dynamics analysis using PKH26 dye dilution showed that the ratios between stem cells, early and late progenitor cells were not changed. GH treatment reduced the number of cells in quiescent state (G0) and decreased p21 protein levels, a cell-cycle regulator previously associated with stem cells quiescence. Taken together, these results indicated that GH treatment did not change symmetry of self-renewal cell divisions but increased the number of cycling mammary stem/progenitor cells. We found that GH is present in normal human mammary epithelial cells both in vitro and in vivo. In vitro, GH is secreted by mammary epithelial cells upon progesterone stimulation. We propose a model in which GH, estrogen and progesterone establish a paracrine signaling loop that stimulates GHR positive/steroid receptor negative stem and progenitor cells to enter the cell cycle. We propose that increased levels or prolonged exposure steroid hormones and/or GH would lead eventually to an expanded undifferentiated population at higher risk for transformation through oncogenic hits. Consistent with this concept, analysis of 180 cases of clinical precursor lesions (DCIS) showed an expanded GHR+ cell population in 92% of cases, with expression in 50-100% of the cell population in more than half of cases. Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 103rd Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2012 Mar 31-Apr 4; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2012;72(8 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-190. doi:1538-7445.AM2012-LB-190


This master thesis describes nonlinear nite element analysis and ex-
perimental verication tests of a corrugated board panel when loaded
in-plane. Detailed modelling of a panel, where both the liner and fluting
is represented in detail, is compared to simplied shell modelling with a
solid core and to experimental tests. In the experimental tests, Stereo-
scopic Digital Speckle Photography is used to obtain the in-plane as well
as the out-of-plane displacements. The analyses shows that a local phe-
nomenon as buckling of the liner between the corrugations is important for the global load-displacement response. It is also shown that it is possible to predict the load carrying capacity with a simple composite model if a failure criterion that considers both material and structural failure is used.


The paper analyzes the meaning of the phrase "the woman's status in the society" that is recognized in demography as an important cultural factor of demographic development and transitional changes. The analysis indicates qualitative shifts in the woman's status and simultaneously reveals its importance at present, not only in traditional, but also in modern and developed societies. On the other hand, it explains the importance of sex as a biodemographic determinant, and introduces the concept of gender that sheds another light on the concepts of sex and woman's status in the society and integrates them. Gender regimes that subsume the inferiority of women in public and private social structures are examined from demographic perspective, albeit only in those phenomenological aspects that can be supported by demographic research, theories, and analyses. To this end, the paper analyzes the effects of strengthening gender equalities on the fertility and mortality transitions, the gender's impact on the population distribution by sex in South Asian countries, and highlights the key role of gender in interpreting certain social and economic structures. It also stresses the establishing of gender equality as an important element of population policies. The global dimension of the patriarchal society is illustrated through a series of examples of demographic phenomena from various societies. Gender regimes underlie all of these phenomena. The paper puts foreword certain theoretical hypotheses about gender inequalities, and finds their connections with demographic behaviors and demographic indicators. Finally, it summarizes the role of demography in gender (in)equality research and the demographic perspective of the way and the speed the demographic equality is being established. Demography is seen as an irreplaceable discipline in examining gender inequalities, especially at the global level. With the advance of qualitative methods in demography and with its multidisciplinary nature, demography gets closer and closer to the field of "woman issues".


Drinking water is disinfected to inactivate waterborne pathogens.  The most common form of disinfection is chlorination, although ozone and UV light are also used in some plants of the world. Disinfection equipment depends on the type of disinfectant used.  In developing countries, the water disinfection problem is large and complex. There are a number of appropriate methods but chlorine continues to be one of the most popular options. In Algeria, it is the only method of disinfection used.  Chlorine is a very effective disinfectant, it is relatively easy to handle, the capital costs of chlorine installation are low, simple to dose, measure and control and it has a relatively good residual effect. Chlorination efficiency depends on chlorine residual, contact time, type of chemical used, location in the treatment process, and on characteristics of the water being treated. The chlorine demand involves the reaction of chlorine with compounds in water, reducing the amount of chlorine available to kill microorganisms. Chlorination of humic substances in drinking water is known to produce mutagenic and carcinogenic compounds such as trihalomethanes. Because of their chemical quality, Algerian waters could lead to complex and competitive reactions during chlorination step. The widespread detection of chloroform and other organohalogenated compounds contamination in the water reservoirs appear to be largely a consequence of the use of chlorination for the disinfection of drinking water. Those documented as probable human carcinogens and mutagens have been detected in large amounts and have been considered as the major component of DBPs.  Taking into account above drawn conclusions, greater efforts are needed to evaluate and set priorities for drinking water disinfection in Algeria. The challenge is to maintain the level of microbial protection while minimizing the exposure of the consumers to DBPs. If disinfection by chlorination is maintained, the best way to reduce THM generation is to reduce the concentration of precursors through various water treatment techniques prior to chlorination.


For efficient video compression, the BMAs should be designed and implemented in such a way that that the Motion Estimation takes very less time and will have lesser complexity. In this paper, two new algorithms namely Improved Logarithmic Search (ILS) and Zero motion predicted ILS (ZMILS) are proposed which are based on the basic idea of Three Steps Search (TSS) algorithm. In these BMA, the search pattern of proposed algorithms changes the efficiency both in terms of complications required for each macro block (MB) and quality of the compensated images. We improved the TSS and NTSS by changing the searching pattern of locations in reference frame and by adding no movement early prediction case with these algorithms we further reduced the computations. The computations required by the new developed algorithm are lesser per macro block and even 50% of few existing techniques while retaining the quality of the reconstructed image


The study objective is to know the prevailing crossbred calf mortality & managemental practices in the operational area of Dairy Vigyan Kendra (DVK), Vejalpur, Gujarat, India. A total of 300 crossbred cattle owners from 30 villages of 10 talukas were selected using the simple random sampling method for the study from August to December 2022. The data were collected based on the pre-tested structured interview schedule. Overall crossbred calf mortality was observed 33.70 per cent in the study area. There was a higher mortality rate in male calves (56.78%) than in female crossbred calves (16.98%) due to limited attention towards the male calf. The mortality rate was recorded higher during the first three months of age (70.78%) and during the monsoon (39.72%). The primary reason for calf mortality was malnutrition/ male calf negligence. Farmers urgently need extension services on scientific calf rearing practices such as providing concentrate feed, cutting navel cord with the sterilized object, providing milk as per body weight, on-time colostrum feeding, provision of milk replacer, calf starter, salt, mineral mixture, deworming, and vaccinations against diseases.


Implementing active learning methods in engineering education is becoming the new norm and is seen as a prerequisite to prepare future engineers not only for their professional life, but also to tackle global issues. Teachers at higher education institutions are expected and encouraged to introduce their students to active learning experiences, such as problem-, project-, and more recently, challenge-based learning. Teachers have to shift from more traditional teacher-centered education to becoming instructional designers of student-centered education. However, instructional designers (especially novice) often interpret and adapt even well-established methods, such as problem-based learning and project-based learning, such that the intended value thereof risks being weakened. When it comes to more recent educational settings or frameworks, such as challenge-based learning, the practices are not well established yet, so there might be even more experimentation with implementation, especially drawing inspiration from other active learning methods. By conducting a systematic literature analysis of research on problem-based learning, project-based learning, and challenge-based learning, the present paper aims to shed more light on the different steps of instructional design in implementing the three methods. Based on the analysis and synthesis of empirical findings, the paper explores the instructional design stages according to the ADDIE (analysis, design, development, implementation, and evaluation) model and provides recommendations for teacher practitioners.


There is currently an urgent need to identify effective antiviral agents that will prevent and treat severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) infection. In this study, we have investigated and compared the antiviral effect of different interferons (IFNs) on SARS-CoV replication in the epithelial kidney monkey Vero cell line. The results showed that SARS-CoV grown in Vero cells is moderately sensitive to IFN-β and only weakly sensitive to IFN-α and IFN-γ, in comparison to other IFN-sensitive viruses, such as those for encephalomyocarditis, vesicular stomatitis and Newcastle disease. Simultaneous incubation of Vero cells with IFN-β and IFN-γ indicated that they may act synergistically against SARS-CoV replication. The IFN-induced MxA protein was detected in the IFN-treated Vero cells. The data, however, suggest that the antiviral activity of IFN against SARS-CoV virus is independent of MxA expression.


Meniscal transplantation as a treatment of degenerative knee joint disease remains controversial. When confronted with a medial or lateral compartmental pain syndrome in a patient after total meniscectomy, the orthopedic surgeon faces manifest therapeutic challenges. Apparently, satisfactory results can be obtained consistently after proper correction of axial malalignment. However, in the well-aligned knee joint, it seems logical to reimplant the meniscus when it has been removed anteriorly and incapacitating pain has led to functional impairment. Experience gained from medium-term implantation results suggests that arthroscopically assisted lateral transplantation is the most effective procedure, whereas the open technique seems to be best suited for medial meniscal transplantation, with either dual or single skin incision allowing for medial collateral ligament release. The use of bone blocks for allograft fixation is still controversial because meniscal implantation should be anatomic to restore meniscal function. Accurate bone block fixation is difficult, but meniscal transplantation without bone blocks might induce erratic meniscal behavior.


Several deterministic approaches have been proposed in literature for available transfer capability (ATC) computation. However, the gradual shift in power generation sources from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources has a remarkable influence on the ATC evaluation. The deterministic approaches do not incorporate the uncertainties of the renewable energy sources efficiently, therefore, various probabilistic techniques have been proposed in literature. This article presents a review of the various probabilistic methods for ATC computation. It provides the background, techniques and the features of ATC. Several contributions made by researchers, using probabilistic techniques for ATC computation, have been highlighted in this paper. This review has shown that there is a need for improvement in the existing approaches in order to evaluate ATC accurately. The improvement includes the development of a robust technique incorporating the system uncertainties and the uncertainties due to the renewable energy system as well as complete system dynamics in ATC computation. In addition, evaluation of ATC incorporating the transfer capability margins (TRM and CBM) is necessary to avoid over-/under-estimation of ATC value. This review will serve as a guide for the entrants in this research area


Reference crop evapotranspiration (ETO) is often used to determine crop water requirements. In the paper, ETO is calculated with Penman-Monteith method in 18 stations from 1960 to 2005 in eastern agricultural areas of Qinghai, China. Results show that the mean annual ETO is 904 mm, the spatial distribution characteristics are ETO in south is higher than it in north, east is higher than west and it decreases from southeast to northwest, firstly increases then decreases from southwest to northeast. Within a year, the value of ETO in spring-summer accounts for 72% of the total annual amount, while less than 30% in autumn-winter. ETO shows a significant decreasing trend during the period 1960 to 2005.


Figuring Violence catalogs the affects that define the latter stages of the war on terror and the imaginative work that underpins them. These affects—apprehension, affection, admiration, gratitude, pity, and righteous anger—are far more pleasurable and durable than their predecessors. Hence, they are deeply compatible with the ambitions of a state embroiling itself in a perpetual and essentially unwinnable war. Surveying the cultural landscape of this sprawling conflict, Figuring Violence reveals the varied mechanisms by which these affects have been militarized. This book tracks their convergences around six types of beings: civilian children, military children, military spouses, veterans with PTSD and TBI, Guantánamo detainees, and military dogs. All of these groups have become preferred objects of sentiment in wartime public culture, but they also have in common their status as political subjects who are partially or fully unknowable. They become visible to outsiders through a range of mediated and imaginative practices that are ostensibly motivated by concern or compassion. However, these practices actually function to reduce these beings to abstracted figures and so make them easy targets for affective investment. This is a paradoxical and conditional form of recognition that eclipses the actual beings upon whom those figures are patterned, silencing their political subjectivities and obscuring their suffering. As a result, they are erased and rendered hypervisible at once. Figuring Violence demonstrates that this dynamic ultimately propagates the very militarism that begets their victimization.


Vicarious liability doctrine has twin origins. In ancient law it concerned ownership and control of things, slaves and servants. In the modern period it was reconfigured as a means of accomplishing the social democratic spreading of losses caused by industrial activity. Both ideas still inhabit vicarious liability doctrine. The early court cases rarely experienced between the historical origins of vicarious liability (control of things and people) and the idea that the community at large, or the employer's deep pocket, should bear the cost of losses caused by industry. This is because most employees considered in the early cases were controlled. The rise of the professional employee induces tension because the professional employee is not controlled in the traditional sense. Strict application of the control idea in the professional employee context restricts access to the employer's deep pocket for losses caused by industry. In this context the historical formulation (control) and the social-democratic rationalization (loss-spreading) contradict each other. This tension is why the doctrine is erratically administered in the professional employee context and produces uncertain and unsatisfactory results.


Angiotensin II (Ang II) stimulates norepinephrine transporter (NET) and tyrosine hydroxylase (TH) in the neurons, but the signal transduction mechanism of this neuromodulation is not understood. Treatment of neuronal cultures of hypothalamus-brainstem with Ang II resulted in a time- and dose-dependent activation of Ras, Raf-1, and mitogen-activated protein kinase. This activation was mediated by the interaction of Ang II with the AT1 receptor subtype and was associated with the redistribution of AT1 receptor with Ras and Raf-1 on the neuronal membrane. Treatment with antisense oligonucleotide (AON) to mitogen-activated protein kinase decreased mitogen-activated protein kinase immunoreactivity by 70% and attenuated Ang II stimulation of c-fos, NET, and TH mRNA levels. This demonstrates that induction of these genes requires mitogen-activated protein kinase activation by Ang II. In contrast, AON to mitogen-activated protein kinase failed to inhibit Ang II stimulation of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 mRNA levels. These results suggest that AT1 receptors are coupled to a Ras-Raf-1 mitogen-activated protein kinase signal transduction pathway that is responsible for stimulation of NET and TH, two neuromodulatory actions of Ang II in the brain.


Hyperthermia not only directly induces cell injury of body tissues, but also causes the body to release large amounts of inflammatory mediators and cells with extensive biological activities to induce a systemic inflammatory response and immune dysfunction. Thus, hyperthermia causes systemic inflammatory response syndrome, aggravating injuries to various organs. This study aimed to observe the effects of ulinastatin (UTI) administered at different time points on the cellular morphologies of the lung tissues of rats with systemic hyperthermia. A total of 40 male Sprague Dawley rats were randomly divided into five groups: The normal control group (C group), the hyperthermia group without medication (H group), the hyperthermia and UTI pre-treatment group (HU group), the group treated with UTI at 1 h after hyperthermia (HU1 group), and the group treated with UTI at 2 h after hyperthermia (HU2 group). The systemic hyperthermia rat model was established in a heating chamber with a biological oxygen supply. For the HU, HU1 and HU2 groups, UTI (5×104 U/kg) was administered at different time points. For the C and H groups, an equivalent volume of normal saline was administered. During heating, the respiratory frequency and rectal temperature were measured and recorded once every 30 min. After 2.5 h of heating, the wet/dry weight (W/D) ratio of the lung tissues of the rats was measured. Additionally, the cellular morphologies of the lung tissues were observed under light and electron microscopes. The respiratory frequencies and lung tissue W/D ratios of the rats in the various hyperthermia groups were significantly higher than those of the rats in the C group (all P<0.05). The respiratory frequencies and lung tissue W/D values of the HU and HU1 groups were significantly lower than those of the H group (all P<0.05). Under the light microscope, the bronchial surrounding tissues of the HU and HU1 groups were loose, and the majority of the pulmonary alveolar structures were normal; the H and HU2 groups presented a number of changes, including pulmonary interstitial hyperemia, alveolar epithelial swelling and emphysema. Under the electron microscope, it was observed in the type II epithelial cells of the pulmonary alveoli of the H group that the mitochondria were swollen, the cell ridges were shortened, the microvilli were thin and increased, and the alveolar wall was thickened. Also, an increased number of infiltrating neutrophils were visible. In addition, the type II epithelial cells of the HU2 group also presented these changes to different extents and the changes in the HU and HU1 groups were the mildest. These results indicate that the early application of UTI relieves edema and the extent of cell injury of the lung tissue in rats with systemic hyperthermia.


Background Miscommunication during clinical handover can lead to partial information transfer and healthcare provider dissatisfaction. We hypothesised that a quality improvement project to standardise the cardiovascular intensive care unit (CVICU) handover could improve healthcare provider satisfaction and reduce information omission. Methods After institutional review board approval, the operating room (OR) to CVICU handover was audited prior, post and 1 year after standardisation implementation. The medical information transferred, healthcare provider participation and satisfaction, and patient outcome data were collected. Additionally, surveys were sent to the OR and CVICU staff by email. Results There were 68 handover processes observed. The odds of greater satisfaction with handover for providers were 18 times higher with the process post implementation (p<0.0001) and 26 times higher 1 year after implementation (p<0.0001). There was statistically significant difference between intensive care unit resident presence (45% vs 76% vs 91%, p=0.004), surgical faculty presence (10% vs 36% vs 45%, p=0.034) and surgical fellow presence (15% vs 64% vs 62%, p=0.001) between the three time periods. More information related to the surgeon (5% vs 52% vs 27%, p=0.002), the medical history (65% vs 96% vs 91%, p=0.014) and the cardiopulmonary bypass (47% vs 88% vs 76%, p=0.017) was conveyed. The duration of mechanical ventilation was shorter after implementation (2.2±2.6 days vs 1.2±1.9 days vs 0.5±1.2 days, p=0.026). Conclusions One year after the OR to CVICU standardised handover implementation, the healthcare provider satisfaction remained increased, more team members participated and the information transfer increased. Although some clinical outcomes improved, further studies are recommended to prove causality.


One of the most significant barriers to medication treatment is patients' non-adherence to a prescribed medication regimen. The extent of the impact of poor adherence on resulting health measures is often unknown, and typical analyses ignore the time-varying nature of adherence. This article develops a modeling framework for longitudinally recorded health measures modeled as a function of time-varying medication adherence. Our framework, which relies on normal Bayesian dynamic linear models (DLMs), accounts for time-varying covariates such as adherence and non-dynamic covariates such as baseline health characteristics. Standard inferential procedures for DLMs are inefficient when faced with infrequent and irregularly recorded response data. We develop an approach that relies on factoring the posterior density into a product of two terms: a marginal posterior density for the non-dynamic parameters, and a multivariate normal posterior density of the dynamic parameters conditional on the non-dynamic ones. This factorization leads to a two-stage process for inference in which the non-dynamic parameters can be inferred separately from the time-varying parameters. We demonstrate the application of this model to the time-varying effect of antihypertensive medication on blood pressure levels for a cohort of patients diagnosed with hypertension. Our model results are compared to ones in which adherence is incorporated through non-dynamic summaries.


Two new species of Sphingidae from Argentina are recorded: Aleuron iphis (Walker) and Pachylia darceta Druce. Both species were collected in the province of Misiones. The specimens belongs to the collection of the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia".


The ecology, morphology, production and physiology of Eleusine indica seeds were studied. Emphasis was on germination, as it determined success or failure as a competitor in a crop. E. indica seeds germinated best without glumes, at alternating temperatures of 20/35 deg C in light. Soaking seeds prior to incubation resulted in higher germination percentage. There are no natural inhibitors present in the seeds or spikelets to prevent germination. Seeds were soaked in 10-10 000 p.p.m. 2,2-DPA [dalapon], MSMA, paraquat and simazine before germination. Paraquat effectively inhibited germination even at 100 p.p.m.


The aim of this study was to study the variation of isokinetic strength and bone mineral density on the lower limb in youth soccer players according to age level. Sixty-one youth male soccer players from three age groups (Under19, Under-17, and Under-15) take part on the study. Hamstrings and quadriceps concentric strength was evaluated by isokinetic dynamometry, and body composition was assessed using Dual energy X-ray absorptiometry. The t-test of matched pairs, ANOVA, and Bonferroni post hoc comparisons were applied to localize differences by age group. Statistical criterion was set at 0.05. Strength and bone mineral density tended to develop with age with the furthest presenting higher values in the non dominant extremity in all age groups. Differences were found in peak torque of the quadriceps in the dominant limb between Under-15 and the other age groups (p<0.05). For the hamstrings peak torque and bone mineral density, differences were only found between the Under-19 and Under-15 (p<0.01). The Under-15 group diverged from the other two groups in the non-dominant limb in all variables. The non-dominant limb presented higher values of bone mineral density in all three groups (p<0.001). Bone mineral density seems to increase due to soccer practice, and this fact seems to be connected with strength development. Increasing muscle mass, which occurs with soccer practice, may increase the forces generated at the bones, thus leading to the development of bone mineral density.


Experience in treatment of pleural complication of destructive pneumonia in children was submitted. Of the 46 children, admitted with pneumonia complicated by the destructive, in 92% cases were typed pleural complications - 35% in the form of pleural empyema, in 30% fibrinothoracs. Delimited pleural empyema and fibrinothoracs found in children, treated for an average of two weeks in district hospitals. In these cases is made thoracoscopic pnevmoliz with resolution adhesions, opening and readjustment cavities, abscesses, removal of fibrin and subsequent drainage of pleural cavity. All 16 operated patients have a positive result, length of stay decreased by 1,5-2 times: 21 days vs 44-68 days with conservative tactics.


Automatic speech recognition (ASR) allows transcribing the communications between air traffic controllers (ATCOs) and aircraft pilots. The transcriptions are used later to extract ATC named entities, e.g., aircraft callsigns. One common challenge is speech activity detection (SAD) and speaker diarization (SD). In the failure condition, two or more segments remain in the same recording, jeopardizing the overall performance. We propose a system that combines SAD and a BERT model to perform speaker change detection and speaker role detection (SRD) by chunking ASR transcripts, i.e., SD with a defined number of speakers together with SRD. The proposed model is evaluated on real-life public ATC databases. Our BERT SD model baseline reaches up to 10% and 20% token-based Jaccard error rate (JER) in public and private ATC databases. We also achieved relative improvements of 32% and 7.7% in JERs and SD error rate (DER), respectively, compared to VBx, a well-known SD system.11Our code is stored in the following public GitHub repository: https://github.com/idiap/bert-text-diarization-atc


A 39-yr-old white male with a prolonged history of Crohn's disease presented with worsening diarrhea associated with an increasingly painful rash of both lower extremities as well as left ankle swelling. A skin biopsy revealed an acute leukocytoclastic vasculitis. Intravenous hydrocortisone followed by oral prednisone achieved a rapid remission of the both cutaneous and gastrointestinal manifestations. Long-term remission has been maintained with 6-mercaptopurine and mesalamine. The rare association between cutaneous vasculitis and Crohn's disease is discussed and earlier reported cases reviewed.


NBR1 (named as next to BRCA1) was originally cloned as a candidate gene for the ovarian cancer antigen CA125, using expression cloning with the anti-CA125 Ig, OC125. NBR1 has been of interest due to its position close to BRCA1, although no involvement in breast or ovarian cancer has been demonstrated. Recently, the antigen CA125 has been cloned, and identified as a new mucin, MUC16, entirely different from NBR1. The function of NBR1 remains unknown. To investigate its function, a yeast two-hybrid study was performed to identify interacting protein partners that may reflect a biological role for this protein. Here, we show that NBR1 interacts with two proteins; fasciculation and elongation protein zeta-1 (FEZ1), a PKCzeta interacting protein, and calcium and integrin binding protein (CIB), which is associated with polo-like kinases Fnk/Snk and the Alzheimer's disease presenilin 2 protein. Co-transfection of FEZ1 and NBR1 showed overlapping localization in the cytoplasm, whereas coexpression of NBR1 and CIB resulted in a shift of CIB protein expression from the nucleus to the perinuclear compartment. FEZ1 is highly expressed in the brain and in situ hybridization analysis of Nbr1 showed that its expression is also regulated in the murine brain during development. These data suggest that NBR1 may function, through interaction with CIB and FEZ1 in cell signalling pathways, with a developmentally restricted expression suggesting a possible role in neural development.


MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are key regulators of gene expression at the post-transcription level. The present study specifically explored and compared the miRNA expression profiles of F. gigantica and F. hepatica using an integrated sequencing and bioinformatics platform and quantitative real-time PCR. Nineteen and 16 miRNA candidates were identified from F. gigantica and F. hepatica, respectively. The two parasites shared 11 miRNAs, with 8 also showing similarity to miRNAs of Schistosoma japonicum. Another 8 miRNAs were identified as F. gigantica-specific and 5 as F. hepatica-specific, most of which were novel. Predicted target analysis with 11465 mRNA and EST sequences of F. hepatica and F. gigantica revealed that all of the miRNAs had more than one target, ranging from 2 to 398 with an average of 51 targets. Some functions of the predicted targets were only found in F. gigantica, such as "transcription regulator", while some others were only found in F. hepatica, such as "reproduction" and "response to stimulus", indicating the different metabolism and gene regulation patterns of the two parasites. The present study represents the first global comparative characterization of miRNA expression profiles of F. gigantica and F. hepatica, which has provided novel valuable resources for a better understanding of the two zoonotic trematodes.


The aim of study was to evaluate the diagnostic significance of plasma SPD and CRP in patients with LRTI.

Study population. 4 patients with COPD acute exacerbations (AE COPD), 8 patients with community acquired pneumonia (P) and 10 healthy persons (H) made the study sample.

Methods. Plasma CRP and SPD were measured in addition to physical examination, spirometry and chest X-Ray.

Results are shown in table 1.

View this table:

There was no any correlation between SPD and CRP either in patients with AE COPD, or in H (R = -0.4, p = 0.6; R = -0.47, p = 0.16 respectively). But SPD significantly correlate with CRP in patients with P (R = 0.8, p = 0.01).

Conclusions: 1) Both SPD and CRP increases in patients with LRTI.

2) Probably SPD more significantly reflects long-term lung inflammation, while CRP reflects acute injury.

3) Plasma SPD strongly positively correlates with CRP in patients with P.


This paper presents a new lung tumor motion prediction method for tumor following radiation therapy. An essential core of the method is accurate estimation of complex fluctuation of time-variant periodical nature of lung tumor motion. Such estimation can be achieved by using a multiple time-variant seasonal autoregressive integral moving average (TVSARIMA) model in which several windows of different lengths is used to calculate correlation based time-variant period of the motion. The proposed method provides the final predicted value as a combination of those based on different window lengths. We have tested unweighted average, multiple regression, and multi layer perceptron (MLP) for the combination method by using real lung tumor motion data. The proposed methods with multiple regression and MLP based combinations showed high accurate prediction and are superior to the single TVSARIMA based prediction. The most highest prediction accuracy was achieved by using the MLP based combination. The average errors were 0.7953±0.0243[mm] at 0.5[sec] ahead and 0.8581±0.0510[mm] at 1.0[sec] ahead predictions, respectively. The results clearly demonstrate that the proposed method with an appropriate combination of several TVSARIMA is useful for improving the prediction performance.


The derivation of an analytic formula for the impedance of cylindrical and helical antennas in cold magnetoplasma is outlined. The method used is a conventional one reducing to integration of a three-dimensional integral involving the Fourier transforms of the current distribution and tensor Green's function. It is shown that the impedance decomposes into three parts corresponding, respectively, to the axial and circumferential components of current, and a mutual impedance depending on both current components. The explicit formulas are in the form of one-dimensional integrals suitable for machine computation. The integrands are made up of many simple terms, and for brevity only the impedance terms referring to the axial current are written out explicitly.


Nonlinear Kalman filter adaptations such as extended Kalman filters (EKF) or unscented Kalman filters (UKF) provide approximate solutions to state estimation problems in nonlinear models. The algorithms utilize mean values and covariance matrices to represent the probability densities in the otherwise intractable Bayesian filtering equations. As a consequence, their estimation performance can show significant dependence on the choice of state coordinates. The here considered problem of tracking maneuvering targets using coordinated turn (CT) models is one practically relevant example: The velocity in the target state can either be formulated in Cartesian or polar coordinates. We extend a previous study to a broader range of CT models that allow for changes in target speed and turn rate, and investigate UKF as well as EKF variants in terms of their performance and sensitivity to noise parameters. The results advocate for the use of polar CT models.


We aimed to identify a suitable method for long-term monitoring of the migration and proliferation of mesenchymal stromal cells in stroke models of rats using ferritin transgene expression by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Bone marrow mesenchymal stromal cells (BMSCs) were transduced with a lentivirus containing a shuttle plasmid (pCDH-CMV-MCS-EF1-copGFP) carrying the ferritin heavy chain 1 (Fth1) gene. Ferritin expression in stromal cells was evaluated with western blotting and immunofluorescent staining. The iron uptake of Fth1-BMSCs was measured with Prussian blue staining. Following surgical introduction of middle cerebral artery occlusion, Fth1-BMSCs and superparamagnetic iron oxide- (SPIO-) labeled BMSCs were injected through the internal jugular vein. The imaging and signal intensities were monitored by diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), T2-weighted imaging (T2WI), and susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) in vitro and in vivo. Pathology was performed for comparison. We observed that the MRI signal intensity of SPIO-BMSCs gradually reduced over time. Fth1-BMSCs showed the same signal intensity between 10 and 60 days. SWI showed hypointense lesions in the SPIO-BMSC (traceable for 30 d) and Fth1-BMSC groups. T2WI was not sensitive enough to trace Fth1-BMSCs. After transplantation, Prussian blue-stained cells were observed around the infarction area and in the infarction center in both transplantation models. Fth1-BMSCs transplanted for treating focal cerebral infarction were safe, reliable, and traceable by MRI. Fth1 labeling was more stable and suitable than SPIO labeling for long-term tracking. SWI was more sensitive than T2W1 and suitable as the optimal MRI-tracking sequence.


Turning movement (TM) counts are used for a variety of intersection analyses, including traffic operations analyses, intersection design, and transportation planning applications. For many planning and design applications, especially in the case of proposed future improvements to an intersection or even proposed new intersections, future year TM counts are needed for the analysis. Accordingly, there is a need to forecast TMs at the intersection. The purpose of the research was to inventory and review the methods used to forecast intersection TMs. The effort was limited to a literature review and a limited survey of practitioners to determine methods currently being used to make such forecasts. Based on this limited review, it was found that the state-of-the-practice for estimating TMs is based on using growth factors to project link volumes and TM counts. In many cases, engineering judgement is used to account for special conditions or to accommodate known or anticipated land use changes that may significantly impact TMs. The implication, therefore, is that although there are similarities among methods used by a variety of organizations for a variety of purposes, there is no identifiable preferred means of estimating TMs. The most definitive technique found is the procedures described in the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 255.


The traditional grid soil sampling is laborious and time-consuming. It leads to delay in applying the precision-farming cycle. An apparent electrical conductivity (ECa) sensor (VerisEC 3100) was introduced to delineate zones of contrasting areas of paddy soils for site-specific fertilizer management. This study was conducted to zone the area by ECa data as a summary indicator for zoning paddy soils to facilitate fertilizer management. The area was 145 ha lowland paddy fields in Selangor Malaysia. In a typical plot size of 1.2 ha, the ECa sensor was pulled by a tractor to collect ECa data in 4 passes spaced 15 m apart. Soil samples were collected at 2 points per plot on the track within the area. Under shallow ECa zoning characteristics, zone 1 has significantly lower organic matter (OM), organic carbon (OC), total S, cation exchange capacity (CEC), Mg, Fe and Clay, and has higher exchangeable sodium percentage (ESP), fine sand and sand. Deep ECa zone showed that mean soil base saturation (BS) in zone 3 was significantly higher than those in the other zones while EC was significantly lower. Mean soil P, Mg, total basic cation and clay within zones 1 and 2 were significantly lower as compared to the other zones. However, yield as responded to ECa was found to be in a non-linear form. The results of zonal characterizations indicate that the ECa sensor can provide useful information for zone management practice.

 Key words: Rice soils, management zones, precision farming, regression, correlation.


Endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) are known to exert estrogen-like effects that are similar to those made by naturally produced hormones or by inhibition of the receptors in the cell receiving the hormones. Recently, several reports have indicated that EDCs can affect the developing central nervous system. In our current study, we report that some EDCs induce apoptosis in cultured PC12 cells and can be classified into three groups. Bisphenol A (BPA), p-nonylphenol (NP) and tributyltin chloride (TBT) were found to induce endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-associated apoptosis and activate the unfolded protein response (UPR) system, whereas benomyl (beno) induced non-ER stress-associated apoptosis. The half-maximal apoptosis-inducing concentrations (IC50) of these EDCs were 160 uM for BPA, 25.6 uM for NP, 640 nM for TBT and 48 uM for beno. Although these concentrations are higher than those found in the environment, some EDCs may have apoptotic effects on various cells in the body, including neurons, through their accumulation in the body over time or condensation through the food chain. On the other hand, benzopyrene, fenvalerate, styrene monomer and bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate did not induce apoptosis in PC12 cells. We analyzed also whether apoptosis-inducing EDCs had an estrogen-like effect on cultured PC12 cells transfected with a luciferase reporter plasmid, the activity of which is dependent on estrogen receptor α. We found that BPA had an estrogen-like effect (EC50 = 5.9 uM) but that NP, TBT and beno did not in transfected PC12 cells. These results suggest that BPA may predomi-nantly exert estrogenic effects, but others may pre-dominantly have apoptosis-inducing effects on cells in the body exposed to a polluted environment.


The amino acid sequence of chymotryptic peptides C4 and C5 which together make up 206 COOH-terminal residues of alpha2-CB3 of chick skin collagen is described. This in combination with the sequence of 132 residues from the amino-terminal region published earlier [Dixit, Seyer, and Kang (1977) Eur. J. Biochem. 73, 213-221] completes the total amino acid sequence of the large CNBr peptide, alpha2-CB3 of chick skin collagen. The amino acid sequence was determined by automated Edman degradation of intact peptides C4 and C5 and their respective tryptic and maleylated tryptic peptides, and thermolytic peptides of C4. The comparison of the sequence with the homologous segment of alpha1(I) chain showed striking variance of over 51% within the same species.


Diophantine Geometry aims to describe the sets of rational and/or integral points on a variety. More precisely one would like geometric conditions on a variety X that determine the distribution of rational and/or integral points. Here geometric means conditions that can be checked on the algebraic closure of the field of definition. Pairs, sometimes called log pairs, are objects of the form (X,D) where X is a projective variety and D is a reduced divisor. These objects naturally arise in arithmetic when studying integral points, and play a central role in geometry, especially in the minimal model program and the study of moduli spaces of higher dimensional algebraic varieties. They arise naturally in the study of integral points since, if one wants to study integral points on a quasi-projective variety V , this can be achieved by studying points on (X,D), where (X \D) ∼= V , the variety X is a smooth projective compactification of V , and the complement D is a normal crossings divisor. In this case, (X,D) is referred to as a log pair. The goal of these notes is threefold: (1) to present an introduction to the study of rational and integral points on curves and higher dimensional varieties and pairs; (2) to introduce various notions of hyperbolicity for varieties and pairs, and discuss their conjectural relations; (3) and to show how geometry influences the arithmetic of algebraic varieties and pairs using tools from birational geometry. Roughly speaking, a k-rational point of an algebraic variety is a point whose coordinates belong to k. One of the celebrated results in Diophantine geometry of curves is the following.


Quantum computing is an important developing technology with the potential to revolutionise the landscape of scientific and business problems that can be practically addressed. The widespread excitement derives from the potential for a fault tolerant quantum computer to solve previously intractable problems. Such a machine is not expected to be available until 2030 at least. Thus we are currently in the so-called NISQ era where more heuristic quantum approaches are being applied to early versions of quantum hardware. In this paper we seek to provide a more accessible explanation of many of the more technical aspects of quantum computing in the current NISQ era exploring the 2 main hybrid classical-quantum algorithms, QAOA and VQE, as well as quantum annealing. We apply these methods, to an example of combinatorial optimisation in the form of a facilities location problem. Methods explored include the applications of different types of mixer (X, XY and a novel 3XY mixer) within QAOA as well as the effects of many settings for important meta parameters, which are often not focused on in research papers. Similarly, we explore alternative parameter settings in the context of quantum annealing. Our research confirms the broad consensus that quantum gate hardware will need to be much more capable than is available currently in terms of scale and fidelity to be able to address such problems at a commercially valuable level. Quantum annealing is closer to offering quantum advantage but will also need to achieve a significant step up in scale and connectivity to address optimisation problems where classical solutions are sub-optimal.


The effect of La doping on the electronic structure and optical properties of SrTiO3 and Sr2TiO4 is investigated by the first-principles calculation of plane wave ultrasoft pseudopotential based on the density function theory (DFT). The calculated results reveal that the electron doping in the case of Sr0.875La0.125TiO3 and Sr1.875La0.125TiO4 can be described within the rigid band model. The La3+ ions fully acts as electron donors in Sr0.875La0.125TiO3 and Sr1.875La0.125TiO4 systems and the Fermi level shifts further into the conduction bands (CBs) for Sr1.875La0.125TiO4 compared to Sr0.875La0.125TiO3. The two systems exhibit n-type degenerate semiconductor features. At the same time, the density of states (DOS) of the two systems shift towards low energies and the optical band gaps are broadened. The Sr1.875La0.125TiO4 is highly transparent with the transmittance about 90% in the visible range, which is larger than that of Sr0.875La0.125TiO3(85%). The wide band gap, small transition probability and weak absorption due to the low partial density of states (PDOS) of impurity in the Fermi level result in the optical transparency of the films.


We present velocities for 230 stars in the outer parts of the globular cluster M15 measured with the Hydra multifiber spectrograph on the 3.5 m WIYN telescope. A new Bayesian technique is used for analyzing the data. The mean velocity of the cluster is -106.9 ± 0.3 km s-1. Rotation with an amplitude of 1.5 ± 0.4 km s-1 and a position angle of 125° ± 19° is observed, and a model including rotation is marginally favored over one without rotation. The velocity dispersion decreases from the center out to about 7′ and then appears to increase slightly. This behavior is strikingly different from the continued decline of velocity dispersion with increasing radius that is expected in an isolated cluster. We interpret this as an indication of heating of the outer part of M15 by the Galactic tidal field.


Rapidly growing research interest in the field of printed electronics, especially polymer-based organic thin film transistors (OTFTs) and organic photovoltaics (OPVs), stems from the dramatically improved performance of these devices, which become competitive to the amorphous silicon-based counterparts. The performance enhancement of polymer OTFTs and OPVs is largely attributed to the progress made in the development of polymer semiconductor materials. Therefore exploration of new building blocks for developing high-performance polymer semiconductors has been an area of extensive research. This article provides an overview of new building blocks including 21 electron acceptors and 20 electron donors, which were developed over the past three years for constructing π-conjugated polymers, particularly donor–acceptor (D–A) type polymers. Polymers containing these building blocks have shown very promising performance as active semiconductors in OTFTs and OPVs. Rationales for the structural design and the device performance of the polymers based on these new building blocks are discussed.


One of the biggest challenges of software evolution is to adapt a software system to the ever-changing requirements from users or operating environments. An ideal goal is to encapsulate these requirements into a high-level abstraction, which can drive large-scale adaptation of the underlying software implementation. Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is one of the enabling techniques that support this objective, in that it allows the application designers to synthesize various software artifacts from high-level models. The state-of-the-art MDE techniques, however, lack support for advanced processes and constructive methods for software evolution. With respect to large legacy systems written in disparate programming languages, the primary problems of evolution are the difficulty of adapting the legacy source to match the evolving requirements specified in the models and the incapability of developing evolutionary tasks in a modular way.
In order to overcome such difficulties, this dissertation introduces a Model-Driven Aspect Adaptation (MDAA) framework that unites the MDE and Aspect-Oriented Software Development (AOSD) approaches to support modular software evolution. AOSD offers an advanced technique that supports invasive adaptation by weaving aspect modules that encapsulate the evolutionary crosscutting changes into the software system. By combining MDE and AOSD, the evolutionary change requirements are specified in the high-level aspect models, which drive the generation of the low-level aspect code used to perform legacy system evolution. This way, the whole software evolution process is performed in a modular manner, which enables the changeability, comprehensibility and independent development of the evolved implementation.
Two case studies are provided to demonstrate the applicability and benefit of the approach. One is based on the paradigm of Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM), which leverages a DSM modeling environment, a model transformation engine and a program transformation system to provide evolution support for legacy systems from domain models. Another case study is based on UML activity modeling. An Aspect-Oriented Activity Modeling (AOAM) approach is implemented to facilitate modular evolution for activity models. In addition, the corresponding AspectJ code is generated from the aspect-activity models to enable evolutionary adaptation of the underlying legacy source.


Stability studies are essential to understanding the limitations of capacitive deionization (CDI) technology and to future commercialization efforts. In this work, the effect of trapped salt ions on stability degradation is explored. The extraction results indicate that Na+ and Cl− exist in aged electrodes and are metastably trapped. Accordingly, a schematic illustration based on the classical Gouy–Chapman–Stern (GCS) model is made to present the dynamic movement of ions near degraded electrodes with regard to the inversion effect. Moreover, a two-electrode voltage sweep test (voltage of null conductivity change (Vncc) test) is developed to simultaneously monitor the active voltage window for CDI. This voltage sweep test is conducted along with long-term operation of CDI cells. The results indicate that the active voltage window between the electrodes decreases gradually, with prolonged cycling, or increases immediately, by inverting the applied voltage of the cell. The shift of Vncc and the desalination ability are found to be strongly correlated, regardless of the cycling history of the electrodes. Therefore, the Vncc test can be a practical tool for sensing both the active voltage window and the desalination ability of carbon-based electrodes during prolonged or continuous CDI operations.


Ghost membranes prepared from human erythrocytes exhibit 2 distinct (Ca + Mg)-ATPase1 activities (Quist and Roufogalis, Arch Biochem Biophys 168:240, 1975). (Ca + Mg)-ATPase activity dependent on a water soluble protein fraction is selectively lost from ghost membranes during preparation of vesicles under low ionic strength, slightly alkaline conditions. In this study, the Ca2+ dependence of the remaining membrane bound (Ca + Mg)-ATPase activity and ATP-dependent Ca uptake in vesicles were compared. The Ca2+ activation curves for (Ca + Mg)-ATPase activity and Ca uptake into vesicles were parallel over a Ca2+ range of 0.3-330 micrometer, and both curves have 2 apparent KA values for Ca2+ of 0.45 and 100 micrometer. Addition of a concentrated soluble protein fraction containing predominantly spectrin to the vesicles increased (Ca + Mg)-ATPase activity over twofold but did not affect the rate of Ca uptake. These findings suggest that the (Ca + Mg)-ATPase activity remaining in vesicles after extraction of the water soluble proteins is associated with the Ca pump whereas (Ca + Mg)-ATPase activity dependent on the soluble protein fraction is associated with some other function.


The ESRF uses the Leica TDA5000/5 motorized theodolite with automatic target recognition (ATR) for all high precision survey work. This instrument provides an extremely high measurement rate accompanied by very good precision. Typically, three teams of two people make the full storage ring survey in one 8-hour shift (3200 angle and distance measurements). The standard deviation in the distance and angle measurements are better than 0.15 mm and 4.7 μrad (1 arcsec) respectively. The standard deviation in the absolute point determination is 0.15 mm. In order to achieve these results, great efforts have been made in the proper calibration procedures for this instrument.


Introduction: Panic disorder (PD) is a prevalent psychiatric disorder characterized by unexpected and recurrent panic attacks. PD patients present significant psychosocial impairment and a high risk of psychiatric comorbidities and suicide. PD should be treated effectively as soon as the symptoms emerge because the longer these patients remain without treatment, the worse the prognosis will be. Areas covered: The authors carried out a systematic review of the literature regarding the pharmacological treatment of PD in the last 10 years. Only open studies, placebo-controlled studies or comparative clinical trials were selected. Expert opinion: Compounds with reported effectiveness in the treatment of PD included tricyclic antidepressants, benzodiazepines, serotonin selective reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), serotonin and noradrenaline reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) and other drugs. SSRIs and SNRIs are the first-line compounds in the treatment of PD. These drugs were better tolerated than tricyclics and benzodiazepines as they had a low risk of dependence and overdosing complications. The serotonergic, noradrenergic and GABAergic pathways play a major role in the fear network and in the physiopathology of PD. A better understanding of the role of these neurotransmitter systems in PD will allow the development of more effective drugs for this psychiatric condition.


Oxytocin (OT) is a neurohormone that regulates the so-called "social brain" and is mainly studied in adulthood. During postnatal development, the mechanisms by which the OT system structures various behaviors are little studied. Here we present the dynamic process of postnatal development of the OT system as well as the OT functions in the perinatal period that are essential for shaping social behaviors. Specifically, we discuss the role of OT, in the newborn, in integrating and adapting responses to early sensory stimuli and in stimulating suckling activity. Sensory dialogue and suckling are involved in mother-infant bonds and structure future social interactions. In rodents and humans, neurodevelopmental diseases with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), such as Prader-Willi and Schaaf-Yang syndromes, are associated with sensory, feeding and behavioral deficits in infancy. We propose that in early postnatal life, OT plays a key role in stimulating the maturation of neural networks controlling feeding behavior and early social interactions from birth. Administration of OT at birth improves sensory integration of environmental factors and the relationship with the mother as well as sucking activity as we have shown in mouse models and in babies with Prader-Willi syndrome. Long-term effects have also been observed on social and cognitive behavior. Therefore, early feeding difficulties might be an early predictive marker of ASD, and OT treatment a promising option to improve feeding behavior and, in the longer term, social behavioral problems.


Processing of mushrooms is one of the most profitable economic activities which has tremendous potential for income generation. Experiments on the most common methods of mushroom processing like drying, pickle and chutney making were conducted which were demonstrated in the field situation. To find out their feasibility in mushroom growing units. Regarding the feaslbility of mushrooms, it was found that majority of the respondents perceived mushroom processing as easy to understand and use, profitable, physically and culturally compatible, observable and triable technoiogy.


This paper produces an approach for video synopsis through which shorter and condensed form of video can be obtained. Most of the spatiotemporal redundancies in surveillance video can be avoided and essential activities in the video can be preserved here. In most of the existing approaches collisions are caused while video is condensed. Most of the collisions can be avoided by reducing size of moving objects. Mainly three steps are used. Interesting objects are identified and detected in first step. An optimization framework technique is used in second step in order to find energy mapping values. Finally scaled down objects are added back to the video of user defied length video.


Background: Drug utilization studies are helpful in understanding the current practice. We have conducted a retrospective study to evaluate the relevant use of a group of most commonly prescribed antibiotics in a teaching hospital in Iran.  The results of this study may be of help for clinicians to improve the patient care. Methods: Patients who received parenteral ceftazidim, vancomycin and amikacin from December2010 to May 2011 were enrolled in this study. Patient's data including demographic, length of Hospital stay, drug allergy, first and final diagnosis were recorded in a predesigned data collection form. American Hospital Formulary Services (AHFS) book were used as a reference for evaluation of study drug indication and dosing according to diagnosis and microbiological culture. Defined Daily Dose (DDD) of each drug extracted from Anatomic and Therapeutic Chemical classification system (ATC/DDD) and drug usage data evaluated by calculating the ratio of prescribed drug to its DDD.| Results: The ratio of prescribed daily dose to DDD was 0.78, 0.95 and 0.86 for amikacin, ceftazidime and vancomycin respectively. Between amikacin group, 43 patients (86%) received drug empirically, the number of empiric treatments for ceftazidim and vancomycin were 45(90%) and 44 patients (88%). The renal function tests (Blood Urea Nitrogen, Serum Creatinin) were evaluated in 56% of amikacin group, 64% in ceftazidime group and 78% in vancomycin group. Conclusion: The results of this study indicate the need to establish continuing medical education (CME) courses for physicians to familiarize them with standards required to use and monitor these agents.


The problem of laminar fluid flow which results from the shrinking of a permeable surface in a nanofluid has been investigated numerically. The model used for the nanofluid incorporates the effects of Brownian motion and thermophoresis. A similarity solution is presented which depends on the mass suction parameter S, Prandtl number Pr, Lewis number Le, Brownian motion number Nb and thermophoresis number Nt. It was found that the reduced Nusselt number is decreasing function of each dimensionless number.


Abstract Previous studies have shown that a rate of temporal decline in visual working memory (vWM) highly depends on a number of memory items. When people retain the information of many (≥ 4) stimuli simultaneously, their memory representations are fragile and rapidly degrade within 2–3 s after an offset (called the "competition" among memory items). When a memory load is low (1 or 2 items), in contrast, the fidelity of vWM is preserved for a longer time because focused attention to the small number of items prevents the temporal degradation. In the present study, we explored neural correlates of this load-dependent decline of vWM in the human brain. Using electroencephalography and a classical change-detection task, we recorded neural measures of vWM that have been reported previously, such as the contralateral delay activity (CDA) and a suppression of alpha power (8–12 Hz). Results indicated that the load-dependent decline of vWM was more clearly reflected in the change in power and speed of alpha/beta rhythm than CDA, suggesting a close relationship of those signals to an attention-based preservation of WM fidelity.


Air mass origin as determined by back trajectories often aids in explaining some of the short-term variability in the atmospheric concentrations of semivolatile organic contaminants. Airsheds, constructed by amalgamating large numbers of back trajectories, capture average air mass origins over longer time periods and thus have found use in interpreting air concentrations obtained by passive air samplers. To explore some of their key characteristics, airsheds for 54 locations on Earth were constructed and compared for roundness, seasonality, and interannual variability. To avoid the so-called "pole problem" and to simplify the calculation of roundness, a "geodesic grid" was used to bin the back-trajectory end points. Departures from roundness were seen to occur at all latitudes and to correlate significantly with local slope but no strong relationship between latitude and roundness was revealed. Seasonality and interannual variability vary widely enough to imply that static models of transport are not sufficient to describe the proximity of an area to potential sources of contaminants. For interpreting an air measurement an airshed should be generated specifically for the deployment time of the sampler, especially when investigating long-term trends. Samples taken in a single season may not represent the average annual atmosphere, and samples taken in linear, as opposed to round, airsheds may not represent the average atmosphere in the area. Simple methods are proposed to ascertain the significance of an airshed or individual cell. It is recommended that when establishing potential contaminant source regions only end points with departure heights of less than ∼700 m be considered.


Information is a very valuable weapon, in can help in manipulation and it can result in changing behaviours and actions. Information warfare in the cyber environment can be considered the most developed form of warfare, through which the goal is achieved without human loss and without bloodshed. While many studies and researches have been conducted on the "weapons of attack" of this unconventional war, fake news and propaganda, since ancient times, less has been written about "weapons of defence" counteracting and combating their effects, and scientific studies and research are still far from finding the answer. In this article, we aim to analyse both the main weapon of attack: communication, as a method (technique, tactics) of transmitting fake news and propaganda and the main means of conducting information warfare, social media, by the force (speed) of the dissemination of communication. We will make this analysis starting from the origin and characteristics of interpersonal communication and social networks, which we will identify in disciplines such as psychology, sociology, social psychology and anthropology and show how each of these areas contributes to shaping the lives of users of virtual social networks. They can thus be used in information warfare. In our approach, we start from the hypothesis that communication aims to influence, the social network broadens the communication environment and promotes influence, and the Internet makes the communication process take place at the mass level, amplifies the speed of dissemination, which further accentuates influencing and recommending social media as a tool in the information war. We also aim to analyse this process of modelling (influencing) from socio-psychological perspectives to highlight how propaganda and fake news in social media work and how they could be countered using simple principles of communication and psycho-sociology.


The 5‐year survival rate for patients with pancreatic cancer is <5%, and it is always resistant to the current chemoradiotherapy. Therefore, new, effective agents for the treatment of pancreatic cancer are urgently needed. The promising strategy of cancer‐targeting gene virotherapy (CTGVT) has demonstrated great anticancer potential. The objective of the current study was to determine whether 1 CTGVT approach, oncolytic virus (OV)‐harboring lipocalin‐2, is capable of treating pancreatic cancer.


Optometry Times Editor Gretchyn Bailey invites you to drop by the Optometry Times reception! The reception will be held from 9-11 pm Thursday, June 26, at the Hotel Monaco in the rooftop lounge. Please join us for dessert and drinks! The hotel's address is 433 Chestnut Street in the heart of Old City and steps away from the Liberty Bell.