Four steers fitted with a ruminal cannula and chronic indwelling catheters in the mesenteric artery, mesenteric vein, hepatic portal vein, hepatic vein, and the right ruminal vein were used to study VFA absorption from bicarbonate buffers incubated in the washed reticulorumen, and metabolism by splanchnic tissues. Portal and hepatic vein blood flows were determined by infusion of p-aminohippurate into the mesenteric vein. The steers were subjected to four experimental treatments in a Latin square design. The treatments were Control (ruminal bicarbonate buffer with [mmol/kg]: acetate = 72; propionate = 30; isobutyrate = 2.1; butyrate = 12; valerate = 1.2; caproate = 0; and heptanoate = 0); Val (same as control except for valerate = 8 mmol/kg); Cap (same as control except for caproate = 3.5 mmol/kg); and Hep (same as control except for heptanoate = 3 mmol/kg). All buffers were incubated for 90 min in the rumen, and ruminal VFA absorption rates were maintained by continuous intraruminal infusion of VFA. The arterial concentrations of valerate and heptanoate showed a small increase (< or = 1 micromol/L; P < 0.05) with inclusion of the respective acid in the ruminal buffer, but no change (P = 0.57) in arterial concentration of caproate was detected. Valerate increased (P < 0.05) the net portal flux of butyrate and valerate, as well as the net splanchnic flux of propionate, butyrate, and valerate. With Cap and Hep, the net portal flux of caproate and heptanoate accounted for 54 and 45% of ruminal disappearance rates, respectively, indicating that these acids were extensively metabolized by the ruminal epithelium. Caproate was ketogenic both in the ruminal epithelium and in the liver, and Cap increased (P < 0.05) the arterial concentration, ruminal vein minus arterial concentration difference, net hepatic flux, and net splanchnic flux of 3-hydroxybutyrate. The net hepatic flux of glucose decreased (P = 0.02) with Cap and Hep compared with Control and Val; however, no effect (P = 0.14) on the net splanchnic flux of glucose could be detected. We conclude that the strong biological activity of valerate, caproate, and heptanoate warrant increased emphasis on monitoring their ruminal presence and their potential systemic effects on ruminant metabolism.


Education
Process of science (POS) skills, such as communication, experimental design, and data analysis, are critical components of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) curricula. Balanced with teaching content, how much time should be spent on teaching POS, and which POS skills should be prioritized? Addis and Powell-Coffman surveyed faculty and students across six science disciplines on time allotted to POS and which POS skills were most important. Whereas students approved of time spent on POS, faculty found this same amount of time to be insufficient. Students and faculty agreed that the POS skills of problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication were important but disagreed about several others, suggesting a disconnect in the way that these two groups define specific POS skills. Findings from this study will help inform future curriculum development.

J. Coll. Sci. Teach. 47 , 72 (2018).


By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to establish policies and procedures governing the assertion of executive privilege by incumbent and former Presidents in connection with the release of Presidential records by the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) pursuant to the Presidential Records Act of 1978, it is hereby ordered as follows: Section 1. Definitions. For purposes of this order: (a) "Archivist" refers to the Archivist of the United States or his designee. (b) "NARA" refers to the National Archives and Records Administration. (c) "Presidential Records Act" refers to the Presidential Records Act, 44 U.S.C. 2201-2207. (d) "NARA regulations" refers to the NARA regulations implementing the Presidential Records Act, 36 C.F.R. Part 1270. (e) "Presidential records" refers to those documentary materials maintained by NARA pursuant to the Presidential Records Act, including Vice Presidential records. (f) "Former President" refers to the former President during whose term or terms of office particular Presidential records were created. (g) A "substantial question of executive privilege" exists if NARA's disclosure of Presidential records might impair national security (including the conduct of foreign relations), law enforcement, or the deliberative processes of the executive branch. (h) A "final court order" is a court order from which no appeal may be taken. Sec. 2. Notice of Intent to Disclose Presidential Records. (a) When the Archivist provides notice to the incumbent and former Presidents of his intent to disclose Presidential records pursuant to section 1270.46 of the NARA regulations, the Archivist, using any guidelines provided by the incumbent and former Presidents, shall identify any specific materials, the disclosure of which he believes may raise a substantial question of executive privilege. However, nothing in this order is intended to affect the right of the incumbent or former Presidents to invoke executive privilege with respect to materials not identified by the Archivist. Copies of the notice for the incumbent President shall be delivered to the President (through the Counsel to the President) and the Attorney General (through the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel). The copy of the notice for the former President shall be delivered to the former President or his designated representative. (b) Upon the passage of 30 days after receipt by the incumbent and former Presidents of a notice of intent to disclose Presidential records, the Archivist may disclose the records covered by the notice, unless during that time period the Archivist has received a claim of executive privilege by the incumbent or former President or the Archivist has been instructed by the incumbent President or his designee to extend the time period for a time certain and with reason for the extension of time provided in the notice. If a shorter period of time is required under the circumstances set forth in section 1270.44 of the NARA regulations, the Archivist shall so indicate in the notice. Sec. 3. Claim of Executive Privilege by Incumbent President. (a) Upon receipt of a notice of intent to disclose Presidential records, the Attorney General (directly or through the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel) and the Counsel to the President shall review as they deem appropriate the records covered by the notice and consult with each other, the Archivist, and such other executive agencies as they deem appropriate concerning whether invocation of executive privilege is justified. …


The photogrammetry is a technique used to reconstruct three-dimensional scene from a series of photographs. This process is used for many years by the French National Geographic Institute to produce topographic maps from aerial photographs. However, the protocols previously used were extremely heavy, because the record three-dimensional topographical information had to be done manually by an operator. Today, with the significant development of digital photography and the computer power, the production of three-dimensional data from photographs can be almost automated. In mining archaeology, access to three-dimensional data is a particularly important to understand the organization of a mine because it is a structure developed in the space. From a three-dimensional model of a part of a mine, it is possible to extract data previously collected on plan from archaeological surveys. However, the record of sections of a gallery, profiles of a working place and tool marks can be more easily recorded on a 3D model. Moreover, we also have access to new data about the volumes extracted and the organization in a mine. And 3D photorealistic models can be used as a tool for cultural heritage visualization and give the opportunity to present to the public archaeological mines, places usually difficult to access. Finally, given the simplicity of the presented survey method that only requires the use of a camera, a flashlight and spatial references, it is of great interest to be systematically implemented in mining archaeology. The purpose of this paper is to present our photogrammetric method and its application in the study of archaeological mines. We will expose our experiments in different French mines to validate the efficiency of our process in different situations (narrow and large spaces, gallery, shaft, working place…). The accuracy of our 3D models will also be compared with the traditional archaeological survey plan. And finally, we will expose different examples of the interest to use a photogrammetric model in the study of mines: tool marks, fire setting technique. SUBMMITED AS POSTER


We analyze theoretically the phase diagram of a triangular triple quantum dot with strong onsite repulsion coupled to ferromagnetic leads. This model includes the competition of magnetic ordering of local or itinerant magnetic moments, geometric frustration and Kondo screening. We identify all the phases resulting from this competition. We find that three Kondo phases -- the conventional one, the two-stage underscreened one, and the one resulting from the ferromagnetic Kondo effect -- can be realized at zero temperature, and all are very susceptible to the proximity of ferromagnetic leads. In particular, we find that the quantum dots are spin-polarized in each of these phases. Further, we discuss the fate of the phases at non-zero temperatures, where a plethora of competing energy scales gives rise to complex landscape of crossovers. Each Kondo regime splits into a pair of phases, one not magnetized and one comprising magnetically polarized quantum dots. We discuss our results in the context of heavy-fermion physics in frustrated Kondo lattices.


OBJECTIVE
To investigate the association of cytokine gene polymorphism with the development of breast cancer.

METHODS
The study was carried out in Uludag University Medical School, Bursa, Turkey. The study included 38 patients with breast cancer admitted to the Medical Oncology outpatient clinic, and 24 healthy controls, age and sex matched, from the Internal Medicine Department between 2004 and 2005. All genotyping of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), tumor growth factor-beta1 (TGF-beta1), interleukin (IL)-10, IL-6, and interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma) experiments were performed using polymerase chain reaction sequence-specific primers.

RESULTS
The frequencies of IL-6-174GC genotype and IL-10 (-1082, -819, -592) GCC/ATA haplotype were significantly higher in the patient group (p=0.0008) when compared with controls (p=0.020). Significantly lower frequencies of IL-10 (-1082, -819, -592) ACC/ATA haplotype were observed in the patient group in comparison to the controls (p=0.026). The distribution of IFN-gamma +874, TNF-alpha 308, and TGF-beta1 codon 10-25 genotypes failed to show any statistical significant association with the development of breast cancer.

CONCLUSION
Our data suggest that IL-10 (-1082, -819, -592) GCC/ATA haplotype and IL-6-174 GC genotype seem to be potential risk factors for the development of breast cancer. The presence of IL-10ACC/ATA haplotype may be protective for the oncogenesis of breast cancer.


Pollinators and UV photos of flowers of Duchesnea chrysantha and D. indica are discussed. The petals of D. chrysantha reflect UV light strongly, while those of D. indica have a nectar guide appearing as a spot at the base of the petals that absorbs UV light. This is the same as in Potentilla which is closely related taxonomically. In Duchesnea, we consider the presence of a nectar guide to be a derived character. The petals of D. chrysantha and D. indica are distinguished by the presence or absence of nectar guides, but both species are pollinated mostly by the same kind of pollinators, which are commonly small polylectic insects. The main pollinators are four small bees (Andrena knuthi, A. minutula, Halictus aerarius, Lasioglossum sp.) and three syrphid flies (Paragus haemorrhous, Sphaerophoria macrogaster, S. philanthus). The total number of insect visitors in D. chrysantha was 60 species, while in D. indica there were 51. There was no significant difference in the visitors to the two Duchesnea species, therefore, the adaptive meaning of the presence of nectar guides was not determined in Duchesnea.


Author(s): Moroto, Robert Hiroshi | Advisor(s): Bitmead, Robert R | Abstract: In many practical engineering applications, a significant portion of the available information is excluded from the design process due to a lack of obvious mechanisms for its incorporation. In this dissertation, several methods are presented for leveraging such underutilized prior knowledge in application-oriented settings. Three cases, motivated by real-world examples, are considered, addressing controller, estimator, and identification design respectively. In each case, a methodology is presented capturing the key features of the prior knowledge in a characterization which can be readily incorporated into standard solution. Firstly, a flexible modeling framework is presented for characterizing time-advanced forecast data associated with an exogenous disturbance. The model is incorporated into a disturbance-attenuating feedforward controller which can be synthesized with standard H2 or H∞ methods. The closed-loop performance calculation provides a comparative metric to juxtapose multiple designs and address economic questions, such as sensor placement. A practical example is provided for a wind turbine and lidar sensor with tunable focus range. Secondly, a modeling framework is presented for characterizing logic-valued measurements that provide timely indication of an associated disturbance event. An estimator is constructed using the fast logic-valued measurement, and known disturbance statistics, to rapidly adjust the disturbance estimate, resulting in improved performance. The framework is applied to a gas turbine (GT) system with transient load disturbance associated with a fast electrical breaker switching measurement. The method is generalized to incorporate multiple disturbance load and breaker pairs. Finally, a high-fidelity GT (HFGT) model is used to construct a linear GT engine model for control design. The HFGT model generates closed-loop transient simulation data for system identification and the structure of its internal subsystems is leveraged to reduce the complexity of the identification process by excluding unnecessary subsystems. The partition of subsystems is enabled by access to signals in the high-fidelity model which are otherwise unavailable during physical engine testing. The resulting linear engine model can be modularly reconfigured with different fuel subsystem and rotor subsystem models. The linear GT model is validated in closed-loop transient simulations.


Phytotoxic activity of crude methanolic extract of Euphorbia prostrata from Euphorbiacae was tested on the germination of wheat seeds and on the growth of the germinated seedlings. In both the field and plate studies, the extract showed inhibitory effect on the germination of the growth of root and shoot of the seedlings. The inhibition was found to be dose dependent. The higher concentration of 1000 μg/ml showed maximum inhibitory effect on the growth of root and shoots in the studies of plate as well as on fresh and dry weight of wheat plant. Similarly, the herbicidal activity is also dependent on the concentration of extract. In this study, it was found that inhibitory potential of methanolic extract of E. prostrata increases as1000 >100 >10 μg/ml. Key words: Phytotoxic activity, herbicidal activity, germination, plates and field studies, Euphorbia prostrate .


The four-point bivariate Lagrange interpolation algorithm was applied to near-field antenna data measured in a plane-polar facility. The results were sufficiently accurate to permit the use of the FFT (fast Fourier transform) algorithm to calculate the far-field patterns of the antenna. Good agreement was obtained between the far-field patterns as calculated by the Jacobi-Bessel and the FFT algorithms. The significant advantage in using the FFT is in the calculation of the principal plane cuts, which may be made very quickly. Also, the application of the FFT algorithm directly to the near-field data was used to perform surface holographic diagnosis of a reflector antenna. The effects due to the focusing of the emergent beam from the reflector, as well as the effects of the information in the wide-angle regions, are shown. The use of the plane-polar near-field antenna test range has therefore been expanded to include these useful FFT applications. >


Models of human work are well recognized means for representing multiple elements of an organization in a mutually tuned form. However, humans and systems tend to use different forms of representation when expressing their knowledge. Most of the widespread modelling approaches focus on a system designer's or software view rather than on intuitive and comprehensive (re)presentations of mental models of users. Tangible interfaces that support the modelling process in an intuitive way could help to reduce the cognitive load when leveraging individual mental models of work processes. In a collaborative setting the immediate and concurrent manipulation of model elements fosters the reflection and discussion of both modelling a work domain and corresponding processes. In this way, it facilitates the development of common views on work tasks and knowledge sharing


Promise programs, or place-based tuition-free college policies, have become increasingly popular among policymakers looking to expand postsecondary attainment. In this article, we examine Tulsa Achieves, a widespread, albeit understudied type of promise program that covers the balance of students' tuition and fees after other aid is exhausted at a single community college. Utilizing a difference-in-differences and event-study design, we investigate the role Tulsa Achieves eligibility plays in promoting or hindering vertical transfer and bachelor's degree attainment across racial/ethnic groups. We find that Tulsa Achieves eligibility is associated with increases in bachelor's degree attainment within 5 years among Native American and Hispanic students and an increased likelihood of transfer within 4 years for Hispanic students.


The major challenges facing resource constraint wireless devices are error resilience, security and speed. Three joint schemes are presented in this research which could be broadly divided into error correction based and cipher based. The error correction based ciphers take advantage of the properties of LDPC codes and Nordstrom Robinson code. A cipher-based cryptosystem is also presented in this research.
The complexity of this scheme is reduced compared to conventional schemes. The securities of the ciphers are analyzed against known-plaintext and chosen-plaintext attacks and are found to be secure. Randomization test was also conducted on these schemes and the results are presented. For the proof of concept, the schemes were implemented in software and hardware and these shows a reduction in hardware usage compared to conventional schemes. As a result, joint schemes for error correction and security provide security to the physical layer of wireless communication systems, a layer in the protocol stack where currently little or no security is implemented. In this physical layer security approach, the properties of powerful error correcting codes are exploited to deliver reliability to the intended parties, high security against eavesdroppers and efficiency in communication system. The notion of a highly secure and reliable physical layer has the potential to significantly change how communication system designers and users think of the physical layer since the error control codes employed in this work will have the dual roles of both reliability and security.


Background Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multisystem inflammatory autoimmune disease with higher prevalence among women [1]. The first manifestation of SLE occurs most commonly at childbearing age, but can appear at any age [2]. Previous studies demonstrated heterogeneous clinical presentation, medication use and disease severity among different onset age groups [3]. The influence of age at disease onset on the clinical presentation and prognosis remains not well recognized. Objectives The present study aims to evaluate differences in clinical and laboratory manifestations and medication use in each SLE patient group according age of onset disease. Methods This cross-sectional study consisted of 549 patients with SLE who attended the Rheumatology Clinic of the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre between 2003 and 2013. Interview during medical consultation and medical chart review were used to collect demographic, clinical and laboratory data. The patients were classified into three groups according to their ages at disease diagnosis. Results Among the 549 patients studied, 54 (9.8%) were Juvenile-onset (≤16 years), 427 (77.8%) were Adult-onset (>16 and <50 years) and 68 (12.4%) were Late-onset (≥50 years). The frequency of women was higher in Adult-onset (93.9%) than in Juvenile-onset (83.3%) (p=0.003). Arthritis was predominantly found in Adult-onset group (79.1%) when compared with Late-onset (61.8%) (p=0.006). Nephritis was more common in Juvenile-onset (66.7%) than in Late-onset (27.9%) (p<0.001), as also occurred with positive results for anti-DNA (64.2% vs. 38.1%, respectively). A non-significantly difference of Sjögren's syndrome, antiphospholipid syndrome, concomitant autoimmune disease and family history of SLE was observed among the groups. Disease activity index and damage scores were similar among the groups. The Juvenile-onset was more likely to require oral corticosteroids (p=0.01), pulse methylprednisolone (p<0.001), cyclophosphamide (p<0.001), azathioprine (p<0.001) and mycophenolate mofetil (p<0.001) in the treatment and maintenance of SLE than the other two groups. In contrast, the Late-onset had used more commonly hydroxychloroquine than the Juvenile-onset (98.5% vs. 90.6%, respectively) (p=0.04). Conclusions Our findings confirm most of the data previously published. The juvenile-onset group showed a more severe disease due to the higher incidence of nephritis and the need of a more aggressive treatment with immunosuppressive drugs. The rate of women is bigger in the adult-onset group, which can be explained by the hormonal effect of estrogen. References Manson JJ, Isenberg DA. The pathogenesis of systemic lupus erythematosus. Neth J Med. 2003 Nov;61(11):343-6. Rothfield N. Clinical features of systemic lupus erythematosus. In: Textbook of Rheumatology, Kelley WN, Harris ED, Ruddy S, Sledge CB (Eds), WB Saunders, Philadelphia 1981. Brunner HI, Gladman DD, Ibanez D, Urowitz MD, Silverman ED. Difference in disease features between childhood-onset and adult-onset systemic lupus erythematosus. Arthritis Rheum. 2008 Feb;58(2):556-62. Disclosure of Interest : None declared DOI 10.1136/annrheumdis-2014-eular.4193


Integrating methods in low-energy electron diffraction (LEED)—turning the instrument to low resolution in k∥—can reliably be used to study critical properties of continuous two-dimensional phase transitions and to determine critical exponents α and η. We performed systematic tests of the conditions under which an energy-like power dependence of the diffracted intensity of superstructure beams can be observed in order-disorder phase transitions of adsorbed atomic layers belonging to 3- and 4-state Potts universality classes. We further show that in the limit kξ ≫ 1 the exponent η can be determined reliably both below and above Tc using integrated intensities.


The analysis of random coding error exponents pertaining to optimal decoding in a degraded broadcast with degraded message sets is revisited. Instead of using Jensens inequality as well as some other inequalities in the derivation, we demonstrate that, after an initial step, an exponentially tight analysis can be carried out by assessing the relevant moments of a certain type class enumerator.


An optical fibre flowmeter is described which uses a single fibre mounted transversely to the fluid flow within the pipe. The fibre is vibrated by the natural phenomenon of vortex shedding, causing phase modulation of the optical carrier within. The modulation is detected at the fibre exit by the fibredyne technique, and the flow rate determined from the vibration frequency.


AIM
This study aimed to evaluate the dental students' performance in ICDAS (International Caries Detection and Assessment System) coding with different levels of clinical experience.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
Dental students (n = 122) in their clinical years, year 3 (n = 37), year 4 (n = 44), and year 5 (n = 41) received training (two-hour introductory lecture on ICDAS, followed by a 90 min e-learning video, and practice sessions using extracted teeth and photographs) from a calibrated expert. After training, the students examined a prevalidated set of extracted teeth and assigned scores in two sessions. The intra- and inter-examiner agreement between students was analyzed using weighted kappa statistics and a focus group discussion was conducted for qualitative feedback.

RESULTS
The range of kappa values for intra-examiner agreement among the year 3, 4, and 5 students for ICDAS caries code (0.611-0.879, 0.633-0.848, and 0.645-1.000) and restoration code (0.615-0.942, 0.612-0.923, 0.653-1.000), respectively. The range of kappa values for inter-examiner agreement for year 3, 4, and 5 students with a trained expert for ICDAS caries code (0.526-0.713, 0.467-0.810, and 0.525-0.842) and restoration code (0.531-0.816, 0.682-0.842, and 0.645-0.928), respectively.

CONCLUSION
The ICDAS system is a promising tool for caries detection and its implementation in the curriculum was perceived by dental students as an effective method. In general, there was moderate to substantial agreement for ICDAS caries and restoration code between students of different academic year groups and with a trained ICDAS expert.

CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE
ICDAS is a simple, logical, and evidence-based system for the detection and classification of caries. Introducing ICDAS to dental students enables them to detect caries in a reliable and reproducible manner irrespective of their past clinical experience and also significantly improves their caries detection skills.


Introduction: The existence of sporozoites in the salivary gland of Anopheles is a prominent factor in the transmission and spread of malaria. Malaria control programs must be comprehensive including the treatment of patients, management of the vector population, and efforts to prevent human-vector contact. The present study aimed to track the presence of sporozoite in the Anopheles mosquito population in a malaria pre-elimination area and evaluate the implementation of a malaria elimination program. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in a malaria pre-elimination area over a period of one year. Mosquitos were caught using human bait and in resting sites close to cattle pens. Sporozoites were detected microscopically and circumsporozoite protein (CSP) was tested using polymerase chain reaction technique. Results: A total of 212 Anopheles mosquitoes were caught. Anopheles maculatus, Anopheles aconitus, Anopheles subpictus, Anopheles barbirostris, Anopheles vagus, and Anopheles kochi species were identified. Salivary gland of 111 mosquitoes were dissected and CSP was detected in 101 specimens. Neither type of test found any sporozoites in the captured Anopheles. Conclusion: The absence of sporozoites in Anopheles in the pre-elimination area is a good sign of the ongoing malaria control program. Breaking the life cycle of the parasite that causes it by minimizing contact with vectors is an effective method that should be continuously improved.


Abstract Objective The study sought to explore information needs arising from a gap in clinicians' knowledge that is not met by current evidence and identify possible areas of use and target groups for a future clinical decision support system (CDSS), which will guide clinicians in cases where no evidence exists. Materials and Methods We interviewed 30 physicians in a large academic medical center, analyzed transcripts using deductive thematic analysis, and developed a set of themes of information needs related to a gap in knowledge unmet by current evidence. We conducted additional statistical analyses to identify the correlation between clinical experience, clinical specialty, settings of clinical care, and the characteristics of the needs. Results This study resulted in a set of themes and subthemes of information needs arising from a gap in current evidence. Experienced physicians and inpatient physicians had more questions and the number of questions did not decline with clinical experience. The main areas of information needs included patients with comorbidities, elderly and children, new drugs, and rare disorders. To address these questions, clinicians most often used a commercial tool, guidelines, and PubMed. While primary care physicians preferred the commercial tool, specialty physicians sought more in-depth knowledge. Discussion The current medical evidence appeared to be inadequate in covering specific populations such as patients with multiple comorbidities and elderly, and was sometimes irrelevant to complex clinical scenarios. Our findings may suggest that experienced and inpatient physicians would benefit from a CDSS that generates evidence in real time at the point of care. Conclusions We found that physicians had information needs, which arose from the gaps in current medical evidence. This study provides insights on how the CDSS that aims at addressing these needs should be designed.


Cefotaxime has little antimicrobial activity in vitro against most strains of enterococci, as measured by conventional MICs and MBCs. However, the MICs of cefotaxime against many enterococci are markedly reduced by the addition of serum to the test medium. To assess the relevance of this observation in vivo, we examined the efficacy of cefotaxime in experimental Streptococcus faecalis endocarditis. Since response to antimicrobial agents may vary with the degree of vegetation development, therapeutic efficacy was assessed both in rabbits with newly formed vegetations and in rabbits with well-developed endocardial lesions. Peak serum levels of cefotaxime (50.1 +/- 20.0 micrograms/ml) exceeded the MIC in medium supplemented with serum (4 micrograms/ml), but not in Mueller-Hinton broth alone (greater than 64 micrograms/ml). After 4 days of therapy, animals with newly formed lesions (therapy initiated 1 h after infection, transvalvular catheters removed) had lower mean vegetation bacterial titers than did untreated controls. Among animals with mature vegetations (therapy initiated 12 h after infection, catheters indwelling), the rate of mortality was significantly reduced by cefotaxime therapy. However, no difference in vegetation titers was observed. Thus, cefotaxime demonstrated antienterococcal activity within newly formed vegetations, but did not inhibit bacterial proliferation within well-established vegetations.


The author analyses Saudi Arabia position in the conflict on the Middle East, examines the influence of this conflict on the formation of the country's domestic and foreign policy.


In this paper, we discuss the directions of active and passive force closures in hybrid active/passive-closure grasps. We show the directions are orthogonal to each other. We also discuss the magnitudes of the internal forces in the manipulation of the object. In hybrid active/passive-closure grasps, there exist two kinds of magnitudes of internal forces. One is the magnitude of internal forces, which changes if the object moves and the geometry of the fingers changes. The other is the one which don't change even when the object moves. We derive these two magnitudes.


The analysis here aims to explain Smith's and Condorcet's ideas about public education, stemming from their common adhesion to the principles of the "Liberalism of Liberty". Their Liberalism makes public intervention necessary for education, so as to ensure the equality of natural rights and to preserve individuals against the damaging effects of the division of labour. But the state's prerogatives in regard to education vary according to the authors. It may therefore be asked whether there are not two distinct traditions within the "Liberalism of Liberty", which thus displays heterogeneity.


Glioblastoma is a deadly disease and modest improvement has been made in patient survival in previous decades. At initial diagnosis, treatment consists of maximum safe surgical resection, followed by temozolomide chemoirradiation and then adjuvant temozolomide alone [1]. This treatment results in a median survival of 14.6 months, a 2-year survival of 27.2% and a 5-year survival of 9.8% [1]. At the time of tumor progression, the best available treatment option consists of single-agent bevacizumab, a humanized monoclonal antibody against VEGF, or in combination with irinotecan or other cytotoxic chemotherapies [2]. Although patients experience improved neurological function, this improvement is nevertheless transient and overall survival is not prolonged. Therefore, new treatment strategies are being sought.


A digital watermarking technique has been proposed as a possible resolution to the necessity of copyright protection and authentication of transmission information in a networked setting, it makes possible to spot the author, owner, approved client of a document victimization RDWT technique were developed in recent years. Because it will recover the watermarked information back to the first host signal, reversible watermarking algorithms are suitable for medical, military and different special fields. However, these algorithms have their defects, like weak robustness, low embedding capability and high hard quality. This paper proposes a reversible picture element technique watermarking algorithmic rule supported LSB replacement. It can not only recover the first information to a high extent, however even have strong hardiness and low hard quality and .The watermark is superimposed in choose coefficients with significant image energy within the remodel domain so as to confirm noneras ability of the watermark. Advantages of the projected technique include: improved resistance to attacks on the watermark, implicit visual masking utilizing the timefrequency localization property of wave transform .Digital image watermarking that doesn't require the first image for watermark detection and this projected technique is strong to most of the signal process techniques. Purposed Technique ARDWT base on Image Data Authentication.


Ground subsidence due to underground mining has posed a constant threat to the safety of surface infrastructure such as motorways, railways, power lines, and telecommunications cables. Traditional monitoring techniques like using levels, total stations and GPS can only measure on a point-by-point basis and hence are costly and time-consuming. Differential interferometric synthetic aperture radar (DINSAR) together with GPS and GIS have been studied as a complementary alternative by exploiting multi-source satellite SAR images over a mining site southwest of Sydney. Digital elevation models (DEMs) derived from ERS-1 and ERS-2 tandem images, photogrammetry, airborne laser scanning, and the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission were assessed based on ground survey data using levelling as well as GPS-RTK. The identified high quality DEM was then used in the DINSAR analysis. Repeat-pass acquisitions by the ERS-1, ERS-2, JERS-1, RADARSAT-1 and ENVISAT satellites were used to monitor mine subsidence in the region with seven active mine collieries. Sub-centimeter accuracy has been demonstrated by comparing DINSAR results against ground survey profiles. The ERS tandem DINSAR results revealed mm-level resolution.


Pulmonary neuroendocrine tumors comprise 20% of all lung cancers. They are separated into 4 subgroups: typical carcinoid tumor, atypical carcinoid tumor, large-cell neuroendocrine carcinoma, and small-cell lung carcinoma. The major symptoms present in 60% of patients are cough, hemoptysis, and obstructive pneumonia. They may also exhibit hormonally related symptoms e.g. carcinoid syndrome. Small cell lung cancer is the most common subgroup, with rapid progression, aggressive metastatic potential and the worst prognosis. Large cell neuroendocrine carcinoma is rare but also has a poor prognosis. Typical carcinoid may be accompanied with hormone related symptoms and has the best prognosis; atypical one on the contrary may cause lymph node and distant metastases in half of the cases. Elevated plasma levels of chromogranin-A are present in majority of pulmonary neuroendocrine tumors and act as tumor marker. The mainstay of treatment is radical surgery if possible. In locally advanced or metastatic disease combination chemotherapy and somatostatin-analogues may have beneficial effect. This review focuses on the general features, and current diagnostic options of pulmonary neuroendocrine tumors.


The present Ph.D. studies the most important, perhaps, factor of Corporate Strategy (beyond capital adequacy) of the largest Greek Mutual Fund Management Companies, i.e. the Human Capital, since the review of bibliography showed the absence, in general, of researches that study the behavior of employees in the mutual fund sector. The objective of the study was to cover, partly, this gap, examining the behavior of employees working in the 3 largest Greek Mutual Fund Management Companies, with a combined market share of 80% of the Greek Market. By developing an assessment tool, through the combination of two established ones and with Factor Analysis, the following factors were derived: (1) Dynamic (2) Sociable (3) Formal (4) Supportive (5) Rational The behavior of employees between the three equally dominant Greek mutual fund management companies isn't differentiated in the majority of Factors (1-4). Furthermore, employee's behavior isn't differentiated according to their personal/ demographic profile (gender, marital status, age, educational institution, studies, tenure in the organization, experience). Finally, employees that work in the same departments - regardless in which organization they work- adapt distinct, differentiable behavior from employees that work in other departments, because three out of the results for the five factors in Factor Analysis indicated a statistical significant difference


Landsat 8 was launched in 2013 by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). On board of the Landsat 8 is the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). Data for visible, panchromatic band, short-wave infrared spectral bands are collected by the OLI while TIRS collect images in the thermal region. As data for Landsat 8 is available to be used for public, researchers have utilized the data for numerous applications. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is yet a review paper on the various applications of Landsat 8 data. Hence, this paper presented an innovative survey on Landsat 8 data in the application of agriculture and forestry, land use and mapping, geology, hydrology, coastal resources and environmental monitoring. The potential of utilizing Landsat 8 data for power utility companies is also discussed in this paper. As Landsat 8 data is predicted to be available for more years to come, this paper provides insight for researchers to utilize the data better for their research.


In this paper, we propose a novel approach to hyperspectral image super-resolution by modeling the global spatial-and-spectral correlation and local smoothness properties over hyperspectral images. Specifically, we utilize the tensor nuclear norm and tensor folded-concave penalty functions to describe the global spatial-and-spectral correlation hidden in hyperspectral images, and 3D total variation (TV) to characterize the local spatial-and-spectral smoothness across all hyperspectral bands. Then, we develop an efficient algorithm for solving the resulting optimization problem by combing the local linear approximation (LLA) strategy and alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM). Experimental results on one hyperspectral image dataset illustrate the merits of the proposed approach.


In the current study, exceptional and reasonable heterogeneous ZnO/PVP nanocatalysts were synthesized via the chemical reduction method followed by ultra-sonication for methyl orange degradation in the aqueous medium. The synthesized nanocatalysts were confirmed using different characterization techniques such as Energy Dispersive X-ray, Scanning Electron Microscope, X-ray diffraction analysis, Zeta Potential, Dynamic light Scattering, UV-Visible spectroscopy, and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy. To validate the competency of the nanocatalysts as the photocatalyst, the synthesized ZnO/PVP nanocatalysts were applied to the degradation of methyl orange dye. Lastly, the fabricated catalyst demonstrated splendid catalytic efficiency; within 90 seconds, more than 98% degradation of methyl orange dye was perceived using 150 μg nanocatalysts dose in the aqueous medium. The fabricated ZnO/PVP nanocatalysts illustrate many benefits above traditional routes for degrading the toxic and hazardous dye, like a short time, high percentile of degradation, the least amount of nanocatalysts, and admirable reusability. On the above facts, it is recommended that these viable and effective nanocatalysts can be applied successfully on the commercial level for degradation hazard pollutants.


Urban agriculture is gaining attraction to become one of the pillars of the urban ecological transition and to increase food security in an urbanized planet. However, there is a lack of systematic quantification of the benefits provided by urban agriculture solutions. In this paper, we present an R package to estimate several indicators related to benefits of urban agriculture. The goal is to provide a tool for researchers and practitioners interested in the impacts of urban agriculture. The ediblecity package provides functions to calculate 8 indicators: urban heat island, runoff prevention, green areas accessibility, NO 2 sequestration, jobs created in commercial gardens, volunteers involved in community gardens, green per capita and, finally, food production. Moreover, the package also provides a function to generate scenarios with different implementations of urban agriculture. We illustrate the use of the package by comparing three scenarios in a neighborhood of Girona (Spain), which is included in the package as an example dataset. There, we compare scenarios with an increasing amount of urban agriculture solutions. The ediblecity package is open-source software. This allows other R developers to contribute to the package, providing new functionalities or improving the existing ones.


Air quality of indoor environments can be influenced by the presence of biotic and abiotic agents such as microorganism, spores, acari, and pollen, natural components in these environments, which can be transported from the outdoor air by dust particles.. The microorganisms present in the environment of the Library Alfonso Patino Rosselli, Tunja (Boyaca) were evaluated and it was determinated which of the isolated fungal genera could represent risk of biodeterioration on the documents. The open Petri dish sedimentation method was employed for the microbiological sampling, using Sabouraud Agar for fungi isolation and Nutrient Agar for bacteria, whereas for sampling of documents, the Potato Dextrose Agar as culture media was utilized. In the environment, the highest diversity was represented by fungi with 23 isolated genera, predominating Cladosporium spp., whereas yeasts were less representative, with Geotrichum the predominant genus. Regarding bacterial forms, Gram positives were the most abundant, being Staphylococcus the most prevalent genus of the 13 identified ones, with respect to three genera of Gram negative. On books, Aspergillus spp., and Penicillium spp. were the predominant fungi. Microbial concentration of environment was high, but within the limit of sanity of public places to be considered as not contaminated; however, it is important to establish control measures of these microbial populations and the environmental conditions that could favor its development.


We examined the down-regulation of alpha-1B adrenoceptors in Madin-Darby canine kidney D1 (MDCK) cells with an emphasis on a possible role of protein kinase C. The alpha-1 adrenoceptor agonist phenylephrine (1-100 microM) concentration-dependently down-regulated alpha-1B adrenoceptors in MDCK cells. Down-regulation by 100 microM phenylephrine was detectable after 2 hr and maximal after 8 to 24 hr. The receptor down-regulation was accompanied by a decrease in phenylephrine-stimulated inositol phosphate formation but not by an altered expression of immunodetectable Gq/11 alpha subunits. Even though alpha-1B adrenoceptor and P2 purinergic receptor stimulation promote prostaglandin E2 formation, receptor down-regulation was not prevented by indomethacin (10 microM) treatment but was partly mimicked by treatment with the purinergic receptor agonists adenosine-5'-O-(3-thio)triphosphate and 2-methylthio-ATP (300 microM each). Phorbol-12-myristate-13-acetate (1-100 nM) concentration-dependently down-regulated MDCK alpha-1B adrenoceptors to a greater extent than did phenylephrine. Three protein kinase C inhibitors, H7 (100 microM), staurosporine (100 nM) and KT5926 (1 microM), markedly attenuated receptor down-regulation promoted by phorbol ester but did not affect that by phenylephrine. Two inhibitors of Ca++/calmodulin protein kinase pathways, KT5926 (1 microM) and W-7 (30 microM), also failed to prevent phenylephrine-induced down-regulation of alpha-1B adrenoceptors. We conclude that agonist-induced down-regulation of MDCK cell alpha-1B adrenoceptors is mimicked by a protein kinase C-activating phorbol ester but that the second messenger kinases protein kinase C and Ca++/calmodulin protein kinase do not mediate agonist-induced down-regulation of the alpha-1B adrenoceptor.


What if we could start with a blank slate, and write ourselves a brand new copyright system? If we could scrap the existing structure entirely and design a law to encourage creativity, remunerate and support creators, and increase the size of cultural markets to ensure broad access to new knowledge and creativity; in short, if we could draw up a new copyright law that genuinely furthered the public interest, what might it look like? Would we opt for radical overhaul? Or would we keep our current fundamentals? What parts of the system would we jettison? What would we keep?


This dissertation deals with fathers of children subjected to child welfare investigations. They are "fathers called into question" and their fatherhood is not very much investigated so far. The dominating picture is that the fathers are absent, to their children as well as in research and social work literature. Two Swedish contexts are presented. These represent different interpretations of "the best interest of the child". Both are of importance to the social services' image of fathers called into question. The first context is about social policy and gives prominence to fathers as emotionally important for their children. The other context is about child welfare where children sometimes have to be protected from their fathers. The aims of the thesis are to examine 1) the images of fathers and the relationship to their children expressed in case files; 2) the images of fathers and the relationship to their children expressed in interviews with administrative social workers; 3) fathers' own experiences of the social services, their perspectives of fatherhood and the relationship to their children. I have examined 40 case files, interviewed 13 social workers at two social welfare offices, and interviewed 19 fathers. In the case files the image of fathers stands out as fragmented, but from the information available it was evident that fathers were recognized as important for children. By involving fathers in the child welfare investigation and documenting it, the social workers could argue that they live up to what is expected from them according to the general discourse of fatherhood in social policy, namely to strengthen fathers' relationship to their children. However, in cases where the fathers did not have custody of their children the social workers could use their own discretion to decide whether fathers should be contacted or not. In the interviews with the social workers the image of the fathers was characterized by an ambiguity between the various interpretations of the notion "in the best interest of the child". On the one hand the social workers gave prominence to fathers as important for their children, in accordance to the intentions of social policy. On the other hand, in the social workers' practical work it could be necessary to protect children from their fathers. Furthermore a conflict between traditional and modern fatherhood was evident. The social workers maintained traditional gender roles at the same time as they tried to create modern fathers. The fathers' images of their own fatherhood is characterized by mixed feelings. They felt misunderstood by the social services and expressed powerlessness, and felt stigmatized. They had to fight to be active and present fathers for their children and to be seen as such. However the fathers gave an image of themselves as normal fathers. Many of the fathers thought that they lived up to their own image of good fatherhood even if it was hard sometimes. The children had an important place in their lives and they also thought that they were important to their children.


The domain of autonomic networking comes with its own set of architectural challenges and requirements that necessitates the knowledge of other domains like protocol design, system engineering and modern control theory for the design of autonomic behaviors. Thus, there is a need for an unified framework and methodology for designing the autonomic entities of such networks. A Model-driven framework or approach appears as a viable option, as it integrates and masks the differences between the domains through meta-models and model-to-model transformation services. In this paper, we focus on the instantiation of one such methodology and associated tool-chain for the design of the Auto-Configuration behavior in a network. We showcase how the application of the methodology helps in detecting and resolving conflicting and entangled control-loops during the design phase of autonomic behaviors.


The main function of a rating function in an online charging system is to perform real-time calculations of the tariff. In the context of the IP multimedia subsystem, and the consequent revolution in terms of services and applications, quality of service and network performance play an important role in application delivery and user experience. Consequently, a rating function that integrates these new parameters is important to address the challenge of an accurate real-time charging of applications in IP multimedia subsystem environments. The present contribution suggests an approach for modeling rating functions in the online charging system of IMS. Furthermore it defines the interactions between the rating function and service elements and network elements and business actors.


OBJECTIVE
To make and identify the monoclonal antibody against AIB1-N.

METHODS
BALB/c mice were immunized with purified GST-AIB1-N protein, McAb against AIB1-N was produced by hybridoma technique. ELISA and Western-blot were used to identify the immunoglobin subtype and specificity. Results A hybridoma cell was successfully produced to secrete the McAb against AIB1-N, which was identified to belong in IgG1 subtype. By western-blot, the McAb against AIB1 displayed strongly specificity and high affinity.

CONCLUSION
The McAb against AIB1 protein may be a useful tool for studying the biological properties of AIB1 expression and the clinical laboratory detection.


Objectives: This study was conducted to find out knowledge attitude and practice (KAP) of epilepsy among persons of bundelkhand region. Secondary data from this study was compared with KAP studies from other parts of country. Material and Methods: Four hundred non epileptic persons attending various OPDs of Maharani Laxmi Bai Medical college Jhansi, Uttar Pradesh were selected randomly. Printed questionnaire having answer yes or no were used for assessment of KAP. This questionnaire was used by various authors and validated for KAP analysis.Results: It was revealed that word epilepsy was heard by 94% of persons, 64% thought that epilepsy is a mental illness. Twenty three percent believe it to be contagious disease while 21% attribute it to previous life sin. Social discrimination was favored by 53% persons. Negative attitude is shown as more than half persons stated that epilepsy is hindrance to marriage and occupation. Holy treatment by tantric or priest was favored by 20% persons. More than one third persons use onion, shoe or splash water on face to terminate seizure episode. Conclusion: Study on persons of Bundelkhand revealed poor KAP for epilepsy and require special educational programme to remove these misconception


This paper describes two systems for Named Entity Recognition (NER) and performance of two systems has been compared. The first system is a rule-based one whereas the second one is statistical (based on CRF) in nature. The systems vary in some other aspects too, for example, the first system works on untagged data (not even POS tag is done) to identify NER whereas the second system makes use of a POS tagger and a chunker. The rules used by the first system are mined from the training data. The CRF-based classification does not require any explicit linguistic rules but it uses a gazetteer built from Wiki and other sources.


A 96-well microplate reader for absorption spectroscopy was designed, constructed, and tested at a total cost of ca. 500 USD. The reduced cost of the device represents the major technical contribution of this manuscript, as costs were reduced 7 fold from previous reports. The device was able to achieve 3σ limits of detection of ca. 0.01 absorbance units (AU) over a 60 second measurement for the mid-visible wavelength range. Component parts are either commercially available, or 3D printed from plans. Analysis wavelength can be altered throughout the visible region through use of various photographic or theatrical filters. This feature allows the well plate reader to be used for typical laboratory assays such as cell population estimation by optical density (OD) at 600 nm, or enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) at 450 nm. This manuscript reports on the motivation and process of constructing the device, lists required parts, presents data demonstrating device function, and provides the community of scholars with plans to reproduce the work. The device can be reproduced in laboratories lacking sufficient resources to purchase commercially available options and this outcome contributes towards empowerment of individuals and equity of scientific enquiry.


Our work focuses on tackling the challenging but natural visual recognition task of long-tailed data distribution (i.e., a few classes occupy most of the data, while most classes have rarely few samples). In the literature, class re-balancing strategies (e.g., re-weighting and re-sampling) are the prominent and effective methods proposed to alleviate the extreme imbalance for dealing with long-tailed problems. In this paper, we firstly discover that these re-balancing methods achieving satisfactory recognition accuracy owe to that they could significantly promote the classifier learning of deep networks. However, at the same time, they will unexpectedly damage the representative ability of the learned deep features to some extent. Therefore, we propose a unified Bilateral-Branch Network (BBN) to take care of both representation learning and classifier learning simultaneously, where each branch does perform its own duty separately. In particular, our BBN model is further equipped with a novel cumulative learning strategy, which is designed to first learn the universal patterns and then pay attention to the tail data gradually. Extensive experiments on four benchmark datasets, including the large-scale iNaturalist ones, justify that the proposed BBN can significantly outperform state-of-the-art methods. Furthermore, validation experiments can demonstrate both our preliminary discovery and effectiveness of tailored designs in BBN for long-tailed problems. Our method won the first place in the iNaturalist 2019 large scale species classification competition, and our code is open-source and available at https://github.com/Megvii-Nanjing/BBN.


Wave motion of a liquid in a rotating, axially symmetric container undergoing a whirl motion is investigated. In the analysis of the present study, gravity is considered to be negligible and the liquid motion is taken as being axially uniform. Assuming that the liquid layer is thin, based on the shallow-water theory, the equations of motion are simplified to a one-dimensional problem along the circumference of the container. The modal coupling equations that include the nonlinear effects of the wave motion are obtained by applying Galerkin's method. Periodical solutions under harmonic whirl motion, which give resonance curves, are determined by applying the harmonic balance method to the modal coupling equations. The wave height and the fluid force acting on the container obtained from the analysis are compared with experimental results reported in previous studies. Good agreement is observed between the results of the present analysis and the experimental results with respect to the wave height profile and the magnitude of the fluid force by which the asynchronous whirl motion of the container is excited.


Multimedia communications over vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET) will play an important role in the future intelligent transport system (ITS). QoS support for VANET therefore becomes an essential problem. In this paper, we first study the QoS performance in multi-hop VANET by using the standard IEEE 802.11e EDCA MAC and our proposed triple-constraint QoS routing protocol, Delay-Reliability-Hop (DeReHQ). In particular, we evaluate the DeReHQ protocol together with EDCA in highway and urban areas. Simulation results show that end-to-end delay performance can sometimes be achieved when both 802.11e EDCA and DeReHQ extended AODV are used. However, further studies on cross-layer optimization for QoS support in multi-hop environment are required.


A melting criterion for charged semi-flexible systems is formulated by combining the Lindemann rule with the theory of undulation-enhanced interactions. The predicted Lindemann ratios are constant along the melting curves for the lamellar phase of didodecyldimethylammonium bromide and the hexagonal phase of DNA. For connected systems there appears to be an unexplained spread in the Lindemann ratios.


Background Current practice methods are unclear as to the most safe and effective prophylactic pharmacotherapy and method of delivery to reduce postoperative endophthalmitis occurrence. Methods A systematic review and meta-analysis using Meta-analysis of Observational Studies in Epidemiology guidelines was performed to compare the efficacy of intracameral cefuroxime, moxifloxacin and vancomycin in preventing postphacoemulsification cataract surgery endophthalmitis. A safety analysis of intracameral antibiotics was concurrently performed. Data sources BIOSIS Previews, CINAHL, ClinicalTrials.gov, Cochrane Library, Dissertations & Theses, EMBASE, PubMed, ScienceDirect and Scopus were searched from inception to January 2017. Data were pooled using a random effects model. All articles were individually reviewed and data were extracted by two independent reviewers. Funnel plot, risk of bias and quality of evidence analyses were performed. Results Seventeen studies with over 900 000 eyes were included, which favoured the use of intracameral antibiotics at the end of cataract surgery (OR 0.20; 95% CI 0.13 to 0.32; P<0.00001). The average weighted postoperative endophthalmitis incidence rates with intracameral cefuroxime, moxifloxacin and vancomycin were 0.0332%, 0.0153% and 0.0106%, respectively. Secondary analyses showed no difference in efficacy between intracameral plus topical antibiotics versus intracameral alone (P>0.3). Most studies had low to moderate risk of bias. The safety analysis showed minimal toxicity for moxifloxacin. Dosing errors led to the majority of toxicities with cefuroxime. Although rare, vancomycin was associated with toxic retinal events. Conclusion Intracameral cefuroxime and moxifloxacin reduced endophthalmitis rates compared with controls with minimal or no toxicity events at standard doses. Additionally, intracameral antibiotics alone may be as effective as intracameral plus topical antibiotics.


Desulfurization ash and fly ash are solid wastes discharged from boilers of power plants. Their utilization rate is low, especially desulfurization ash, most of which is stored. In order to realize their resource utilization, they are used to modify loess in this paper. Nine group compaction tests and 32 group direct shear tests are done in order to explore the influence law of desulfurization ash and fly ash on the strength of the loess. Meanwhile, FLAC3D software is used to numerically simulate the direct shear test, and the simulation results and the test results are compared and analyzed. The results show that, with the increase of desulfurization ash's amount, the shear strength of the modified loess increases first and then decreases. The loess modified by the fly ash has the same law with that of the desulfurization ash. The best mass ratio of modified loess is 80:20. When the mass ratio is 80:20, the shear strength of loess modified by the desulfurization ash is 12.74% higher than that of the pure loess on average and the shear strength of loess modified by fly ash is 3.59% higher than that of the pure loess on average. The effect of the desulfurization ash on modifying the loess is better than that of the fly ash. When the mass ratio is 80:20, the shear strength of loess modified by the desulfurization ash is 9.15% higher than that of the fly ash on average. Comparing the results of the simulation calculation with the actual test results, the increase rate of the shear stress of the FLAC3D simulation is larger than that of the actual test, and the simulated shear strength is about 8.21% higher than the test shear strength.


Human epidemiologic studies have found that silicosis may develop or progress even after occupational exposure has ended, suggesting that there is a threshold lung burden above which silica-induced pulmonary disease progresses without further exposure. We previously described the time course of rat pulmonary responses to silica inhalation as biphasic, the initial phase characterized by increased but controlled pulmonary inflammation and damage. However, after a threshold lung burden was exceeded, rapid progression of silica-induced pulmonary disease occurred. To test the hypothesis that there is a threshold lung burden above which silica-induced pulmonary disease progresses without further exposure we initiated a study to investigate the relationship between silica exposure, the initiation and progression of silica-induced pulmonary disease, and recovery. Rats were exposed to silica (15 mg/m(3), 6 h/day) for either 20, 40, or 60 days. A portion of the rats from each exposure were maintained without further exposure for 36 days to examine recovery. The major findings of this study are: (1) silica-exposed rats were not in pulmonary overload, and lung silica burden decreased with recovery; (2) pulmonary inflammation, damage and lipidosis increased with recovery for rats exposed to silica for 40 and 60 days, but not 20 days; (3) histopathology revealed changes in silica-induced alveolitis, epithelial hypertrophy and hyperplasia, and alveolar lipoproteinosis consistent with bronchoalveolar lavage (BAL) endpoints; and (4) pulmonary fibrosis developed even when exposure was stopped prior to its initial development.


The Mediterranean catchment of the Cevennes (S. France) presents deep incision of the river network (fig. 1 and 2). Combined geomorphology and analyses of the residual sedimentary formations allows to reconstruct a complex history of river network evolution, including capture of tributaries of the Herault River (fig. 1, 2 and 3). The history of uplift of the upstream drainage area could be estimated from the provenance studies of the fluvial and karstic deposits, however river incision is also controlled sea-level changes and differential erosion, which makes reconstruction more complex. Allochthonous clasts types: Analyses of allochthonous deposits on the Grands Causses surface reveals different origin for sediments from the hill top and the Airoles valley (fig. 4 b), which was previously unrecognised. Facies 1 is found on the highest points of the Grands Causses surface (well sorted rounded quartz pebbles in red shale matrix) it corresponds to a weathered residual sediments (dismantling of an ancient cover). Facies 2 is found on the slope of the Airoles Valley (fig. 7). It consists of alluvial crystalline poorly sorted clasts with outsized clasts (up to 50 cm) of quartz-vein, schists in a matrix of shales and sand (weathered granite). Between the hill tops and the Airoles Valley, karstic network presents a sediment fill with clasts reworked from facies 1 and facies 2 (fig. 6). Airoles valley model; an example of diachronic formation of drainage network: The Airoles dry valley stretches on the Grands Causses from the north (700 m) to the south into the present thalweg line of the Vis canyon (500 m) (fig. 1b & 3). Crystalline deposits witness an ancient catchment in the Cevennes. Presently, the catchment in the crystalline basement is disconnected and captured by the Arre River flowing eastwards (fig. 3 & 4a). The profile of the Airoles abandoned valley connects with the present Vis Canyon, therefore, at the time of capture, incision of the Vis canyon had reached its present altitude (fig. 4a). The geomorphologic evolution of this area took place in three stages (fig. 8). 1) The Grands Causses acted as piedmont for the crystalline highlands of the Massif Central (fig. 8A). A latter karstic evolution (tropical climate) allowed the weathered residual sediments (facies 1) (fig. 8A). 2) Incision of the Vis karstic canyon implies that the Herault incision and terraces (facies 2) (fig. 8B) of the Airoles valley occurred during this stage. 3) The Arre valley head propagates westward by regressive erosion and finally captured the Airoles river crystalline catchment (fig. 8C). Consequence for the Cevennes uplift and hydrographic network development: Although the values of present vertical incision in the Vis canyon and in the Arre valley are similar, but they achieved at different time. In addition, the narrow and deep canyon of the Vis is due to vertical incision from the karstic surface of the Grands Causses, whereas the Arre wide valley results from (a younger) lateral slopes retreat from a low Herault base-level. The Vis karstic canyon developed in a similar way to the major karstic canyons of both Mediterranean and Atlantic catchment (i.e. Tarn). This rules out a Messinian Mediterranean desiccation as incision driving mechanism and suggests tectonic uplift of the Cevennes and surrounding areas. The Tarn being already incised by 13 My [Ambert, 1990], it implies a Miocene age for the incision. Conclusion: The amplitude of the vertical incision cannot therefore be used in a simple way to interpret the uplift history of the basement. Consequently, geomorphologic analysis appears to be a prerequisite to distinguish the part played by each factor, and to select the site of uplift measurement.


The grating transducer, the dual of the meander line, is studied and its performance compared with a meander line for the excitation of magnetoelastic surface waves. A LiNbO3‐YIG‐LiNbO3 epoxy‐bonded composite is used to experimentally study both transducer geometries at 50 MHz. It is found that the grating transducer offers no significant improvement in performance over the meander line. Both types of transducers have large conversion losses because of large Ohmic resistance to radiation resistance ratios. Practical considerations of an allowable metalization thickness for the transducers and spatially nonuniform demagnetizing fields in the substrate permit only modest reductions in the conversion losses of either type of transducer situated on materials such as YIG.


OBJECTIVE
To explore the mechanism of benign biliary stricture caused by bile duct trauma.

METHODS
A model of trauma of the common bile duct was established in 28 dogs and then repaired. The anastomotic tissues were taken on 3 days, 1 week, 3 weeks, 3 months, and 6 months respectively after operation and examined by using light microscopy and electromicroscopy. Macrophage, transforming growth factor beta 1 (TGF-beta1) and alpha-smooth muscle actin (alpha-SMA) were studied immunohistochemically.

RESULTS
The mucosal epithelium of the common bile duct restored poorly, chronic inflammation lasted for a long time, fibroblasts proliferated actively, extracellular matrix overdeposited, and myofibroblasts functioned actively during the whole healing process. Immunohistochemical test showed a high expression of macrophage, TGF-beta1 and alpha-SMA during the healing process lasting a long duration. Macrophages were found in the lamina propria under mucosa, TGF-beta1 in the granular tissue, fibroblasts and endothelial cells of blood vessels, while alpha-SMA in the myofibroblasts and smooth muscle tissue.

CONCLUSIONS
The healing of the bile duct is in the mode of overhealing. Myofibroblast is the main cause for contracture of scar and stricture of the bile duct. The high expression of macrophage, TGF-beta1 and alpha-SMA is closely related to active proliferation of fibroblasts, extracellular matrix overdeposition and scar contracture of the bile duct.


Sartorius (SART) and tensor fasciae latae (TFL) in the cat hindlimb are functionally heterogeneous muscles with regions that differ in their skeletal actions and electromyographic recruitment during normal activity. The topographical organization of motoneurons supplying different regions of SART or TFL has been investigated by exposing cut nerve branches supplying different peripheral territories to a combination of retrograde tracers, including Fast Blue (FB), Fluorogold (FG), and horseradish peroxidase (HRP). Motoneurons supplying medial, central, and anterior regions of SART were intermixed extensively throughout a single columnar nucleus located in the ventrolateral part of segments L4 and L5. Within this column, motoneurons supplying medial SART tended to lie more rostrally than those supplying anterior regions, but the gradient was modest and showed some cat‐to‐cat variation. Two major branches entered anterior SART at different proximodistal levels. When these two branches were exposed to different tracers, most motoneurons contained a single tracer; only a few double‐labelled cells were apparent. The labelling suggests that anterior SART may contain two separate, in‐series divisions of motor units. In TFL, motoneurons supplying nerve branches to posterior, central, and anterior parts of the muscle were intermingled indiscriminately in a single ventrolateral cell column in L6 and rostral L7. These results suggest that topographical organization in lumbar motor nuclei does not always reflect the highly ordered biomechanical and functional specialization evident in the peripheral organization of the muscles themselves.


Crystals of diiodo-2,2'-dipyridyldisulfide mercury(II) [HgI2(C5H4N)2S2], dichloro-2,2'-dipyridyldisulfide zinc(II) [ZnCl2(C5H4N)2S2], dibromo-2,2'-dipyridyldisulfide cadmium(II) [CdBr2 (C5H4N)2S2], diiodo-2,2'-dipyridyldisulfide cadmium(II) [CdI2(C5H4N)2S2], and diaquo 2,2'-dipyridyldisulfide cadmium(II) trifluoromethanesulfonate [Cd(H2O)2(C5H4N)2S2](CF3SO3)2, were obtained by evaporation of solutions of the ligand and the appropriate metal salts, and their X-ray crystal structures determined


With the goal of raising awareness and developing stakeholder educational tools for the appropriate imaging of children, the Image Gently campaign was launched in 2007. This campaign is a product of a multidisciplinary alliance with international representation which now numbers nearly 100 medical and dental professional societies and organisations, and includes regulatory organisations. The alliance focuses on increasing awareness and developing education materials that support the protection of children worldwide from unnecessary radiation in medicine. The alliance members work with agencies and regulatory bodies to improve standards and measures that are specific to children. The campaign has produced open source modules for all stakeholders regarding CT, fluoroscopy, nuclear medicine, interventional radiology, digital radiography and dental imaging. The philosophy of the Image Gently steering committee is to collaborate, to share information freely, to keep messaging simple and to commit to lifelong learning. Many healthcare practitioners may not understand how to decrease children's radiation exposure; the goal of Image Gently is to increase all stakeholders' understanding of both the benefits and the risks and to encourage radiation reduction strategies. This article summarises the rationale and goals of the global campaign to date.


The RACE COBRA consortium has performed four field trials to verify the suitability of dense WDM combined with heterodyne detection (for which the term CMC, "coherent multicarrier" is used) for different network applications. The main advantage in using heterodyne detection is the simple access to individual optical channels by only switching local lasers to the desired channel. Heterodyne detection acts as a perfect optical filter. Thus, a plurality of dense spaced optical carriers can be placed, e.g., within one WDM window. The additional freedom in the channel multiplex provides some advantages which are shown in the demonstrators: a routing flexibility in the RENO (reconfigurable node) cross-connect demonstrator supporting STM-16 at Philips Research in Eindhoven. A routing flexibility in the demonstrator at BBC in Kingswood Warren, UK, supporting uncompressed HDTV communication in a studio environment. By shifting switching functions to the terminals, the network is kept completely passive. This is also obtained in the local area videoconference trial at CET in Aveiro, Portugal, using high quality standard TV and in the BCPN trial at KPN Research in Leidschendam, NL, where ATM-streams are supported for multimedia services. The paper outlines the demonstrator concepts as well as some subsystems and key components developed by the consortium.


Most online optimization algorithms focus on one of two things: performing well in adversarial settings by adapting to unknown data parameters (such as Lipschitz constants), typically achieving $O(\sqrt{T})$ regret, or performing well in stochastic settings where they can leverage some structure in the losses (such as strong convexity), typically achieving $O(\log(T))$ regret. Algorithms that focus on the former problem hitherto achieved $O(\sqrt{T})$ in the stochastic setting rather than $O(\log(T))$. Here we introduce an online optimization algorithm that achieves $O(\log^4(T))$ regret in a wide class of stochastic settings while gracefully degrading to the optimal $O(\sqrt{T})$ regret in adversarial settings (up to logarithmic factors). Our algorithm does not require any prior knowledge about the data or tuning of parameters to achieve superior performance.


This paper proposes a hybrid algorithm (Powell-IEA) based on the Powell search method and immune evolutionary algorithm for unconstrained optimization.Powell-IEA is very easy to implement in practice since it does not require gradient computation.The modification of both the Powell search method and immune evolutionary algorithm intends to produce faster and more accurate convergence.The main purpose of the paper is to demonstrate how the immune evolutionary algorithm can be improved by incorporating a hybrid strategy.In a suit of 4 test function problems taken from the literature,the comparison report still largely favors the Powell-IEA algorithm in the performance of accuracy,robustness and function evaluation.As evidenced by the overall assessment based on computational experience,the new algorithm demonstrates to be extremely effective and efficient at locating best-practice optimal solutions for unconstrained optimization.


Outbred female mice were exposed during 3 oestrous cycles and mated to outbred or C57BL/kw males. Although ovulation number (CL and flushed eggs) was similar in all females, there were significantly fewer (P < 0.01) fertilized eggs and implantations in females exposed and mated to C57BL/kw males. Exposure to outbred males and mating with C57BL/kw males led to some improvement but the best results were obtained with females mated to outbred males. The activity of uterine dehydrogenases on Day 4 of pregnancy was also greatest in females mated to outbred males. It is concluded that the pheromonal stimulation leads to hormone concentration differences which affect implantation.


Using voltage island methodology to reduce power consumption for system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs has become more and more popular recently. Currently this approach has been considered either in system-level architecture or post-placement stage. Since hierarchical design and reusable intellectual property (IP) are widely used, it is necessary to optimize floorplanning/placement methodology considering voltage islands generation to solve power and critical path delay problems. In this paper, we propose a floorplanning methodology considering voltage islands generation and performance constraints. Our method is flexible and can be extended to hierarchical design. The experimental results on some MCNC benchmarks show that our method is effective in meeting performance constraints and simultaneously considers the tradeoff between power routing cost and the assignment of supply voltage in modules.


Within the late Ordovician-early Silurian Southern Uplands thrust belt, quartzo-feldspathic greywackes derived from the north are interbedded with volcanic-rich greywackes of southerly provenance. Abundant fresh clinopyroxenes which occur in the latter, both as single crystals and phenocrysts in lithic fragments, have compositions that indicate a calc-alkaline island arc origin.


Daman Milkiyyah or ownership risk is an important element in Islamic Law of Contract as there are many implications arising from it. This concept also highlights one of the unique features of Islamic Law of Contract which promotes justice in transactions. The lack of a proper understanding of this concept may lead people to breaching Shariah principles as well as dealing with non-Shariah compliant transactions. It is the purpose of this paper to shed light on the fundamental concepts of ownership risk and its application on some of modern financial instruments. This work will write down the scattered though of ownership risk which has been discussed by Islamic classical scholars and continued by matching this concept to the existing modern financial instruments. In the end of the paper, we suggest further enhancement in the financial industry to adhere more towards shariah principle.


The aim of this study was to evaluate the morphological characteristics and to describe some quantitative traits of Bursa Oynari native pigeon breed in Bursa province in Turkey. The study was carried out on a total of randomly selected 43 Bursa Oynari pigeons (23 males, 20 females). The morphological characteristics (head type, eye colour, head and bib colour, neck blend colour, beak type and colour, head plumage, ventral abdomen colour and claw colour) and the quantitative traits (body weight and morphometric measurements) were determined from both male and female pigeons. The results indicated that the most frequent morphological characteristics of this pigeon breed were round shaped head (72.09%), dusty rose eye colour (67.44%), veiled head/bib colour (37.21%), purple neck blend colour (53.49%), flat-shaped type beak (67.44%), white beak (51.16%), markless head plumage (69.77%), white ventral abdomen colour (93.02%) and white claw colour (95.35%). Sex significantly (P<0.01) affected the quantitative traits such as the body length, leg length and tail length. Male pigeons had higher means of the mentioned traits than those of female pigeons. Over the past few decades, there has been an increased awareness for the conservation of native breeds for their importance to genetic diversity. Thus, studies conducted on native breeds in various species may provide a noteworthy contribution to this purpose.


The recycling cell formation problem means that disposal products are classified into recycling part families using group technology in their end of life phase. Disposal products have the uncertainties of product status by usage influences. Recycling cells are formed considering design, process and usage attributes. In this paper, a novel approach to the design of a cellular recycling system is proposed, which deals with the recycling cell formation and assignment of identical products concurrently. Fuzzy clustering and fuzzy-ART algorithms are applied to describe the states of disposal product with the membership functions and to make recycling cell formation. This approach leads to recycling and reuse of the materials, components, and subassemblies and can evaluate the value at each cell of disposal products. Application examples are illustrated by disposal refrigerators, comparing fuzzy clustering with fuzzy-ART performance in cell formation.


Digitalisation technology is powerfully changing the way how stakeholders can utilise library resources today. Traditional libraries were vigorously time consuming with customisation service approach whereas digitalisation offers extensive materials accessible at any time. Based on stakeholder mapping, there is recognition of competitive force which impacts in higher academic libraries. Finally, a set of information system activities have been derived which sets out as a key platform to the success for Higher Education Library (HEL). However, the success is dependent on a series of factors to sustain the current market condition but also meeting the needs. These can be superseded through alignment of competitive strategies and determining the critical success factors which will equip HEL for viable global services.


In this paper, a novel image compression technique, the combination of wavelet packet transform and directional decomposition, is proposed. Wavelet packet transform is an increasingly remarkable approach which outperforms the standard wavelet transform in image coding. It can be employed to exploit the image redundancy efficiently and therefore obtain a high compression ratio. Directional filtering coding technique, as one of the "second generation image coding techniques", first introduced the concept of directional decomposition. By placing emphasis on edge detection to preserve edge information to exploit the fact that the human visual system is more sensitive to image edge features, it is generally capable to obtain a relatively high compression ratio. The approach proposed in this paper decomposed an image into a low frequency component and a number of high frequency components, with the edges on each high frequency component at its own directions. By a combination process of Cartesian coordinate rotation transform, interpolation, wavelet packet transform, and a coding algorithm, the image is reconstructed at an improved visual quality at the same bitrate compared to the common wavelet pyramid algorithm.


Abstract Geranylgeranylacetone (GGA) has been used as an antiulcer drug and also is known as inducer of heat shock protein 70 that has cytoprotective effects especially in hyperglycemic condition. In contrast, cytotoxicity of GGA has also been reported. Some studies have reported that GGA suppresses cell growth and induces apoptosis in cell models of human leukemia, ovarian carcinoma, and colon cancer in vitro. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine whether GGA can have a cytotoxic effect on a human cervical cancer cell line (HeLa), human colorectal adenocarcinoma cells (Caco-2), and human embryonic kidney cells 293 (HEK) in normal-glucose and high-glucose environments (NG and HG, respectively). The results showed that 100 μM GGA inhibited proliferation of HeLa cells only in NG environment despite inhibiting proliferation of Caco-2 and HEK cells regardless of glucose concentration. Cell viability assay revealed that GGA decreased viability of HeLa, Caco-2, and HEK cells only in NG environment. Flow cytometric analyses revealed that the type of cell death was a combination of necrosis and apoptosis. Our study revealed that difference in cytotoxicity of GGA is influenced by glucose condition. The cytotoxic effects of GGA are attenuated in the HG condition. Since both cytotoxic and cytoprotective effects are reported about GGA, further research is needed about the mechanism of the cytotoxic effects.


In this paper, we propose a recognition index to evaluate the complexity of discrimination among parts and units. The parts and units are classified into some groups (the number of groups is shown as n) by one characteristic, such as color, shape, size and so on. The recognition index of each is denoted as log(2) (n+1) by the information quantity formula. The recognition diagram shows the classfication of parts and units into only one part and unit by the structure of a characteristic. Further we propose the line balancing method for assembly line based on the working time and recognition index.


Current empirical research on scalar implicature processing is yielding substantial support for the Context-Driven over the Default account of scalar implicatures (Noveck and Posada (2003), Breheny et al. (2006)). The Context-Driven model is taken to be on par with Relevance Theory, the Default model with Neo-Gricean accounts (Noveck and Posada (2003)). It is thus concluded by experimental researchers such as Noveck that Relevance Theory is more likely to provide a correct account of scalar implicatures, while Neo-Griceanism cannot account for the data. I show that the debate between Relevance Theory and (Neo-)Griceanism is unresolvable via predictions following from current empirical approaches. In particular the assumption employed e.g. by Noveck that being a Neo-Gricean implies defending a Default notion of scalar implicatures is not warranted. Further, I show that there is nothing to prevent NeoGricean theories in general from being compatible with the Context-Driven model.


This study was conducted to investigate the differneces in milling, physicochemical, rheological and end-product properties between Korean and American wheat cultivars. Also, rheological and bread baking properties of Korean wheat flour in blends with U.S. standard flour were investigated. The milling yield of Korean wheat rated 71.1% similar to 71.6% of U.S. wheat. The average AWRC 61.8% of the three Korean wheats ranked higher than the conventional value of 60% for classifying hard and soft wheat. The cookies made from Korean wheat flour showed comparatively good spread with diameter of 8.5-8.9 cm, and marked recommendable top grain score. The volume ranges 975-1175 cc of sponge cake made from all cultivars tested were lower about 4-26% than that of standard cake flour. especially, Wonkwang was selected as one which has special characteristics good for cookie and sponge cake. The volumes of breads from Korean wheat 리ours ranged 924-1020 cc, and Yongkwang of 1020cc marked the most appropriate characteristics for bread-making among the tested wheats. The proper blending ratio of Korean wheat flour to U.S. bread standard flour was revealed 30% in bread-making.


The existence of three infectious forms of potato spindle tuber viroid (PSTV) RNA from Scopolia sinensis was demonstrated by fractionation with high salt, by reverse phase and high pressure liquid chromatography, and by polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. Purification of fraction II was achieved by the following steps: extraction of nucleic acid with phenol, precipitation of the RNA with cetyltrimethylammonium bromide, fractionation of the RNA with lithium chloride and isopropanol, and finally gel electrophoresis. A procedure using reverse phase chromatography was developed to obtain 70-90% recovery of RNA from polyacrylamide gels. Purified PSTV fraction II RNA was digested with ribonuclease A and T and labelled with [gamma-32P[ATP using polynucleotide kinase. The labelled digests were separated by the electrophoresis-homochromatography procedures of Sanger. About 20 and 30 spots were obtained with ribonuclease A and T, respectively.


In the present paper, the exact modeling and frequency analysis of the mass sensor nanobeam are investigated based on a higher-order elasticity theory with taking into account the longitudinal discontinuity. The energy equations of the beam are expressed considering discontinuity, and finally, the vibration equations and boundary conditions of the non-uniform nanobeam are derived using the Hamilton's principle. By the implementation of an analytical solution, the number of shape functions equal to longitudinal discontinuities is assumed. Then, by expressing the compatibility and boundary conditions, the frequency equation of the discontinuous nanobeam is obtained and solved. Effects of different parameters such as sensed mass and size effects on the frequency behavior of the nanobeam are investigated at various vibrational modes. The results show that accurate modeling of discontinuous nanobeam is important. Also, Changing the position of the sensed mass to the free end of the nanotube increases the sensing feature of the beam, and the size effect reduces it. The size effect reduces the frequency and increases the amplitude of the mode shape, especially at higher vibrational modes. The results also show that the sensing feature of the mass sensor nanobeam is more prominent at higher modes of vibration, and therefore the use of mass sensor nanobeam at higher vibrational modes is recommended


This tutorial paper introduces direct kernel least squares support vector machines, where traditional ridge regression is applied directly on the kernel transformed data, rather than using the primal dual formulation. A direct kernel method can be any regression model, where the kernel is considered as a data pre-processing step. The emphasis of the paper is that such direct kernel methods often require kernel centering in order to work. A heuristic formula for the regularization parameter is proposed based on preliminary scaling experiments.


Perinatal depression is a mood disorder that is reported in women during pregnancy (prenatal) and after childbirth (postnatal). The onset of perinatal depression is associated with changes in reproductive hormones, stress hormones and neurosteroids. These chemical compounds can be modulated by the gut microbiota, which may affect maternal mental health during the perinatal period via the gut-brain-axis. Recent studies suggest that nutritional and dietary interventions (vitamin D, ω-3 fatty acids, iron, and fiber) effectively prevent or mitigate maternal depression and anxiety, but their efficacy is confounded by various factors, including the gut microbiota. Probiotics are efficacious in maintaining microbiota homeostasis, and thus, have the potential to modulate the development of perinatal mood disorders, despite no evidence in human. Therefore, clinical trials are warranted to investigate the role of probiotic supplementation in perinatal depression and behavioral changes. This article reviews the interplay between nutrition, gut microbiota and mood and cognition, and the evidence suggesting that probiotics affect the onset and development of perinatal depression.


A 6 A resolution electron density map has been calculated for a bacterial lysozyme produced by Streptomyces erythraeus. This lysozyme differs from the vertebrate lysozyme in its size, amino acid composition, and specificity. The structure was determined by the method of isomorphous replacement. Three heavy atom derivatives were obtained by soaking crystals of the lysozyme in HgCl2, K2PtCl4, and UO2(NO3)26H2O. The resulting electron density map clearly shows the molecular boundary. The molecule is ellipsoidal in shape with average dimensions 50 A X 35 A X 35 A. High resolution analysis and sequence analysis of the molecule are in progress.


Mesenteric panniculitis is a rare, recently accepted clinical entity which is characterized by the presence of an unspecific inflammatory process in the fat tissue of the gut mesentery. A usually intermittent abdominal pain is the most frequent symptom, whereas urological involvement is exceptional. This paper contributes a new case of mesenteric panniculitis in a 72-year old male patient who initially presented with signs and symptoms of intestinal obstruction resulting from mesenteric tumoration, and affecting a segment of the terminal ileum which, during growth, infiltrated the apex of the bladder leading to its resection. The ultimate diagnosis was histologic. Brief review of the clinical features, as well as the diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.


The latest results from the CLEO collaboration are summarized. An update on the status of the upgraded CLEO III detector is also included.


This paper reconsiders the problem of robust network design form a different point of view using the concept of resistance distance from network science. It has been shown that some important network performance metrics, such as average utilization in a communication network or total power dissipation in an electrical grid, can be expressed in terms of linear combination of point-to-point resistance distances of a graph. In this paper we choose to have a weighted linear combination of resistance distances, referred to as weighted network criticality (WNC), as the objective and we investigate the vulnerability of different network types. In particular, we formulate a min-max convex optimization problem to design k-robust networks and we provide extension to account for joint optimization of resources and flows. We study the solution of the optimization problem in two different networks. First we consider RocketFuel topologies and Abilene as representatives for service provider networks, and we show gains that can be achieved by optimizing link capacities and flows in RocketFuel topologies and Abilene. In the second experience, we show the application of the proposed optimization problem in designing robust electrical grids.


Abstract Background: Recently, 3-Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) after an intravenous gadolinium injection has been used to describe the endolymphatic space (ELS). Objectives: This study described the histopathological differences between idiopathic sudden sensorineural hearing loss (ISSNHL) and fluctuating sensorineural hearing loss (FSNHL) by examining the ELS. Additionally, the relationship between the affected cochlear and vestibular ELS/total fluid space (TFS) volume ratio and the duration from the onset to MRI in patients with FSNHL were evaluated. Material and methods: This study included 205 individuals without vertigo: 47 controls, 94 with ISSNHL, and 64 with FSNHL. The TFS and ELS volumes were measured and the ELS/TFS volume ratios (%) were evaluated. Results: The cochlear and vestibular ELS/TFS volume ratios of the affected ear in patients with FSNHL were significantly higher than that in those with ISSNHL. There was no correlation between the duration from FSNHL onset to the MRI scan in the affected cochlea and vestibule. Conclusion and significance: There were differences in the form of hearing fluctuation and the extended ELS volume between ISSNHL and FSNHL. ISSNHL cases with severe ELS extension were likely to change to FSNHL.


Most cases of decompression sickness that occur at altitude resolve upon descent to lower altitudes. Before the use of hyperbaric therapy, cases that did not resolve accounted for some of the most difficult medical management problems in military aerospace medicine. On 27 March, 1941, the U.S. Navy Diving School successfully used hyperbaric therapy for a case of altitude-induced decompression sickness that did not resolve on return to ground level. Since then, over 145 such cases have been treated by hyperbaric therapy. At first, treatments involved using compressed air, with varying success. Current medical management of altitude-induced decompression sickness requires immediate compression to 2.8 ATA, equivalent to 60 ft of sea water (FSW) pressure, and a series of intermittent oxygen and air breathing periods during the subsequent slow decompression to surface. This report confirms the treatment recommendations set forth by Behnke and Downey, and crystallized by Goodman in 1964. Conclusions are based on treatment experience in the management of 120 cases in U.S. Air Force hyperbaric chambers, and a survey of hyperbaric facilities which have treated 25 other cases.