Classic models of vigilance assume instantaneous and sequential randomness in the scanning process, implying negative exponential distribution of interscan durations and no interdependence among successive interscans. We examined whether vigilance pattern by preening black-headed gulls, Chroicocephalus ridibundus, meets these assumptions. Out of 54 behavioural sequences, 50 departed from the expected negative exponential distribution, whereas the focal interscan duration was significantly affected by the interaction of the preceding scan and the interscan interval. These results reveal departures from randomness in the scanning process by gulls, which may be a consequence of the hunting strategies of their predators or due to the trade-off between the needs for feather maintenance and antipredator vigilance.


The aim of this work was to study the production of pigments by Monascus ruber Van Tiegham using submerged culture technique. The fermentation media contained rice flour, peptone, glycerin, glucose, MgSO4, KNO3 and the variables studied included the addition of zinc, ammonium and glutamate in the liquid culture. The experiments were designed to investigate the production of pigments using a Box Behnken design. The influence of each of these factors on pigment production were evaluated by the ratio of 500 nm and 400 nm absorbance measurements and by the color parameters of the Commission Internationale d'Eclairage L*A*B* system. Total and red pigments measured as absorbance units showed optical density values as high as 21.78 and 11.67 absorbance units, respectively, which was close to values reported in the literature for solid-state culture. The response surface analysis proved a quadratic effect of zinc concentration on both pigment production and color quality. This result is quite important because the quadratic effect of zinc was not reported before in the literature and it demonstrates there is an optimum concentration of zinc for pigment production and quality. More importantly, color L*A*B* measurements showed that the increase in total red pigment production caused no prejudice in color quality within the range of the experimental conditions. The results demonstrate the feasibility of pigment production with high color quality in submerged culture.


Despite recent advances in acute stroke management, many stroke patients suffer from long-term disability. Most stroke patients regain their function partially or fully during the first 3 to 6 months depending on many factors ; pre-stroke, stroke and post-stroke factors. Brain plasticity plays a major role during stroke recovery, and motor-relearning and brain plasticity shares the common mechanism. Successful neurorehabilitation is to drive beneficial plastic change and therefore to gain functional recovery. In this brief review, we will discuss mechanisms of brain plasticity engaged in stroke recovery and recent advanced management strategies for stroke recovery. ( Jpn J Rehabil Med 2015;52:63.67 )


This article investigates the conflict–poverty relationship in Africa between 1980 and 2015. Conducting a panel regression, we test the effect of disaggregated conflict on the poverty index (POV) and indicators in Africa. Conflict causes poverty in Africa, and not the other way round as many studies have suggested. We also found that internal conflict causes poverty in Africa; it increases the poverty rate and worsens the standard of living. However, interstate conflicts have little effects on poverty indicators, it reduces the life expectancy of people in Africa. This article concludes that poverty is not the prime cause of conflict in Africa; there are other causes (i.e., political, structural, and sociological), poverty only stimulates conflict. This article suggests that peacemaking and peacebuilding mechanisms should be strengthened in Africa. Also, emphasis should be laid on other causes of conflict, such as political, structural and sociological, as it has been established that poverty is not the cause of conflict in Africa.


ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to identify and quantify nasal profile changes following maxillary advancement (MA) and maxillary advancement with impaction (MAI) with Le Fort I osteotomies. MethodsThe study consisted of preoperative and postoperative lateral cephalograms of 42 class III adult patients. The study sample was divided into 2 groups, with the first group composed of 22 patients who underwent MA surgery and the second group composed of 20 patients who underwent MAI surgery. In total, 7 skeletal parameters and 17 soft-tissue parameters related to nasal projection, hump, dorsal convexity, and the nasolabial region were evaluated on the cephalograms, and hard- and soft-tissue relationships were assessed. ResultsNasal length, hump, nasal depths, distance from the most convex point of the Alar curvature to the most inferior point of the nostril, alar curvature-subnasale, and subnasale-pronasale measurements decreased postoperatively. In the MAI group, MA correlated with significant decreases in nasal length and hump. In the MA group, MA correlated with pronasale position (P < 0.05); significant decreases in nasal depth, columella convexity, and subnasale-pronasale length; and significant changes in subnasale position. ConclusionsThere is little difference in the effects of the 2 different maxillary surgeries on the postoperative nasal profile.


BACKGROUND: Fire is one of the most important threatening factors for hospitals and needs special attention. The present study was conducted to explain the factors affecting hospital emergency evacuation following fire based on hospital administrators' experiences. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This was a qualitative study conducted employing the content analysis approach. Participants included 22 hospital administrators in Tehran, Lorestan, Kurdistan, and Ilam provinces. The participants were purposefully selected and included until reaching principle of data saturation. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews from November 2019 to August 2020 and analyzed by the content analysis method. RESULTS: Factors affecting hospital emergency evacuation during fire were categorized into five main categories and 17 subcategories including response to incident (five subcategories of fire nature, emergency evacuation, service provision, coordination and communication; and collaboration and companionship), human factors (two subcategories of individual characteristics and competencies), hospital preparedness (three subcategories of planning, safety and security; and information management system), environmental factors (two subcategories of hospital design and infrastructure; and weather condition), and finally ethical values (five subcategories of human dignity, trust, altruism, responsibility and accountability; and empathy). CONCLUSION: The results of this study indicated that during fire in Iranian hospitals, several factors in addition to available standard guidelines affect the emergency evacuation process that need to be considered. Hospital emergency evacuation during fire is a complex process and necessitates a full and high-level hospital preparedness, so using the results of this study can be used to develop and practice evacuation plans and improve the hospital preparedness.


The Big Data phenomenon is posing new challenges in our modern society. In addition to requiring information systems to effectively manage high-dimensional and complex data, the privacy and social implications associated with the data collection, data analytics, and service requirements create new important research problems. First, the high volume of personal data generated by users' devices (e.g. credit card transactions, GPS trajectories from mobile devices and medical data) can be used, much like a fingerprint, to identify the person who created it with the risk of disclosing sensitive information such as: political inclination, financial status and medical condition. Second, popular social networks (e.g. Facebook, Foursquare, Yelp) not only enable users to share locations and preference but also create opportunities for them to establish complex interactions (e.g. forming communities, planning trip). This creates the needs for location based services to provide services to groups of users rather than individuals. In this dissertation, we present effective solutions for both these privacy and social challenges. In the privacy domain, we propose new privacy preserving techniques to provide individual users with formal guarantee of privacy while at the same time preserve meaningful information of the data released. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our solutions in different domains such as: sequential pattern mining, record linkage, and computation of statistics over data streams. In the social domain, we propose a new type of group query aiming to find a route that all users can traverse while maximizing the group preference for the locations jointly visited. The ability of solving such query can greatly benefit many existing and emerging tools that allow users to share route information (e.g. Uber, Waze) and plan group outings or trips (e.g. QuickCliqs). Extensive empirical studies demonstrate the effectiveness of our solutions and provide us with important insights for future research directions. Wednesday, July 29, 2015, 2:00 pm Mathematics and Science Center: W301


BackgroundLinkage between administrative datasets routinely collected by government departments and other statutory bodies create rich resources for policy-relevant research. We describe how ADRC-E has achieved linkage between health and education data for England, and the challenges presented by this process.
MethodsA key task of ADRC-E is to progress exemplar studies of novel data linkages, and build relationships with data providers. While navigating untested data application and permission processes, ADRC-E researchers have maintained detailed timelines and developed a framework to improve the efficiency of future applications.
ResultsThe ADRC-E has approval to link four one-year birth cohorts of the National Pupil Database and Hospital Episode Statistics to facilitate research into outcomes for children with chronic conditions. The timeline of 3 years and 4 months represents 6 face-to-face meetings and 108 email and telephone correspondences. The technical challenges of data linkage have yet to be overcome before we receive data for research. Other examples of data timelines for cross-sectoral data linkage requests will be reported.
ConclusionsThe shifting legal landscape governing the use of personal data, and a lack of precedent mean that unlocking administrative data for research requires substantial time, diligence and expertise on the part of both researcher and data provider.


: Despite the availability of new pharmacological options and novel combinations of existing drug therapies, the rate of suboptimal asthma control is still high. A prospective observational study was conducted to determine the factors affecting the control of asthma among children of 1-14 years suffering from bronchial asthma. 100 paediatric cases of bronchial asthma attending the paediatric department (outpatient and wards) of teaching hospital from December 2014 to May 2016 were included in the study. All the enrolled children with bronchial asthma were followed at 1 month, 3 months and 6 months and level of control and factors affecting poor control in different age groups were noted. Of the 100 children studied, 26 cases were newly diagnosed and remaining cases were previously diagnosed cases. Among the factors affecting the poor control of asthma difficulty with devices was the main factor affecting the control in 1-4 years group. Irregular follow up visits and passive smoking were the main factors affecting control in 5-11 years age group and allergic rhinitis was the main factor affecting the control in the age group of 12-14 years.


The Optimal Optical Coronagraph (OOC) Workshop at the Lorentz Center in September 2017 in Leiden, the Netherlands gathered a diverse group of 25 researchers working on exoplanet instrumentation to stimulate the emergence and sharing of new ideas. In this first installment of a series of three papers summarizing the outcomes of the OOC workshop, we present an overview of design methods and optical performance metrics developed for coronagraph instruments. The design and optimization of coronagraphs for future telescopes has progressed rapidly over the past several years in the context of space mission studies for Exo-C, WFIRST, HabEx, and LUVOIR as well as ground-based telescopes. Design tools have been developed at several institutions to optimize a variety of coronagraph mask types. We aim to give a broad overview of the approaches used, examples of their utility, and provide the optimization tools to the community. Though it is clear that the basic function of coronagraphs is to suppress starlight while maintaining light from off-axis sources, our community lacks a general set of standard performance metrics that apply to both detecting and characterizing exoplanets. The attendees of the OOC workshop agreed that it would benefit our community to clearly define quantities for comparing the performance of coronagraph designs and systems. Therefore, we also present a set of metrics that may be applied to theoretical designs, testbeds, and deployed instruments. We show how these quantities may be used to easily relate the basic properties of the optical instrument to the detection significance of the given point source in the presence of realistic noise.


Intelligent systems for condition monitoring, alarm diagnosis and fault detection have been widely used in modern industrial manufacturing, as they are capable of providing more efficient decision making support. This paper proposes a distributed intelligent monitoring system based on the embedded technology. Using advanced RISC machines microprocessor embedded with a real-time multi-task micro kernel, the developed system possesses the functions such as data acquisition, signal preprocessing, mass storage, realtime monitoring, and remote intelligent control. In virtue of a wireless CDMA communication network, it is especially appropriate to be applied to the circumstance where building a wired network is not feasible. Design and implementation about the hardware and software of the system are presented in detail. The high performance, reliability and security of the system have been validated in the case of remote intelligent monitoring system in industrial oil exploration and production. Due to its flexible structures of both software and hardware, the developed system is easy to be adapted to other applications.


Kenneth Burke's employment with the Bureau of Social Hygiene informed his rhetorical theory in the 1930s. Between 1926 and 1930, Burke researched criminology and drug addiction and ghostwrote a book for Colonel Arthur Woods, Dangerous Drugs. An investigation of archives indicates that this research left its mark on Burke's Permanence and Change (1935): in particular, Burke's concept of piety can be understood better in relation to the Bureau of Social Hygiene. An account of Burke's criminological research shows that piety, as a rhetorical concept, involves both embodied and discursive acts. Because it involves mental and affective factors, piety forms the basis for metabiology.


The article describes results of an experimental study of efficiency criteria for managerial decisionmaking styles. It defines the terms �managerial decision making style� and �efficiency� as applied to the sphere of management. As it has been required by the theoretical analysis, three groups of efficiency criteria have been outlined and grouped into three categories of efficiency criteria of managerial decision-making styles: efficiency criteria for production, socio-organizational criteria, psychological efficiency criteria for a manager�s personality; also, a theoretical model of a psychological profile for an efficient managerial decision-making style has been developed. The analysis of the results of diagnostics and evaluation of middle-ranking managers� performance within the survey sample has proved that the newly developed evaluation criteria for middle-ranking managers� performance, as well as the selected diagnostics methods, are adequate, and discovered that managerial decision-making styles have different leading motives, risk readiness, and job satisfaction.


Cholesterol synthesis inhibitors (HMG-CoA Reductase Inhibitors) are reported to decrease cholesterol saturation index of duodenal bile in hypercholesterolaemic subjects. The dissolution of gallstones in animals on treatment with these drugs created expectations of a therapeutical role for these drugs in cholesterol gallstone disease. However, in prospective studies with these drugs in humans, no effect on number and size of cholesterol gallstones was observed. This is likely the result of the fact that not just biliary secretion of cholesterol is decreased during treatment with these drugs in cholesterol gallstone disease, but phospholipids and bile salts as well. As a consequence, nucleation time of cholesterol crystals in gallbladder bile is not influenced by these drugs. Another important determinant in cholesterol gallstone disease, e.g. gallbladder motility, is not influenced by HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors. Although these drugs and their metabolites are secreted into the bile, they do not influence biliary lithogenicity. In conclusion, there seems to be no therapeutic role for HMG-CoA reductase inhibitors in the treatment of cholesterol gallstone disease, although no negative effects on determinants of cholesterol gallstone formation during treatment with these drugs are observed either.


Gammaherpesviruses chronically infect their host and are tightly associated with the development of lymphoproliferative diseases and lymphomas, as well as several other types of cancer. Mechanisms involved in maintaining chronic gammaherpesvirus infections are poorly understood and, in particular, little is known about the mechanisms involved in controlling gammaherpesvirus reactivation from latently infected B cells in vivo. Recent evidence has linked plasma cell differentiation with reactivation of the human gammaherpesviruses EBV and KSHV through induction of the immediate-early viral transcriptional activators by the plasma cell-specific transcription factor XBP-1s. We now extend those findings to document a role for a gammaherpesvirus gene product in regulating plasma cell differentiation and thus virus reactivation. We have previously shown that the murine gammaherpesvirus 68 (MHV68) gene product M2 is dispensable for virus replication in permissive cells, but plays a critical role in virus reactivation from latently infected B cells. Here we show that in mice infected with wild type MHV68, virus infected plasma cells (ca. 8% of virus infected splenocytes at the peak of viral latency) account for the majority of reactivation observed upon explant of splenocytes. In contrast, there is an absence of virus infected plasma cells at the peak of latency in mice infected with a M2 null MHV68. Furthermore, we show that the M2 protein can drive plasma cell differentiation in a B lymphoma cell line in the absence of any other MHV68 gene products. Thus, the role of M2 in MHV68 reactivation can be attributed to its ability to manipulate plasma cell differentiation, providing a novel viral strategy to regulate gammaherpesvirus reactivation from latently infected B cells. We postulate that M2 represents a new class of herpesvirus gene products (reactivation conditioners) that do not directly participate in virus replication, but rather facilitate virus reactivation by manipulating the cellular milieu to provide a reactivation competent environment.


A study of the behaviour of fresh cement pastes under shear in a rotational viscometer of the Rheotest-2 type, especially designed for this purpose, is described. It is shown that an addition of fly ash to Portland clinker influences the change of flow behaviour of cement pastes from thixotropic flow to thixotropic-dilatant flow. Moreover, introduction of fly ashes without decreasing the amount of cement brings about an increase in the basic rheological characteristics of cement pastes, growth intensity being dependent on volume fraction of solid and percentage of addition.


Uncertainty surely plays an important role in promoting and directing cognitive growth, but most investigations of children's reasoning and problem solving have relied on procedures that are poorly suited to reveal the degree to which individuals are certain of the answers they endorse. We examine research on children's reasoning in the context of obvious indeterminacy in order to assess whether simple modifications of the standard assessment procedures would allow us to monitor subjective certainty more reliably. It is concluded that when we set as our goal the measurement of judgment certainty, major changes in our testing methods are required. Two promising alternatives are considered, and it is hypothesized that once these new procedures are perfected and applied, we will discover that uncertainties are both prevalent and prolonged – that most of what seems to be known at any one time is actually understood only partially and therefore with some degree of uncertainty. It is argued that this is a natural and acceptable situation. Progress requires only a relative degree of confidence and not complete certainty. Persistent, vague uncertainties, on the other hand, provide continuous motivation and sensitization for further discoveries, growth, and development.


In the 1980s, the intensive and irrational use and development of natural resources in the mountain areas in south Jiangxi Province caused serious water loss and soil erosion. Some farming lands were desertified. The erosion resulted in ecological deterioration, which led to increased poverty in rural areas. The increased poverty, in turn, exacerbated ecological deterioration. The MRL Project was implemented in Jiangxi Province in the 1980s. The project involved selection of a typical watershed in the mountain region as an experimentation and demonstration area in which to carry out ecological agricultural modelling. The principle "harnessing the mountain should harness the poverty" was proposed. The "plant trees up the hills, plant fruit in the middle of hills, stockbreed down the hills and integrate planting and stockbreeding" model, the "pig-biogas-fruit" eco-agriculture model, the "courtyard economy" model and the "feudal economy" model were popularized and vigorously developed throughout the basin. This integrated watershed development model for mountain areas appears to be the most effective way to develop the economy in southern Jiangxi Province. The project also presents a good example for the sustainable development of natural resources and ecological protection in mountain areas in the south of China.


Wireless sensor networks have limited energy resource and therefore energy-efficient protocols are required to minimize the energy consumption. The virtual MIMO technique is considered as one of the new solutions to solve this problem. In this paper, in order to maximize the network lifetime, we propose a virtual MIMO transmission scheme coupled with multi-hop transmission. In our cross-layer design, the transmission rate, the number of clusters and the number of virtual antenna nodes are jointly optimized. Unlike existing work that is mostly based on Alamouti scheme, the proposed transmission scheme does not require transmitter-side cooperation (joint STBC encoding/decoding), making it more suitable for application in real wireless sensor networks. Simulation results show significant energy savings and lifetime maximization of the network.


After defining the area of defectological science, as it is understood in Zagreb, three developmental stages of scientific research at the Faculty of Defectology in Zagreb are described: the first stage (1962-1975) was marked predominantly by individual research projects; the second stage (1976-1980) experienced the access to research work of already organized research projects along broad interdisciplinary lines; the third stage (1981 and onwards) is characterised by a larger number of scientific projects, a greater number of researchers, accumulated experience, and a more favorable financial situation. Furthermore, a number of principles are presented which the Faculty has been trying to include in its scientific work. These principles concern mainly the following areas: a) the relationship between theoretical and empirical research; b) the relationship between scientific and societal needs; c) the relationship between research and practice, and d) the relationship between scientific activity and teaching. Following the elaboration of theoretical concepts on "defectology", "special education" and "educational integration of handicapped children"--which will find its reflection also in scientific research--a short presentation is given of scientific research being currently performed at the Faculty, and scientific research planned for the period up to 1985.


Over the past several years, there has been a rise in incidence of tuberculosis in both developing and developed countries. Tuberculosis complicating a fracture is uncommon. In this article, we report the case of a 10-year-old patient with a proximal tibia fracture who developed discharging wound over the fracture site after 2 weeks of initial trauma. The fracture was showing no signs of healing. A diagnosis of tuberculosis of proximal tibia was made on the basis of polymerase chain reaction and histology. After antituberculous treatment was started, the sinus healed and the fracture united. To the best of our knowledge, such a presentation has not been documented.


The rapid sampling and efficient collection of target molecules from a real-world surface is fairly crucial for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) to detect trace pesticide residues in the environment and in agriculture fields. In this work, a versatile approach was exploited to fabricate a flexible SERS substrate for highly sensitive detection of carbaryl pesticides, using in-situ grown silver nanoparticles (AgNPs)on non-woven (NW) fabric surfaces based on mussel-inspired polydopamine (PDA) molecules. The obtained NW@PDA@AgNPs fabrics showed extremely sensitive and reproducible SERS signals toward crystal violet (CV) molecules, and the detection limit was as low as 1.0 × 10−12 M. More importantly, these NW@PDA@AgNPs fabrics could be directly utilized as flexible SERS substrates for the rapid extraction and detection of trace carbaryl pesticides from various fruit surfaces through a simple swabbing approach. It was identified that the detection limits of carbaryl residues from apple, orange, and banana surfaces were approximately decreased to 4.02 × 10−12, 6.04 × 10−12, and 5.03 × 10−12 g, respectively, demonstrating high sensitivity and superior reliability. These flexible substrates could not only drastically increase the collection efficiency from multifarious irregular-shaped matrices, but also greatly enhance analytical sensitivity and reliability for carbaryl pesticides. The fabricated flexible and multifunctional SERS substrates would have great potential to trace pesticide residue detection in the environment and bioscience fields.


The important role of media in any country is its culture and country's success and principal aspiration of mass media ought to be the human solidity in all its magnitude. What is needed that people could engagethemselves in positive behavior? How to achieve it? The media's objectives should be by highlighting the problems of citizens and not it could spoil everything by diverting the attention of people from important issues towards insignificant issues to create chaos and confusion among the masses. It is only possible if all truth is brought forward. The international media propaganda that the whole world is a global village with a new time order of living is monetary based slogan. To achieve this profitable/ commercial culture a new name is given to mankind that as common faith of "Civic religion".  It is further coded/ camouflaged as "democracy" i.e. a "mankind's religion" mean with "democratic faith" that whole human beings have a common culture and ethics mean "Living style". The world is in the grip of money- making mass media i.e. woman, wine and wealth (www.com) oriented culture. That is a war against very aim of peace and prosperity of human being. This mass media cultural/ fashion war is only in few powerful companies/ agencies. A Pakistani electronic/ print media's day and night broadcasting of a fashion is against the Islamic teaching. This broadcast of multi culture invasion has many organized ethical  issues  which  are directly challenging the Islamic values and culture. In this paper to save guard against Islamic culture and Pakistan integrity/ solidarity. The endeavor is made to highlight various aspects of mass media's ethics invasion. And some remedial measures for countering this media's culture offensive on divine Islamic culture and Pakistan.


This article presents the design of a planar MIMO (Multiple Inputs Multiple Outputs) antenna comprised of two sets orthogonally placed 1 × 12 linear antenna arrays for 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) applications. The arrays are made of probe-fed microstrip patch antenna elements on a 90 × 160 mm2 Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 grounded dielectric substrate. The antenna demonstrates S11 = −10 dB impedance bandwidth in the following 5G frequency band: 24.25–27.50 GHz. The scattering parameters of the antenna were computed by electromagnetic simulation tools, Ansys HFSS and CST Microwave Studio, and were further verified by the measured results of a fabricated prototype. To achieve a gain of 12 dBi or better over a scanning range of +/−45° from broadside, the Dolph-Tschebyscheff excitation weighting and optimum spacing are used. Different antenna parameters, such as correlation coefficient, port isolation, and 2D and 3D radiation patterns, are investigated to determine the effectiveness of this antenna for MIMO operation, which will be very useful for mmWave cellphone applications in 5G bands.


Raman spectroscopy is an invaluable technique for identifying compounds by the unique pattern of their molecular vibrations and is capable of quantifying the individual concentrations of those compounds provided that certain parameters about the sample and instrument are known. We demonstrate the development of an optical model to describe the intensity distribution of incident laser photons as they pass through the sample volume, determine the limitations of that volume that may be detected by the spectrometer optics, and account for light absorption by molecules within the sample in order to predict the total Raman intensity that would be obtained from a given, uniform sample such as an aqueous solution. We show that the interplay between the shape and divergence of the laser beam, the position of the focal plane, and the dimensions of the spectrometer slit are essential to explaining experimentally observed trends in deep ultraviolet Raman intensities obtained from both planar and volumetric samples, including highly oriented pyrolytic graphite and binary mixtures of organic nucleotides. This model offers the capability to predict detection limits for organic compounds in different matrices based on the parameters of the spectrometer, and to define the upper/lower limits within which concentration can be reliably determined from Raman intensity for such samples. We discuss the potential to quantify more complex samples, including as solid phase mixtures of organics and minerals, that are investigated by the unique instrument parameters of the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) investigation on the upcoming Mars 2020 rover mission.


Despite immunophilins being abundant in the brain,their functional role there remains unclear. Using rat models of transient focal cerebral ischemia,I investigated the effect of ischemic stress on the rotamase activity of immunophilins in the brain and examined the possible role of immunophilins in postischemic neuroprotection. I found that the rotamase activity of the FK506 binding protein class of immunophilins increases in response to ischemia and may play a key role in regulating the cascade of intracellular events after cerebral ischemia. This study provides direct evidence that the FK506 binding protein family of immunophilins mediate the neuroprotective effects of the immunosuppressant FK506 (tacrolimus) in the ischemic brain and suggests that a neuroprotective signal transduction system involving immunophilins could be used to treat ischemic stroke. (Jikeikai Med J 2003;50:9-14)


Post bureaucratic concepts of public management, such as new public management and governance reshaped not only theoretical but also practical landscape of public administration, at a global scale. These two mainstreams of reforms originated from non-legal view on the administration, which was the key feature of Weberian bureaucracy. Legal approach to administration, in the light of the expansion of economic, managerial and sociological theories of public administration reform, faces the necessity to develop a coherent response to the recommendation of non-legal models of public management. The article outlines the theoretical concept of incorporating the law perspective in the mainstream debate on the reform of public administration. It is based on the assumption that the theory of law and the legislation have to fulfill two basic functions: 1) protective – protect the constitutional values and rights in the process of reforming the administration and 2) instrumental – to provide the necessary equipment for the effective implementation of the public management reforms.


Tension pneumopericardium is a rare and life threatening condition which results from either penetrating or blunt thorax trauma. A 44-year-old man, who fell from the fifth floor of a building, had major trauma that consisted with hemorrhagic shock, pneumothorax and pneumopericardium, retroperitoneal hemorrhage, pelvic and lower extremity fractures. Multiple costal fractures, sternal fracture, right hemopneumothorax, massive air in the pericardial sac and diffuse subcutaneous emphysema were reported in the chest computed tomography. Pneumopericardium is usually self–limited but can progress into tension pneumopericardium causing cardiac tamponade. The drainage of pneumothorax could be the initial procedure in case of pneumothorax associated with pneumopericardium. However, emergent pericardiocentesis can be required for patients with resistant hypotension. Emergency physicians should consider this rare entity for the differential diagnosis of thorax trauma with shock and be familiar with its treatment options.


Growing clinical evidence has unequivocally proven that combination approaches are leading the way in increasing the overall response rates in cancer immunotherapy (IT), compared to single agent therapies. Most cancer ITs have a higher likelihood of succeeding if the targeted tumor has a preexisting state of inflammation elicited by the combined presentation of shared- and neo-antigens from tumor cells. Certain cancers have been deemed to be non-immunogenic due to tumor intrinsic strategies that evade immune recognition. Thus, novel combination treatment modalities are needed to convert non-immunogenic, 'cold' tumors into inflamed 'hot' tumors that are amenable to IT. Gp96-Ig/Fc-OX40L is a re-engineered molecular chaperone, designed to export and deliver MHC I-associated antigens to APCs in context of the immune costimulator, OX40L. Allogeneic cancer vaccine cell lines designed to co-secrete Gp96-Ig and Fc-OX40L, generate antigen-specific CD4+/CD8+ anti-tumor responses in both highly immunogenic (CT26) and less immunogenic (B16) mouse tumors (Fromm et al., Cancer Immunol Res, 2016). Such a strategy allows for Gp96-Ig-mediated chaperoning of antigens from the allogeneic vaccine cell line (shared antigens), which could benefit further from increased presentation of tumor-derived peptides (neo-antigens) that are only accessible if Gp96-Ig/Fc-OX40L is expressed from within the tumor. To achieve this, we have employed an in vivo electroporation-based strategy (EP) to deliver Gp96-Ig/Fc-OX40L expressing DNA to tumor cells in situ. Herein we set out to test whether a combination approach of intratumoral EP of Gp96-Ig/Fc-OX40L DNA and vaccination with allogeneic cells co-secreting the same effector molecules would lead to enhanced CD4+/CD8+ T cell cross-priming to tumor neo-antigens and superior anti-tumor activity over the individual monotherapies in a non-immunogenic B16 tumor model. To assess antigen-specific CD8+ T cell expansion, mice were adoptively transferred with OT-I cells after B16-ovalbumin cells were injected to generate primary and contralateral melanotic tumors. Contralateral tumors were monitored to assess whether a systemic CD8+ T cell response could be elicited following vaccination and primary tumor EP. The combination approach lead to a significant synergistic expansion of OT-I cells in tumors and in the peripheral blood compared to the individual monotherapies. A synergistic increase in SIINFEKL-positive CD8+ TIL cells was also observed in treated tumors, which was associated with superior anti-tumor response in both the EP-treated primary and untreated contralateral tumors. These findings suggest that a combination approach of allogeneic vaccination and in situ tumor EP of Gp96-Ig/Fc-OX40L may have significant benefit in eliciting a potent immune response in less-immunogenic tumors. Citation Format: Suresh de Silva, George Fromm, Anandaroop Mukhopadhyay, Jean Campbell, Robert Pierce, Taylor Schreiber. Combined intratumoral electroporation and allogeneic vaccination of Gp96-Ig/Fc-OX40L stimulates CD8 T cell cross-priming to tumor specific neoantigens and enhanced anti-tumor response [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 5617. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-5617


Peptides displayed by antigen presenting cells in the thymus shape the T cell repertoire. We investigated the antigen processing machinery of the MHC class II presentation pathway and describe the differential expression of lysosomal proteases in compartments of the thymus and the peripheral lymphoid tissue. Overexpression of certain proteases found in the thymus and thymoma associated with myasthenia gravis is likely to affect tolerance induction and may promote the generation autoreactive CD4+ T helper cells.


Background Existence the children with blood diseases in family could cause lots of stress and anxiety for parents, this stress among parents would negative effects on children's disease process and his response to treatment. Materials and Methods This is a descriptive-analytical study which carried out on 480 parents with children affected to blood disease referring to Shafa hospital of Ahvaz, Iran.  The parents' level of anxiety was evaluated using the Hospital Scale for Anxiety and Depression. In this study Sample size by using statistical formulas was selected 480 persons by available sampling. Data were analyzed using SPSS-16 software. Results Results showed that in 20.4% (98 cases) of parents level of anxiety was intense, in 50.7% (243 cases) level of anxiety was middle, in 15.6% (75 cases) level of anxiety was low and 13.3% (64 cases) of parents were lack of anxiety. Additionally the results of level depression study showed that 8.6% (41cases) of parents had severe depression, 35.7% (171 cases) moderate depression, 15.7% (76 cases) low depression and 40% (192 cases) no depression. According to the results of this study, there was a significant difference between level of anxiety and depression of parents and the duration of child's hospitalization (P<0.05). Conclusion According to the results, high prevalence of anxiety and depression was among parents; so with treatment and management of anxiety and stress in parents of children; it can be achieved to better treatment in children with blood disease.


Metal nanoparticles have recently emerged as ubiquitous surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) agents for nano-imaging and nano-analysis. These applications make use of the unique optical properties of metal nanoparticles to enhance the efficiency of Raman scattering, whereas the small size of the nanoparticles localizes the enhanced Raman scattering at the nanoscale. In this perspective, we review the recent progress in SERS nano-imaging and nano-spectroscopy using metal nanoparticles applied especially to biological samples and nanomaterials. For biosamples, the highly sensitive molecular SERS detection capability of metal nanoparticles is used to analyze intracellular molecules. For analysis of nanomaterials, an innovative approach called tip-enhanced Raman scattering (TERS) microscopy, where metal nanoparticles are used with an AFM cantilever, has proven to be extremely powerful for nano-imaging. The precise control and analysis of the interaction between the metal and the sample are thus the key to overcome the limitations of current microscopic and spectroscopic techniques, and to guide future developments.


Decentralized coded caching is studied for a content server with N files, each of size F bits, serving K active users, each equipped with a cache of distinct capacity. It is assumed that the users' caches are filled in advance during the off-peak traffic period without the knowledge of the number of active users, their identities, or the particular demands. User demands are revealed during the peak traffic period, and are served simultaneously through an error-free shared link. A new decentralized coded caching scheme is proposed for this scenario, and it is shown to improve upon the state-of-the-art in terms of the required delivery rate over the shared link, when there are more users in the system than the number of files. Numerical results indicate that the improvement becomes more significant as the cache capacities of the users become more skewed.


A distance golf club for hitting a golf ball a distance generally designated for golf clubs using wooden heads and under conditions where the golf clubs using wooden heads are generally used. The golf club comprises a shaft, a club head and a hosel integrally formed with the club head for fixedly receiving an end of the shaft to secure the end of the shaft to the club head in alignment with the face of the club head. The club head is formed from a hollow steel casting and has either a metallic sole plate or an epoxy sole plate, dependent on whether the distance club is either a driver or one of the other distance clubs.


The hallmark of the eukaryotic cell is the complex endomembrane system that compartmentalizes cellular functions. Transport into and out of the nucleus, occurs through the Nuclear Pore Complex (NPC). The heptameric Nup84 or Y complex is an essential scaffolding component of the NPC. Here we report two nanobody-bound structures: the full-length Nup84-Nup133 C-terminal domain complex and the Nup133 N-terminal domain, both from S. cerevisiae. Together with previously published structures, this work enables the structural description of the entire 575 kDa Y complex, from one species. The structure of Nup84-Nup1 33CTD details the high flexibility of this dimeric unit of the Y complex. Further, the Nup133NTD contains a structurally conserved amphipathic lipid packing sensor (ALPS) motif, confirmed by liposome interaction studies. The new structures reveal important details about the function of the Y complex that affect our understanding of NPC structure and assembly.


Introduction: Although prostate cancer mortality rates are on the decline, rates in African American men remain more than twice as high as those in white men. Men at risk for prostate cancer are encouraged to utilize informed decision making (IDM) to determine the most appropriate strategy for screening and prevention. However, multiple barriers exist in the provision of culturally and linguistically appropriate IDM models on prostate cancer for African American men, including mistrust of the health system, fear of cancer, and concerns about discrimination and racism. Multimedia approaches have been determined to be an effective means for the dissemination of culturally and linguistically appropriate IDM models for African Americans that minimize barriers within the community. Methods: Focus groups were conducted with African American men in the Tampa Bay area to determine core elements for the design of a video-based patient decision aid for prostate cancer screening. Lay health advisors from the community recruited African American men to participate in this formative research. The inclusion criteria were: African American men; aged 40 to 70 years; and no diagnosis of prostate cancer or any other type of cancer. The focus groups were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using a combination of content analysis and the constant comparison method with Atlas.ti software. Results: A total of 18 African American men, ranging in age from 41 to 65 years, were recruited (mean age=48.5 years). Overall, men had limited knowledge regarding prostate cancer, and slightly more than one-third (38.9%) of the men had previously been screened for prostate cancer. Multiple themes emerged through the conduct of focus groups, including the influence of cultural beliefs in screening, the need for more information on risk and protective factors for prostate cancer, the involvement of spouses and family members in decision-making, and the importance of culturally-appropriate educators, advocates, and role models. Conclusions: Overall, there is a lack of information regarding prostate cancer among African American men. Cultural perceptions and beliefs play a critical role in the determination of screening practices in this community. Patient decision aids on prostate cancer for African American men require the utilization of African American health professionals and peers as purveyors of information. Furthermore, messaging should be tailored for African American men, as well as their spouses and families, to aid in the determination of appropriate prevention and screening strategies. These findings will assist in the design and development of culturally and linguistically appropriate educational resources and interventions on prostate cancer for the African American community. Citation Information: Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2011;20(10 Suppl):A33.


The surface etching characteristics of single crystalline silicon wafer were investigated using potassium hydroxide (KOH) and tetramethylammonium hydroxide (TMAH). The saw damage layer was removed after 10min by KOH 45wt% solution at 80?C. The wafer etched at high temperature (90?C) and in low concentration (4wt%) of TMAH solution showed an increased etch rate of silicon wafer and wavy patterns on the surface. Especially, pyramidal textures were formed in 4wt% TMAH solution without alcohol additives.


CYP2C19 is a member of the human microsomal cytochrome P450 (CYP). Significant variation in CYP2C19 levels and activity can be attributed to polymorphisms in this gene. Wildtype CYP2C19 and 13 mutants (CYP2C19.1B, CYP2C19.5A, CYP2C19.5B, CYP2C19.6, CYP2C19.8, CYP2C19.9, CYP2C19.10, CYP2C19.11, CYP2C19.13, CYP2C19.16, CYP2C19.19, CYP2C19.23, CYP2C19.30, and CYP2C19.33) were coexpressed with NADPH-cytochrome P450 reductase in Escherichia coli. Hydroxylase activity toward testosterone and progesterone was also examined. Ten CYP2C19 variants showed Soret peaks (450 nm) typical of P450 in the reduced CO-difference spectra. CYP2C19.11 and CYP2C19.23 showed higher testosterone 11α, 16α-/17- and progesterone 6β-,21-,16α-/17α-hydroxylase activities than CYP2C19.1B. CYP2C19.6, CYP2C19.16, CYP2C19.19, and CYP2C19.30 showed lower activity than CYP2C19.1B. CYP2C19.9, CYP2C19.10. CYP2C19.13, and CYP2C19.33 showed different hydroxylation activities than CYP2C19.1B. These results indicated that CYP2C19 variants have very different substrate specificities for testosterone and progesterone.


The COVID-19 pandemic is a global health threat. Smoking and smoking-related lung diseases are risk factors for severe COVID-19 infection. This study investigated whether low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) scan results affected the success of 1-year smoking cessation. The Gyeonggi Southern Smoking Support Center performed the residential smoking cessation program from January to December 2018. During the program, LDCT was performed on 292 participants; 6 months later, follow-up via telephone or visit was conducted. Among the 179 participants who succeeded in smoking cessation for 6 months, telephone follow-up was conducted to determine whether there was a 12-month continuous smoking cessation. In order to evaluate the association between LDCT results and 12-month continuous abstinence rate (CAR), logistic regression was used to estimate the odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). The CARs at 6 and 12 months were 61.3% and 31.5%, respectively. Indeterminate or suspicious malignant lung nodules were associated with a higher 12-month CAR (OR, 3.02; 95% CI, 1.15–7.98), whereas psychiatric history was associated with a lower 12-month CAR (OR, 0.06; 95% CI, 0.03–0.15). These results suggest that abnormal lung screening results may encourage smokers to quit smoking.


This study traced the historical path of Physical Education (PE) in South Africa from being a stand-alone school subject to its incorporation into the learning area, Life Orientation (LO). LO is an amalgamation of non-examinable subjects. The critical stance taken towards this amalgamation may also be regarded as a critique of Outcomes-based Education (OBE). The infusion of PE into LO came about as a result of teacher rationalisation and at the expense of pedagogical concerns. PE was integrated into LO without critical opposition. The introduction of OBE and the integration of PE hinged largely on political symbolism, rather than reflecting true change in the educational system, resulting in policy becoming separated from practice. The post-apartheid government did not consider PE a serious concern, due to the development of a spirit of South African national sport pride mainly promoted along the lines of mega events and through the country's re-admittance to participation in the international sporting arena. Consequently, PE with its emphasis on mass-participation activity was insignificant compared to this emerging international trend. Sources that take a judgemental stand towards LO and OBE influenced the perspective taken in this study. Research for this study used critical theory as a means of expressing dissent. Key words: Physical education; Life orientation; Outcomes-based education; Politics; South Africa.


Electromyographic (EMG) recordings of muscle activity using monopolar electrodes suffer from poor spatial resolution due to the crosstalk from neighbouring muscles. This effect has mainly been studied on surface EMG recordings. Here, we use Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce the crosstalk in recordings from unipolar epimysial electrodes implanted in three transhumeral amputees. We show that the PCA-transformed signals have, on average, a better signal-tonoise ratio than the original unipolar recordings. Preliminary investigations show that this transformation is stable over long periods of time. If the latter is confirmed, our results show that the combination of PCA with unipolar electrodes allows for a higher number of muscles to be targeted in an implant (compared with bipolar electrodes), thus facilitating 1-to-1 proportional control of prosthetic hands.


Background: Chronic suppurative otitis media (CSOM) was considered as a contraindication of cochlear implantation (CI) in the past. Recently, various surgical options have been adopted for CI in CSOM patients with showing a low complication rate. Objectives: To evaluate surgical outcomes of CI in patients with CSOM and to propose a management algorithm for those patients. Methods: Thirty-six consecutive patients with CSOM who underwent single stage or staged CI were enrolled. Speech performance, including Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) test and sentence score, and complications were retrospectively analyzed. Results: The average follow-up was 3.1 years (range 0.5–9.2 years). Postoperative median CAP and sentence scores were 6 and 78%, respectively. Three (8.3%) of the 36 patients had postoperative complications. One experienced breakdown of the ear canal closure. Recurrence of the pars tensa retraction was observed in another patient with adhesive otitis media who underwent CI and cartilage tympanoplasty as a single stage operation. Electrode extrusion occurred in another patient who underwent staged CI with maintenance of a previous open cavity. Subtotal petrosectomy and cavity obliteration were used to manage the latter 2 complications. All implant patients with good mastoid pneumatization exhibited no complications. There were no significant differences in postoperative speech performance and complication rates between single stage CI and staged CI. Based on these current findings, a management algorithm was proposed according to type of CSOM, presence of open cavity, and mastoid pneumatization. Conclusions: Patients with CSOM show good postoperative speech performance after CI. Proper surgical options according to type of CSOM, presence of open cavity, and mastoid pneumatization may help in reducing complications.


BACKGROUND
Academic procrastination is a widespread problem among college students. It is linked to poor academic performance and increased college dropout intentions, as well as several mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, and stress. Guided web-based interventions can help reduce procrastination. However, guidance by professional clinicians draws upon valuable and limited societal resources, and a more efficient, scalable form of guidance is needed. Guidance by trained clinical psychology students has not yet been examined.

OBJECTIVE
The aim of this open trial is to examine the feasibility and acceptability of a web-based procrastination intervention for college students under the guidance of student digital coaches (e-coaches).

METHODS
We developed a single-arm trial of a guided web-based intervention targeting procrastination for the Dutch student population. Guidance is delivered by trained clinical psychology students asynchronously in the form of textual feedback on intervention progress, with the aim of supporting and motivating the participant. Participants are recruited at 7 Dutch universities. Primary outcomes are intervention satisfaction, usability, and adherence, which are assessed by the Client Satisfaction Scale (CSQ-8), System Usability Scale (SUS-10), and number of completed modules, respectively. The primary outcomes will be examined by calculating descriptive statistics. Secondary outcomes are e-coach satisfaction and changes to procrastination, depression, stress, and quality of life from pre- to posttest and follow-up.

RESULTS
The project was funded in 2019, and recruitment began in January 2021. As of May 2023, a total of 985 participants were enrolled, of which 372 had completed the posttest and 192 had completed the follow-up. The expected date of analysis and publication of the results is 2024.

CONCLUSIONS
The results are expected to contribute to the body of literature regarding eHealth in 3 ways. First, we will examine whether students who procrastinate adhere to and are satisfied with an eHealth intervention targeting this problem. Second, we will explore whether an intervention targeting procrastination can also decrease depression and stress. Lastly, we will investigate whether trained psychology students can effectively guide their peers in web-based interventions. Given the shortage of licensed psychologists, exploring alternative sources of guidance is much needed in order to provide students with the mental health support they need.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)
DERR1-10.2196/44907.


The consequences of telecommunication network fraud are becoming more and more serious, which seriously affects social harmony and stability. The psychological dilemmas of those caught in telecommunication network fraud constrain their mental lives and behavioral patterns and are a key element in cultivating a good social mindset to maintain social stability. A study of five victims aged 22-50 years old found that the psychological manifestations of those caught in telecommunication network fraud were different but similar, and their psychological dilemmas were mainly reflected in cognitive bias and irrational beliefs, many negative emotions and barriers to emotional support, and behavioral tendencies to escape from society and even suicide. The path of social work intervention includes: helping to establish rational cognition, providing targeted psychological counseling, helping to establish a social support network, and advocating to create a good social atmosphere.


In recent years, learning models from data has become an increasingly interesting tool for robotics, as it allows straightforward and accurate model approximation. However, in most robot learning approaches, the model is learned from scratch disregarding all prior knowledge about the system. For many complex robot systems, available prior knowledge from advanced physics-based modeling techniques can entail valuable information for model learning that may result in faster learning speed, higher accuracy and better generalization. In this paper, we investigate how parametric physical models (e.g., obtained from rigid body dynamics) can be used to improve the learning performance, and, especially, how semiparametric regression methods can be applied in this context. We present two possible semiparametric regression approaches, where the knowledge of the physical model can either become part of the mean function or of the kernel in a nonparametric Gaussian process regression. We compare the learning performance of these methods first on sampled data and, subsequently, apply the obtained inverse dynamics models in tracking control on a real Barrett WAM. The results show that the semiparametric models learned with rigid body dynamics as prior outperform the standard rigid body dynamics models on real data while generalizing better for unknown parts of the state space.


Millennials, Generation Y workforce as they are commonly referred are some of the most nimble workers in organisations. They are not only passionate about their work but are also not afraid of adopting change. They will be a key factor in "Make in India" initiative as more and more workforce will be needed for expansion and growth of various sectors in different types of industry in India. The main Objectives of Make in India movement is to give the Indian economy global recognition and to create competitive industrial environment and generate employment This young workforce who will be involved in this revolutionary initiative believe in multi-tasking and are able to manage several new projects simultaneously and are able to easily switch from one given task to the other. They are immensely creative and highly innovative. They choose their personal passion over salary when making choices about their career. They are highly tech – savvy. Social media has been woven into the fabric of Generation Y (Gen Y), becoming an integral part of their daily routine. This is the fastest growing workforce population and its effective engagement has become a priority for most of the organizations. It is assumed that because this generation is so used to technology and instantaneous feedback, that they look for a experience which gives them instant gratification. The delay or sometimes absence of instant reward usually becomes a cause for frustration for them, and this frustration has a direct effect on both job performance and job satisfaction, leading, to poor retention in organisations. Social media has the capability of contributing user-generated content. This technology-enabled approach is much needed by organisations to retain this future workforce Organizations should become more receptive to generation Y characteristics and tailor strategies according to them. In light of this, organizations should improve their social media footprints to better manage young generation employees. The present research attempts to study the retention strategies used by organisations to retain Gen Y employees using social media platforms. The research presents a case for social media adoption by organisations to retain Generation Y employees. This will help the organizations; overcome the problem of retaining employees for long run and make Gen Y more comfortable, satisfied and Productive in the era of Make in India.


With numerical simulations we examine static and dynamic properties of two-dimensional vortices with anisotropic interactions. We find evidence for a smectic-A phase in the absence of pinning. Quenched disorder can induce a smectic-type state even at T = 0. When an external drive is applied, a variety of novel anisotropic dynamical flow states with distinct voltage signatures occur, including elastic depinning in the hard direction and plastic depinning in the easy direction. We compare our work to recent experiments on two-dimensional colloids with anisotropic interactions. We also discuss the implications of the anisotropic transport for other systems which exhibit depinning phenomena, such as stripes and electron liquid crystals.


The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is supporting engine and vehicle research to investigate the potential of high-octane fuels to improve fuel economy. Ethanol has very high research octane number (RON) and heat of vaporization (HoV), properties that make it an excellent spark ignition engine fuel. The prospects of increasing both the ethanol content and the octane number of the gasoline pool has the potential to enable improved fuel economy in future vehicles with downsized, downsped engines. This report describes a small study to explore the potential performance benefits of high octane ethanol blends in the legacy fleet. There are over 17 million flex-fuel vehicles (FFVs) on the road today in the United States, vehicles capable of using any fuel from E0 to E85. If a future high-octane blend for dedicated vehicles is on the horizon, the nation is faced with the classic chicken-and-egg dilemma. If today's FFVs can see a performance advantage with a high octane ethanol blend such as E25 or E30, then perhaps consumer demand for this fuel can serve as a bridge to future dedicated vehicles. Experiments were performed with four FFVs using a 10% ethanol fuel (E10) with 88 pump octane, and a market gasolinemore » blended with ethanol to make a 30% by volume ethanol fuel (E30) with 94 pump octane. The research octane numbers were 92.4 for the E10 fuel and 100.7 for the E30 fuel. Two vehicles had gasoline direct injected (GDI) engines, and two featured port fuel injection (PFI). Significant wide open throttle (WOT) performance improvements were measured for three of the four FFVs, with one vehicle showing no change. Additionally, a conventional (non-FFV) vehicle with a small turbocharged direct-injected engine was tested with a regular grade of gasoline with no ethanol (E0) and a splash blend of this same fuel with 15% ethanol by volume (E15). RON was increased from 90.7 for the E0 to 97.8 for the E15 blend. Significant wide open throttle and thermal efficiency performance improvement was measured for this vehicle, which achieved near volumetric fuel economy parity on the aggressive US06 drive cycle, demonstrating the potential for improved fuel economy in forthcoming downsized, downsped engines with high-octane fuels.« less


Nonverbal behavior of 8 patients and 7 therapists during the first few minutes of 20 therapeutic sessions (either 2 or 3 per therapist-patient pair) was used as a baseline measure to assess whether there were systematic changes by the end of a single therapeutic session. The nonverbal behavior of both patients and therapists showed increases in prosocial behavior. Also, increases in signs of anxiety were noted in the nonverbal behavior of therapists. Significant correlations between nonverbal behavior of patients and therapists occurred for certain classes of behavior. It appears worthwhile to assess changes in nonverbal behavior during therapeutic sessions.


Security is an essential requirement in mobile ad hoc network (MANETs). Compared to wired networks, MANETs are more vulnerable to security attacks due to the lack of a trusted centralized authority and limited resources. Attacks on ad hoc networks can be classified as passive and active attacks, depending on whether the normal operation of the network is disrupted or not. In this paper, we are describing the all prominent attacks described in literature in a consistent manner to provide a concise comparison on attack types.


In this dissertation we study the error due to the temporal discretization in numerical simulations of deformable solid dynamics . For that, we start from the semidiscrete equations of motion and analyze the conditions that an estimator must satisfy to compute accurate results. With them, two typical error estimators are analyzed. Later, we propose a novel methodology for the formulation of a posteriori error estimators for the most common time-stepping methods employed in solid and structural dynamics. The estimators obtained by means of this methodology are accurate even in non-smmoth problems, they can be applied both in linear and non-linear problems and can be easily implemented in _nite element codes. The proposed methodology is applied to construct error estimators for Newmark's method and for the HHT method. The good performance of these new estimators is investigated in several numerical simulations. The information given by these estimators is the starting point for developing adaptive algorithms. They change automatically the time step size to ensure that the error is smaller than a tolerance, but keeping the computational cost as low as possible. The algorithms presented are based on control theory, and di_erent techniques applied in this _eld are employed to optimize the adaptive strategies. The _nal adaptive schemes are very simple formulas which are easily implemented in existing codes. Three non-linear numerical examples are presented to validate the good behaviour of the adaptive algorithms described.


Wheat Research Institute (WRI), Faisalabad, Pakistan, a premier foundational birthplace of the Green revolution in Pakistan, has played a vital role in attaining food self-sufficiency. Latest grown varieties have succumbed to ever-changing pathogens, unable to stand in the fields. Hence, the initiative to develop an indigenous type to withstand high disease pressure producing better grain yield transpired during 2008–2009, with the hybridization of Dilkash-20 (WBLL*2/4/SNI/TRAP#1/3/KAUZ*2/TRAP//KAUZ/5/ PB.96//LU26/HD2179). It proceeded with segregating generations from F2 to F7 from 2009 to 2016. During 2016–2017 and 2017–2018, its testing followed at station yield trials, including Preliminary (A) and Regular (B), under code V-16005. It produced a significantly higher yield (10.86% and 10.40%) than the check varieties (Faisalabad-08 [FSD-08] and Punjab-11 [PB-11]). In provincial trials, it out-yielded a check variety by 4.06%. Testing in national yield trials, line V-16005 produced 17.40% and 12.03% higher grain yield than check cultivars during 2018–2019 and 2019–2020, respectively. It yielded better when planted on the first 10 days of November with a 100 kg ha-1 seed rate and 120:90:60 NPK (kg ha-1) fertilizer rate. The Dilkash-20 variety is a medium-height (105–115 cm), semi-erect producing 425 tillers per m2, with 119 days to heading and 145–150 days to maturity. It is of excellent quality, with protein (15.1%), starch (52.7%), gluten (28.7%), and test weight (72.1 kg hl-1), highly suitable for chapatti making. It has an effectual, durable resistance against brown and yellow rusts based on adult plant resistance genes. Therefore, the Punjab Seed Council approved Dilkash-20 for general cultivation throughout the irrigated areas of Punjab.


The CDSP32 protein (chloroplastic drought-induced stress protein of 32 kD) is a thioredoxin participating in the defense against oxidative damage. We recently have identified in vitro the BAS1 2-Cys peroxiredoxin, a peroxide-detoxifying enzyme, as a target for CDSP32. Here, we report the characterization under stress conditions of transgenic potato (Solanum tuberosum) plants lacking CDSP32 with regard to the BAS1 redox state and the level of lipid peroxidation. Under control conditions, BAS1 is present at similar levels both in wild-type (WT) and transgenic plants. Under drought and methyl viologen treatment, CDSP32-lacking plants display, compared with WT, an increased proportion of BAS1 monomer corresponding to an overoxidized form of the protein. Leaf discs from transgenic plants treated with methyl viologen exhibit earlier degradation of BAS1 than WT plants do. Using several approaches, i.e. a probe emitting fluorescence when reacting with peroxides, high-performance liquid chromatography determination of lipid hydroxy fatty acid content, and measurement of chlorophyll thermoluminescence, we show a higher lipid peroxidation level under methyl viologen treatment in thylakoids from CDSP32-lacking plants compared with WT. These data show that CDSP32 is a critical component in the defense system against lipid peroxidation in photosynthetic membranes, likely as a physiological electron donor to the BAS1 peroxiredoxin.


DNA methylation may contribute to the etiology of complex genetic disorders through its impact on genome integrity and gene expression; it is modulated by DNA-sequence variants, named methylation quantitative trait loci (meQTLs). Most meQTLs influence methylation of a few CpG dinucleotides within short genomic regions (<3 kb). Here, we identified a layered genetic control of DNA methylation at numerous CpGs across a long 300 kb genomic region. This control involved a single long-range meQTL and multiple local meQTLs. The long-range meQTL explained up to 75% of variance in methylation of CpGs located over extended areas of the 300 kb region. The meQTL was identified in four samples (P = 2.8 × 10(-17), 3.1 × 10(-31), 4.0 × 10(-71) and 5.2 × 10(-199)), comprising a total of 2796 individuals. The long-range meQTL was strongly associated not only with DNA methylation but also with mRNA expression of several genes within the 300 kb region (P = 7.1 × 10(-18)-1.0 × 10(-123)). The associations of the meQTL with gene expression became attenuated when adjusted for DNA methylation (causal inference test: P = 2.4 × 10(-13)-7.1 × 10(-20)), indicating coordinated regulation of DNA methylation and gene expression. Further, the long-range meQTL was found to be in linkage disequilibrium with the most replicated locus of multiple sclerosis, a disease affecting primarily the brain white matter. In middle-aged adults free of the disease, we observed that the risk allele was associated with subtle structural properties of the brain white matter found in multiple sclerosis (P = 0.02). In summary, we identified a long-range meQTL that controls methylation and expression of several genes and may be involved in increasing brain vulnerability to multiple sclerosis.


Large volumes of data from material characterizations call for rapid and automatic data analysis to accelerate materials discovery. Herein, we report a convolutional neural network (CNN) that was trained based on theoretic data and very limited experimental data for fast identification of experimental X-ray diffraction (XRD) spectra of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs). To augment the data for training the model, noise was extracted from experimental spectra and shuffled, then merged with the main peaks that were extracted from theoretical spectra to synthesize new spectra. For the first time, one-to-one material identification was achieved. The optimized model showed the highest identification accuracy of 96.7% for the Top 5 ranking among a dataset of 1012 MOFs. Neighborhood components analysis (NCA) on the experimental XRD spectra shows that the spectra from the same material are clustered in groups in the NCA map. Analysis on the class activation maps of the last CNN layer further discloses the mechanism by which the CNN model successfully identifies individual MOFs from the XRD spectra. This CNN model trained by the data-augmentation technique would not only open numerous potential applications for identifying XRD spectra for different materials, but also pave avenues to autonomously analyze data by other characterization tools such as FTIR, Raman, and NMR.


BACKGROUND
Repetitive, task-specific practice (RTP) increases functioning of the paretic upper extremity and decreases upper extremity motor impairment. One method to increase participation in RTP is an upper extremity myoelectric device, called the "Myomo", which uses surface electromyography signals to assist with active movement of the moderately impaired hemiplegic upper extremity.

OBJECTIVE
To determine the efficacy of regimens comprised of: (i) Myomo + RTP; (ii) RTP only; and (iii) Myomo only on outcomes for hemiplegic arm.

METHODS
Using a randomized, controlled, single-blinded design, 34 subjects (20 males; mean age = 55.8 years), exhibiting chronic, moderate, stable, post-stroke, UE hemiparesis, were included. Participants were randomized to 1 of the above conditions, and administered treatment for 1 h/day on 3 days/week over an 8-week period. The primary outcome measure was the upper extremity section of the Fugl-Meyer Impairment Scale (FM); the secondary measurement was the Arm Motor Activity Test (AMAT).

RESULTS
The groups exhibited similar score increases of approximately +2 points, resulting in no differences in the amount of change on the FM (H = 0.376, p = 0.83) and AMAT (H = 0.978 p = 0.61).

CONCLUSION
The results suggest that a therapeutic approach integrating myoelectric bracing yields highly comparable outcomes to those derived from RTP-only. Myoelectric bracing could be used as alternative for labour-intensive upper extremity training due to its equivalent efficacy to hands-on manual therapy [AQ1] with moderately impaired stroke survivors.


Bone marrow stromal cells (BMSCs) are very useful model systems for a better understanding of cell behavior and differential gene expression. Up to now, there have not been specific markers and MAbs for BMSCs that hamper the identification and isolation of BMSCs populations. In this study, chicken BMSCs were isolated from 1-day-old Beijing fatty chickens by adherent culture. After biological characteristics were detected, the chicken BMSCs were used to immunize BALB/c mice to prepare BMSCs-specific monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) by the routine hybridoma technique. These MAbs were characterized by FACS analysis, immunocytochemistry, immunohistochemistry, subtype identification, and Western blotting assay and were used to explore markers of chicken BMSCs. Our data showed that BMSCs expressing antigens CD29, CD44, and CD105, but not expressing antigens CD34, CD45, and CD11b, could be isolated from postnatal chicken bone marrow and hold great potential for multiline age differentiation. Meanwhile, we obtained two hybridoma cell lines secreting chicken BMSCs-specific MAbs (named CHK1 and CHK2), which specifically recognized the surface antigens expressed on chicken BMSCs. According to our subtype identification, heavy chains of CHK1 and CHK2 were typed as IgG1 and IgG2b, respectively; all the light strands were kappa subtype. MAbs CHK1 and CHK2 can be used to develop the detection assay and to discover novel biomarkers of chicken BMSCs.


Goal-oriented dialogue systems aim to help users achieve certain goals. Therefore, how humans perceive their helpfulness is important. However, neither the human-perceived helpfulness of goal-oriented dialogue systems nor its fairness implication has been well studied. In this paper, we study computational measurements of helpfulness. We first formally define a dialogue response as helpful if it is relevant&coherent, useful, and informative to a query. Then, we collect human annotations for the helpfulness of dialogue responses based on our definition and build a classifier to automatically determine the helpfulness of a response. We further propose to use the helpfulness level of a dialogue system towards different user queries to measure the fairness of a dialogue system. Experiments with state-of-the-art dialogue systems under three information-seeking scenarios reveal that existing systems tend to be more helpful for questions regarding concepts from highly-developed countries than less-developed countries, uncovering potential fairness concerns underlying the current goal-oriented dialogue systems.


The author's thoughts and opinions on where the field of forensic DNA testing is headed for the next decade are provided in the context of where the field has come over the past 30 years. Similar to the Olympic motto of 'faster, higher, stronger', forensic DNA protocols can be expected to become more rapid and sensitive and provide stronger investigative potential. New short tandem repeat (STR) loci have expanded the core set of genetic markers used for human identification in Europe and the USA. Rapid DNA testing is on the verge of enabling new applications. Next-generation sequencing has the potential to provide greater depth of coverage for information on STR alleles. Familial DNA searching has expanded capabilities of DNA databases in parts of the world where it is allowed. Challenges and opportunities that will impact the future of forensic DNA are explored including the need for education and training to improve interpretation of complex DNA profiles.


Vpr is a conserved primate lentiviral protein that promotes infection of T lymphocytes in vivo by an unknown mechanism. Here we demonstrate that Vpr and its cellular co-factor, DCAF1, are necessary for efficient cell-to-cell spread of HIV-1 from macrophages to CD4+ T lymphocytes when there is inadequate cell-free virus to support direct T lymphocyte infection. Remarkably, Vpr functioned to counteract a macrophage-specific intrinsic antiviral pathway that targeted Env-containing virions to LAMP1+ lysosomal compartments. This restriction of Env also impaired virological synapses formed through interactions between HIV-1 Env on infected macrophages and CD4 on T lymphocytes. Treatment of infected macrophages with exogenous interferon-alpha induced virion degradation and blocked synapse formation, overcoming the effects of Vpr. These results provide a mechanism that helps explain the in vivo requirement for Vpr and suggests that a macrophage-dependent stage of HIV-1 infection drives the evolutionary conservation of Vpr.


It was shown, that in order to value the efficiency of electronic security system (ESS), you have to know efficiencies of its components. In order to instance evaluation possibilities of efficiency of individual ESS pieces, several calculation methods of efficiency of sensors (of sensors, as individual electronic devices, of sensors definable with many indexes and sensors, used by security of territory perimeter) were presented. It was shown, how is efficiency of security changing, by using several sensors for the same area secure and by evaluation chances of incorruptibility of these sensors. Ill. 7, bibl. 4 (in Lithuanian; summaries in Lithuanian, Russian, English).


Currently, comorbidity has become a very serious problem of medicine including surgery and gynecology. Aim. To study the comorbid pathology in patients of surgical and gynecological profile taking into account connective tissue dysplasia. Materials and methods. 100 patients of gynecological and surgical profile were examined at The First Republican Clinical Hospital. The basic surgical pathology, the cause of patients' hospital staying, was postoperative hernia, gynecological - threat of abortion before 22 weeks. To assess the comorbidity degree, Charlson index and cumulative illness rating scale (CIRS) were used. Results. Charlson index was 4,9; CIRS - 6,4 in surgical patients and in gynecological patients - 1,5 and 3,2, respectively. The most significant and frequently occurring clinical manifestations of connective tissue dysplasia (60% and >) among patients with postoperative ventral hernia and threat of abortion are the following: valve, asthenic, vertebrogenic, visceral, cosmetic. Heart dysplasia rate is 86% in patients with primary undifferentiated connective tissue dysplasia. Conclusion. Different manifestations of undifferentiated connective tissue dysplasia among patients with postoperative ventral hernias and women with threat of abortion is a rather widespread syndrome causing the basic disease or comorbid pathology.


Nearest neighbor search (NNS) has a wide range of applications in information retrieval, computer vision, machine learning, databases, and other areas. Existing state-of-the-art algorithm for nearest neighbor search, Hierarchical Navigable Small World Networks (HNSW), is unable to scale to large datasets of 100M records in high dimensions. In this paper, we propose LANNS, an end-to-end platform for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search, which scales for web-scale datasets. Library for Large Scale Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search (LANNS) is deployed in multiple production systems for identifying top-K (100 ≤ k ≤ 200) approximate nearest neighbors with a latency of a few milliseconds per query, high throughput of ~2.5k Queries Per Second (QPS) on a single node, on large (e.g., ~ 180M data points) high dimensional (50-2048 dimensional) datasets.


Intact 12-day-old barley (cv. Prior) plants or first-leaf sections were grown on iso-osmotic solutions of polyethylene glycol or a variety of inorganic salts for 24 h. All solutions caused a similar decline in leaf water potential with external osmotic potential in the intact plant, but the decline in internal osmotic potential was least on solutions of polyethylene glycol, causing a loss of turgor in plants growing on that osmoticurn. Plants growing on solutions of NaCl, KCl, Na2SO4 or CaCl, accumulated less proline than plants on iso-osmotic solutions of polyethylene glycol, but plants on MgCl2, solutions accumulated as much or more. With leaf sections, no proline accumulated on solutions containing the monovalent cations, whereas tissue floated on salt solutions containing Mg2+ or Ca2+ accumulated as much or more proline as that on iso-osmotic solutions of polyethylene glycol. NaCl was found to inhibit the proline accumulation caused by a reduction in external osmotic potential.


Ecological research on ant/plant symbioses in Fiji, combined with molecular phylogenetics, has brought to light four new species of Squamellaria in the subtribe Hydnophytinae of the Rubiaceae tribe Psychotrieae and revealed that four other species, previously in Hydnophytum, need to be transferred to Squamellaria. The diagnoses of the new species are based on morphological and DNA traits, with further insights from microCT scanning of flowers and leaf δ13C ratios (associated with Crassulacean acid metabolism). Our field and phylogenetic work results in a new circumscription of the genus Squamellaria, which now contains 12 species (to which we also provide a taxonomic key), not 3 as in the last revision. A clock-dated phylogeny and a model-testing biogeographic framework were used to infer the broader geographic history of rubiaceous ant plants in the Pacific, specifically the successive expansion of Squamellaria to Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Fiji. The colonization of Vanuatu may have occurred from Fiji, when these islands were still in the same insular arc, while the colonization of the Solomon islands may have occurred after the separation of this island from the Fiji/Vanuatu arc. Some of these ant-housing epiphytes must have dispersed with their specialized ants, for instance attached to floating timber. Others acquired new ant symbionts on different islands.


Efficiently quantifying renal structures can provide distinct spatial context and facilitate biomarker discovery for kidney morphology. However, the development and evaluation of the transformer model to segment the renal cortex, medulla, and collecting system remains challenging due to data inefficiency. Inspired by the hierarchical structures in vision transformer, we propose a novel method using a 3D block aggregation transformer for segmenting kidney components on contrast-enhanced CT scans. We construct the first cohort of renal substructures segmentation dataset with 116 subjects under institutional review board (IRB) approval. Our method yields the state-of-the-art performance (Dice of 0.8467) against the baseline approach of 0.8308 with the data-efficient design. The Pearson R achieves 0.9891 between the proposed method and manual standards and indicates the strong correlation and reproducibility for volumetric analysis. We extend the proposed method to the public KiTS dataset, the method leads to improved accuracy compared to transformer-based approaches. We show that the 3D block aggregation transformer can achieve local communication between sequence representations without modifying self-attention, and it can serve as an accurate and efficient quantification tool for characterizing renal structures.


Remote Masking (RM) (a rise in threshold for low-frequency tones when the ear is exposed to a high intensity noise band of high frequency) has been attributed to mechanical nonlinear distortion of the cochlear partition, as an effect of the envelope of a nonuniform signal. Clinical studies using RM have revealed RM is normal only when both the endolabyrinthine pressure and the cochlear hydrodynamics are normal. Increasing the stiffness of the cochlear partition affects adversely the mechanism of motion of the cochlear duct and reduces RM values. We studied RM in normal young Ss and in patients with presbycusis in order to determine whether aging of the inner ear also induces stiffness of the cochlear partition. In presbycusic Ss the RM values were indeed reduced symmetrically in both ears and progressively as a result of aging. Thus RM demonstrates the existence of cochlear conductive presbycusis and can be considered a useful test of stiffness of the cochlear partition.


In this paper, we explore whether fiscal input brings the raise of regional education quality. To discuss this relationship, we employ Chinese provincial panel data ranged from 2008-2016. By constructing a two-way fixed effect model, we find that provincial education quality is positively associated with the fiscal expenditure, and more specifically, educational expenditure. This correlation is robust even we consider other important factors such economy growth, industrial structure and population structure. Besides, since the regional heterogeneity across China, the relationship between fiscal spending, and education quality may exhibit different patterns, we thus split our samples into eastern region and non-eastern region. Empirical results indicate that our main argument only exists in non-eastern area, which refers to the western area, where expanding fiscal expenditure would be more efficient for the government to raise provincial education quality. Meanwhile, fiscal policy would be less efficient to raise education quality for eastern area, thus new policy instrument is necessary.


Objectives Atrial fibrillation (AF) is a predominant risk factor of ischaemic stroke and treatment with oral anticoagulants (OACs) is recommended in all patients with risk factors. This study sought to examine treatment patterns of OACs in older patients with AF. Design Retrospective, cross-sectional study. Setting Danish nationwide administrative and clinical registers and databases. Participants A total of 40 027 patients, >75 years of age, after their first hospital contact due to AF between 2010 and 2018. Primary and secondary outcomes measures The primary event of interest was claimed prescriptions for OACs within 180 days after first hospital contact due to AF. Proportions of patients treated with OACs were estimated and clinical factors associated with the probability of receiving OAC treatment were identified using adjusted logistic regression models. Results A total of 40 027 patients were included with a slight majority of women (54%). The median age was 81 years (IQR 78–86). We found that an overall 32 235 patients (81%) were prescribed an OAC after their first hospital contact due to AF with a marked increase in the proportion of patients treated from 2010 to 2018. Factors related to a decreased probability of receiving treatment were bleeding risk factors such as a history of haemorrhagic stroke (OR 0.21, 95% CI 0.16 to 0.27), any bleeding (OR 0.58, 95% CI 0.53 to 0.62) as well as markers of frailty such as osteoporosis (OR 0.78, 95% CI 0.71 to 0.85). Conclusion In this large nationwide study, we found that in older patients with AF, the overall rates of OAC prescription were generally high (~80%) and increasing during the last decade. Factors associated with not receiving guideline recommended OAC treatment were generally related to bleeding risk factors or frailty.


OF THESIS LABORATORY SCALE CONCEPT VALIDATION AND EVALUATION OF COMPROMISING PLANT NODAL INTEGRITY AS A MEANS TO INCREASE BALE DENSITY Transportation costs represent a significant role in the economics of packaged hay and biomass crops. The material's low bulk density limits transportation efficiency. Density is currently limited by the ability of the baling twine to withstand the expansion forces generated by the baled material shortly after it is ejected from the bale chamber. It was hypothesized that compromising the structure of the plant, particularly the plant nodes could reduce the amount of energy stored in the material as it is compressed and thereby reduce the material's elastic response to compression. Literature pertinent to the biomass material's behavior in compression was reviewed. Bulk samples of switchgrass and miscanthus were subject to uniaxial compression, and the required pressure needed to obtain a target density of 256 kg/m 3 was compared on a wet and dry density basis. Both switchgrass and miscanthus showed a statistically significant decrease in the required compression pressure, and the interaction between the moisture level and required pressure was also significant. Existing models for the pressure density relationship of compressed bulk material were evaluated for suitability. Individual nodes and internode sections were subject to radial compression and the apparent modulus of elasticity and maximum contact stress were determined.


The study of automatically generate test data based on evolutionary algorithm method focuses on the path coverage direction. The key problem is how to construct a suitable and has a good orientation of the fitness function to evaluate the quality of a test data. This paper introduces several evolution test methods, shows its advantages and problems it can effectively solve, and proposes an improved evolutionary test data generation method, which can generate better test data. DOI : http://dx.doi.org/10.11591/telkomnika.v12i1.3342


BACKGROUND The multi-organ disorder, diabetes mellitus (DM) continues to be one of the commonest and challenging health-related problems in the 20th century, prevalent in about 9.3 % of the world's population in 2019 and likely to affect 10.2 % by 2030. Diabetes mellitus is a group of chronic metabolic disorders of multiple aetiology, characterized by chronic hyperglycaemia due to derangement in carbohydrate, fat and protein metabolism. Electrolytes are crucial in maintaining various metabolic functions and play a pivotal role in maintaining a healthy state's body. Diabetic patients are more prone to and frequently develop a constellation of electrolyte disorders due to hyperglycaemia, polydipsia and polyuria. METHODS Our study comprised a total of 70 subjects in the age group of 35 - 60 years with age and sex-matched controls. They were grouped into two groups; the first group, group-1 (healthy controls) and the second group was group-2 (patients of diabetes mellitus on oral hypoglycaemic agents with poor control). 5 ml of fasting venous blood was collected in a plain vacutainer tube in the morning after a zerocalorie overnight 08 hours fast. Post collection, the blood sample was used as serum or plasma or whole blood to estimate plasma glucose, blood urea, serum creatinine, serum sodium, serum potassium, serum chloride by kit methods using an auto analyser. RESULTS Among the various parameters tested, the mean value of fasting plasma glucose, blood urea, serum creatinine, serum potassium, serum chloride were higher in group-2 (diabetic patients) compared to group-1 (healthy controls) with a p-value of < 0.0001. The value of the mean of serum sodium was lower in group-2 (diabetes mellitus) compared to group-1 (healthy controls) with a p-value of < 0.0001. CONCLUSIONS We conclude that electrolyte abnormalities are present in diabetic patients and maybe a root cause for associated morbidity or mortality. These disturbances are generally seen in decompensated Diabetes Mellitus patients, elderly individuals and in the presence of renal impairment. KEYWORDS Diabetes Mellitus, Serum Electrolytes, Fasting Blood Glucose


Highly imaginative and emotionally powerful, this stunning novel about childhood innocence amid the nightmarish disease and deterioration at the heart of modern Los Angeles was nominated for a National Book Award.


This paper proposes an approach estimating a gait abnormality index based on skeletal information provided by a depth camera. Differently from related works where the extraction of hand-crafted features is required to describe gait characteristics, our method automatically performs that stage with the support of a deep auto-encoder. In order to get visually interpretable features, we embedded a constraint of sparsity into the model. Similarly to most gait-related studies, the temporal factor is also considered as a post-processing in our system. This method provided promising results when experimenting on a dataset containing nearly one hundred thousand skeleton samples.


Sudden unexpected death in infancy (SUDI) - defined as the death of a child under 1 year of age du ring sleep with no initially obvious cause - remains one of the most common causes of post-neonatal mortality. Approximately 3,500 infants die annually in the United States from sleep-related deaths. A complex and multifactorial origin is postulated in a vulnerable infant. However, the pathophysiology of SUDI has not been fully understood. Health care providers play a key role in promoting preventive measures described in the literature, which include sleeping in a supine position on a firm surface, avoiding smoking and co-sleeping, promoting breastfeeding, among others. The objective of this re view is to summarize the main epidemiological and physiopathological characteristics of SUDI, and safe sleep-related factors.


Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME) is a popular technique used to increase the interpretability and explainability of black box Machine Learning (ML) algorithms. LIME typically generates an explanation for a single prediction by any ML model by learning a simpler interpretable model (e.g. linear classifier) around the prediction through generating simulated data around the instance by random perturbation, and obtaining feature importance through applying some form of feature selection. While LIME and similar local algorithms have gained popularity due to their simplicity, the random perturbation and feature selection methods result in "instability" in the generated explanations, where for the same prediction, different explanations can be generated. This is a critical issue that can prevent deployment of LIME in a Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CAD) system, where stability is of utmost importance to earn the trust of medical professionals. In this paper, we propose a deterministic version of LIME. Instead of random perturbation, we utilize agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (HC) to group the training data together and K-Nearest Neighbour (KNN) to select the relevant cluster of the new instance that is being explained. After finding the relevant cluster, a linear model is trained over the selected cluster to generate the explanations. Experimental results on three different medical datasets show the superiority for Deterministic Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (DLIME), where we quantitatively determine the stability of DLIME compared to LIME utilizing the Jaccard similarity among multiple generated explanations.


Pancreatic cancer is one of the most frequently occurring malignancies worldwide and it is the fourth most common cause of cancer-associated mortality in Western countries. Thalidomide (THD) plays an important role in tumor therapy, as it is able to promote early stage apoptosis and inhibit the process of angiogenesis. The present study evaluated the ability of the combination of THD and gemcitabine (GEM) to inhibit the growth of the pancreatic cancer SW-1990 cell line in vitro and in vivo. Early apoptosis in the SW-1990 cells was detected by the Annexin V/propidium iodide double staining method, the level of B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) and Bcl-2-associated X protein (Bax) were detected by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and western blot analysis. In addition, the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor in transplanted tumor tissue was measured by RT-PCR, immunohistochemistry and western blot analysis. Cluster of differentiation 34 positivity was considered to indicate the microvessel density. Subsequent to treatment with THD and GEM alone or in combination, it was found that the expression of Bax was upregulated, while the expression of Bcl-2 was downregulated, and the growth of SW-1990 cells and transplanted tumors in nude mice was evidently inhibited. The administration of THD in combination with GEM may demonstrate a potent antitumor effect that increases with increasing dose. The mechanism behind the antitumor effect may be associated with the inhibition of tumor angiogenesis and induction of the apoptosis pathway.