The microstructures and the rheological behaviour of synthetic magmatic suspensions in the range of 0% to 80% solid fraction have been investigated in torsion experiments. The liquid phase is a haplogranitic melt (HPG) with 2.5 Wt % H20. The solid phase is composed of a sieved fraction (45Μm<Φ<90Μm) of crushed alumina grains that avoid any chemical interaction with the melt such as dissolution/crystallisation during synthesis of the suspension and during the experiments. Four analogous suspensions with respectively 0, 20, 60 and 80% solid fraction were synthesised at 100 MPa and 950°C during one month ensuring a homogeneous repartition of water in the melt. Torsion experiments were performed in a high-pressure, high temperature Paterson apparatus at 300 MPa confining pressure, temperatures ranging from 475°C to 1000°C and shear strain rates from 2.1x10-3 to 2.0x10-5 s-1. Pure melt was deformed up to Γ=8.8. Steping tests at various shear strain rates yielded a stress exponent of ~1.1 with an apparent viscosity ~1010.9 Pa.s at T=475°C and a stress exponent of ~1.0 with an apparent viscosity ~1010.3 Pa.s at T=500°C. These results confirm the Newtonian character of pure haplogranitic melts at high pressure. The 20% solid fraction suspension departs from Newtonian behaviour with a stress exponent n=1.4 and an apparent log viscosity varying from 11.5 (T=500°C) to 10.6 (T=600°C) both at a strain rate ~2.10-4 s-1. Shape Preferred Orientations (SPO) of alumina grains and shapes and orientations of initially spherical (22 Μm in diameter) residual air bubbles were analysed using the inertia tensor method on polished sections normal to the shear direction. For Γ=2.6 the solid fraction developed a strong SPO with a mean direction Α=2° anticlockwise from the shear direction and bubbles passively deformed with a mean long axis orientation 24° anticlockwise and a mean aspect ratio R=2.07. For Γ=17.5, the SPO of the alumina grains became significantly weaker but still homogeneous in orientation with Α=6° anticlockwise while long axis of bubbles were oriented 17° anticlockwise with R=2.13. For the 60% solid fraction suspension, shear softening behaviour is evidenced by a stress exponent n=2.2 for T=550°C and n=2.0 for T=600°C. Measured apparent viscosities from 1010.1 Pa.s to 1011.6 Pa.s are four orders lower that predicted by theoretical models. From Γ=8.8 to 21.3, SPO of the alumina phase determined by the intercept method is composed of two mean heterogeneously developed directions respectively ~10° anticlockwise and ~25° clockwise from the shear direction. These two associated directions that match S/C structures are locally disturbed by strain localisation developing synthetic R and P Riedel shear bands that suggest granular flow-like behaviour of the solid suspension. This strain localisation with possibly melt enhanced weakening in strain localised domains is a possible cause of low apparent viscosities recorded in these experiments. For 80% solid fraction, the samples were too strong to be deformed in the stress range of the apparatus. This behaviour implies a rheological threshold between 60% and 80% solid fraction that matches with the Particle Locking Threshold suggested by theoretical models.


Although teniposide activity in glioma was reported as early as 1971, it is only within the last 2 to 3 years that its effectiveness in small cell lung cancer and, most dramatically, in associated brain metastasis, has undergone long overdue systematic investigation. The drug appears to enjoy preferential uptake by brain-tumor tissue compared with disease-free brain tissue. Single-agent activity of teniposide in astrocytomas has been widely reported but the data are difficult to interpret due to differences among studies in definition of response and response duration. Combination therapy has focused primarily on teniposide with nitrosoureas and, again, definition variations have made it difficult to evaluate data. Similar problems plague trials by one group of investigators who reported that the combination of teniposide with doxorubicin and lomustine resulted in regression or improvement in significant percentages of their patients. While many studies indicate that teniposide has significant potential in treatment of adult glioma, controlled trials are needed to evaluate and optimize the use of this agent.


AACR Annual Meeting-- Apr 18-22, 2009; Denver, CO

Malignant melanoma continues to be the most lethal skin cancer with limited therapeutic options. We have explored the use of naturally occurring compounds for malignant melanoma. Eugenol, a naturally occurring phenolic compound was found to produce significant tumour growth delay in the B16 melanoma model. Eugenol also induced cell cycle arrest and modulated expression and protein level of E2F family of transcription factors. We further investigated the role of E2F2 in the anti-cancer activities associated with eugenol. We knocked down E2F2 expression stably in the human metastatic melanoma cell line (1205Lu) using shRNA. We show that while the absence of E2F2 does not perturb the ability of eugenol to inhibit melanoma cell proliferation, it slowed down progression through G1 and S phases of the cell cycle. The oxidative DNA damage marker, 8-oxo-dG produced in response to eugenol treatment is repaired more efficiently in the absence of E2F2 which is accompanied by inhibition of eugenol-induced apoptosis. Taken together our results suggest that eugenol targets E2F2 to produce specific biological effects in metastatic malignant melanoma cells. Our study also does not rule out the possibility that members of the E2F family substitute for one another in specific functions. Our results call for further development of eugenol-mediated E2F family as a target in metastatic malignant melanoma since deregulation of E2F is associated with melanoma. Supported by NIH CA117366 (RG)

Citation Information: In: Proc Am Assoc Cancer Res; 2009 Apr 18-22; Denver, CO. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; 2009. Abstract nr 1.


The Directive 2007/23/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the placing on the market of pyrotechnic articles has been adopted by the European Union (EU) on the 23rd of May, 2007. This Directive should help manufacturers and importers that had to comply with a different regulation in each country to get technical approvals of their pyrotechnic articles. Although this directive will reduce the administrative burden for everybody by introducing the CE marking and certification procedure, its substitution and application instead of the current national regulations may create difficulties in the beginning. In this paper we present information related to the different parts of the Directive dealing specifically with fireworks ; taking into account the present French regulation and European standards on fireworks, we remind and comment topics like categorisation, labelling, testing methods for fireworks characterisation and requirements for safety levels ; these elements are reviewed and commented in the scope to help people concerned to comply with the Essential Safety Requirements (ESR) of the new Directive.


Aim: To investigate the efficacy of lifestyle adjustment strategies as a preventive measure and/or treatment of obesity-related non-alcoholic fatty liver disease in adults. Method: A systematic review of literature through 1 July 2017 on the PubMed Database was performed. A comprehensive search was conducted using key terms, such as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), combined with lifestyle intervention, diet, and exercise. All of the articles and studies obtained from the search were reviewed. Redundant literature was excluded. Results: Several types of dietary compositions and exercise techniques were identified. Most studies concluded and recommended reduction in the intake of saturated and trans fatty acids, carbohydrates, and animal-based protein, and increased intake of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), monounsaturated fatty acids (MUFAs), plant-based proteins, antioxidants, and other nutrients was recommended. The Mediterranean and Paleo diet both seem to be promising schemes for NAFLD patients to follow. Exercise was also encouraged, but the type of exercise did not affect its efficacy as a NAFLD treatment when the duration is consistent. Conclusions: Although these different dietary strategies and exercise regimens can be adopted to treat NAFLD, current literature on the topic is limited in scope. Further research should be conducted to truly elucidate which lifestyle adjustments individually, and in combination, may facilitate patients with obesity-related NAFLD.


Abstract This article defines the shift in the concept and conditions of collaborative learning for university studies using the social networking tool Facebook and discusses the collaborative learning effect in terms of using Open Educational Resources (OER), creating learning artefacts and new generic competence development. In order to evaluate students' learning through collaboration in Facebook, qualitative research method and survey of generic competencies based on the Tuning project framework (2003) were used. The data was collected through focus group interviews and analyzed using qualitative content analysis. The qualitative research method was chosen because it provides information of how students collaborate and what experience they gained during the activities. First, Facebook online groups have been identified at three different levels at VMU. The Facebook first level group was the social networking of Vytautas Magnus University's students and academic staff. The second level group was created for the department dealing with social sciences, and is called "Department of Social Science". The third level group is "Education Service Management" within the Department of Education. The research was done at the third level group with the students of the "Education Service Management" study programme. As research results show, Facebook as a social network has been changing communication between students, by facilitating the exchange of information and knowledge. The research analyses Facebook in the context of undergraduate university studies, based upon the experience of Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) for using Facebook for university studies. It could be concluded that learning is about developing capabilities to think and to act. Learners using social networking tools for collaborative learning, act, provide feedback and peer-review, asses and rate information. Openness is based on the idea that knowledge is disseminated and shared freely for the benefit of society as a whole. University students collaborate online and learn by using and exchanging OER, as well as developing them as the artefacts of online collaborative learning. They influence task design by creating "educational resources" themselves.


The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) with innate and adaptive immune response triggered in such patients by viral antigens. Both convalescent plasma and engineered high affinity human monoclonal antibodies have shown therapeutic potential to treat COVID-19. Whether additional antiviral soluble factors exist in peripheral blood remain understudied. Herein, we detected circulating exosomes that express the SARS-CoV-2 viral entry receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) in plasma of both healthy donors and convalescent COVID-19 patients. We demonstrated that exosomal ACE2 competes with cellular ACE2 for neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 infection. ACE2-expressing (ACE2+) exosomes blocked the binding of the viral spike (S) protein RBD to ACE2+ cells in a dose dependent manner, which was 400- to 700-fold more potent than that of vesicle-free recombinant human ACE2 extracellular domain protein (rhACE2). As a consequence, exosomal ACE2 prevented SARS-CoV-2 pseudotype virus tethering and infection of human host cells at a 50-150 fold higher efficacy than rhACE2. A similar antiviral activity of exosomal ACE2 was further demonstrated to block wild-type live SARS-CoV-2 infection. Of note, depletion of ACE2+ exosomes from COVID-19 patient plasma impaired the ability to block SARS-CoV-2 RBD binding to host cells. Our data demonstrate that ACE2+ exosomes can serve as a decoy therapeutic and a possible innate antiviral mechanism to block SARS-CoV-2 infection.


Flow in porous media occurs in many naturally-occurring and engineered systems. One of the key properties for understanding the fluid flow and pressure drop in porous media is permeability, which is varies widely among researchers. The current work presents systematic experimental data for packed spheres of uniform size (3 mm) having a porosity of 36.6% subjected to water flow. The experiments covered a sufficiently broad range of flow Reynolds number such that all flow regimes are encountered: pre-Darcy, Darcy, Forchheimer and Turbulent. The pre-Darcy regime is very scarce or non-present in the literature. As a necessary initial step, flow regimes were identified and different permeabilities exhibited by the porous medium in each flow regime were calculated. The length scales in defining the Reynolds number included the diameter of the sphere and the square root of the various permeabilities in order to study the transitional Reynolds numbers among the flow regimes. It is shown that the permeability in the Darcy regime is most appropriate and produces results consistent with accepted understanding in the literature of porous media.


Thermochromic coating on yttria stabilized zirconia (YSZ) substrate was prepared by the sol-gel La0.825Sr0.175MnO3 nanoparticles and the binder composed of terpineol and ethyl cellulose. The surface morphology and the variable emittance properties of coating in the infrared range was evaluated from infrared reflectance spectra at various temperatures. LSMO nanoparticles with size 200 nm are obtained by the sol-gel process. The coating sample shows a thermochromic behavior with the rise of temperature. The emittance of coating increases from 0.62 at 173 K to 0.88 at 373 K. When the sample surface root-mean-square roughness is 122 nm, its emittance variation increases from 0.43 at 173 K to 0.73 at 373 K.Copyright © 2016 by ASME


A tight binding network of diamond shaped unit cells trapping a staggered magnetic flux distribution is shown to exhibit a topological phase transition under a controlled variation of the flux trapped in a cell. A simple real space decimation technique maps a binary flux staggered network into an equivalent Su–Shrieffer–Heeger (SSH) model. In this way, dealing with a subspace of the full degrees of freedom, we show that a topological phase transition can be initiated by tuning the applied magnetic field that eventually simulates an engineering of the numerical values of the overlap integrals in the paradigmatic SSH model. Thus one can use an external agent, rather than monitoring the intrinsic property of a lattice to control the topological properties. This is advantageous from an experimental point of view. We also provide an in-depth description and analysis of the topologically protected edge states, and discuss how, by tuning the flux from outside one can enhance the spatial extent of the Aharonov–Bohm caging of single particle states for any arbitrary period of staggering. This feature can be useful for the study of transport of quantum information. Our results are exact.


—The surface pattern of permafrost area in the Tibetan Plateau, with 15–20 m polygons, resembles the patterned ground of the Arctic periglacial loess plains in northeastern Eurasia and North America. However, unlike the Arctic plains, it consists of semi-stabilized modern sand dunes, up to 2.5–3.0 m high, and U-shaped epigenetic ice wedge casts inherited from an ancient polygonal network on the surface of a 10–12-m terrace of the Yangtze River. The polygonal dunes and the U-shaped sand wedges were studied in the Yangtze head-waters in the vicinity of the high-altitude research station Bei-Lu-Xe. The polygons have desert pavement floors with ventifacts, composed of Late Pleistocene alluvial gravel and debris. The dunes and wedges consist of well sorted quartz-carbonate sand with an average grains size of 2.0–2.2 mm. Ground Penetrating Radar surveys in the area revealed the permafrost table at depths varying from 2 to 4 m below the dunes. The polygonal dunes may have formed by biogenic-aeolian deposition over an ancient system of ice wedges.


Over the years the Supreme Court has given academic freedom a special First Amendment status. This study reviewed a selected group of recent cases at public universities, focusing particularly on several where rulings were based either on a professor's public comments or in-class verbiage, in an attempt to assess the current status of academic freedom. Cases cited include two where professors were disciplined for views expressed outside the classroom; in both these cases the courts upheld the professors' rights of protected free speech. In two other cases where professors interjected personal religious beliefs during classroom activities, the courts ruled that the university had a responsibility to ensure a secular environment, especially in regard to curriculum. In several "hostile environment" and sexual harassment cases cited, the picture has been mixed, with the rulings usually supporting classroom speech that is germane to course content and not protecting speech that serve no academic function. The paper concludes that given the absence of educational precedents, the courts will continue to apply rulings from cases outside education (such as "Waters v. Churchill"), and suggests that academic freedom can best be protected by self-restraint and the understanding that speech at a higher level carries with it greater responsibility. (Contains 17 references.)


We tackle the task of reconstructing hand-object interactions from short video clips. Given an input video, our approach casts 3D inference as a per-video optimization and recovers a neural 3D representation of the object shape, as well as the time-varying motion and hand articulation. While the input video naturally provides some multi-view cues to guide 3D inference, these are insufficient on their own due to occlusions and limited viewpoint variations. To obtain accurate 3D, we augment the multi-view signals with generic data-driven priors to guide reconstruction. Specifically, we learn a diffusion network to model the conditional distribution of (geometric) renderings of objects conditioned on hand configuration and category label, and leverage it as a prior to guide the novel-view renderings of the reconstructed scene. We empirically evaluate our approach on egocentric videos across 6 object categories, and observe significant improvements over prior single-view and multi-view methods. Finally, we demonstrate our system's ability to reconstruct arbitrary clips from YouTube, showing both 1st and 3rd person interactions.


Background: Cancer patients are at increased risk of venous thrombosis (VT). In surgical cancer patients a dose of about 5000 anti factor Xa (aXa) units of low molecular weight heparin (LMWH) prevents VT at acceptable safety with regard to bleeding. We hypothesize that non-surgical cancer patients at risk of VT could benefit from a higher LMWH dose. Methods: We conducted a randomized, double-blind trial in 49 hospitalised non-surgical cancer patients with risk factors of VT. Patients received either enoxaparin 40 mg or 80 mg once daily subcutaneously. Outcome variables were markers of coagulation activation (D-Dimer), thrombin generation (peak thrombin level) and aXa levels determined in venous blood before enoxaparin on day 1 to 4 and 2, 4, and 6 hours after enoxaparin on day 1. D-Dimer was determined by enzyme immunoassay (Asserachrom® D-Di, Roche, Germany), and thrombin generation by use of a commercially available fluorogenic assay (Technothrombin TGA, Vienna, Austria). Results: 22 patients were randomized to enoxaparin 40 mg and 27 to 80 mg. On day 1, D-dimer levels [median (range)] before administration of enoxaparin (=baseline) were elevated in both groups [40 mg: 957.0 ng/ml (254.1–4419.6); 80 mg: 1054.9 ng/ml (197.0–14761.0)]. D-Dimer levels only slightly decreased 6 hours after enoxaparin in both groups (p=0.001). D-Dimer baseline levels in the 80 mg group were significantly lower on day 4 [1785.6 ng/ml (128.4–13742.5)] than on day 1 (p=0.01), while in the 40 mg group no difference was seen. In patients receiving enoxaparin 40 mg, peak thrombin levels (mean±SD) at baseline were 434.8±29.7 nM and significantly decreased over time. Trough levels (171.8±30.9 nM) were reached after 4 hours. The decrease of peak thrombin levels was significantly more pronounced in the enoxaparin 80 mg group. Compared with baseline (407.8±18.9 nM), peak thrombin levels were 138.7±19.6, 86.6±19.9 and 82.8±19.9 nM after 2, 4 and 6 hours, respectively. Compared with baseline on day 1, peak thrombin levels in the 80 mg group were significantly lower on day 4 (317.5±28.3 nM; p=0.005), while no significant difference was seen in patients receiving 40 mg (p=0.5). aXa levels significantly increased with maximum levels at 4 hours in patients receiving enoxaparin 40 mg and at 6 hours in the 80 mg group. In none of the patients receiving enoxaparin 40 mg and in 3 of those receiving 80 mg, peak aXa levels exceeded 1.0 IU/ml. None of the patients had thrombotic or bleeding complications. Conclusion: Non-surgical cancer patients exhibit a state of hypercoagulability. Compared with enoxaparin 40 mg, the extent of coagulation activation and thrombin generation can be significantly reduced by doubling the dose. These findings support the hypothesis that thromboprophylaxis with a standard dose of enoxaparin 40 mg once daily might be too low to provide optimal protection from VT in non-surgical cancer patients at high thrombotic risk. Interventional studies are needed to investigate safety and efficacy of a more intense thromboprophylactic regimen in these patients.


Strategies to battle malignant tumors have always been a dynamic research endeavour. Although various vehicles (e.g., chemotherapeutic therapy, radiotherapy, surgical resection, etc.) are used for skin cancer management, they mostly remain unsatisfactory due to the complex mechanism of carcinogenesis. Increasing evidence indicates that redox imbalance and aberrant reactive oxygen species (ROS) are closely implicated in the oncogenesis of skin cancer. When ROS production goes beyond their clearance, excessive or accumulated ROS could disrupt redox balance, induce oxidative stress, and activate the altered ROS signals. These would damage cellular DNA, proteins, and lipids, further leading to gene mutation, cell hyperproliferation, and fatal lesions in cells that contribute to carcinogenesis in the skin. It has been known that ROS-mediated skin carcinogenesis involves multiple ways, including modulating related signaling pathways, changing cell metabolism, and causing the instability of the genome and epigenome. Nevertheless, the exact role of ROS in skin cancer has not been thoroughly elucidated. In spite of ROS inducing skin carcinogenesis, toxic-dose ROS could trigger cell death/apoptosis and, therefore, may be an efficient therapeutic tool to battle skin cancer. Considering the dual role of ROS in the carcinogenesis and treatment of skin cancer, it would be essential to clarify the relationship between ROS and skin cancer. Thus, in this review, we get the related data together to seek the connection between ROS and skin carcinogenesis. Besides, strategies basing on ROS to fight skin cancer are discussed.


This study was conducted to evaluate the relationships among work stress, nonwork stress, locus of control, social support, and head nurses' psychological symptoms. Data were collected from head nurses (N = 300) representing all Army hospitals in the United States; 21% of the volunteer sample were men. The results supported the hypotheses that perceived stress from both work and nonwork sources was positively related to psychological symptoms. Direct effects for both internal locus of control and social support, while weak, were manifest as expected; these variables demonstrated a negative relationship with psychological symptoms. None of the hypothesized buffering effects were detected. The stress model derived from this study accounted for 35.9% of the variance in psychological symptoms. Regardless of gender, the head nurses' psychological symptoms were one standard deviation higher than nonpatient norms.


Brian S. Eastwood: Multiple Layer Image Analysis for Video Microscopy. (Under the direction of Russell M. Taylor II.) Motion analysis is a fundamental problem that serves as the basis for many other image analysis tasks, such as structure estimation and object segmentation. Many motion analysis techniques assume that objects are opaque and non-reflective, asserting that a single pixel is an observation of a single scene object. This assumption breaks down when observing semitransparent objects—a single pixel is an observation of the object and whatever lies behind it. This dissertation is concerned with methods for analyzing multiple layer motion in microscopy, a domain where most objects are semitransparent. I present a novel approach to estimating the transmission of light through stationary, semitransparent objects by estimating the gradient of the constant transmission observed over all frames in a video. This enables removing the non-moving elements from the video, providing an enhanced view of the moving elements. I present a novel structured illumination technique that introduces a semitransparent pattern layer to microscopy, enabling microscope stage tracking even in the presence of stationary, sparse, or moving specimens. Magnitude comparisons at the frequencies present in the pattern layer provide estimates of pattern orientation and focal depth. Two pattern tracking techniques are examined, one based on phase correlation at pattern frequencies, and one based on spatial correlation using a model of pattern layer appearance based on microscopy image formation. Finally, I present a method for designing optimal structured illumination patterns tuned for constraints imposed by specific microscopy experiments. This approach is based on analysis of the microscope's optical transfer function at different focal depths.


We report on a theoretical analysis of the dynamical performance of a single-frequency semiconductor laser under the influence of nonlinear optical feedback. It is shown that the modal structure of such a laser is both dependent on the mirror characteristics and on the pump current. The analysis concentrates on the self pulsating regimes that can be observed, and more precisely on the occurrence of harmonic passive mode-locking. Generation of short pulses, characterized by a duration around 10 ps and a repetition rates as high as 20 GHz, have been demonstrated. The characteristics of this mode-locking strongly depend on the nonlinear mirror's temporal response


Digital change detection techniques using multi-temporal satellite imagery helps in understanding landscape dynamics. The present study assesses the spatial and temporal dynamics of vegetation cover change in the coastal wilayat of Al-Suwaiq, Sultanate of Oman using field and remote sensing data. The study was conducted at various distances from the coastline, considering the variability in soil and water salinity. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index was calculated using the Landsat 5 TM and Landsat 8 OLI satellite images and classified into three main classes to evaluate the monthly and annual vegetation cover change between 1987 and 2016. Soil and water samples were collected during the cultivated season in Al-Suwaiq and analyzed mainly for salinity. Vegetation cover maps showed a general shift in vegetation biomass from regions closer to the coast (north-side) as water salinity increased with time. Between 1988 and 1999, vegetation cover increased by 7.7%, whereas it declined by 1.5 % in the study area along the coast. However, between 1999 and 2016, the vegetation cover decreased further by 5% along the coast while increasing by 12.2% farther from the coast. The largest increase in the area was for vegetation covers falling within the moderate (0.33-0.67) and high (0.67-0.86) NDVI classes. In conclusion, vegetation cover in Al-Suwaiq reduced along the coastline and shifted agriculture activities and increased cultivation from the North to the South of Wilayat. Therefore, agriculture activities on the Southside of the Wilayat should be controlled to prevent further degradation of water quality and its possible effect on agricultural farmlands.


A description is given of the adaptation to the ENIAC of the interferogram reduction problem for axisymmetric flows. Isopycnal charts from interferograms of projectiles in free flight are presented, and comparison is made with similar studies by other workers using fixed models in a wind tunnel or a circular jet. In general, good agreement is found between density fields obtained by the two methods. Sources of error are discussed; and in particular, it is found that random errors accumulate to effect adversely the density values near the axis of the flow.


This study investigated the impact of a semester-long technology course as part of a higher education cultural exchange program for secondary school teachers of developing nations. We integrated quantitative data from surveys that evaluated participants' technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPACK), with qualitative evidence from participants' technology-based lesson designs. Analysis across the 16 participants indicated that the course was effective in improving teachers' TPACK. Teachers reported increases in all TPACK domains, with the largest growth in technological content knowledge and TPACK. However, qualitative analysis suggested greater presence of technological pedagogical knowledge. Teachers learned to consider affordances of technology in accordance with content or pedagogy, but their ability was limited due to resource constraints or students' readiness. Results suggest that international exchange programs are a valuable way to support teachers of developing nations in building educational technology capacity at their home schools.


BACKGROUND
Oral teratomas are rare entities.

CASE
A patient was referred for elevations in the maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein. On ultrasound examination, a cyst was seen protruding from the fetal mouth. Postnatally, a teratoma was found to be filling the neonate's oral cavity.

CONCLUSION
This case illustrates problems in determining the etiology of head and neck masses antenatally. It also shows that teratomas can appear to regress and yield positive amniotic fluid alpha-fetoprotein and acetyl-cholinesterase. The appropriate perinatal management of this potentially devastating disorder includes preparation for establishing an airway following delivery.


The authors undertook a randomised prospective study to investigate the contribution of thigh tourniquets to the formation of intra-operative venous emboli during lower limb surgery. Patients were randomised to have a thigh tourniquet or no tourniquet and transoesophageal echocardiography was used to detect embolic signals in the right heart during and after knee arthroscopy. Three physicians blinded to patient demographics and tourniquet status separately assessed videotapes of the echocardiograms for evidence of emboli. Of the 32 patients randomised, 18 underwent knee arthroscopy with and 14 without tourniquet. Emboli were seen in 72% (95% CI 55 to 84) of patients, in 14 patients with tourniquet and in 9 patients without tourniquet. There was an estimated 13% greater incidence of emboli in the tourniquet group compared to the non-tourniquet group, a difference which was not statistically significant (Fisher's Exact Test, p = 0.45). No patients suffered symptoms or signs attributable to a pulmonary embolus.


One of the more consistent characterizations of both American Fundamentalism and other versions of conservative Evangelicalism is that these groups represent authoritarian religious and social systems. Such characterizations are not entirely without some basis in fact. Fundamentalism will almost always appear authoritarian, and so too will forms of Pentecostalism which, like Fundamentalism, place a heavy emphasis on correct thinking and combine a belief in the infallibility of scripture with a commitment to literal readings. Outsiders are sometimes disconcerted to find that "authoritarian" and related concepts are not assessed negatively in conservative Evangelical circles. Quite the contrary is the case: the Bible, infallible, inerrant, "God-breathed," is the clear center of Evangelical authority. Many a Fundamentalist sermon has sought to clinch its case with the phrase, "on authority of the holy Word of God."


ABSTRACT Context. Soil salinity is a serious environmental issue that is drastically reducing crop productivity via limiting the uptake of important micronutrients including iron (Fe) and zinc (Zn). Aims. To identify the wheat genotypes with better Fe and Zn uptake potential under saline conditions. Methods. The seedlings of eight wheat genotypes (SARC-1, SARC-2, SARC-3, SARC-4, SARC-5, SARC-6, SARC-7 and SARC-8) were exposed to salinity (100 mM NaCl), deficiency of Fe and Zn (one-fourth of the control) and their combination of salinity and deficiency of Fe and Zn, created usingHoagland's nutrient solution for 28 days. Key Results. It was noticed that root and shoot growth of all the genotypes decreased due to salinity and nutrient (Fe and Zn) deficiency, and even higher in their combined treatment. The concentration of Na increased while K decreased under both salinity alone and it's combination with nutrient deficiency. The concentrations and uptake of Fe and Zn greatly decreased in the combinedapplication of salinity and nutrient deficiency followed by nutrient deficiency and saline treatments. Multivariate analysis showed that Na uptake was the major reason for the limited growth and nutrient uptake by wheat genotypes. Conclusions. SARC-5 was the most sensitive genotype against salinity and nutrient deficiency. In contrast, SARC-1 was the most tolerant genotype against salinity, whichaccumulated the highest contents of both Fe and Zn. Among the eight genotypes used in the present study, SARC-1 is the most suitable genotype for cultivation on Zn and Fe deficient saline soils. Implications. The obtained results would be very helpful for ensuring food security and quality in salt affected areas.


BACKGROUND
Glaucoma is second cause of blindness in the world. The financial burden on the patient during long-term treatment is immense and affects the compliance to medications, thus visual morbidity.

OBJECTIVE
To analyse economic impact of three commonly used drug combinations (Dorzolamide + Timolol = DT; Brimonidine + Timolol = BT; Latanoprost+Timolol = LT) in primary open angle glaucoma.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
This observational, prospective study was undertaken at M & J Institute of Ophthalmology, Civil Hospital, Ahmedabad, a western regional institute of Ophthalmology. A total of 257 patients were included in the study. Only101 patients could complete the 6 month follow-up, of which 35, 34 and 32 patients belonged to DT, BT and LT group respectively. Cost of drug, details of the transportation were noted at every visit. Total cost incurred per patient/eye was calculated. Cost effectiveness was calculated by cost per mm Hg IOP (Intra-Ocular Pressure) reduction.

RESULTS
Treatment with DT, BT & LT group consumed 8.6%, 4.6% and 7.7% of the per annum income of the family, respectively. Cost of medications per annum (in INR)/eye for DT, BT & LT group were 2562 ± 15.74, 1544 ± 32.06, 3876 ± 73.68 (Mean±SEM) respectively. Additional cost of travelling was different for patients coming from Ahmedabad (Locals) and outsiders (patients coming outside Ahmedabad, India). Outsiders has to bear the brunt of higher transport charges, where they spent an average of Rs. 914, 856 & 933 per annum (5 follow-ups), whereas, Locals spent an average of Rs. 104, 112, 100 for DT, BT & LT group respectively.

CONCLUSION
Treatment with BT was found to be most cost-effective among three groups. Drug therapy takes substantial amount from per annum income of family and was an important compliance factor in the treatment of POAG.


The University of the South Pacific (USP) a regional university, established in 1968, serves twelve independent island nations of the South, Central and North Pacific. The University is moving towards providing more of its programmes and courses through flexible delivery using online and blended modes. As a result there has been a gradual increase in the integration of multimedia components such as audio, video, graphics, animations, and simulations as part of courseware or course packages. This increase in demand is anticipated to have further growth.

This paper focuses on the current status on the different types of multimedia currently integrated in USP coursewares, and discusses the areas of multimedia that is anticipated to grow over the next few years at USP.


If the intercropping components have a complementarit y effect in consuming environmental resources, the crop production will be more in intercropping compared to sole crops. A field experiment was carried out in during 2003 to investigate the competition and complementarity between intercropped components of corn and cowpea in nutrient uptake. A randomized complete block design (RCBD) was employed to compare the treatments including cowpea sole crop (Cp), corn sole crop (C), within-row intercropping (M1), alternate intercropping (M2) and mixed intercropping (M3). Intercropping was conducted as replacement method, where one corn plant was replaced by three cowpea plants. The results indicated that nutrient uptake by intercropping was more than sole crop which should be noticified for nutrient supply of the next crops. Cowpea was more competitive than corn in absorbing divalent cations (Ca and Mg) for its high root cation exchange capacity. However, corn was more competitive for phosphorus and potassium which is related to its expanded root system. For all intercrops, relative yield total (RYT) was significantly higher than unity, indicating that corn and cowpea were complement for nutrient consumption. This shows the advantage of intercropping in consuming an effective environmental resource for production, compared to sole crops.


In 1971 the Committee on Food and Nutrition of the American Diabetes Association published a special report entitled "Principles of Nutrition and Dietary Recommendations for Patients with Diabetes Mellitus." Publication of the report was prompted by new and emerging information regarding effects of diet on blood glucose concentration in diabetic persons and by information relating aberrations of blood lipid levels, particularly cholesterol, with atherosclerosis in the general population. The present report updates these original principles and recommendations and is based on information accumulated since 1971.


U-Pb zircon measurements from some of the basement rocks in southwestern New Mexico have ages that range from 1,650 to 1,450 m.y. The largest ore deposits occur near Silver City in the southwest part of the region studied. They are associated with Laramide alkali to calc-alkaline plutons, and their lead-isotopic compositions are the least radiogenic in the region. This lead exhibits lower-crustal-upper-mantle characteristics, and for the major producing porphyry copper deposits, the 206 Pb/ 204 Pb ratios are less than 18.0. Lead from more silicic mid-Tertiary volcanic rocks and associated ore deposits has somewhat higher 208 Pb/ 204 Pb ratios that reflect a greater crustal involvement in their origin. In a regional trend to the northeast, ore lead becomes more radiogenic, and at Hansonburg, 200 km from Silver City, lead in the Mississippi-type deposits is clearly derived from upper-crustal sources. On the 207 Pb/ 204 Pb- 206 Pb/ 204 Pb plot, data from all of the rocks and ores that we have analyzed form an array that lies below the average orogene curve of Doe and Zartman (1979). A common source is implied for the lead, the isotopic composition of which was similar to that found in 1,750-m.y.-old stratiform deposits as far apart as Pecos, New Mexico, and Jerome, Arizona. Such a composition indicates that over a large region of the southwestern United States, continental crust developed between 1,750 and 1,450 m.y. ago, possibly in an island-arc environment. Basement rocks that are ∼ 1,750 m.y. old extend northward through Colorado to Utah. Galena data obtained in previous studies show that the fraction of older sialic lead in those rocks increases toward the Archean craton in Wyoming. The crust apparently developed southward from Wyoming in stages at 2,400 m.y. ago or before, 2,100 m.y. ago, and 1,750 m.y. ago, with incorporation of older sialic material in each stage as far south as Milford, Utah.


Event-based image processing is a relatively new domain in the field of computer vision. Much research has been carried out on adapting event-based data to comply with established techniques from frame-based computer vision. On the contrary, this paper presents a descriptor which is designed specifically for direct use with event-based data and therefore can be considered to be a pure event-based vision descriptor as it only uses events emitted from event-based vision devices without transforming the data to accommodate frame-based vision techniques. This novel descriptor is known as the Post-stimulus Time-dependent Event Descriptor (P-TED). P-TED is comprised of two features extracted from event data which describe motion and the underlying pattern of transmission respectively. Furthermore a framework is presented which leverages the P-TED descriptor to classify motions within event data. This framework is compared against another state-of-the-art event-based vision descriptor as well as an established frame-based approach.


Background Epidemiological studies can promote the further understanding of the characteristics of non-syndromic supernumerary teeth(ST) and provide references for the clinical work and the basic research in the future. This study aimed to investigate the prevalence and radiographic characteristics of non-syndrome supernumerary teeth (ST) in pediatric patients attending one Shanghai hospital.MethodsCone beam computed tomography (CBCT) of 639 subjects diagnosed with non-syndromic ST among 255259 pediatric patients visiting Shanghai Stomatology Hospital were analyzed to evaluate the number, morphology, location, orientation and sagittal position of supernumerary teeth. The profile of patients and radiographic characteristics were collected. Pearson's Chi-square test and Fisher exact test were employed to estimate the potential relationships between categorical covariates.ResultsThe overall prevalence of ST was 0.25%, and the male: female ratio was 3.07:1. Most ST were single, with a conical shape and vertical orientation, located in maxillary anterior region, palatally/lingually positioned in sagittal plain and detected in mixed dentition. Malposition of adjacent permanent teeth was most common complication. The morphology of ST was significantly correlated with development and eruption of the adjacent permanent teeth, while the orientation was only associated with malposition of neighboring teeth. ConclusionsThe epidemiological and radiographic data in this study can be applied as a reference for characterization understanding and clinical treatment planning of ST in Shanghai children and adolescents.


Effects of two types of stress, restraint and footshock, on plasma glucose level, insulin secretion, and glucose uptake by the liver, heart and femoral muscle were investigated in mice. Plasma glucose level gradually increased and reached maximum at 60 min after the onset of restraint stress, while footshock stress slightly increased plasma glucose level only 15 min after the onset of the stress, and this subsequently decreased significantly. The basal plasma insulin level and glucose-induced insulin secretion significantly decreased during both the stress stimuli. Glucose uptake by the femoral muscle was slightly increased during restraint stress, and was significantly increased during footshock stress. These results suggest that the transient increase in plasma glucose level during the early period of both stress stimuli might be caused by the inhibition of insulin secretion, and subsequent decrease in plasma glucose level during the latter phase of both stress stimuli was probably due to the increase in glucose uptake by the skeletal muscle. The present study confirmed that there was a difference in stress-induced glucoregulatory changes between restraint stress and footshock stress. This difference might be due to the degree of muscle movement during the stress stimuli.


We characterized the mechanism of action of the neuregulin-non-competitive anti-HER3 therapeutic antibody 9F7-F11 that blocks the PI3K/AKT pathway, leading to cell cycle arrest and apoptosis in vitro and regression of pancreatic and breast cancer in vivo. We found that 9F7-F11 induces rapid HER3 down-regulation. Specifically, 9F7-F11-induced HER3 ubiquitination and degradation in pancreatic, breast and prostate cancer cell lines was driven mainly by the itchy E3 ubiquitin ligase (ITCH/AIP4). Overexpression of the ITCH/AIP4 inhibitor N4BP1 or small-interfering RNA-mediated knockdown of ITCH/AIP4 inhibited HER3 ubiquitination/degradation and PI3K/AKT signaling blockade induced by 9F7-F11. Moreover, 9F7-F11-mediated JNK1/2 phosphorylation led to ITCH/AIP4 activation and recruitment to HER3 for receptor ubiquitination and degradation. ITCH/AIP4 activity was activated by the deubiquitinases USP8 and USP9X, as demonstrated by RNA interference. Taken together, our results suggest that 9F7-F11-induced HER3 ubiquitination and degradation in cancer cells mainly occurs through JNK1/2-dependent ITCH/AIP4 activation.


This paper will focus on the emergence of the Swedish National Electronic Identification (eID) from an Actor-Network perspective. As being a significant part of the public sectors delivery of secure electronic services, this seemingly limited technical artifact has an interesting potential in either enabling or limiting the public sectors ambitions for better and more secure electronic services. This paper will show that the emergence can be perceived as successful, but not as a product of a long term and pre-defined strategy formulated by the government. It is rather a product of a positive and emergent synergy between the public and market sector, driven by a strong belief in its potential by the actors involved in the ongoing process. By applying a lens of actor-network theory on the emergence of the eID, we have gained useful insights into how and why different actors have affected the emergence, as well as each other. By the processes of inscribing, translating and framing, this study analyses how actors have acted and interacted during the emergence with the focus on the influence of central beliefs. We argue, that with a clear focus on the actors concerned, governments have a better opportunity to successfully plan and implement complex inter-organizational solutions for electronic identification. This paper presents one possible approach to gain a better understanding of these aspects.


Google is one of the most popular information retrieval systems among users. Spoken questions are a natural standard for penetrating the network in settings where typing on a console is not applicable. This paper describes a speech boundary to the Google search. The study entails the improvement of HandsFree voice recognition Google Search Engine to operate Google and browse the result of search without using a keyboard or mouse. Speech recognition uses are becoming more and more beneficial nowadays. Digital processing of speech signal and voice recognition process is very important for fast and precise automatic voice recognition technology. Here we present a new service which is not currently accessible in Google search engine (GSE). It suggests the enactment of speech recognition input in GSE. The paper stimulates an older method from n-gram language modelling to scale training data. The algorithm is implemented efficiently using a MapReduce/SS (Spectral Subtraction) Table framework based on HMM and Gaussian Mixture models. Keywords— Automatic speech recognition; acoustic modelling; Hidden Markov models; phonetic context; back-off; n-gram; distributed storage.


Cathodic current on a metal tends to increase the neighboring to the metal surface, especially during electro-deposition in seawater. The increased pH at metal/seawater interface results in precipitation of brucite crystal structure- as following formula; , that is typical mechanism of the main calcareous deposits-compound in electro deposited coating films. In this study, the effects of anode and current density on deposition rate, composition structure and morphology of the deposited films were systematically investigated by scanning electron microscopy(SEM) and x-ray diffraction(XRD), respectively in order to overcome the problems such as deposition rate and a weak adhesion between deposit film and metal surface. The adhesion and corrosion resistance of the coating films were also evaluated by anodic polarization test. The electro-deposited film formed by using AZ31-Mg anode had the most appropriate physical properties. Weight gain of electro-deposit films increased with increasing cathodic current. Electro-deposit prepared at current density shows better adhesion than that formed at .


Business rescue is an important innovation introduced in South Africa by Chapter 6 (sections 128 to 154) of the Companies Act 71 of 2008 ('the Act'), with the aim of rehabilitating financially distressed companies and restoring them to financial health by placing them under the temporary supervision of a business-rescue practitioner ('BRP'). The BRP is tasked with developing and implementing a business-rescue plan approved by creditors for the recovery of the company, while the Act affords a temporary moratorium in respect of creditors' claims against it. Business rescue has replaced the judicial management procedure, which had proved unsuccessful in saving companies from liquidation under the previous companies legislation.
The article discusses, in particular, the impact of business-rescue proceedings on SARS's claims for tax liabilities owed by the affected company, both prior and subsequent to the commencement of business-rescue proceedings, in the light of a clash of views between SARS and business-rescue practitioners as to the correct treatment of SARS's claims for tax against a company under business rescue.
The particular issue which is proving controversial arises when the company placed under business rescue not only has outstanding tax liabilities to SARS, but has failed to render the required returns for the tax periods prior to the commencement of business rescue in respect of income tax, VAT and other employee taxes such as PAYE, UIF and skills-development levies. The question is whether, as SARS apparently contends, taxes that arise from the belated submissions of outstanding tax returns must in all cases be treated as post-commencement financing as contemplated in section 135 of the Act; or whether, as contended by the business-rescue practitioners' profession, such claims constitute pre-commencement claims, which do not enjoy any preference over other unsecured creditors.
The article discusses the purpose of business rescue as stipulated in the Act and the status of SARS as a creditor in business-rescue proceedings according to the recent decision in Commissioner, South African Revenue Service v Beginsel NO and Others 2013 (1) SA 307 (C) at 314E-G, paragraphs [24]-[25].
It is then suggested that, to resolve the controversy, three pivotal issues must be considered: (i) whether, irrespective of the tax period for which the tax is due, liability for tax arises only on the date of assessment, with the result that in the case of a post-commencement assessment, the liability must be treated as a post-commencement claim. This raises the further question as to whether the differences relating to the assessment of income tax and of VAT (and other self-assessment taxes), require a different conclusion as to when the tax liability arises; (ii) whether, if any tax liability arises only after an assessment post-business rescue, SARS's claims in respect thereof constitutes post-commencement finance as contemplated in sections 135(2) and (3), thereby conferring on SARS the preference accorded to such claims; and (iii) whether the liability for income tax in relation to pre-commencement tax periods as a result of a post-commencement assessment, in any event, constitutes a preferent claim by SARS 'arising out of the costs of the business-rescue proceedings' as contemplated in section 135(3) of the Act.
The analysis concludes, with reference to case law and the provisions of the Tax Administration Act 28 of 2011, that the tax liability for VAT does not depend on an assessment being made, but that it arises continuouslyand periodically on the dates specified as the required self-assessment and payment dates for each tax period, in terms of sections 27 and 28, read with section 38, of the Value-Added Tax Act 89 of 1991. On the other hand, in relation to income tax, it is submitted that the correct conclusion is that, given the special statutory rules for arriving at taxable income and the requirement that the tax assessment is made by SARS on the basis of the taxpayer's return for the relevant tax year, the income-tax liability arises only on assessment by SARS, and if this is done after business rescue has commenced, the liability will arise during the post-commencement period.
The question that then still remains is whether this tax liability will constitute 'post-commencement finance' for the purposes of section 135. The article concludes that in light of the purpose of business rescue and in the context of section 135 as a whole, SARS's claim for income tax in these circumstances does not qualify as post-commencement finance.
The article further concludes that, on a proper interpretation of section 135(3), neither VAT (and the other self-assessment taxes) relating to prebusiness-rescue tax periods, nor income tax relating to such periods (but only assessed after business rescue has commenced), can constitute claims arising 'out of the costs of business-rescue proceedings'.
The article distinguishes, in this regard, however, VAT (or similar self-assessment employee taxes) and income-tax liabilities arising in relation to the conduct and operation, post-commencement, of the company's business by the business-rescue practitioner. Such tax liabilities would probably fall into the category of claims arising out of the costs of the business-rescue proceedings, on the analogy of Van Zyl NO v Commissioner for Inland Revenue 1997 (1) SA 883 (C) at 892I-893B, which deals with tax due on post-liquidation interest earned by the company in liquidation.
It is further submitted that where the company has outstanding pre-commencement tax returns, any late assessment and resulting liability is coincidental and fortuitous, and that there is not a sufficiently real and close connection between cause and effect, which has been held by the Courts must be present in applying the phrase 'arise out of' in a statute.
Finally, the article discusses the application of section 22(3) of the VAT Act, which gives SARS a 'clawback' claim for input tax deducted by the company where there are unpaid creditors who have not been paid for supplies made to the company within twelve months after the expiry of the tax period within which the relevant deductions were made. In such event, the tax fraction on the unpaid consideration is deemed to be tax charged in respect of a taxable supply made by the company in the period following the expiry of the twelve-month period.
The article concludes that business rescue does not affect SARS's claims in terms of section 22(3): where the twelve-month period ended prior to the commencement of business-rescue proceedings, SARS will have a pre-commencement claim for the deemed VAT under section 22(3). But where the twelve-month period ends after business-rescue proceedings have commenced the conclusion is that because the deemed VAT relates to a taxable supply made in a tax period that falls during the business-rescue proceedings and arises from the continued failure to pay the suppliers while the company is under business rescue, it is properly to be treated as a claim arising out of the costs of the business-rescue proceedings. The result is that SARS would probably enjoy the 'super preference' conferred on such claims by section 135(3) of the Act. It is further submitted that the proviso to section 22(3) dealing with compromises with creditors has no application to business-rescue proceedings.
The article cautions that, apart from the case of Beginsel NO, there are no authoritative judicial precedents providing clear guidance on these issues, and that the statutory provisions involved lack clarity and certainty. It is suggested that the efficacy and success of the business-rescue process would be advanced by providing greater clarity on these difficult issues through appropriate legislative amendment.


Calcium-ion batteries represent a promising alternative to the current lithium-ion batteries. Nevertheless, calcium-ion intercalating materials in nonaqueous electrolytes are scarce, probably due to the difficulties in finding suitable host materials. Considering that research into calcium-ion batteries is in its infancy, discovering and characterizing new host materials would be critical to further development. Here, we demonstrate FeV3O9∙1.2H2O as a high-performance calcium-ion battery cathode material that delivers a reversible discharge capacity of 303 mAh g−1 with a good cycling stability and an average discharge voltage of ~2.6 V (vs. Ca/Ca2+). The material was synthesized via a facile co-precipitation method. Its reversible capacity is the highest among calcium-ion battery materials, and it is the first example of a material with a capacity much larger than that of conventional lithium-ion battery cathode materials. Bulk intercalation of calcium into the host lattice contributed predominantly to the total capacity at a lower rate, but became comparable to that due to surface adsorption at a higher rate. This stimulating discovery will lead to the development of new strategies for obtaining high energy density calcium-ion batteries.


Laboratory colonies of the cotton bollworm, Helicoverpa zea were established from field populations of larvae collected from Bt and conventional crops in Arkansas and surrounding states during 2002 and 2003. Progeny, usually those from the 1 st to 3 rd generations following colonization, were exposed to a range of Cry1Ac endotoxin protein in a standard diet incorporation assay. Concentration-response regressions were compared to those obtained with similar procedures at Mississippi State University during 1992 and 1993. Resulting LC50s for several colonies, especially those established from larvae surviving on Bt crops, were higher than those measured prior to the commercial release of Bt cotton and Bt corn. Assays with progeny from field colonies crossed and backcrossed to a laboratory susceptible colony illustrated dominant or incompletely dominant inheritance with a maternal influence. Trends in survivorship on the treated diet were confirmed in assays with larvae fed Bt cotton leaf tissue. Results suggest that field selection for Bt resistance may be measurable by collecting larvae from the field environment and conducting traditional assays of the progeny in the laboratory. Genetic variability in H. zea populations to Cry1Ac appears to be a component of field control problems, but lower LC50s in colonies from conventional crops suggest that susceptible insects from non-Bt crop hosts often dilute frequencies of Bt resistance genes in H. zea. The higher LC50s in colonies from Bt crops and a few late-season colonies from conventional cotton illustrate the genetic potential for resistance and the need to continue to manage selection pressure.


Anomaly detection is the process of identifying nonconforming behaviour. Many approaches from machine learning to statistical methods exist to detect behaviour that deviate from its norm. These non-conformances of specifications can stem from failures in the system or undocumented changes of the system during its evolution. However, no generic solutions exist for classifying and identifying these non-conformances. In this paper, we present the CRI-Model (Cause, Reaction, Impact), which is a taxonomy based on a study of anomaly types in the literature, an analysis of system outages in major cloud companies and evolution scenarios which describe and implement changes in Cyber-Physical Production Systems. The goal of the taxonomy is to be usable for different objectives like discover gaps in the detection process, determine components most often affected by a particular anomaly type or describe system evolution. While the dimensions of the taxonomy are fixed, the categories can be adapted to different domains. We show and validate the applicability of the taxonomy to distributed cloud systems using a large data set of anomaly reports and cyber-physical production systems by categorizing common changes of an evolution benchmarking plant.


Non-ionic hydroxyethylcellulose (HEC) has limited mucoadhesive properties for application in transmucosal drug delivery. In this study, HEC was chemically modified by reaction with glycidyl methacrylate. This allowed introducing the methacryloyl groups to HEC structure to make it capable of forming covalent bonds with the sulfhydryl groups present in the mucin glycoprotein to achieve enhanced mucoadhesive properties. The results showed a successful modification of HEC as confirmed by 1H NMR and FTIR spectroscopies. The quantification of methacryloyl moieties was conducted using HPLC. The toxicity studies using in vivo planaria acute toxicity assay, in vivo planaria fluorescent test, and in vitro MTT assay with Caco-2 cell line confirmed that the chemical modification of HEC does not result in any toxicological effects. Mucoadhesive wafers were developed based on parent and modified HEC as a model dosage form for buccal delivery. The mucoadhesive properties of modified HEC assessed using a tensile test were found to be significantly better compared to unmodified HEC.


The study examined climate change and growth rate of food grain output in Nigeria from 1970-2010. Time series data of maize, rice, millet, sorghum, wheat, temperature and rainfall were used for the study. Data analysis involved the use of Descriptive Statistics and the annual additive series (Trend) Analysis measured in years by getting the annual average of parameters which depict the factual position of climate change by variations of the weather parameters over time. Findings showed that the preferred weather parameters (rainfall and temperature), and the food grain (maize, rice, millet, sorghum, wheat) exhibited significant changes in trend of growth during the 1970-2010 period. Rainfall grew at the compound growth rate of 5.3 % more than temperature per annum. The compound growth rate of maize, millet, sorghum, and wheat output were less than the compound growth rate of rice by 0.9%, 6.5%, 5.9% and 6.4% respectively, and the compound growth rate of maize, rice, sorghum, and wheat outputs were more than the Original Research Article Igwe et al.; JSRR, Article no. JSRR.2014.001 398 compound growth rate of millet output by 5.6%, 6.5%, 0.6% and 0.1% respectively. Acceleration was witnessed in the growth rate of temperature, rainfall, sorghum, and millet; deceleration for wheat, while stagnation was witnessed in the growth rate of rice and maize over the 1970-2010 periods. There was significant difference in the average growth rate of rainfall and each of maize, millet, sorghum and wheat yield; and no significant difference between rainfall and rice. There was no significant difference also in the average growth rate of temperature and each of maize, millet, sorghum and wheat yield; but there was significant difference between temperature and rice. The conclusion of the study is that food grain yield was influenced by rainfall and temperature. It is therefore recommended that if increase in food grain production is to be sustained, proper irrigation and drainage should be applied.


The main objective of this research paper is to investigate the causal relationship between sectoral development (namely: agriculture, oil, industry and services sectors) and economic growth in Saudi Arabia over the period 1970 to 2012 using multivariate econometric analysis approach. Real GDP is used as proxy for economic growth; value added for agriculture, oil and gas, industry and services sectors is used as proxy for inter-sectoral development. The results suggest that there exists bidirectional causality among the sectoral output of Saudi economy at least in the short run. The findings of this study suggest that the income of Saudi economy largely depends on the income generating from services and industrial sectors, and the income growth of these two sectors, in turn, depends on growth of oil and gas sector. The findings also revealed that the income growth of agricultural sector largely depends on growth of industrial sector. The overall research outcomes also suggest that the oil and gas sector continue to be the dominant driver of other sectoral output growth.


Because shaking modes of super high-rise buildings are very complicated, it is not enough to perform health-monitoring only for the whole structures. We try to extract story-by-story shear-wave velocities applying the deconvolution method to microtremor records measured at super high-rise buildings. The shear-wave propagation (including reflection, transmission, and interferometry at the boundary of stories) extracted from microtremor records are compared with those simulated ones using 2-D frame models with different mass-and-rigidity distributions which lead to different shaking modes. Story-by-story shear-wave velocities can be extracted from buildings whose shaking modes of all the stories are mainly shear modes. However, the shear-wave velocities of the buildings cannot be extracted successfully, if the stories are shaking in pure bending mode, because no inter-story shear deformation happened, the apparent shear-rigidities of these stories can be seen as infinite, which lead shear-wave travel times to zero.


This article presents the inter-disciplinary improvised performance series Shared Agendas , an annual event at the University of Otago, Aotearoa New Zealand, as a vehicle for reinforcing effective democratic community interaction. I am referring to interaction that is inclusive, open, non-hierarchical, non-judgemental and socially responsive and responsible. In couching these inclusive spontaneous events as a form of academic meeting, where members work together to solve problems and find a common ground of understanding or agreement, I contend that the artists involved are practising the kind of socially concerned democratic process that we might wish for all groups, organisations or nation states worldwide. Dance therapist Adwoa Lemieux (1988) suggests that, within a danced improvisation, any difficulties and conflicts of interest are evident, physical, real, immediate and therefore immediately resolvable. In this form of community engagement, the conversation is directed towards co-operation, mutual sharing and communication between the performers, technical personnel and the viewers as active critical witnesses. Because of the intense engagement and preoccupation with the process by all participants, including the audience, this kind of performance meeting becomes what Schechner (1988) terms, a ' living entity' or microcosm of society. In describing this theatre of inter-relationship, I draw on the literatures of art and social justice theory, deep ecology, cognitive biology, somatics, perception psychology, education and dance in order to support this discussion.


Abstract  Currently, hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) transplantation is widely used in the therapy of hematological malignancies, non-malignant refractory anemia, genetic diseases and certain tumors with satisfactory therapeutic efficacy. HSC sources used for transplantation include bone marrow, mobilized peripheral blood and neonate umbilical cord blood. However, for many patients, sufficient number of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) -matched HSC cannot be found for transplantation, because the number of HSC in these tissues is small and HLA-identical donors are rare. Thus, in vitro generation of HSC has recently been focused. At present, the origin of HSC is hPSC, including hESC and hiPSC, which is worth to be the new origin of HSC transplantation. However, to generate functional hematopoietic stem cells which have efficient multi-lineage differentiation and in vivo engraftment potentials still is a big challenge to be confronted. In this review, the recent technical progress in HSC generation is summarizd, and the problems to be solved and new challenges to be confronted were discussed.


Introduction. Adrenal myelolipoma is a rare tumor that is benign in nature, usually asymptomatic, unilateral, and nonsecreting. It is composed of variable mixture of mature adipose tissue and hematopoietic elements and develops within the adrenal gland. With the widespread use of cross-sectional imaging modalities such as ultrasonography and computed tomography, the incidental detection of these tumors is increasing in frequency. Case Presentation. We report a case of adrenal myelolipoma in a 63-year-old Kashmiri male, who presented with pain in the right upper abdomen. Physical examination was unremarkable. Ultrasound abdomen showed the presence of a hyperechoic mass in the right suprarenal region with undefined margins. Contrast-enhanced computed tomography (CECT) scan of abdomen revealed a well-defined, round lesion in the right suprarenal region with heterogeneous attenuation suggesting the possibility of myelolipoma. The patient was subjected to right adrenalectomy and his postoperative course was uneventful. The histopathological evaluation of the mass confirmed the initial diagnosis of adrenal myelolipoma. Conclusion. Although mostly discovered as an "incidentaloma", the diagnosis of adrenal myelolipoma warrants thorough diagnostic study. Imaging techniques such as ultrasonography and CT scans as well as biochemical studies are useful for indicating the best treatment taking into account the size of the mass and possible hormone production. Surgical resection is advocated through extraperitoneal approach as it minimizes postoperative complications and leads to quicker recovery.


This paper presents a new method for solving face gender identification and face classification problems. The proposed method uses gradient features for feature extraction and support vector machine for classification. Experiments for the proposed method have been conducted on two public data sets CalTech and AT&T. The results show that the proposed method could improve the classification rates.


Background: Peripheral blood S100A9+ monocytic myeloid derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) is a predictive factor for treatment response of chemotherapy and epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR-TKI) of lung adenocarcinoma patients. Tumor associated macrophages (TAMs), which might derived from peripheral blood monocyte, is also a predictive factor to treatment response of EGFR-TKI. However, the correlation of S100A9+ monocytic MDSCs and TAMs is not well understood in lung adenocarcinoma patients. Methods: Stage IV lung adenocarcinoma patients with paired formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tumor tissue and peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMCs) were enrolled. CD68+ cells were calculated in 3 different 200X microscopic field of FFPE as TAMs, and S100A9+ cells also calculated with same method as MDSCs in tumor microenvironment. S100A9+ MDSCs percentage was calculated by flow cytometry from CD14+S100A9+ in PBMC. Results: Twenty-four lung adenocarcinoma patients with paired FFPE tissue and PBMC data were enrolled. PBMC S100A9+ MDSCs percentage is 17.9± 13.6; average number of S100A9+ cells and CD68+ TAMs in tumor tissue is 96.8±45.7 and 79.3±13.3, respectively. The correlation between S100A9+ MDSCs percentage and tissue S100A9+ cells and CD68+ TAMs is significant (Spearman r = 0.54, p = 0.003 for S100A9+; Spearman r = 0.03, p = 0.03 for CD68; n = 24) CD68+ and S100A9+ cells were also correlated (Spearman r = 0.41, p = 0.04, n = 24). Clinically, high or low (cutoff value as median number) tissue S100A9+ cells and CD68+ TAMs were both predictive factors for treatment PFS for EGFR-TKI. (For CD68, median: 56, high vs low TAM PFS = 7.4 vs 15.4 months, p = 0.04; For S100A9+ cells, median: 76, high vs low S100A9+ cells PFS = 7.2 vs 13.6 months, p = 0.05) Conclusion: Peripheral blood S100A9+ MDSCs is well correlated to tumor tissue S100A9+ cells and CD68+ TAMs. Both tissue S100A9+ cells and CD68+ TAMs were predictive factors for EGFR-TKI PFS. Our study suggests that peripheral blood S100A9+ monocytic MDSC might be one of the origin of tumor tissue CD68+ TAMs. Citation Format: Kang-Yun Lee, Po-Hao Feng. Correlation of peripheral blood S100A9+ myeloid-derived suppressor cells and tumor-associated macrophages in lung adenocarcinoma patient. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 5142.


The arctic-alpine White Mountain Orchid (Pseudorchis albida) has so-far resisted attempts at in vitro reproduction from seed, but a practical method is required for its conservation. We hypothesised that, having similar seeds to the notoriously intractable orchid Cypripedium calceolus, immature seeds can germinate in vitro. We collected mature and immature seeds from the Italian Alps, and sowed these in sterile conditions on Malmgren's basal nutrient medium modified with either phytohormones or complex organic media (COM). Different COM treatments included coconut milk, banana powder, malt extract and yeast extract, all at a concentration of 5%. Phytohormones, all at 20 mg L, included 6-benzylaminopurine (BA), gibberellic acid (GA3), kinetin and thidiazuron (TDZ), added to autoclaved growth media via filter sterilization. After six months we found absolutely no germination of mature seeds for any treatment. Only 3.9% of immature seeds germinated in the control treatment and germination in all COM treatments was not significantly greater than this. However, most phytohormones significantly increased germination of immature seed and promoted protocorm development, BA being most effective (50.5% germination) – this method can therefore be used to propagate the species.


The study aimed at examining the knowledge, attitudes and training needs of extension agents for farm management practices and marketing extension in Jordan. Data were collected from all public agents using four 5-point Likert-type scales. Cronbach's alpha coefficients ranged between 0.81 – 0.94, which indicated the internal consistency of the study scales. Parametric and non-parametric tests were used to analyze the data. The extension services were found to be largely oriented to technical and production aspects, as less than one tenth of extension agents indicated that they offer general extension services in farm management or marketing extension. Few agents gave high ratings to their knowledge of farm management techniques. However, most agents attached high importance to farm management and marketing skills in an increasingly competitive environment. Similarly, most agents gave high ratings to their need for practical training to improve their farm management and marketing skills using multi-day workshops, irrespective of their attributes. Knowledge and need for training scale ratings were negatively correlated, which suggests that lower knowledge is associated with higher need for training. Coordinated efforts are momentous to enable agents to provide farmers with a basis for sound decision-making, and the skills to carry out profitable farm operations.


Summary: Harmon et al demonstrate that differential expression of an actin nucleator, the formin, Dia1, drives cell sorting and maintains distinct morphological domains within an epithelial tissue. This illuminates the possible utility of evolving a large formin family in orchestrating the compartmentalization and differentiation of complex tissues. Abstract: Although implicated in adhesion, few studies address how actin assembly factors guide cell positioning in multicellular tissue. The formin, Dia1, localizes to the proliferative basal layer of epidermis. In organotypic cultures, Dia1 depletion reduced basal cell density and resulted in stratified tissue with disorganized differentiation and proliferative markers. Since crowding induces differentiation in epidermal tissue, we hypothesized that Dia1 allows cells to reach densities amenable to differentiation prior to stratification. Consistent with this hypothesis, forced crowding of Dia1-deficient cells rescued transcriptional abnormalities. Dia1 promotes rapid growth of lateral adhesions, a behavior consistent with the ability of cells to remain monolayered when crowded. In aggregation assays, cells sorted into distinct layers based on Dia1 expression status. These results suggested that as basal cells proliferate, reintegration and packing of Dia1-positive daughter cells is favored while Dia1-negative cells tend to delaminate to a suprabasal compartment. These data demonstrate how formin expression patterns play a crucial role in constructing distinct domains within stratified epithelia.


Because of concerns about safety and expense associated with continuous subcutaneous insulin infusion (CSII), all people who had used CSII as of July 1982 were identified. Annual follow-up has resulted in data for up to 61 mo. Of the 92 nonpregnant registrees, 31 were <20 yr old, 36 were 20–29, and 25 were 30 yr or older. Two deaths occurred in 1780 person-months of pump use. The cumulative proportion on the pump (CPOP) or actuarial CSII continuance proportion was 11%. There was no significant difference between sexes or between ages for men, but despite eliminating pregnant women, those ≥30 yr old had a CPOP of 0.22, compared with 0.11 for those <30 yr (P = .03). Continuance curves were no different for those beginning CSII with or without complications or for those with or without good glucose control. Those who began at patient request did have better CPOP than thoe who began at physician request (P = .05). Physician perception of clinical, mechanical, or psychosocial problems while on the pump was not predictor of continuance curves as measured by CPOP. Of the 17 physicians queried at the latest update, 9 physicians have 16 current CSII users; these 9 have only 14% of their patients in the original cohort currently on CSII. This is compared with the 3 physicians who have 34 current users and 60% of their original cohort on CSII. Four physicians no longer use CSII. Devices for CSII cost $131/person-month of use. For those discontinuing use within 3 mo of initiation of CSII, per person-month cost is $1517. These population-based data provide further information for use in deciding whether to use CSII as a therapeutic option.


We investigate the critical endline of the finite temperature phase transition of QCD around the SU(3)-flavor symmetric point at zero chemical potential. We employ the renormalization-group improved Iwasaki gauge action and non-perturbatively $O(a)$-improved Wilson-clover fermion action. The critical endline is determined by using the intersection point of kurtosis, employing the multi-parameter, multi-ensemble reweighting method to calculate observables off the SU(3)-symmetric point, at the temporal size $N_{\rm T}$=6 and lattice spacing as low as $a \approx 0.19$ fm. We confirm that the slope of the critical endline takes the value of $-2$, and find that the second derivative is positive, at the SU(3)-flavor symmetric point on the Columbia plot parametrized with the strange quark mass $m_s$ and degenerated up-down quark mass $m_{\rm l}$.


This paper studies the effect of railway track design parameters on the expected long-term degradation of track geometry. The study assumes a geometrically perfect and straight track along with spatial invariability, except for the presence of discrete sleepers. A frequency-domain two-layer model is used of a discretely supported rail coupled with a moving unsprung mass. The susceptibility of the track to degradation is objectively quantified by calculating the mechanical energy dissipated in the substructure under a moving train axle for variations of different track parameters. Results show that, apart from the operational train speed, the ballast/substructure stiffness is the most significant parameter influencing energy dissipation. Generally, the degradation increases with the train speed and with softer substructures. However, stiff subgrades appear more sensitive to particular train velocities, in a regime which is mostly relevant for conventional trains (100-200 km/h) and less for high-speed operation, where a stiff subgrade is always favorable and can reduce the sensitivity to degradation substantially, with roughly a factor up to 7. Also railpad stiffness, sleeper distance and rail cross-sectional properties are found to have considerable effect, with higher expected degradation rates for increasing railpad stiffness, increasing sleeper distance and decreasing rail profile bending stiffness. Unsprung vehicle mass and sleeper mass have no significant influence, however, only against the background of the assumption of an idealized (invariant and straight) track. Apart from dissipated mechanical energy, the suitability of the dynamic track stiffness is explored as an engineering parameter to assess the sensitivity to degradation. It is found that this quantity is inappropriate to assess the design of an idealized track.


This article discusses the Education of Youth and Adults in Brazil as a right and as a field of studies and political intervention with practices and reflections of distinct or even antagonistic political-pedagogical bases. Such reflections are part of the debate on the fundamentals and forms of relationship between education, work and human emancipation. A key argument of the text is the conviction that young and adults are subjects of rights and the fulfillment of one of them - access and permanence in school - depends on the (re) cognition, by all those involved in the field, of the nature and the potential of the relationship of these subjects to the worlds of work. In this qualitative study, the authors conducted document analysis and data from two qualitative educational researches. The data was taken through semi-structured interviews, participant observation and field work notes. It was argued on the centrality of singular and collective experience of student-worker to mediate relations between work and education in the curriculum of youth and adult education. The authors emphasize the work as a place where workers make permanent production, mobilization and ( re) interpretation of knowledge and values. They put into circulation in the school context this knowledge and values of their working experience, generating tensions that drive the rapprochement between school knowledge and work experience. The authors emphasize the relevance of new studies on the Integrated Curriculum and other curricular practices that enhance the work as a singular and fundamental human experience.


The mechanism by which remote ischaemic preconditioning (RIPC) exerts its cardioprotective effects is not fully understood. Exosomes are lipid bound membranous vesicles that range from 30-100nm in size. With increasing interest in the scientific community about these vesicles as a mode of intercellular communication, in this project we explore the possible mechanistic role of human plasma exosomes in RIPC. We first developed a consistent and reliable model for the isolation of human plasma exosomes through a process of differential centrifugation and ultracentrifugation. Further scientific models for biomarker analysis and quantification of the isolated human plasma exosomes were developed and validated through western blotting and flow cytometry and nanosight analysis. In addition we successfully developed a protocol for the isolation of microRNA from our human plasma exosomes. Confident with our isolation and biomarker analysis models we investigated the content differences in human plasma exosomes isolated after a RIPC (3 cycles of fore arm cuff inflation and deflation) and compared those to control human plasma exosomes. Our results show that RIPC lead to a rise in plasma exosome concentration with a peak rise in exosome concentrations occurring only after the last 5 minutes of cuff deflation (reperfusion) in the 3 cycles of the RIPC protocol. We probed both RIPC and control human plasma exosomes for known pro-survival protein kinases of the RISK pathway (P13K, MEK 1/2, AKT, ERK1/2) though were not able to detect these in any sample. We then tested the hypothesis that the cardio-protection conferred through RIPC is mediated through circulating plasma exosomes. RIPC and control human plasma exosomes were added to an invitro model of ischaemia reperfusion using rat cardiomyocyte cells. Interestingly our results demonstrate that human plasma exosomes are cardio-protective against ischaemia reperfusion injury irrespective if they are control or RIPC plasma exosomes. The cardio-protection conferred by human plasma exosomes is comparable to Insulin, a known cardio-protective agent, used as our positive control. These results suggest that plasma exosomes in general are cardio-protective and may not have a mechanistic role in the cardio-protection conferred through RIPC. Further experiments must be carried out to ascertain the exact mechanism through which human plasma exosomes confer cardio-protection.


Photocatalytic inactivation of Enterococcus faecalis using TiO(2) suspensions was investigated and compared to the inactivation of the most commonly used faecal indicator strain Escherichia coli. In contrast to the inactivation in pure deionized water, disinfection of effluents from the biological process of an urban wastewater plant showed a longer initial lag phase and higher survival fractions after several hours of irradiation. Moreover, the fluctuation of the composition of the effluents strongly affects the overall inactivation rate, not directly related to changes in the values of organic matter content. Additionally, it was found that E. faecalis seems to be more resistant than E.coli towards the photocatalytic treatment. These results could be related to the differences in the cell wall structure of both microorganisms. The main conclusion of this work is that attention must be paid when transferring results obtained for model organism to real bacteria consortia and from laboratory experiments with deionized water to effluents from sewage plants.


In this paper, we investigate bifurcation processes for the mean eld theory (MFT) annealing applied to traveling salesman problems (TSPs). Due to the symmetries of the TSP free energy function, some special bifurcations occur: cyclic symmetry breaking bifurcations and reverse symmetry breaking bifurcations. Saddle-node bifurcations also occur. Which type of bifurcations occurs depends on the symmetry of the eigenvector that corresponds to the zero eigenvalue mode of the free energy curvature matrix at the bifurcation point. In the MFT annealing process, a sequence of bifurcations occurs and the bifurcation structure a ects the quality of the annealing solution. It is shown that the annealing solution in this process is not unique in general, and it is not always the optimal solution. Our approach can also be applied to the Potts spin model and its bifurcation structure is almost the same as that of the MFT. The practical implications of our results are also discussed.


At the first stage of the electron cyclotron emission imaging (ECEI) diagnostic project on HT-7, a 16-channel vertical-resolved ECEI diagnostic has been developed and installed on HT-7 tokamak to measure electron cyclotron emission with a temporal resolution of 0.5 μsec. The system works at a fixed frequency of 97.5 GHz. The sample volumes of the system are aligned vertically with a vertical channel spacing of 11 mm, and can be shifted across the plasma cross-section by varying the toroidal magnetic field. The high spatial resolution of the system is achieved by utilizing a low-cost linear mixer/receiver array and an optical imaging system. The focus location may be shifted horizontally when translating one of the optical imaging elements. The details of the system design and laboratory testing of the ECEI optics are presented together with the preliminary experimental results.


Tumor progression necessitates the induction of blood vessels that converge upon the tumor and enhance the diffusibility of oxygen and nutrients. Approaches to treat cancer by antiangiogenic therapy are therefore straightforward, and there is a great need for suitable in vitro systems to test antiangiogenic agents. In the present study, embryoid bodies (EBs) differentiated from totipotent mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells and cultivated using the spinner flask technique are introduced as an in vitro system for antiangiogenesis research. ES cells effectively differentiated endothelial cells within the three-dimensional tissue of EBs. The total area of capillary-like structures, which were positive for CD31 (platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule, PECAM-1), was assessed by confocal laser scanning microscopy and image analysis of a series of optical sections. Endothelial differentiation occurred between Day 4-5 and Day 8 of EB development. Within 7 days, 100% of EBs contained capillary-like structures. Suramin, tamoxifen, tetrahydrocortisol, and a combination of tetrahydrocortisol and heparin were tested for their antiangiogenic capacity in the EB system and were found to efficiently inhibit endothelial differentiation. Diffusion studies of a 10-kd 2',7'-bis-(2-carboxyethyl)-5-(and-6)-carboxyfluorescein (BCECF)-dextran and the fluorescent, amphiphilic agent doxorubicin in avascular and vascularized EBs revealed that the endothelial structures formed functional vessels that facilitated diffusion. The diffusion coefficient D for doxorubicin was 296 x 10(-9) cm2 s(-1) in vascularized 8-day-old EBs, ie, about 10-fold larger than in avascular 3-day-old EBs (18 x 10(-9) cm2 s(-1)) and EBs treated with suramin (14 x 10(-9) cm2 s(-1)), tamoxifen (13.5 x 10(-9) cm2 s(-1)), and tetrahydrocortisol/heparin (18.5 x 10(-9) cm2 s(-1)). Consequently, avascular EBs treated with antiangiogenic agents developed central necrosis, which was absent in vascularized EBs. Our findings indicate that EBs are a suitable in vitro model system to study the effects of antiangiogenic agents in a three-dimensional tissue context. Furthermore, EBs provide a unique model to investigate the diffusion of anticancer agents in a tissue in both the avascular and vascularized states.


Buried bit-line NAND (BiNAND) Flash is newly proposed to achieve low voltage programming/erase and facilitate multi-level storage. Due to the buried bit-line, the required high program/erase voltage for FN tunneling can be divided between word-line and bit-line and therefore minimizes the disturbance. The negative programmed threshold voltage also facilitates the operation of multi-level storage due to high array conductivity.


This paper investigates the stability of the interval type-2 (IT2) fuzzy-model-based (FMB) control systems. An IT2 T-S fuzzy model is developed to represent the nonlinear plant subject to parameter uncertainties, which are captured by the lower and upper membership functions. An IT2 fuzzy model is then be proposed to close the feedback loop. It is not required that the IT2 fuzzy controller shares the same premise membership functions or the same number of fuzzy rules as those of the IT2 T-S fuzzy model. Consequently, it offers a greater design flexibility to the IT2 fuzzy controllers. However, the mismatched premise membership functions are not favourable to the development of stability conditions and thus leads to a conservative stability analysis result. In this paper, with the consideration of the lower and upper membership functions, which carry the information of the nonlinearities and parameter uncertainties of the nonlinear plant, the stability of the IT2 FMB control systems is investigated based on the Lyapunov stability theory. Stability conditions in terms of linear matrix inequalities are developed to guarantee the stability of the IT2 FMB control systems and synthesize the IT2 fuzzy controller. A simulation example is given to demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed approach.


The paper presents best practices and results from projects in four countries dedicated to the creation of corpora of computer-mediated communication and social media interactions (CMC). Even though there are still many open issues related to building and annotating corpora of that type, there already exists a range of accessible solutions which have been tested in projects and which may serve as a starting point for a more precise discussion of how future standards for CMC corpora may (and should) be shaped like.


OBJECTIVES
To demonstrate that with carbamazepine (CBZ), positive results of bioequivalence trials in healthy volunteers cannot be extrapolated to patients because metabolic enzyme induction fundamentally changes the pharmacokinetics of CBZ.

METHODS
Bioequivalence trials were simulated assuming normal and induced metabolic clearance. The relevant pharmacokinetic parameters were drawn from published studies.

RESULTS
The Cmax ratio depends on the clearance. A generic product which is fully compliant with the regulatory requirements in healthy volunteers could be non-bioequivalent in patients with enhanced elimination.

CONCLUSION
A statement of bioequivalence of CBZ formulations, based on a single-dose study performed in healthy subjects, may not hold for a target patient population in the steady state.


Beamforming algorithms for UAV swarms are investigated. The swarm is modeled as a morphing volumetric random array and it is assumed that each element is enabled with orientation awareness. These algorithms are examined to improve the side lobe level for swarms operating as sparse arrays with small numbers of agents or large inter-agent distances. These are also examined to enable more complex beamforming operations for heterogeneous swarms composed of agents with different radiation patterns and/or polarizations. Simulated results based on amplitude tapering algorithms are presented to illustrate the concept, but experimental campaigns have demonstrated the utility of orientation awareness and its ability to provide side information that can enable complex beamforming operations.