As the crossroads of the Mediterranean and a stepping-stone between Africa and Europe, the Italian peninsula has always whetted the appetite of foreign powers. Its identity is rooted in centuries of invasion, and many different groups have inhabited its coasts and cities. The migration of Goths, Lombards, Arabs, and Turks, and, later, domination by the French, Spanish, and Austrian monarchies have left a deep mark on the cultural and genetic heritage of the Italian people. The country's political unification as an independent state (1861) meant coming to terms with a composite, variegated population that spoke different dialects from one valley to the next, and in which only roughly 2.5 percent spoke the standard Italian language. Moreover, there was a clear economic divide between regions, with intensive agriculture in the north and areas with grain-based extensive agriculture on latifundia in the south; some scholars have even seen the Italian unification as the annexation of a foreign territory by the north (Schneider 1997).

Keywords:

immigration;
labor;
poverty;
globalization;
capitalism


Two-thirds of sodium filtered by the renal glomerulus is reabsorbed from the proximal tubule via a sodium/proton exchanger isoform 3 (NHE3)-dependent mechanism. Since sodium and bicarbonate reabsorption are coupled, we postulated that the molecules involved in their reabsorption [NHE3 and carbonic anhydrase II (CAII)] might physically and functionally interact. Consistent with this, CAII and NHE3 were closely associated in a renal proximal tubular cell culture model as revealed by a proximity ligation assay. Direct physical interaction was confirmed in solid-phase binding assays with immobilized CAII and C-terminal NHE3 glutathione-S-transferase fusion constructs. To assess the effect of CAII on NHE3 function, we expressed NHE3 in a proximal tubule cell line and measured NHE3 activity as the rate of intracellular pH recovery, following an acid load. NHE3-expressing cells had a significantly greater rate of intracellular pH recovery than controls. Inhibition of endogenous CAII activity with acetazolamide significantly decreased NHE3 activity, indicating that CAII activates NHE3. To ascertain whether CAII binding per se activates NHE3, we expressed NHE3 with wild-type CAII, a catalytically inactive CAII mutant (CAII-V143Y), or a mutant unable to bind other transporters (CAII-HEX). NHE3 activity increased upon wild-type CAII coexpression, but not in the presence of the CAII V143Y or HEX mutant. Together these studies support an association between CAII and NHE3 that alters the transporter's activity.


The effect of lysosomal enzyme inhibition on the cytotoxic activity of an immunoconjugate composed of anti-alpha-fetoprotein monoclonal antibody and vindesine analog (VDS) was studied in vitro using human tumor clonogenic assay (HTCA). Addition of the lysosome enzyme inhibitors, leupeptin and ammonium chloride, to the HTCA system had little influence on the cytotoxicity of this immunoconjugate. In separate experiments, no released VDS was detected by HPLC after incubation with the supernatant of rat liver homogenate without inhibitor. These results show that the immunoconjugate may bypass the lysosomal process and exert its activity as an intact or similar form.


Objectives: The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between morphologic factors of mandibular protrusion patients and clinical indices of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). Methods: Fifty-two Japanese patients divided into 2 groups: 1 jaw surgery group (30 patients) and 2 jaw surgery group (22 patients). Morphologic changes were studied using cephalograms taken before surgery and 1 year after surgery. Functional changes studied using impulse oscillometry and pulse oximetry during sleep, both of which are clinically useful measures in assessing OSA, taken before surgery and 1 year after surgery. Result: Lower face cage area significantly decreased in 1 jaw group than in 2 jaw group patients. Positive significant correlation was found between changes in 3% oxygen desaturation index (ODI) and changes of tongue area and vertical position of the hyoid bone in 1 jaw surgery group. Multiple regression analysis indicates that tongue area and airway area were independently significant predictors of 3% ODI in 1 jaw group patients. Conclusion: In 2 jaw surgery, maxillary surgery compensated for the effect of mandibular setback surgery. Mandibular setback surgery to mandibular protrusion patients was performed within the range of adequate movement distance, but precautions for risk of postoperative obstructive sleep apnea syndrome should be considered.


While the inequitable academic impacts of curricular tracking are well understood, less attention has been paid to its social impacts. Utilizing focus groups and in-depth interviews with students and parents in a low-income neighbourhood in Toronto, Canada, this paper uses social identity theory to explore how tracking impacts the nature of relationships between students in different tracks. Findings include that tracking contributed to widening social divides between students, working to replicate and reinforce social stratification, with negative consequences falling most heavily on those assigned to lower tracks. Students formed friendships primarily with same-track peers, while negative stereotyping and bullying across tracks was common. Tracking also increased racial divisions, which led to geographic segregation and schools becoming a racially divided space.


Differential capacity, charge density measurements, and polarization modulation infrared reflection absorption spectroscopy (PM-IRRAS) were employed to study the fusion of small unilamellar vesicles of 1,2-dimyristoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DMPC) on a Au(111) electrode surface. The differential capacity and charge density data showed that the vesicles fuse onto the gold surface at charge densities between -10 microC/cm(2) < sigma(M) < 10 microC/cm(2) to form a bilayer. When sigma(M) < -10 microC/cm(2), the film is detached from the surface but it remains in close proximity to the surface. PM-IRRAS experiments provided IR spectra for the bilayer in the adsorbed and the desorbed state. Ab initio normal coordinate calculations were performed to assist interpretation of the IR spectra. The IR bands were analyzed quantitatively, and this analysis provided information concerning the conformation and orientation of the acyl chains and the polar head region of the DMPC molecule. The orientation of the chains, hydration, and conformation of the headgroup of the DMPC molecule strongly depend on the electrode potential.


Abstract The concentrations of Zn, Cr, Cu, As, Cd, and Pb in sediment cores collected from a representative riverine wetland located in the Huaihe River watershed, China, dramaticlly increased from the bottom to upper layer of the cores. Application of principal component analysis (PCA) and enrichment factor (EF) suggested that heavy metals might primarily have been derived from the inflow of contaminated water from an industrial park and agricultural region. Component 1 of the PCA was dominated by Zn, Cr, Cu, Cd, and Pb, while Component 2 was dominated by As. Metals' high concentrations and EF values showed that the anthropogenic pollutants have increased sharply in recent years and reflect the continuous development of industry and agriculture in the region of the wetland, with a corresponding dramatic deterioration of the environment due to constant effluent of pollutants. Cd exerted the highest potential ecological risk of individual metals of sediment cores. Additionally, integrated RI values for all metals indicated that sediments possessed low ecological risk from the bottom to about 6 cm depth of the cores, moderate ecological risk from about 5 cm depth upwards, then considerable ecological risk from 4 cm depth to the top layer of the sediment cores, which demonstrates a continuous deterioration of environmental quality in recent years in this region.


Ultra-scale data analysis has created many new challenges for visualization. For example, in climate research with two-dimensional time-varying data, scientists find it crucial to study the hidden temporal relationships from a set of large scale images, whose resolutions are much higher than that of general computer monitors. When scientists can only visualize a small portion (< 1=1000) of a time step at one time, it is extremely challenging to analyze the temporal features from multiple time steps. As this problem cannot be simply solved with interaction or display technologies, this paper presents a milli-scaling approach by designing downscaling algorithms with significant ratios. Our approach can produce readable-sized images of multiple ultra-scale visualizations, while preserving important data features and temporal relationships. Using the climate visualization as the testing application, we demonstrate that our approach provides a new tool for users to effectively make sense of multiple, large-format visualizations.


A power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) enhancement technique for the low-dropout regulator (LDR) is presented. This proposed LDR with a bandgap reference has been fabricated in a 0.35 µm CMOS process, and its active chip area is 0.1978 mm2. From experimental results, the proposed LDR provides a stable output voltage without the output capacitor and achieves over a PSRR of −76 dB at 100 kHz for the output current within 0–150 mA. In addition, the output integrated noise is 21.45 µVrms within a frequency between 22 Hz and 80 kHz.


Purpose AQP5−/− mice spontaneously exhibit dry eye symptoms. The purpose of this study was to assess the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress-mediated inflammation generated by a deficiency of aquaporin 5 (AQP5) in the lacrimal gland. Methods Hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining, Oil Red O staining, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) analysis were performed to identify structural changes in lacrimal gland epithelial cells because of AQP5 deficiency. Corneal epithelial defects were assessed with sodium fluorescein staining. The expression profiles of mRNA and proteins were determined by quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR) and western blot. Mice in the quercetin group were injected intraperitoneally with 40 mg/kg of quercetin, and the control group was injected with an equal volume of dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) for 4 weeks. Results Aqueous tear secretion fell at about 50% in 1- and 6-month-old AQP5−/− mice compared with that of AQP5+/+ mice. TEM showed that the ER structure was damaged. ER stress was significantly increased in the lacrimal gland of AQP5−/− mice. Lipid droplets accumulated in the matrix and acinar cells, and changes occurred in the lipid metabolism and gene expression levels for PPARα, CPT1α, and CPT2 in the AQP5−/− mice. Immune cell infiltration and increases in the gene expression levels of the chemokines CXCL1, CXCL2, and CCL5 were found in the lacrimal gland of AQP5−/− mice. Quercetin partially reversed ER stress levels, inflammation, and lipid accumulation, and it inhibited tear secretion. Conclusions The study data indicated that a deficiency of AQP5 induced pathophysiological changes and functional decompensation of the lacrimal gland. Quercetin may improve the inflammation in the lacrimal glands of AQP5−/− mice by regulating the ER stress levels.


Just as there are global markets for products, technology, and capital, managers must now think of one for labor. Over the next 15 years, human capital, once the most stationary factor in production, will cross national borders with greater and greater ease. Driving the globalization of labor is a growing imbalance between the world's labor supply and demand. While the developed world accounts for most of the world's gross domestic product, its share of the world work force is shrinking. Meanwhile, in the developing countries, the work force is quickly expanding as many young people approach working age and as women join the paid work force in great numbers. The quality of that work force is also rising as developing countries like Brazil and China generate growing proportions of the world's college graduates. Developing nations that combine their young, educated workers with investor-friendly policies could leapfrog into new industries. South Korea, Taiwan, Poland, and Hungary are particularly well positioned for such growth. And industrialized countries that keep barriers to immigration low will be able to tap world labor resources to sustain their economic growth. The United States and some European nations have the best chance of encouraging immigration, while Japan will have trouble overcoming its cultural and language barriers.


HF Doppler sounders represent a low‐cost and low‐maintenance solution for monitoring wave activity in theF region ionosphere. HF Doppler sounders together with modern data analysis techniques can provide comprehensive traveling ionospheric disturbance (TID) characteristics, including both horizontal and vertical TID velocities and wavelengths across the entire spectrum from periods of 1 min to over an hour. Atmospheric and Space Technology Research Associates LLC has developed a new system called "TIDDBIT" (TID Detector Built in Texas), and data will be presented from a TIDDBIT system deployed in Virginia. These results reinforce the relationship between atmospheric gravity waves (AGWs) and TIDs. The TID propagation azimuths rotate through 360° in 24 h, mimicking the rotation of the thermospheric winds but with approximately a 90° offset. The rotation of TID azimuths and thermospheric winds in Virginia is similar to that observed previously by other Northern Hemisphere systems and opposite from the direction observed in Antarctica. These results illustrate the filtering effects that thermospheric neutral winds can have on the propagation of AGW. The completeness of the wave information obtained from the TIDDBIT system makes it possible to reconstruct the vertical displacement of isoionic contours over the ∼200 km horizontal dimension of the sounder array. Such information will be relevant for understanding the seeding of irregularities, as well as for several operational needs involving navigation, communication, and surveillance systems.


Data-intensive computing increasingly involves operations at the scale of an entire computing system, requiring quick and efficient processing of massive datasets. In this article, the authors present a circuit-switched network architecture, together with requisite optical-switch and burst-mode transceiver technology, designed to support demanding graph algorithms in a distributed-memory system. The proposed optical network, configured as multiple planes of high-radix wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) switches, offers tremendous path diversity and is designed to deliver up to 10 terabytes per second of node bandwidth and predictable performance under heavy load with latencies well under a microsecond. With the optical core switch, the authors overcome pin-count and power-dissipation limitations of electrical networks with comparable bandwidth. To achieve this, they are developing new hardware, including nanosecond-scale silicon photonic switches with flip-chip-attached optical amplifiers, low-power parallel WDM transceivers operating at about 20-Gbps per channel, with burst-mode clock and data recovery circuits in advanced CMOS for link retraining in tens of nanoseconds. Network simulations predict that the proposed system could achieve graph performance on par with today's leading supercomputers, and its limited power consumption would result in several orders of magnitude of efficiency improvements that could allow the system to fit within a few racks.


Thank you, Peter. President Thompson, fellows, members, guests, and friends of the Society: This award brings to mind a 50-year association with the Society beginning in 1959, when I realized as a junior at Dartmouth College that I was interested in ore deposits. A publication called Economic Geology had caught my attention and a subscription seemed like a good idea. The geology department faculty at Dartmouth, with John Lyons, Dick Stoiber, Andy McNair, and Linc Page, urged me to try graduate school at the University of Arizona, where Bill Lacy, Spence Titley, and Tom Mitcham continued the "work in progress."

An Arizona M.S. degree was followed by five years of work guided by Kenyon Richard and Harold Courtright at Asarco and then Phil Jenney with West Range, who stand among the great ore finders anywhere. In 1966 I returned to Arizona to study for a Ph.D. degree with Spence Titley, who was finishing his first book on porphyry copper deposits. John Guilbert and T. S. Lovering had just joined the department, along with a group of outstanding graduate students. That experience pretty much hooked me on ore deposit science and applications, and in 1971 I rejoined Asarco.

Harold Courtright set the hook permanently in …


Introduction The prevalence of chronic physical and mental health conditions is rising globally. Little evidence exists on the joint effect of physical and mental health conditions on health care use, work productivity, and health-related quality of life in Australia. Methods We analyzed data from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, waves 9 (2009), 13 (2013), and 17 (2017). Economic effects associated with multimorbidity were measured through health service use, work productivity loss, and health-related quality of life. We used generalized estimating equations to assess the effect of the association between physical multimorbidity and mental health conditions and economic outcomes. Results From 2009 through 2017 the prevalence of physical multimorbidity increased from 15.1% to 16.2%, and the prevalence of mental health conditions increased from 11.2% to 17.3%. The number of physical health conditions was associated with the number of health services used (general practitioner visits, incidence rate ratio = 1.41), work productivity loss (labor force participation, adjusted odds ratio = 0.71), and reduced health-related quality of life (SF-6D score: Coefficient = −0.03). These effects were exacerbated by the presence of mental health conditions and low socioeconomic status. Conclusion Having multiple physical health conditions (physical multimorbidity) creates substantial health and financial burdens on individuals, the health system, and society, including increased use of health services, loss of work productivity, and decreased health-related quality of life. The adverse effects of multimorbidity on health, quality of life, and economic well-being are exacerbated by the co-occurrence of mental health conditions and low socioeconomic status.


Within current Canadian learning environments, learners bring sophistication in areas such as communication/technology, a wide diversity of learning needs, and often an orientation towards social justice. This commentary refers to the ongoing responsiveness of teacher education programs to these evolving learner attributes, using as exemplars the areas of global citizenship education and technology integration. A backdrop for this discussion is the observation that the knowledge and skills that contribute to successful adult lives are also evolving.


In a previous article [Fiacco, A. V., G. P. McCormick. 1964. The sequential unconstrained minimization technique for nonlinear programming, a primal-dual method. Management Sci. 10(2) 360-366.] the authors gave the theoretical validation of the sequential unconstrained minimization technique for solving the convex programming problem. The technique is based on an idea proposed by C. W. Carroll [Carroll, C. W. 1961. The created response surface technique for optimizing nonlinear restrained systems. Oper. Res. 9(2) 169-184; Carroll, C. W. 1959. An operations research approach to the economic optimization of a Kraft Pulping Process. Doctoral dissertation, The Institute of Paper Chemistry, Appleton, Wisc.]. The method has been implemented via an algorithm based on a second-order gradient technique that has proved extremely efficient on a considerable number of test problems of varying complexity. This paper explores the computational aspects of the method. Included are discussions of parameter selection, convergence criteria, and methods of minimizing an unconstrained function. It is shown that the problem variables, on the trajectory of minima of the sequence of unconstrained functions, can be developed as functions of a single parameter. This provides the theoretical basis for an extrapolation technique that significantly accelerates convergence in actual computations. The detailed computer solution of a small example is given to illustrate the typical convergence characteristics of the method. The speed and accuracy of the computational procedure are believed to be competitive with other known techniques for solving the convex programming problem.


1. Hopkins RO, Jackson JC. Long-term neurocognitive functionafter critical illness. Chest. 2006;130:869-78.2. Fiser DH, Long N, Roberson PK, Hefley G, Zolten K, Brodie-Fowler M.Relationshipofpediatricoverallperformancecategoryand pediatric cerebral performance category scores at pediatricintensive care unit discharge with outcome measures collectedathospitaldischargeand1-and6-monthfollow-upassessments.Crit Care Med. 2000;28:2616-20.3. Taylor HG, Klein N, Hack M. School-age consequences of birthweightlessthan750g:areviewandupdate.DevNeuropsychol.2000;17:289-321.4. AlieviPT,CarvalhoPR,TrottaEA,MombelliFilhoR.Theimpactofadmission to a pediatric intensive care unit assessed by meansof global and cognitive performance scales. J Pediatr (Rio J).2007;83:505-511.5. Fiser DH. Assessing the outcome of pediatric intensive care. JPediatr. 1992;121:68-74.6. Meaney PA,Nadkarni VM,Cook EF,Testa M,Helfaer M,Kaye W,et al. Higher survival rates among younger patients afterpediatric intensive care unit cardiac arrests. Pediatrics. 2006;118:2424-33.7. HopkinsRO,WeaverLK,PopeD,OrmeJF,BiglerED,Larson-LOHRV. Neuropsychological sequelae and impaired health status insurvivors of severe acute respiratory distress syndrome.AmJRespir Crit Care Med. 1999;160:50-6.8. Starr JL, Whalley LJ.Drug induced dementia. Incidence,management and prevention. Drug Saf. 1994;11:310-7.9. Hopkins RO, Weaver LK, Chan KJ, Orme JF Jr. Quality of life,emotional, and cognitive function following acute respiratorydistress syndrome. J Int Neuropsychol Soc. 2004;10:1005-17.10. Jackson JC, Gordon SM, Hart RP, Hopkins RO, Ely EW.Theassociation between delirium and cognitive decline: a review ofthe empirical literature. Neuropsychol Rev. 2004;14:87-98.11. Hopkins RO, Suchyta MR, Jephson A, Orme JF Jr., Weaver LK,Clemmer TP, et al. Hyperglycemia and neurocognitive outcomein ARDS survivors. Proc Am Thorac Soc. 2005;2 abstracts:A36.12. Hofer A,Niedermayer B,Kemmler G,Rettenbacher MA,Trebo E,Widschwendter CG, et al. Cognitive impairment inschizophrenia: clinical ratings are not a suitable alternative toneuropsychological testing. Schizophr Res. 2007;92:126-31.13. Taylor HG, Minich N, Bangert B, Filipek PA, Hack M. Long-termneuropsychological outcomes of very low birth weight:associations with early risks for periventricular brain insults. JInt Neuropsychol Soc. 2004;10:987-1004.14. Woods SP, Weinborn M, Ball JD, Tiller-Nevin S, Pickett TC.Periventricular leukomalacia (PVL): an identical twin case studyillustration of white matter dysfunction and nonverbal learningdisability (NLD). Child Neuropsychol. 2000;6:274-85.


We present a correlative fate map of the nonsegmented caudal hindbrain down to the medullospinal boundary (medulla oblongata), as a companion to a previous fate mapping study of the hindbrain rhombomeres r2–r6 in quail chick chimeras at stages HH10/11 [Marín and Puelles ( 1995 ) Eur J Neurosci 7:1714–1738]. For reproducibility and equivalent precision of analysis, successive portions of the medulla—called pseudorhombomeres "r7" to "r11"—were delimited by transverse planes through the center of adjacent somites at stages HH10/11. These units were each grafted homotopically and isochronically from quail donors into chick hosts. The chimeric specimens were fixed at stages HH35/36 and alternate Nissl‐stained sagittal sections were compared to adjacent sections in which quail cells were detected immunocytochemically. This analysis in general showed that there is little intermixing between adjacent pseudorhombomeric domains, although some neuronal populations in the vestibular and trigeminal columns, as well as in the reticular formation and pontine nuclei, do migrate selectively into the host hindbrain. Contralateral migration was scarce up to the stages examined. Several motor nuclei, i.e., the vagal motor complex, or sensory nuclei, i.e., the medial vestibular nucleus, show cytoarchitectonic limits that coincide with pseudorhombomeric ones; however, most conventional grisea were found to originate across several pseudorhombomeres. The inferior olivary complex originated between "r8" and "r11" (between the centers of somites 1 and 5). The medullospinal boundary coincided precisely with the center of the fifth somite, slightly caudal to the obex and the end of the choroidal roof, and correlated with the end of many medullary cytoarchitectonic units. In contrast, the dorsal column nuclei and the caudal subnucleus of the descending trigeminal column fell within the spinal cord. On the whole, the patterns observed were very similar to those found before within the overtly segmented part of the hindbrain, suggesting that some underlying common mechanism may account for the transverse cytoarchitectonic boundaries. J. Comp. Neurol. 427:522–545, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Research demonstrates the importance of social interaction for children. Two important aspects of social interaction are conversation and scaffolding. Previous work has shown that children benefit from conversation with parents. However, no research has examined if children learn from conversation equally when interacting with different partners, so it is unclear how that learning may be different or similar to how children learn from parents. Even though it is clear that conversation is important for how children learn, no one has looked at conversation using the framework of scaffolding. Scaffolding is an ongoing interaction between a child and some other speaker where the other speaker provides support contingent on the child's progress (Bruner, 1975). Because conversation is an essential part of scaffolding, it is important to understand what potential differences exist between different conversation partners to illuminate differences that may exist in scaffolding. Previous scaffolding research has found that peers scaffold differently than parents; in most cases, they are not as effective as mothers and they exhibit fewer scaffolding-like behaviors. Much less work examines how siblings scaffold; siblings are similar to peers but may be more familiar with the target child. However, there are several methodological problems with these studies, such as the mother being present or comparing children in different settings using different stimulus items. Further, no research has examined what is responsible for the fact that some people can scaffold better than others. In order to understand how children learn differently from different people, we need to know what is responsible for the difference in scaffolding. This research explores whether children can benefit equally from conversation with people other than their parents and seeks to explain why differences in scaffolding exist between partners. Study participants included ethnically diverse 3- and 4-year-old children recruited in local Merced County preschools. In Study 1, 144 participants engaged in a free play interaction with either their parent, older sibling, or other adult. Examining their conversations, results indicate that children seem to vary in how they benefit from conversation depending on their partner. In particular, children asked more questions of parents and other adults than siblings, but siblings provided more informative answers than parents and equally to other adults. Further, parents and other adults turned the question back to children more often than siblings did. In Study 2, the erroneous utterances and how partners responded to these were investigated in the same 144 children who participated in a free play task with either their parent, older sibling, or other adult. Results indicate that parents and other adults provided more reformulations than siblings did. This confirms that children do not equally benefit from conversation with different partners. In both Study 1 and Study 2, sibling age spacing does not seem to affect their interaction with children during conversation. In Study 3, 92 participants engaged in a building task with either their parent, older sibling, or older peer (age-matched to siblings). Scaffolding and orienting behaviors, as well as appropriate shifts in instruction, were investigated. Parents used more scaffolding and orienting behaviors than both siblings and peers. They also made more appropriate shifts during the course of interaction. Siblings and peers did not differ in the amount of scaffolding and orienting behaviors. They also did not differ in the amount of appropriate shifts made. In addition, children performed equally at independent post test regardless of who their teaching partner was, with 4-year-olds outperforming 3-year-olds. Because Study 2 confounded motivation with familiarity within siblings and parents, Study 3 introduced a control for motivation. In Study 3, 63 participants engaged in a building task with either their parent or older sibling. However, unlike Study 2, siblings were told that they would receive a reward if the child performed well during post test. Scaffolding and orienting behaviors, as well as appropriate shifts in instruction, were investigated. Despite introducing a reward, no effects were found between siblings' scaffolding and orienting behaviors in this study and Study 3. Confirming the findings from Study 2, parents used more scaffolding and orienting behaviors, and made more appropriate shifts than siblings did. No effect of teaching partner was found with respect to children's independent post test performance. Consistent with previous studies, sibling age spacing did not have an effect on scaffolding behaviors in both Study 2 and Study 3. Overall, the results of this research suggest that children learn differently from different people, and the benefits of parent-child interaction may not be as beneficial with other types of partners. Knowledgeability, familiarity, and motivation all seem to play a role in why people scaffold differently. This research adds importantly to both the conversation and scaffolding literatures, and these findings have implications for current theories of how children learn, parenting practices, and classroom application.


A technique for microskin grafting for treating extensively burned patients is presented. Eight extensively burned patients were treated in this way with encouraging results. The recipient area covered by microskin grafts ranged from 2.5 per cent to 44 per cent of the total body surface area (TBSA). The expansion ratio of the micrografts was 15:1 maximum. The micrografts took well in seven patients with the healing time ranging from 22 to 45 days post-operatively. One case failed because of sloughing of the homograft. The advantages of the microskin grafting are: (1) economical use of autografts, (2) the procedure is simple, (3) there is less scar on the recipient site. This new technique is effective, simple and feasible in extensive burns.


Digital ulcers represent one of the most frequent complications of systemic sclerosis (SSc; scleroderma); they are very painful, scarcely responsive to treatment, and often responsible for marked limitations on daily activities, including patient self‐care. Infectious complications may severely compromise the outcome of skin lesions in a significant percentage of patients. Numerous pathogens of different origin may be involved, including bacteria from patient endogenous flora. Here we evaluated the possible involvement of fecal pathogens in scleroderma digital ulcers.


Residual stress measurement is necessary in several aspects of product development and sustainment: structural analysis of components, process quality validation, model development and validation, and understanding the root-cause of failure events. Especially in the aerospace industry, accurate residual stress assessment is critical due to the higher safety standards. However, limited tools and methods are available for different components and applications. Goal of this presentation is to review pros and cons of the various methods, discuss the technical challenges in stress determination, and introduce potential solutions to overcome the current limits.


Local anesthetics are commonly used in most medical and dental practice. While adverse effects are rare, the rising prevalence of local anesthetics in practice has resulted in a greater incidence of local anesthetic toxicity. From minor symptoms to major cardiac or central nervous system (CNS) effects, local anesthetic systemic toxicity (LAST) is an important consequence of which to be aware. Systemic toxicity was originally associated with seizures and respiratory failure. However, in the 1970s, cardiac effects were also recognized, as bupivacaine-associated fatal cardiac toxicity was discovered in healthy adults. This article reviews the mechanisms, frequency, clinical characteristics, treatment, and prevention of LAST.[1][2][3]


A theoretical model of the refractive index changes of the TE and TM modes in an electro-absorption modulator (EAM) is deduced. The photon absorption and refractive index changes are analyzed numerically. The influence of pump intensity on the phase difference between the TE and TM modes is studied. The polarization rotation effect is obtained in the EAM, and a novel all-optical fiber loop buffer is designed.


We present an analysis of the X-ray emission of the supernova remnant MSH14-63, which was partially covered by four observations with XMM-Newton. The detection of Fe K emission at 6.4 keV, and the lack of spatial correlation between hard X-ray and radio emission is evidence against a dominant X-ray synchrotron component. We argue that the hard X-ray continuum is best explained by non-thermal bremsstrahlung from a supra-thermal tail to an otherwise cool electron gas. The existence of low electron temperatures, required to explain the absence of line emission, is supported by low temperatures found in other parts of the remnant, which are as low as 0.2 keV in some regions.


Fast high precision relative Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning is very important to various applications and ambiguity resolution is a key requirement. It has been a continuing challenge to determine and fix GNSS carrier-phase ambiguity, especially for medium- and long-distance baselines. In past research, with dual-frequency band Global Positioning System (GPS), it is almost impossible for fast ambiguity resolution of medium- and long-distance baselines mainly due to the ionospheric and tropospheric effects. With the launch of the BeiDou system, triple-frequency band GNSS observations are available for the first time. This research aims to test the ambiguity resolution performance with BeiDou triple-frequency band observations. In this research, two mathematical models are compared: zenith tropospheric delay as an unknown parameter versus corrected tropospheric delay. The ambiguity resolution performance is investigated in detail with BeiDou observations. Different distance baselines are tested: 45 km, 70 km and 100 km and the performances are investigated with different elevation cut-off angles. Also the performance with BeiDou alone and combined BeiDou and GPS are compared. Experimental results clearly show that with practical observations of triple-frequency bands, ambiguity of medium- or long-distance baselines can be fixed. The results also show that: the performance of ambiguity resolution with an elevation cutoff angle of 20° is much better than that of 15°; The performance with tropospheric effect corrected is slightly better than that with tropospheric effect as an estimated parameter; Dual-frequency band GPS observations will benefit ambiguity resolution of integrated BeiDou and GPS.


Allogeneic stem cell transplant (SCT) is a potentially curative option for many hematologic diseases, yet donor availability remains a challenge, and haploidentical SCT is associated with a higher risk of rejection. We successfully translated a model based on total-body irradiation (TBI) with to humans; however, TBI involves toxicities and risk of malignant side-effects, and we hypothesize that busulfan may be a superior alternative in some settings. G-CSF-mobilized F1/J (C57BL/6-BALB/c hybrid) splenocytes were injected into C57BL/6 hosts who had received 10-30mg/kg IP busulfan the previous day. All recipients received 31 days of 3mg/kg IP sirolimus beginning the day before transplant. No GvHD was observed and counts recovered by week 8 in all groups. Mice conditioned with 30mg/kg busulfan displayed remarkably high donor chimerism (>90%), which was significantly higher than 300cGy TBI-conditioned control mice (64-86%) across all timepoints. Mice receiving 30mg/kg or 20mg/kg busulfan maintained stable chimerism for over 18 months. Mice conditioned with 10mg/kg busulfan showed only transient chimerism through 4 weeks. Proliferation of CD4+ cells in response to donor increases with decreasing busulfan, and mice receiving 30mg/kg responded more strongly than mice receiving TBI. A memory effect was observed in mice that received 10mg/kg busulfan and lost their grafts. Notably, a slightly higher incidence of host-derived Tregs in mice was also observed after graft rejection.


"JUST CHECK-OUT MY FRIENDSTER": THE IMPACT OF INFORMATION COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES ON THE TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL FIELDS OF FILIPINO IMMIGRANTS IN CANDA Tom Camilo Lusis Advisor: University of Guelph, 2012 Dr. Harald Bauder Contemporary international migrations take place during an "information age", and information and communications technologies (ICT) have revolutionized transnational immigrant social networks. Immigrants can now maintain transnational connections with their source communities with less cost but more frequency than ever before. E-mail, web cameras, instant messenger services and social networking websites can be used to send very detailed reports about living and working in destination countries to contacts in social networks that span the globe. Drawing upon findings from 54 semi-structured interviews with immigrants in Toronto and other locations in Southern Ontario, this study examines the impact ICTs have had on the transnational social networks of Filipino immigrants in Canada. In this work I employ Pierre Bourdieu's theories of social fields and forms of capital as a theoretical framework to develop the concept of "digital" capital, a valuable resource that can be converted into multiple forms of capital within transnational social networks. I illustrate how immigrants use digital technologies, and in particular social networking websites, to increase the size and diversity of their social networks, and to disseminate information about life in Canada. I also highlight how processes of social distinction and reproduction influence the accuracy of transnational information flows. This PhD project fills important gaps in the geographic literature, a discipline where ICT have been a relatively understudied research topic to date. It also contributes to the migration studies and transnationalism literature. Many studies that investigate immigrant ICT use have overlooked the importance of geography, and do not consider how uneven power relations between migrant source and destination countries shape immigrants' on-line transnational activities. This research also makes important theoretical contributions to labour market theory. Classical ideas related to labour shortage and recruitment, hierarchies in the labour market, and the mechanisms of segmentation in labour markets have traditionally been grounded in processes that take place almost entirely in the destination country. This work demonstrates why a global or transnational perspective must be adopted when considering the labour market experiences of immigrants. The findings from this study demonstrate how the economic integration of newcomers in destination countries clearly has transnational dimensions.


Background: The aim of this article was to verify the utility of nasogastric (NG) tube in primary anterior cervical surgeries. Palpating and identifying the NG tube introduced during induction is one of the ways of preventing esophageal injuries during surgery. It may also be used as a conduit for postoperative feeding. However, the use of NG tube is not without complications. Esophageal perforation is one of them, with an incidence of 0.3%. Materials and Methods: A retrospective observational study was performed of patients who underwent a primary anterior cervical spine surgery from January 2007 to July 2017 by a single surgeon. The indications were degenerative, trauma, infection, and neoplasia. NG tube was avoided in all cases. The patients were followed for 6 months. Results: Our study included 356 patients (201 males and 155 females), with a mean age of 43.6 years (18–92 years) and a mean follow-up of 6 months. We had only one case of esophageal perforation (0.28%) attributed to a traumatic burst fracture. Conclusions: This study indicates that the use of a NG tube in primary anterior cervical spine surgery can be avoided. Comprehensive knowledge of anatomy and meticulous dissection may avoid the disastrous complication of esophageal rupture. This way the discomfort and complications associated with NG tube can be avoided.


The article contains consideration of risk factors of pulmonary hypertension (PH), clinical states associated with PH, and effect of age on susceptibility to PH in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). We have analyzed the prevalence of PH associated with COPD, its importance in the structure of diseases in patients of older age groups. Frequency of PH in old patients is associated with prevalence of concomitant diseases. Addition of LH to polymorbid complex of old age worsens quality of life and increases mortality. We also present in this article data on the use of modern drugs for the treatment of LH in COPD patients aged 60 years and older.


Abstract : Laser injury to the superior or inferior region of the retina results in structural and functional retina deficits. Damage to the superior retina resulted in an intrinsic up- regulation of brain- derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), glial cell- line derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) and a trend towards increased ciliary neurotrophic factor (CNTF) expression between three and 14 days after injury. Intravitreal injection of growth factor- containing seemed to have some protective effect on both structural and functional properties of rods in laser- injured retinas. GDNF was somewhat more effective when compared to CNTF. However, GDNF seemed to have a negative effect on cone function (decreased photopic a- and bwaves and photopic flicker response). Even though GDNF preserved peripapillary nerve fiber layer thickness, none of the growth factors had positive effect on the function of retinal ganglion cells. On the contrary, both CNTF and GDNF seemed to have additional negative effect in addition to laser damage on RGC function. The endogenous expression of GDNF and BDNF were significantly correlated with several functional and structural retinal parameters.


Bacterial meningitis is usually associated with pleocytosis of the cerebrospinal fluid due to the presence of polymorphonuclear leucocytes. However, 75 cases of bacterial meningitis without pleocytosis have been published. Normocellular bacterial meningitis accounts for 3.5% (1-42%) of all patients suffering from bacterial meningitis and is seen in all age groups: The finding can be explained by three different mechanisms including 1) lumbar puncture performed early in the course of meningitis, 2) immune deficiency, and 3) relative leucopenia due to severe sepsis. Normocellular bacterial meningitis is in general associated with a good prognosis except for cases with severe underlying diseases. A high concentration of bacteria in a normocellular cerebrospinal fluid might also indicate a poor prognosis.


Remote Direct Memory Access (RDMA) is an increasingly important technology in high-performance computing (HPC). RDMA provides low-latency, high-bandwidth data transfer between compute nodes. Additionally, it does not require explicit synchronization with the destination processor. Eliminating unnecessary synchronization can significantly improve the communication performance of large-scale scientific codes. A long-standing challenge presented by RDMA communication is mitigating the cost of registering memory with the network interface controller (NIC). Reusing memory once it is registered has been shown to significantly reduce the cost of RDMA communication. However, existing approaches for reusing memory rely on implicit memory semantics. In this paper, we introduce an approach that makes memory reuse semantics explicit by exposing a separate allocator for registered memory. The data and analysis in this paper yield the following contributions: (i) managing registered memory explicitly enables efficient reuse of registered memory; (ii) registering large memory regions to amortize the registration cost over multiple user requests can significantly reduce cost of acquiring new registered memory; and (iii) reducing the cost of acquiring registered memory can significantly improve the performance of RDMA communication. Reusing registered memory is key to high-performance RDMA communication. By making reuse semantics explicit, our approach has the potential to improve RDMA performance by making it significantly easier for programmers to efficiently reuse registered memory.


Pain and discomfort are common problems for patients undergoing orthodontic treatment. We have demonstrated that cortical excitation propagation in the somatosensory and insular cortices (IC) induced by electrical stimulation of the periodontal ligament (PDL) is facilitated 1 d after experimental tooth movement (ETM). However, it is necessary to examine ETM-induced changes in neural responses at a single-cell level to understand the mechanisms of cortical plastic changes, in which excitatory glutamatergic and inhibitory GABAergic neurons are intermingled to form cortical local circuits. We performed in vivo 2-photon Ca2+ imaging by loading the Ca2+ indicator Oregon Green BAPTA with the astrocyte marker sulforhodamine. We focused on the IC region that exhibited the largest neural response to maxillary PDL (mxPDL) stimulation using a VGAT-Venus transgenic rat that expresses venus fluorescent protein in GABAergic neurons and discerned changes in the neural activities of each cortical neuronal subtype before and during ETM treatment of the maxillary incisor and first molar. Notably, 1 d after ETM treatment (1d-ETM), the number of neurons responding to mxPDL stimulation increased from 47.6% to 64.2% in excitatory neurons and from 44.5% to 66.2% in inhibitory neurons. On the other hand, only 3% to 4% of excitatory and inhibitory neurons responded to mandibular molar PDL (mbPDL) stimulation in control rats, and the 1d-ETM group showed significant increases in excitatory (14.0%) and inhibitory neurons (22.5%) responding to mbPDL stimulation. Interestingly, most mbPDL-responding neurons also responded to mxPDL stimulation. The population of excitatory and inhibitory neurons that responded only to mxPDL stimulation was comparable between the control and 1d-ETM groups. The facilitative responses in the 1d-ETM group had almost recovered 7 d after ETM treatment. These results suggest that ETM induces parallel increases in PDL-responding neurons and changes some insensitive neurons to respond to both mxPDL and mbPDL stimulation.


The development outcome of ICT and information systems in developing countries
is often influenced by international development policies and the action of
international actors such as donor agencies. In particular, ICT adoptions and
implementations in developing countries may be influenced by the contradictions
arising mainly from the tension between international managerialist development
policies and the main rationalities of actors in the local implementation context.
Based on the case study of health information systems in Kenya, the objective of
this thesis is to increase the understanding of how these contradictions may affect
the development and change potential of health information systems and ICTs in
developing countries in relation to international development policies.
Drawing on a dialectical perspective on institutional work, the thesis argues that the
change and development trajectories arising from the implementation and usage of
health information systems depend on how actors involved in the restructuring of
health information systems – i.e. donor partners, national decision makers and local
health information systems managers and users – respond to the ongoing dialectic
between global and local pressures of institutional change and stability.
The main findings of the research presented in this thesis point to the importance of
analysing political donor relations and the institutional entrepreneurship of local
actors in order to understand the change and development outcomes of health
information systems and ICT in developing countries.


Using a protein synthesizing in vitro system programmed with MS2-RNA, the ability of alanine tRNAs with the anticodons U*GC (U* represents 5-oxyacetic acid uridine monophosphate) and IGC to read the alanine codons in the coat protein cistron of MS2 has been determined both under conditions of no competition, where the alanyl-tRNA used was the only aminoacylated tRNAAla present in the system, and in experiments where the two alanyl-tRNAs were competing against each other. Under conditions of no competition, each of the anticodons can read all four alanine codons. However, when the anticodons compete for the codon GCC, the anticodon IGC, which can read all three positions of the codon according to the rules of Watson-Crick base pairing, is considerably more efficient than U*GC, which misreads the codon by reading only the first two positions and presumably disregards the third nucleotide of the codon. The outcome of the competition experiments also reveals two apparent violations of the wobble restrictions: the anticodon U*GC reads the codon GUU almost as effectively as does the anticodon IGC, and IGC is almost as effective as U*GC in reading the codon GCG.


Abstract We have searched optical u′g′r′i′z′ imaging of 22 deg2 centred on the nearby giant elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 for new dwarf galaxies in the Centaurus A group. We report 45 promising new candidates, which are broadly consistent with the properties of nearby dwarf spheroidal galaxies and extend the size-luminosity relation toward fainter total luminosities and smaller sizes for known dwarf galaxies outside the Local Group (LG). Altogether, these new results show NGC 5128 to be the host of a large reservoir of low-mass dwarf galaxies that is at least as rich as that of the LG and is ripe for detailed follow-up observations.


This review presents information on the relationship of ultrastructure and composition of wood cell walls, in order to understand how wood degrading bacteria utilise cell wall components for their nutrition. A brief outline of the structure and composition of plant cell walls and the degradation patterns associated with bacterial degradation of wood cell walls precedes the description of the relationship of cell wall micro- and ultrastructure to bacterial degradation of the cell wall. The main topics covered are cell wall structure and composition, patterns of cell wall degradation by erosion and tunnelling bacteria, and the relationship of cell wall ultrastructure and composition to wood degradation by erosion and tunnelling bacteria. Finally, pertinent information from select recent studies employing molecular approaches to identify bacteria which can degrade lignin and other wood cell wall components is presented, and prospects for future investigations on wood degrading bacteria are explored.


This study was designed to compare the sleep of a carefully selected group of patients with chronic primary insomnia toage- and sex-matched controls, in order to investigate the possible physiopathological role of slow wave sleep deficiency in this disturbance. In addition, the effect of age on normal sleep was studied in a group of 40 normal subjects. Sleep was recorded in the laboratory and automatically scored with an electronic system already described. The general trends of sleep stages were computed. Aging in normal subjects was characterized by a sharp decrease of stage 4, but a good stability of stage 3. Insomniacs' sleep showed a sleep-waking imbalance and a marked deficiency in stages 3 and 4. This deficiency seems to be similar to the age effect in normals, but more accentuated; it cannot be attributed merely to increased pressure of wakefulness. We suggest that slow wave sleep is involved in sleep induction and maintenance, and that its deficiency is linked to the fragility of sleep in chronic primary insomnia.


Multiple antennas have been applied in order to increase the performance and reliability of single-and multiuser wireless systems. We study the behavior of a large class of performance metrics and their corresponding optimal transmission strategies under individual and sum power constraints for perfect CSI at the base and mobiles. At first, we derive the unique optimal single-user transmit strategy which is generalized water-filling. As a result, we show that at low SNR values only one user who has highest largest channel eigenvalue is active. The performance of the up-and downlink multiuser system can be measured by different performance metrics, e.g. the sum capacity if optimum decoding and successive interference cancellation (SIC) is applied. Another performance metric is the average sum MSE of the uplink channel if the linear multiuser MMSE receiver is applied. Both performance metrics can be written as the trace of a matrix-monotone function.


Laser incremental heating of sanidine from the pumice deposited by the Plinian eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. yielded a40Ar/39Ar isochron age of 1925 ± 94 years ago. Close agreement with the Gregorian calendar–based age of 1918 years ago demonstrates that the 40Ar/39Ar method can be reliably extended into the temporal range of recorded history. Excess 40Ar is present in the sanidine in concentrations that would cause significant errors if ignored in dating Holocene samples.


The place and relevance of academic libraries, their resources and services in the 21 st century cannot be overemphasized. Hence this study is on disaster management in academic libraries in Benue State: problems and prospects. The study adopted a descriptive survey research design. The total population for the study was 205 library staff in 3 (three) academic libraries. No sampling technique was employed since the population was small and manageable. A structured questionnaire was used for collection of data and a response rate of 205 (100%) was recorded. Data collected were analyzed using frequency counts, percentages (%), mean ( X ) and standard deviation (SD) to answer research questions A majority of the academic libraries were constrained among others by lack of disaster management plan, inadequate/malfunctioning firefighting equipment; lack of disaster management committee and lack of training on disaster management. Based on the findings, was concluded that librarians should be sensitized on the need for disaster management plan and policy in academic libraries in Benue State, Nigeria. It was recommended, among others, that awareness programmes on disaster management in the library should be provided as well as adequate funds for the management of disaster.


Background -amylases catalyze the endo-hydrolysis of -1,4-D-glycosidic bonds in starch into smaller moieties. While industrial processes are usually performed at harsh conditions, -amylases from mainly the bacteria, fungi and yeasts are preferred for their stabilities (thermal, pH and oxidative) and specificities (substrate and product). Microbial -amylases can be purified and characterized for industrial applications. While exploring novel enzymes with these properties in the nature is time-costly, the advancements in protein engineering techniques including rational design, directed evolution and others have privileged their modifications to exhibit industrially ideal traits. However, the commentary on the strategies and preferably mutated residues are lacking, hindering the design of new mutants especially for enhanced substrate specificity and oxidative stability. Thus, our review ensures wider accessibility of the previously reported experimental findings to facilitate the future engineering work. Survey methodology and objectives A traditional review approach was taken to focus on the engineering of microbial -amylases to enhance industrially favoured characteristics. The action mechanisms of - and -amylases were compared to avoid any bias in the research background. This review aimed to discuss the advances in modifying microbial -amylases via protein engineering to achieve longer half-life in high temperature, improved resistance (acidic, alkaline and oxidative) and enhanced specificities (substrate and product). Captivating results were discussed in depth, including the extended half-life at 100C, pH 3.5 and 10, 1.8 M hydrogen peroxide as well as enhanced substrate (65.3%) and product (42.4%) specificities. These shed light to the future microbial -amylase engineering in achieving paramount biochemical traits ameliorations to apt in the industries. Conclusions Microbial -amylases can be tailored for specific industrial applications through protein engineering (rational design and directed evolution). While the critical mutation points are dependent on respective enzymes, formation of disulfide bridge between cysteine residues after mutations is crucial for elevated thermostability. Amino acids conversion to basic residues was reported for enhanced acidic resistance while hydrophobic interaction resulted from mutated hydrophobic residues in carbohydrate-binding module or surface-binding sites is pivotal for improved substrate specificity. Substitution of oxidation-prone methionine residues with non-polar residues increases the enzyme oxidative stability. Hence, this review provides conceptual advances for the future microbial -amylases designs to exhibit industrially significant characteristics. However, more attention is needed to enhance substrate specificity and oxidative stability since they are least reported.


This work presents a method to analyze hydrogen production by biomass gasification, as well as electric power generation in small scale fuel cells. The proposed methodology is the thermodynamic modeling of a reaction system for the conversion of methane and carbon monoxide (steam reforming), as well as the energy balance of gaseous flow purification in PSA (Pressure Swing Adsorption) is used with eight types of gasification gases in this study. The electric power is generated by electrochemical hydrogen conversion in fuel cell type PEMFC (Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell). Energy and exergy analyses are applied to evaluate the performance of the system model. The simulation demonstrates that hydrogen production varies with the operation temperature of the reforming reactor and with the composition of the gas mixture. The maximum H2 mole fraction (0.6-0.64 mol.mol-1) and exergetic efficiency of 91- 92.5% for the reforming reactor are achieved when gas mixtures of higher quality such as: GGAS2, GGAS4 and GGAS5 are used. The use of those gas mixtures for electric power generation results in lower irreversibility and higher exergetic efficiency of 30-30.5%.


In this paper, a new hybrid intelligent system is proposed for transient stability prediction. This intelligent system is composed of a preprocessor, an array of neural networks (NN) and an interpreter. The preprocessor partitions the whole set of synchronous machines into subsets, each one including only two generators. Each subset is assigned to one NN, which extracts the input/ output mapping function of that subset. Then, the interpreter combines the responses of the NNs in a voting procedure to determine the transient stability status of the power system. This mechanism can cover the probable errors of the NNs, increasing the accuracy of the final response of the hybrid intelligent system. In addition to the transient stability status, this intelligent system can determine tripped generators and islanded parts of the power system for unstable cases. The proposed method has been examined on the PSB4 and New England test systems. The obtained results indicate the efficiency of the hybrid intelligent system for transient stability prediction.


This paper deals with the underspeciied semantic representation of ellipsis and its resolution. We present an analysis to explain the the distribution of strict and sloppy readings in the interaction of verb phrase ellipsis and anaphora. The analysis is integrated into a framework that enables a uniform and underspeciied treatment of scope, anaphora and VPE. Abstract This paper deals with the underspeciied semantic representation of ellipsis and its resolution. We present an analysis to explain the the distribution of strict and sloppy readings in the interaction of verb phrase ellipsis and anaphora. The analysis is integrated into a framework that enables a uniform and underspeciied treatment of scope, anaphora and VPE.


Ion exchange membranes have been used in microbial fuel cell (MFC) because it can prevent high oxygen permeability and the migration of substrate instead of protons from one chamber to another. Despite all these advantages the usage of this type of membrane suffers several operational problems such as high dissolve oxygen permeability, adverse deformation and proton conductivity which can affect the MFC performance. In order to overcome this problem, new membrane for microbial fuel cell system was fabricated using sulfonated polyether ether ketone (SPEEK) and Cloisite 15A®. The membranes were characterized based on their electrochemical and physical properties. The characteristics of the SPEEK nanocomposite membranes were then compared with the unmodified SPEEK membrane and the commercially available Nafion117 membrane. Based on the result, SPEEK/Cloisite 15A® contributed high energy generated across the load compare to SPEEK without additive and Nafion 117. The incorporation of Cloisite 15A® improved the water uptake from 56 to 78.2 wt% and reduced the dissolve oxygen permeability of the membrane from 1.5 to 0.7 cm/s but the tensile strength behaviour was reduced from 11.2 to 7.5 MPa.


The yeast Pityrosporum orbiculare is one of the factors that may contribute to atopic dermatitis (AD). In the present study we compared the T‐cell response to P. orbiculare in 12 AD patients with specific immunoglobulin (Ig)E antibodies (Ab) in serum against P. orbiculare with that of six non‐atopic healthy controls. Freshly isolated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were cultured for 3 days in the presence of P. orbiculare extract. The proliferative response as measured by [3H]‐thymidine incorporation was significantly higher in the AD patients than in the healthy controls (P < 0.05). Furthermore, significantly higher levels of interleukin (IL)‐5 (P < 0.05), as analyzed by ELISA, were produced by PBMC from the AD patients compared to the healthy controls. Pityrosporum orbiculare‐reactive T‐cell lines (TCL) established by P. orbiculare stimulation of PBMC for 11 days produced significantly higher levels of IL‐4 and IL‐5 after stimulation with anti‐CD3 Ab and showed a higher IL‐4/interferon (IFN)‐γ ratio (P < 0.05) in the AD patients compared to the healthy controls. The higher proliferative PBMC response to P. orbiculare and the Th2‐like cytokine production by P. orbiculare‐stimulated TCL from AD patients indicate that P. orbiculare may play a role in maintaining skin inflammation in AD.


A generalized outage table approach to analyzing reliability of bus schemes of power stations is proposed in the paper. The approach enables us to profoundly and fully study the influences of different bus schemes on reliability of power stations. The numerical examples given in the paper demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is very practical and efficient.


A large depth of 800 µm gradient microstructure was produced in pure titanium (Ti) by means of surface rolling treatment (SRT). The microstructural characteristics with different depths from the top surface were analyzed by optical microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and electron backscattered diffraction. The results showed that, on the outmost surface, nanograins with an average grain size of ∼100 nm were achieved. In the subsurface, i.e., the deformation twinning region, a large volume fraction of $\{10\bar 12\}$ { 10 1 ¯ 2 } deformation twins together with a low fraction of $\{11\bar 22\}$ { 11 2 ¯ 2 } and $\{11\bar 24\}$ { 11 2 ¯ 4 } twins were identified. Based on the microstructural analysis, the grain refinement mechanisms with increasing strain are summarized as: (i) prior division by deformation twinning, (ii) refinement effect of subgrain boundaries resulting from the accumulation of high density of dislocation, and (iii) transformation effect from low angle grain boundaries to high angle grain boundaries. The results of tension tests also show that the titanium sample after SRT shows higher strength than the as-received titanium sample.


Clare's family has an open secret: her older brother is a violent addict who has been in and out of jail since Clare was five. Clare has compensated by being as perfect as possible, getting good grades, knitting blankets for the homeless, saving for college, and rarely breaking her mother's strict rules, and she's determined to remember her brother as a good guy who was in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, when her brother comes home this time, she starts to see him with new eyes, particularly when he gets in trouble again and her mother tries to protect him at Clare's expense. A dramatic partial memory opens the book, immediately followed by Clare's description of the skeleton that appears before her in times of stress; what unfolds, however, is not the horror story these tropes suggest but a searching tale of a family torn apart by the addictions and criminal activities of one member. The mother and father are psychologically if maddeningly credible in their denial of the extent of their son's problems, and Clare's dawning understanding of how their cover-ups have allowed many people, including herself and her other brother, to be hurt is painful to read. Ultimately, Clare has to come to terms with the fact that no amount of compassion and forgiveness on her part can change her brother, and that her responsibility must be to herself first; that she gradually realizes this through experience rather than through adult supports and guidance relieves the book of any message-y pretense. Instead, there is a subtle coming-of-age arc where she offers to a young boy the kind of tacit compassion that she wishes she had received from her own family, paying forward the good her brother showed her before he went bad. KC


The major aim of this research is to examine the effect of internet-based instruction; the application prepared is based on the instructional model stages of Gagne on academic achievement and retention of learning through the information technology courses at 7 th grade in primary schools. This research was conducted by using pre-test and post-test control group with an experimental design. Internet-based instruction was applied on the group. Traditional instruction method was applied on the control group. 'I start Publishing' unit was studied with the experimental and control group in this research process. The study group consists of 46 7 th grade pupils in two different classes of a primary school in the center of the province of Nigde. The classes were assigned randomly to the experimental and control groups. To analyze the collected data, descriptive statistics, non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon Signed test methods were used. The research results support that Internetbased learning environments affect learning positively using appropriate strategies.


Growth factor (GF) signaling is a key determinant of stem cell fate. Interactions of GFs with their receptors are often mediated by heparan sulfate proteoglycans (HSPGs). Here, we report a cell surface engineering strategy that exploits the function of HSPGs to promote differentiation in embryonic stem cells (ESCs). We have generated synthetic neoproteoglycans (neoPGs) with affinity for the fibroblast growth factor 2 (FGF2) and introduced them into plasma membranes of ESCs deficient in HS biosynthesis. There, the neoPGs assumed the function of native HSPGs, rescued FGF2-mediated kinase activity, and promoted neural specification. This glycocalyx remodeling strategy is versatile and may be applicable to other types of differentiation.


Energetic particle physics is the study of the effects of energetic particles on collective electromagnetic (EM) instabilities and energetic particle transport in plasmas. Anomalously large energetic particle transport is often caused by low frequency MHD instabilities, which are driven by these energetic particles in the presence of a much denser background of thermal particles. The theory of collective energetic particle phenomena studies complex wave-particle interactions in which particle kinetic physics involving small spatial and fast temporal scales can strongly affect the MHD structure and long-time behavior of plasmas. The difficulty of modeling kinetic-MHD multiscale coupling processes stems from the disparate scales which are traditionally analyzed separately: the macroscale MHD phenomena are studied using the fluid MHD framework, while microscale kinetic phenomena are best described by complicated kinetic theories. The authors have developed a kinetic-MHD model that properly incorporates major particle kinetic effects into the MHD fluid description. For tokamak plasmas a nonvariational kinetic-MHD stability code, the NOVA-K code, has been successfully developed and applied to study problems such as the excitation of fishbone and Toroidal Alfven Eigenmodes (TAE) and the sawtooth stabilization by energetic ions in tokamaks. In space plasmas the authors have employed the kinetic-MHD model to study the energetic particle effects on the ballooning-mirror instability which explains the multisatellite observation of the stability and field-aligned structure of compressional Pc 5 waves in the magnetospheric ring current plasma.


To achieve a target data bandwidth in high-speed channels, an on-board channel modeling study was presented in this paper. A design guideline was found by observing the variation of link performance, depending on parameters such as channel length, baud rate, and the number of signal layers. The channel performance was investigated using a newly developed parametric simulation environment supported by a fast multilayered via transition modeling tool. The extensive parameter sweep simulations showed that an allowable channel reach has a lower and an upper bound limited by stub via effect and trace loss, respectively. Under a specified channel reach, the aggregate data bandwidths were estimated using a particle swarm optimization routine, and a tradeoff relation among the wiring capability and the maximum allowable data rate was observed. From these observations, the approach provides a guideline to select the number of signal layers for achieving the required data bandwidth.


Pedagogy is a pillar of human culture and society. Telling each other information and showing each other how to do things comes naturally to us. A strong case has been made that declarative knowledge is the norm of assertion, which is our primary way of telling others information. This article presents an analogous case for the hypothesis that procedural knowledge is the norm of instructional demonstration, which is a primary way of showing others how to do things. Knowledge is the norm of telling and showing. It is the prime pedagogical principle.


Abstract Hebbian mechanisms are justified according to their functional utility in an evolutionary sense. The selective advantage of correlating content-contingent stimuli reflects the putative common cause of temporally or spatially contiguous inputs. The selective consequences of such correlations are discussed by using examples from the evolution of signal form in sexual selection and model-mimic coevolution. We suggest that evolutionary justification might be considered in addition to neurophysiology plansibility when constructing representational models.


Interpretability is a crucial factor in building reliable models for various medical applications. Concept Bottleneck Models (CBMs) enable interpretable image classification by utilizing human-understandable concepts as intermediate targets. Unlike conventional methods that require extensive human labor to construct the concept set, recent works leveraging Large Language Models (LLMs) for generating concepts made automatic concept generation possible. However, those methods do not consider whether a concept is visually relevant or not, which is an important factor in computing meaningful concept scores. Therefore, we propose a visual activation score that measures whether the concept contains visual cues or not, which can be easily computed with unlabeled image data. Computed visual activation scores are then used to filter out the less visible concepts, thus resulting in a final concept set with visually meaningful concepts. Our experimental results show that adopting the proposed visual activation score for concept filtering consistently boosts performance compared to the baseline. Moreover, qualitative analyses also validate that visually relevant concepts are successfully selected with the visual activation score.


1. Contraction and intracellular Ca2+ (Ca2+i) transients were measured in isolated rabbit ventricular myocytes during twitches and contractures induced by rapid application of 10 mM‐caffeine. 2. The amplitude of caffeine‐induced contractures and the accompanying Ca2+i transients were larger than during normal twitches and also declined more slowly. This may be because only a fraction of sarcoplasmic reticulum (SR) Ca2+ is released during a normal twitch, or because of a temporal overlap of SR Ca2+ release and uptake during the twitch. 3. When a caffeine contracture was initiated in Na(+)‐free, Ca(2+)‐free medium (to prevent sarcolemmal Na(+)‐Ca2+ exchange) the contracture and Ca2+i transient were larger and decreased much more slowly. Thus, Ca2+ extrusion via Na(+)‐Ca2+ exchange may limit the amplitude of caffeine‐induced contractures. 4. Relaxation half‐time (t1/2) for the twitch (0.17 +/‐ 0.03 s) was increased to 0.54 +/‐ 0.07 s for caffeine contractures in control solution and 8.8 +/‐ 1 s for caffeine‐induced contractures in Na(+)‐free, Ca(2+)‐free solution. These results confirm that the SR Ca2+ pump and Na(+)‐Ca2+ exchange are the predominant mechanisms for cytoplasmic Ca2+ removal during relaxation. However slower mechanisms can still reduce intracellular [Ca2+]. 5. Relaxation of caffeine contractures in Na(+)‐free solution was further slowed when (a) mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake was inhibited with the oxidative phosphorylation uncoupler, FCCP (t1/2 = 19.7 +/‐ 3.2 s), or (b) the sarcolemmal Ca(2+)‐ATPase pumping ability was depressed by a large transmembrane [Ca2+] gradient (t1/2 = 27.5 +/‐ 6.9 s). 6. When the four Ca2+ transport systems were simultaneously inhibited (i.e. SR Ca2+ pump, Na(+)‐Ca2+ exchange, mitochondrial Ca2+ uptake and sarcolemmal Ca2+ pump), relaxation was practically abolished, but the cell could recover quickly when Na+ was reintroduced and caffeine removed. 7. We conclude that, under our experimental conditions, the sarcolemmal Ca2+ pump and mitochondria are approximately 37‐ and 50‐fold slower than the Na(+)‐Ca2+ exchange at removing Ca2+ from the cytoplasm. Additionally, the SR Ca2+ pump is about 3‐4 times faster than Na(+)‐Ca2+ exchange.


In this paper we estimate the Italian NAIRU using annual data for the period 1951-96. We find evidence consistent with aggregate wage setting in Italy depending only on the rate of unemployment prevailing in the Northern and Central areas of the country. There is evidence supporting the presence of a long-run cointegrating relationship among unemployment in the Northern and Central areas, the tax wedge, the real interest rate and a measure of union power. The response of unemployment to exogenous shocks is sluggish, suggesting that persistence is an important feature of the Italian labor market. Copyright 2000 by Oxford University Press.


The practice of traditional medicine or herbal cures among the Bakossi people of Cameroon, as in any other African society, has been viewed with mixed feelings and sometimes with outright disdain; yet, it has its own type of achievements, particularly in the area of therapeutic cures or exorcism. That notwithstanding, in contemporary Cameroon society one notices how the advent of modern technological developments and Western education has greatly impacted the practice of traditional medicine and the way tangomas (medicine men) practise their art. This study investigates people's possession of a sacred but rare ability to use language in a way peculiar to orthodox linguistic norms. It demonstrates the fact that oral literature has significant roles to play in African herbal medical practice. Furthermore, the paper examines disease taxonomy and how it affects language use among Bakossi tangomas. It is based on the premise that tangomas place high priority on the magical power of the word, as evidenced in their incantations, invocations and chants. The paper concludes that tangomas possess the best stock of poetical expressions and dramatic dialogue, which they employ to establish a rapport between people and the supernatural forces in the process of healing.


Elastic constants for cortical bone tissue have been correlated with the apparent tissue density, mineral density, and tissue porosity [1–4], but the little data that exists has indicated a weak or no relationship between these structural parameters and the elastic anisotropy [4,5]. A micromechanical model accounting for seven structural parameters across multiple length scales identified the bone mineral orientation distribution to be the most significant structural parameter governing the elastic anisotropy of cortical bone [6].Copyright © 2010 by ASME


Saccharomyces kluyveri is a heterothallic yeast with two allelic mating types denoted as a-k and α-k by analogy with Saccharomyces cerevisiae and from the work described here. S. kluyveri produces mating pheromones analogous to those of S. cerevisiae, but which appear to have different specificity. S. kluyveri thus differs from S. cerevisiae, Hansenula wingei, and Schizosaccharomyces pombe in that it exhibits both strong constitutive agglutination and mating pheromones. α-k cells produce a pheromone ("α-k-factor") which causes a-k cells to arrest in the G1 phase of the cell cycle and to undergo a morphological change. After a period of time dependent on the concentration of α-k-factor, cells exposed to the factor resume cell division. α-k-factor has no effect on a-k/α-k diploids or on α-k cells, but at high concentration does induce G1 arrest of S. cerevisiaea cells (a-c). a-k cells produce a pheromone ("a-k-factor") which causes α-k cells to exhibit a morphological change. In addition, a-k cells exhibit the Bar phenotype with respect to α-k-factor. Partially purified preparations of S. cerevisiae α-factor are more active in inducing G1 arrest of a-k cells than of a-c cells. A more purified preparation of α-c-factor is less active against a-k cells than a-c cells, suggesting that an additional factor (KRE, kluyveri response enhancer) may be lost during purification. Attempts to mate S. kluyveri and S. cerevisiae cells by prototroph selection and by cell-to-cell mating have been unsuccessful with all combinations of mating types. Thus, S. cerevisiae and S. kluyveri are incompatible for mating even though their pheromones exhibit some physiological cross-reaction.


Background: The Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Nuclear Translocator (ARNT, HIF-1β) is a member of the basic-Helix-Loop-Helix PER/ARNT/SIM (bHLH/PAS) protein family and a vital transcriptional regulator regarding development and physiological adaptation processes. ARNT is discussed to be linked with cancer, and other diseases. ARNT is known to be translocated into the cell nucleus, where accumulation of the protein takes place. ARNT is a heterodimerisation partner of the xenobiotic ligand activated Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor (AhR), the Single Minded proteins (SIM), the cardiovascular helix-loop-helix factor 1 and the Hypoxia Inducible Factor proteins (HIF-α). ARNT is obligatory for HIF-1, HIF-2 and HIF-3 binding to DNA. Whereas degradation of the HIF-α subunits is suppressed by hypoxia, ARNT is generally regarded as constitutively expressed in excess within the cell, and stabilisation is commonly thought to be oxygen-independent. However, we provide evidence that the regulation of ARNT is far more complex. The aim of our study was to reevaluate the regulation of ARNT expression. Methods: We examined cell lines of different origin like MCF-7 and T47D (human breast cancer), HeLa (human cervix carcinoma), Hep3B and HepG2 (human hepatoma), Kelly (human neuroblastoma), REPC (human kidney) and Cos7 (primary primate kidney) cells. We used immunoblot analysis, densitometry, RT-PCR and transient transfection. Results and Conclusion: Our results show that ARNT protein levels are influenced by hypoxia and hypoxia mimetics such as cobalt(II)-chloride (CoCl2) and dimethyloxalylglycine (DMOG) in a cell line specific manner. We demonstrate that this effect might be triggered by HIF-1α which plays an important role in the process of stabilizing ARNT in hypoxia.


This paper presents the results of our effort in improving the accuracy of a DTW-based automatic phonetic aligner. The adopted model assumes that the phonetic segment sequence is already known and so the goal is only to align the spoken utterance with a reference synthetic signal produced by waveform concatenation without prosodic modifications. Instead of using a single acoustic measure to compute the alignment cost function, our strategy uses a combination of acoustic features depending on the pair of phonetic segment classes being aligned. The results show that this strategy considerably reduces the segment boundary location errors, even when aligning synthetic and natural speech signals of different gender speakers.


BACKGROUND
Double lumen tube (DLT) and Univent are two commonly used lung isolation devices that often require bronchoscopy assistance. In order to facilitate blind placement for situations where bronchoscopy was unavailable, the cricoid displacing maneuver (CDM) was adopted. This study was designed to explore whether the CDM could improve the successful blind placement rate in left lung isolation esophageal surgeries.

METHODS
120 ASA 1-3 patients who received left lung isolation esophageal surgeries from October 2014 to February 2016 and October 2018 to January 2020 were enrolled in this single-centered prospective assessorblinded randomized controlled trial. After anesthesia induction, patients were intubated either with DLT or Univent by applying the CDM, and the position of devices was checked by bronchoscopy. After turning into the right decubitus position, the devices were pulled back to the trachea, and placement was conducted once again. Successful placement rate for the first attempt, time needed for initial placement, malposition and reposition times by bronchoscopy during surgery, bronchus injury score, rank of lung isolation and postoperative anesthesia-related complications were recorded.

RESULTS
At supine position, the successful placement rates for the first attempt of DLT-CDM, DLTcontrol, Univent-CDM and Univent-Control were 100%, 76.7%, 96.7% and 66.7% respectively (DLT: P=0.016; Univent: P=0.003) while at right decubitus position were 86.7%, 66.7%, 93.3% and 66.7% (DLT: P=0.067; Univent: P=0.010). There was no significant difference in the time needed for successful intubation and no severe complications.

CONCLUSIONS
The current study provided evidence that the CDM is an effective and safe blind endobronchial placement technique for left DLT and Univent. We suggest that CDM could be applied to the endobronchial placement of left DLT and Univent.


AIM
To understand the implication of GATA-4 and GATA-5 methylation in gastric carcinogenesis.

METHODS
Methylation status of GATA-4 and GATA-5 CpG islands in human gastric mucosa samples, including normal gastric biopsies from 45 outpatients, gastric dysplasia [low-grade gastric intraepithelial neoplasia (GIN), n = 30; indefinite, n = 77], and 80 paired sporadic gastric carcinomas (SGC) as well as the adjacent non-neoplastic gastric tissues was analyzed by methylation specific polymerase chain reaction (MSP) and confirmed by denatured high performance liquid chromatography (DHPLC). Immunohistochemical staining was used to detect protein expression. The correlation between GATA-4 and GATA-5 methylation and clinicopathological characteristics of patients including Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) infection was analyzed.

RESULTS
GATA-4 and GATA-5 methylation was frequently observed in SGCs (53.8% and 61.3%, respectively) and their corresponding normal tissues (41.3% and 46.3%) by MSP. The result of MSP was consistent with that of DHPLC. Loss of both GATA-4 and GATA-5 proteins was associated with their methylation in SGCs (P = 0.01). Moreover, a high frequency of GATA-4 and GATA-5 methylation was found in both gastric low-grade GIN (57.1% and 69.0%) and indefinite for dysplasia (42.9% and 46.7%), respectively. However, GATA-4 and GATA-5 methylation was detected only in 4/32 (12.5%) and 3/39 (7.7%) of normal gastric biopsies. GATA-4 methylation in both normal gastric mucosa and low-grade GIN was also significantly associated with H. pylori infection (P = 0.023 and 0.027, two-sides).

CONCLUSION
Epigenetic inactivation of GATA-4 (and GATA-5) by methylation of CpG islands is an early frequent event during gastric carcinogenesis and is significantly correlated with H. pylori infection.


A thin layer of CdO is formed on a chemically deposited CdS thin film through reaction with atmospheric oxygen during heating in air for 5-240 min at 370-500 °C. The sheet resistance of the film drops from about 1013 Ω-3.5 kΩ (370 °C) and 470 Ω (500 °C). From optical transmittance and reflectance spectra, the thickness of the CdO layer was found to be about 10 nm; the crystalline grain size is 12-25 nm, depending on the temperature and duration of heating; and the estimated electrical resistivity is 10-4-10-3 Ω cm. The optical bandgap of the CdS-CdO layer is effectively that of the underlying CdS thin film, about 2.45 eV in the annealed film. The CdS, which remains under the conductive CdO top layer, is photosensitive, with a photo-to-dark current ratio of 103 and crystalline grain diameter of about 10 nm in the case of a film heated at 500 °C for 5 min. These results are discussed in the context of window layers in solar cells.


Sometimes SRS (Stereotactic Radio Surgery) requires using sphere packing on a Region of Interest (ROI) such as cancer to determine a treatment plan. We have developed a sphere packing algorithm which packs non-intersecting spheres inside the ROI. The region of interest in our case are those voxels which are identified as cancer tissues. In this paper, we analyze the rotational invariant properties of our spherepacking algorithm which is based on distance transformations. e-Rotation invariant means the ability to arbitrary rotate the 3D ROI while keeping the volume properties remaining (almost) same within some limit of e. The applied rotations produce spherical packing which remains highly correlated as we analyze the geometrically properties of sphere packing before and after the rotation of the volume data for the ROI. Our novel sphere packing algorithm has high degree of rotation invariance within the range of ± e. Our method used a shape descriptor derived from the values of the disjoint set of spheres form the distance-based sphere packing algorithm to extract the invariant descriptor from the ROI. We demonstrated by implementing these ideas using Slicer3D platform available for our research. The data is based on sing MRI Stereotactic images. We presented several performance results on different benchmarks data of over 30 patients in Slicer3D platform.


The indication for off-pump coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) have been expanded as development of the off-pump device has progressed. We present a case of four-vessel revascularization with total arterial graft under a beating heart. All conduits were in situ or composite, and bypass was performed with aorta non-touch technique. Off-pump bypass using in situ quadruple arterial conduits may contribute to a reduction of incidence of perioperative strokes and reduction of the postoperative cardiac events.


Here is a description of an ideal that plays an important part in the construction of projective Reed-Muller codes. The use of Eagon-Northcott complex which is a generalisation of the Koszul complex gives us a method to compute dimensions of projective Reed-Muller codes. Moreover a calculus of dimensions gives us a combinatoric identity. This communication is issued from a paper admitted in the Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra and we have adjoined a straightforward and subtle proof of the combinatoric identity given by Michel Quercia.


In this paper, the development of a power combined W-band heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) oscillator is reported. The oscillation frequency is 105.9 GHz, and the output power is +0.6 dBm with a phase noise of -88 dBc/Hz at 1 MHz offset. We believe this is the first report of a W-band fundamental mode power combined oscillator.


The simulation of turbulent flows including active flow control devices, such as synthetic jets, is still a difficult task. Numerical parameters (grid size, time step, etc.) may have a significant influence on the result, while the choice of the turbulence closure is often critical. In this context, we investigate the use of a Kriging-based global optimization method to determine optimal control parameters. The objective of this study is twofold: firstly, we quantify the impact of some numerical and modeling parameters on the Kriging model constructed using a design of experiment approach. In a second phase, we conduct an optimization process and measure the impact of numerical and modeling errors on the optimal control parameters found. An approach to account for some numerical errors during the optimization is finally presented. The turbulent flow over a backward facing step, including a synthetic jet actuator, is considered as test-case. The time-averaged recirculation length is considered as control criterion, while jet frequency and amplitude are optimized.


The interaction of galaxies with their environment, the Intergalactic Medium (IGM), is an important aspect of galaxy formation. One of the most fundamental, but unanswered questions in the evolution of galaxies is how gas circulates in and around galaxies and how it enters the galaxies to support star formation. We have several lines of evidence that the observed evolution of star formation requires gas accretion from the IGM at all times and on all cosmic scales. This gas remains largely unaccounted for and the outstanding questions are where this gas resides and what the physical mechanisms of accretion are. The gas is expected to be embedded in an extended cosmic web made of sheets and filaments. Such large-scale filaments of gas are expected by cosmological numerical simulations, which have made significant progress in recent years. Such simulations do not only model the large scale structure of the cosmic web, but also investigate the neutral gas component. To truly make significant progress in understanding the distribution of neutral hydrogen in the IGM, column densities of NHI=10^18 cm-2 and below have to be probed over large areas on the sky at sub-arcminute resolution. These are the densities of the faintest structures known today around nearby galaxies, though mostly found with single dish telescopes which do not have the resolution to resolve these structures and investigate any kinematics. Existing interferometers lack the collecting power or short baselines to achieve brightness sensitivities typically below NHI=10^19 cm-2. Reaching lower column densities with current facilities is feasible, however requires prohibitively long observing times. The SKA will for the first time break these barriers, enabling interferometric observations an order of magnitude deeper than current interferometers and with an order of magnitude better linear resolution than single-dish telescopes.


Influence of two different streptococcal group A type 12 strains on chemotactic activity of polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) was investigated in vitro and in vivo. The strains differed only in presence of M protein. In both conditions, the inhibition of the chemotaxis of the PMN after their treatment with M positive strains was observed. These results suggest that M protein of streptococci inhibits chemotaxis of PMN and therefore they can weaken defensive mechanisms of infected organism.


Cultured human myeloid cells (K562) are known to bear Fc receptors that bind with aggregated human IgG (AHG). These cells were used to develop a radiometric assay for detection and quantitation of immune complexes (IC) in human sera. The binding of AHG or in vitro-formed IC between keyhole lympet hemocyanin (KLH) and human anti-KLH to the K562 cells did not require complement. When the K562 radiometric assay was compared to the complement-consumption assay, the K562 radiometric assay could detect IC over a wider range of antibody:antigen ratios. The incidence and mean IC values detected by the K562 radiometric assay in sera from cancer patients and patients with connective tissue diseases (498 +/- 445 and 436 +/- 209 micrograms AHG equ/ml, respectively) were significantly higher than in sera from healthy volunteers (107 +/- 62 micrograms AHG equ/ml). The IC level among sera from cancer patients ranged from 1-3200 micrograms AHG equ/ml. Studies with a limited number of sera from melanoma and sarcoma patients revealed that the mean IC values were significantly higher in patients who had clinically detectable disease than in those with no evidence of disease. Since the K562 cells do not require complement to interact with AHG, the K562 radiometric assay may be potentially useful for detecting IC in pathologic sera which may or may not contain in vivo-bound complement components.


The air traffic management (ATM) system is an integrated intelligent system that integrates the ground computer network, the airborne network and the space satellite (communication and navigation) network. The development of ATM systems cannot be achieved without the application of new technologies, and this paper proposes an integration architecture of cloud computing and blockchain for ATM systems. The research content of this paper is introduced by an overview of the research on cloud computing and blockchain technology in ATM systems. The overall design architecture and the main functional module architecture of the solution are given. In the process of describing the architecture design, the advantages of the new technology architecture over the traditional architecture of existing ATM systems are pointed out. In addition, this paper analyzes and demonstrates the security of the solution in terms of process security and system security. The solution will help improve the security, reliability and scalability of ATM services, and provide reference for the deployment of the third-generation ATM networks and the design and research of the fourthgeneration ATM networks. Keywords—ATM, cloud computing, blockchain, integration architecture


Using linear response theory within the random phase approximation, we investigate the propagation of sound in a uniform two dimensional (2D) Bose gas in the collisionless regime. We show that the sudden removal of a static density perturbation produces a damped oscillatory behavior revealing that sound can propagate also in the absence of collisions, due to mean-field interaction effects. We provide explicit results for the sound velocity and damping as a function of temperature, pointing out the crucial role played by Landau damping. We support our predictions by performing numerical simulations with the stochastic (projected) Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The results are consistent with the recent experimental observation of sound in a weakly interacting 2D Bose gas both below and above the superfluid Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition.


To obtain a correct histological renal diagnosis, two adequate cortical biopsy cylinders are routinely taken for light microscopy and immunohistology in nephrology units. We describe our simple method for light microscopy (LM) study using the same frozen renal material used for immunofluorescence (IF). Of over 2,000 biopsies processed with this method, only three showed thawing artifacts and all occurred when the room temperature was above 30 degrees C. Our 18 years' experience and the large number of biopsies indicate that this method offers an interesting new way to do LM and IF with one biopsy core and could help stimulate etiopathogenic and diagnostic studies in nephrology. The other renal specimen can be used for histological investigation, applying recent molecular biology techniques (PCR, RT-PCR, in situ hybridization).