CTRC-AACR San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium: 2008 Abstracts

Abstract #5076

Background: Oxytocin decreases human breast cancer cell proliferation in vitro and oxytocin receptors are reported to be present on at least 80% of human breast tumors. Animal studies show increased oxytocin levels in association with pair bonding, maternal care giving and mating behavior. Our experiment tested two hypotheses: 1) exogenous administration of oxytocin(OT) and 2) sibling-group housing, compared to individual housing, will reduce the growth in human breast cancer cell -MCF7-xenografts in SCID mice. We also hypothesized this effect would be mediated by differences in circulating OT. Materials and Methods: A 2 X 2 design was used to study 48 animals. Half of the animals lived in group(GRP) housing, the others were housed singly(SGL). Half of the animals in each housing group received OT (10-9 M) administered by a continuous release pellet(Innovative Research of America) and the others received a placebo(PBO) pellet. At weaning(4 wks), SCID mice were randomized to individual cages vs. groups of 4 mice per cage. At maturation (vaginal cornification-8 wks), continuous release estrogen pellets were implanted and two days later MCF7 cells(0.1ml/10X106)were implanted in the mammary fat pad. Pellets containing OT or PBO were implanted, subcutaneously, 2 days after the MCF7 cells. Plasma was collected 2 days prior to and 2 days following pellet & cell implantation, 14 days later and at sacrifice (41 – 60 d) for analysis of OT concentration using enzyme immunoassay (Assay Designs, Inc). Tumor volumes were measured every three days. Statistical Analyses: A natural log transformation of the plasma OT levels was used to reduce skewness in the observed values. Tumor volumes were converted to cubed root to linearize and a regression line was fit to generate tumor growth rate(slope). Differences in tumor growth rate by housing condition (GRP/SGL), oxy Rx(Y/N) and OT plasma levels were tested by mixed effects ANOVA. Results: OT plasma levels in animals with OT pellets, as compared to PBO, were significantly different at 2 & 14 days after pellet implantation(p=0.001), but not at baseline or at sacrifice. OT plasma levels were higher in group vs single housing (p=.023). Due to the lack of difference in plasma OT at the time of sacrifice, we limited prediction of tumor growth rate to the first 29 days when OT pellets were secreting OT (extrapolation from levels at 2 & 14 days). Slower tumor growth rate occurred with OT treatment compared to PBO(p=0.031), and with higher OT plasma levels(p=0.032) but not with group vs. single housing. Discussion: Continuous oxytocin administration over 29 days produced increased oxytocin plasma levels and both were associated with reduced MCF7 xenograft growth rate in SCID mice. Our next step will be to test whether breast tumor oxytocin receptor density moderates the association between plasma oxytocin and tumor growth rate.

Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(2 Suppl):Abstract nr 5076.


An analytical solution for calculating the residence time of fluid flowing toward a pumping well in an unconfined aquifer has been developed. The analytical solution was derived based on a radial, steady‐state, Dupuit‐Forchheimer flow model. The resulting integral expression involved computing the imaginary error function, for which a simple series expansion is proposed. The validity of the analytical expression is demonstrated by testing its results against numerical results for an example problem. The analytical solution compared favorably with the numerical approximation.


Both Kannada and Marathi are very old languages. Both have their own scripts, words with a rich vocabulary, meaning and usages. Synthesis and exchange between Kannada and Marathi in the field of Music, Drama, Painting, Folklore and various other forms of art and literature can be noticed. This paper deals on the cultural heritage or legacy of the Karnataka. Karnataka-Maharashtra border region is primarily concerning Kannada-Marathi languages and the relation between the people speaking these two languages. It is mainly focused on how both Kannada and Marathi languages have influenced each other and have blended together.


Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are well suited to solve numerous real-world data collection and estimation problems. While the wireless nodes used for these applications share many similarities with classical wireless terminals, they are also unique in many ways. In particular, WSNs are typically deployed with little or no existing infrastructure and thus must set-up and operate autonomously. In addition, these wireless nodes are often severely constrained in terms of operational resources. For these reasons, there has been a great deal of research and development for medium access control (MAC) and network layers that are designed to meet these unique operational parameters. Here, we introduce a dynamic channel allocation (DCA) algorithm that is designed to operate in a fully distributed ad hoc manner. This DCA-MAC algorithm employs a common channel for link setup as well as multiple additional frequency channels that are used for data transmission. Deemed essential for long-term operation, sleep synchronization is popular for WSNs. DCA-MAC has been designed to incorporate this mechanism


This review highlights the principal crops of Brazil and how their harvest waste can be used in the chemicals and materials industries. The review covers various plants; with grains, fruits, trees and nuts all being discussed. Native and adopted plants are included and studies on using these plants as a source of chemicals and materials for industrial applications, polymer synthesis, medicinal use and in chemical research is discussed. The main aim of the review is to highlight the principal Brazilian agricultural resources; such as sugarcane, oranges and soybean, as well as secondary resources, such as andiroba brazil nut, buriti and others, which should be explored further for scientific and technological applications. Furthermore, vegetable oils, carbohydrates (starch, cellulose, hemicellulose, lignocellulose and pectin), flavones and essential oils will be described as well as their potential applications.


In Parkinson's disease (PD) patients, the progressive nature of the disease and the variability of disabling motor and non-motor symptoms contribute to the growing caregiver burden of PD partners and conflicts in their relationships. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) improves PD symptoms and patients' quality of life but necessitates an intensified therapy optimization after DBS surgery. This review illuminates caregiver burden in the context of DBS, framing both pre- and postoperative aspects. We aim to provide an overview of perioperative factors influencing caregiver burden and wish to stimulate further recognition of caregiver burden of PD patients with DBS.


CONTEXT
Hypoparathyroidism is characterized by low serum calcium, increased serum phosphorus, and inappropriately low or decreased serum parathyroid hormone, which may be associated with soft tissue calcification in the basal ganglia of the brain.

OBJECTIVE
To assess the prevalence and factors involved in the pathophysiology of basal ganglia calcification (BGC) in the brain in chronic hypoparathyroidism, and to evaluate proposed pathophysiologic mechanisms.

DESIGN
Case-control study with retrospective review of medical records over 20 years.

SETTING
Single academic medical center.

PATIENTS
142 patients with chronic hypoparathyroidism and CT head scans followed between 1/1/2000 and 7/9/2020, and 426 age- and sex-matched controls with CT head scans over the same interval.

INTERVENTIONS
None.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Demographic, biochemical, and CT head imaging findings, with semi-quantitative assessment of volumetric BGC.

RESULTS
The study found that 25.4% of 142 patients followed for a median of 17 years after diagnosis of chronic hypoparathyroidism had BGC, which developed at a younger age than in controls. BGC was 5.1-fold more common in nonsurgical patients, and less common in postsurgical patients. Low serum calcium and low calcium/phosphate ratio correlated with BGC. Neither serum phosphorus nor calcium x phosphate product predicted BGC. Lower serum calcium was associated with greater volume of BGC. The extent of BGC varied widely, with nonsurgical patients generally having a greater volume and distribution of calcification.

CONCLUSIONS
BGC is associated with low serum calcium and low serum calcium/phosphate ratio, which may be related to severity of the disease, its etiology, or duration of treatment.


Background PID is a common condition seen at genitourinary clinics. BASHH published NICE approved guidelines in 2011. To improve consistency amongst clinicians we designed a simple aide memoire tick-box sticker. To improve health adviser (HA) contact and reduce "did-not-attend" (DNA) rates we established a HA staffed telephone follow-up clinic Methods We regularly audit both management of PID and follow-up and so were able to compare data (2011–2015) to demonstrate improvements in practice with these changes Outcome Partner notification rates improved from 50% to 67% helped mainly by the telephone clinic as HA documented in all cases whether partners had been screened/treated. 82% had a recording of symptom change, previously 77%. For those followed-up using the telephone clinic proforma this was 100%. Results for the number of named male contacts screened for infection and/or treated have improved (2011 = 0.21; 2014 = 0.38; 2015 = 0.48) and we now achieve above the BASHH target (0.4 – large city centre clinic). Over the past five years introducing these measures into clinic has improved all outcomes except DNA rate which remains stubborn (33% vs 27%). For a large city centre clinic the reasons behind this are complex and varied Conclusions Innovative yet simple measures can be easily introduced which have a positive impact on guideline adherence and also make audit an easier task. With the advent of EPR in many clinics these initiatives should be transferable and aid standardising management across the GU network particularly during this time of change and service integration


Department Medical Nursing, University of Gondar, Gondar, Ethiopia Background: Depression is the most common mental health disorder among HIV-positive pregnant mothers, which increases mortality, poor quality of life; it also increases the burden of disease. Depression hurts birth outcomes and maternal health. Objective: To assess depression and its associated factors among HIV-positive pregnant women attending antenatal care at Northwest Amhara referral hospitals, 2021. Methods: An institution-based cross-sectional study was conducted among 291 HIVpositive pregnant mothers from March 15, 2021 to April 30, 2021 at Northwest Amhara referral hospitals. Census was applied to reach the study participants. An intervieweradministered questionnaire was used for data collection. A binary logistic regression was conducted to see the relationship between dependent variables and independent. Those variables having a p-value of ≤0.05 were found to be statistically associated with the response. Results: Depression among HIV-positive pregnant women was found to be 28.7% [95% CI (24.8–33.40)] with a response rate of 96.04. Age ≥30 years [AOR = 1.32, 95% CI (1.24– 3.35)], urban residency [AOR = 1.76, 95% CI (1.57–4.61)], having first pregnancy <18 years [AOR = 3.82, 95% CI (1.54–17.34)], known HIV serostatus during pregnancy [AOR = 1.29, 95% CI (1.08–2.47)], and COVID-19-related knowledge [AOR = 0.32, 95% CI (0.12–1.12) were significantly associated with depression. Conclusions and Recommendations: Nearly one-third of the pregnant women attending antenatal care were depressed. The age of the mother, residence, known HIV serostatus during pregnancy, age in the first pregnancy, and COVID-19-related knowledge were significantly associated with depression, and strengthening the existing care provided was the recalled interventions to combat antenatal depression during the COVID-19 pandemic.


The dabsylation of amino acids has been applied to resolve their optical isomers with the use of chiral mobile phase in high performance liquid chromatography. The dabsyl amino acids were successfully separated on reversed phase column(C18) by adding a chiral L-benzylproline-Cu(II) chelate to the mobile phase. The separation selectivity of the dabsyl amino acid enan tiomers was not less than that of dansyl amino acids. The retention order of the dabsyl amino acid enantiomers was as those of the dansyl amino acid enantiomers except dabsyl threonine. The optical selectivity of the dabsyl amino acids increase with pH of the mobile phase and concentration of the chelate, but slightly decreases with concentration of buffer and organic solvent composition. However serine, methionine, valine, and leucine showed a slight decrease in the optical selectivity with increase in pH. The retention times of the dabsyl amino acids decreases with increasing pH and acetonitrile concentration but increases with the concentration of the chiral chelate added. The mechanism of the optical resolution is based on a stereospecific interaction including a intramolecular hydrophobic ef fect and SN-2 reactivity of the ligand exchange chromatography. It is advantageous to detect absorption at 436 nm, which is less interferent them the other detection systems. The derivatized dabsyl amino acids are stable for a month.


In this paper, we reformulate the optimization in discriminative training (DT) of HMMs as an ellipsoid constrained quadratic programming (ECQP) problem, where a second order of the non-linear space is adopted. We show that the unique optimal solution of ECQP can be obtained by an efficient line search and no relaxation is needed as in a general quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP). Moreover, a subspace combination condition is introduced to further simplify it under certain cases. The concrete ECQP form of DT of HMMs is given based on a locality constraint and reasonable assumptions, and the algorithm can be conducted to update Gaussians jointly or separately in either sequential or batch mode. Under the perspective of ECQP, rela-tionships between various popular DT optimization algorithms are discussed. Experimental results on two recognition tasks show that ECQP considerably outperforms other popular algorithms in terms of final recognition accuracy and convergence speed in iterations.


PURPOSE
To describe detailed phenotypic and genotypic analysis of a pleomorphic adenocarcinoma of the ciliary epithelium (CE).

CASE REPORT
An 86-year-old white woman developed an enlarging mass protruding from her previously eviscerated left eye 2 months postoperatively. Based on light and ultrastructural microscopy, the final diagnosis was a pleomorphic adenocarcinoma of the ciliary epithelium (CE).

DISCUSSION
Cell proliferation indices confirmed the unusually rapid growth rate of this tumor; the peridiploid DNA content might explain the relatively low incidence of distant metastases. An imbalance of the chromosome 6 was also found by Comparative Genomic Hybridization (CGH).


In this article we review the literature on the phenomenology of retrieval from the personal past, and propose a framework for understanding how epistemic feelings and metacognitive reflections guide the retrieval of representations of past events in the Self Memory System. Our focus is on an overlooked aspect of autobiographical memory, the phenomenology of the retrieval process, as opposed to the products of retrieval themselves. As we argue in the present paper, this is not some magical collection of phenomena, but centers on the feeling of familiarity derived from retrieval fluency during the process of retrieval. The relationship between retrieval fluency and retrieved content, interpreted metacognitively is what gives autobiographical retrieval its particular phenomenological "flavor." To illustrate our point, we focus on two phenomena that only recently were considered alongside each other: the déjà vu experience and involuntary autobiographical memories. Our proposal is that the feeling of familiarity (i.e., this reminds me of something) for the personal past acts to guide deliberate, conscious memory search. We argue that the critical concept in the phenomenology of retrieval is fluency-how readily information comes to mind. This article is categorized under: Psychology > Memory Philosophy > Consciousness Philosophy > Knowledge and Belief.


This case examines the ethical issues raised when businesses contract for the military during time of war. Dow Chemical Company was a military contractor during the Vietnam War and the primary producer of Agent Orange - a defoliant used to clear vegetation. Agent Orange has been linked to a number of serious medical conditions in war veterans and Vietnamese civilians. In 2004, Vietnamese citizens filed suit against Dow for illnesses they believe were caused by exposure to Agent Orange. Dow thought the issue should have been addressed through political and social policy, while Vietnamese citizens and U.S. Vietnam war veterans believed Dow was ethically responsible. As the case moved through the U.S. judicial system, some of Dow's investors grew uncomfortable with how it was handled. Dow CEO Andrew Liveris was left to wonder what his company could have done differently and what they could learn from the Agent Orange episode that might prevent similar problems in the future. This incident appeared to be a relatively distinct case, but in July of 2007 it was reported that the number of private contract employees in Iraq exceeded that of U.S. military personnel. Consequently, it is likely that companies and their stakeholders will have to address similar issues.


Website and mobile application privacy policies are intended to describe the system's data practices. However, they are often written in non-standard formats and contain ambiguities that make it difficult for users to read and comprehend these documents. We propose a crowdsourcing approach to extract data practices from privacy policies to provide more concise and useable privacy notices to users and support the analysis of stated data practices. To that end, we designed a hierarchical task workflow for crowdsourcing the extraction of data practices from privacy policies. We discuss our workflow design and report preliminary results.


Staphylococcus aureus has emerged as an important pathogen with a significant impact on the health care system. Noskin and colleagues describe the burden of this organism on a national level. From 2000-2001, S aureus was reported as a discharge diagnosis in 0.8% of all hospital stays. On a national level, the impact of S aureus is staggering: 2.7 million days in excess length of stay, $9.5 billion in additional hospital charges, and almost 12 000 hospital deaths annually. Therefore, the potential benefits to hospitals in terms of reduced resource utilization and improved patient outcomes from preventing S aureus are significant.


The association between catastrophic airway events and developmental delay was examined in patients with CHARGE (coloboma, heart disease, atresia choanae, retarded growth and/or development, genital hypoplasia, and ear anomalies and/or deafness) association. A retrospective chart analysis was performed from The Children's Hospital in Boston, Mass. Sixteen patients were identified with CHARGE association. Nine patients had at least one respiratory arrest, and 7 had no airway difficulties. Some degree of developmental delay was seen in 14 patients, but was most severe in those patients who suffered a respiratory arrest. We conclude that children with CHARGE association have a propensity for airway instability and that cerebral hypoxia contributed to the developmental delay in some of our patients. We recommend early tracheotomy rather than early choanal atresia repair in these patients to protect the central nervous system.


LOS ANGELES by FARAH MIHOUBI (Under the Direction of Joan Koonce Moss) ABSTRACT This research explores in detail unbanked Hispanic consumers, using the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency's Survey of Financial Activities and Attitudes dataset. Logistic regression was employed in an attempt to understand the differences between Hispanic and nonHispanic consumers' behavior in the financial services marketplace. This study examined whether Hispanics were more or less likely to be unbanked or to use alternative financial services, both before and after controlling for other variables that could proxy for demographic characteristics, economic characteristics, language-related characteristics, and geographic characteristics. The findings indicated that Hispanics are indeed more likely to be unbanked than their non-Hispanic counterparts. After adjusting for other factors, Hispanics were less likely to be unbanked, suggesting that certain characteristics of the population may play a greater role in being unbanked than being Hispanic. However, the findings did not support the direction of the hypothesis when examining the use of AFS.


The goal of the study was to analyze road traffic injury deaths in children and adolescents aged 0 to 19 years in Lithuanian over 1998- 2007 by road users. Trends were estimated by the use of linear regression. The coefficient of determination (R Square) was used. The significance level p ≤0.05 was considered statistically significant. In Lithuania, in 1998-2007, 1,080 children aged 0 to 19 years were killed in traffic crashes. Boys deceased 2.5 times more that of girls. The results of the study revealed as among children and adolescents killed in traffic crashes there were: 57% in cars, 24% - pedestrians, 8 %- cyclists, and 7 %- motorcyclists. 62 % girls and 55% boys deceased as passengers, 28 % girls and 22 % boys deceased as pedestrians. 4 % girls and 9 % boys died as cyclists, and 2% girls and 10 % boys died as motorized two-wheelers. The study showed significant increasing trends of passengers and motorcyclists mortality rates in the whole group aged 0 to 19 years, and decreasing tendencies of pedestrians' mortality rate over decade. No significant change of cyclists' mortality rate was observed for the whole group. For girls significant increasing trend was observed in passengers' mortality, and significant decreasing trends were observed in cyclists and pedestrians mortality rates. In girls group for motorcyclists mortality no significant changed was showed. For boys, significant increasing trends were observed in passengers' mortality and in motorcyclists' mortality rates. In boys group for pedestrians and cyclists mortality rates no significant trends were observed.


Study Design. A prospective randomized clinical pilot study to compare early versus late enteral feeding in patients with acute cervical spinal cord injury. Objectives. To compare the incidence of infections in patients with acute cervical spinal cord injury who received early versus late enteral feeding. Secondary objectives included assessing nutritional status, feeding tolerance, the number of ventilator hours, and acute-care hospital length of stay. Summary of Background Data. Early nutritional support has been found to be beneficial in critically ill patients. However, the same benefits may not be realized in patients with acute cervical spinal cord injury because of their unique nutritional challenges. Methods. Eligible patients were randomized to early feeding (initiated before 72 hours after injury) and late (initiated more than 120 hours after injury). Patients were stratified on the basis of their neurologic level. Patients were assessed daily for the first 15 days. After that time, infections (according to Center for Disease Control criteria), ventilator hours, and length of acute-care hospital stay were tracked. Results. Twenty-three patients met the eligibility criteria, and 17 patients were included in the analysis. There were 7 patients in the early group and 10 in the late group. The early group had a mean of 2.4 ± 1.5 infections compared with the late group, which had a mean of 1.7 ± 1.1 infections. Secondary outcomes were not substantially different between the two groups. Conclusions. This pilot study failed to detect any differences in the incidence of infection, nutritional status, feeding complications, number of ventilator hours, or length of stay between patients receiving early versus late initiation of enteral feeding. These data will assist in the determination of an adequate sample size for future studies.


Preparations of structurally preserved cerebellar perikarya (cells) were found to express high‐affinity transport systems for glutamate but not for certain putative transmitter substances (including monoamines, glycine and taurine) and non‐transmitter amino acids. The characteristics of the high‐affinity glutamate transport system were similar to those of other preparations of brain tissue: [3H]glutamate uptake by the cells was Na+‐dependent and was inhibited competetively by other acidic amino acids. The rank order of apparent affinities of the carrier for acidic amino acids was L‐aspartate > L‐glutamate > D‐aspartate ≫ D‐glutamate (the affinity for D‐glutamate being over two orders of magnitude lower than for the other three amino acids). Comparison of high‐affinity [3H]glutamate uptake in preparations enriched in different cell types showed that although the affinities are similar (2‐4 fiM), the rate is outstandingly high in astrocytes (Vmax 18 nmol/min per mg protein). Significantly, uptake into the putatively glutamatergic granule cells was very low. These observations were supported by autoradiographic findings which showed that the predominant sites of [3H]glutamate uptake in cerebellar cultures enriched in interneurones are the astrocytes. Furthermore, the Vmax in cultures enriched in astrocytes was as high as that in separated astrocytes. Thus, it seems that the principal cell type involved in acidic amino acid uptake in the cerebellum is the astrocyte, and this must be taken into consideration when high‐affinity uptake is used as a marker for glutamatergic transmitter systems. Furthermore, the selective cellular distribution of glutamate transport sites, together with the uneven distribution of enzymes related to glutamate metabolism observed previously, indicates that a metabolic interaction takes place between the different cell types, supporting the current hypothesis on metabolic compartmentation in the brain.


Bioremediation of soils and waters due to mercury (Hg) contamination represents one of the most critical environmental challenges. In addition, this challenge is even greater in arid soils due to the low economic interest in these regions. Such is the case of the Secocha Annex, located in the Arequipa province of Camaná in Southern Peru. In this region, the excessive use of Hg in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) activities has seriously endangered the health of its inhabitants. Unfortunately, there are few projects aimed at improving the environmental and sanitary conditions of this locality. An alternative to conventional cleaning technology is the use of native microorganisms that allow the recovery of ecological environments with low-cost and low-tech techniques. This work aims to present two new Hg-resistant bacterial strains obtained from Hg-polluted soils of the Secocha Annex as potential bioremediation agents. Both strains showed growth capacity on Hg substrates and their adsorption behaviors and Hg removal capacities were evaluated. By deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) analysis, both Gram-positive strains were identified as Kocuria sp. (99.35% similarity) and Zhihengliuella sp. (99.78% similarity). Spectrometry results showed elimination capacities with values close to 28.4 and 33.3 % in an incubation time period of 45 days, with the maximum elimination efficiency in the first 24 h. These results are encouraging and offer new possibilities for the use of native strains in the bioremediation of arid soils contaminated with Hg in the Secocha Annex. Furthermore, due to the low cost and minimization of negative impacts, this technique and our bacterial strains could be used in other regions of Peru.


Has Barack Obama's success transformed the racial divide? Did he somehow transcend or help bring to an end centuries of racial division in the United States? Did he deliberately run a strategically race-neutral, race-evading campaign? Did his race and ingrained American racism constrain the reach of his success? Have we arrived at that postracial moment that has long been the stuff of dreams and high oratory? Or was the outcome of the 2008 presidential election driven entirely by nonracial factors, such as a weak Republican ticket, an incumbent party saddled with defending an unpopular war, and a worsening economic crisis? It is at once too simple and yet entirely appropriate to say that the answers to these questions are, in a phrase, complicated matters. These complexities can, however, be brought into sharper focus.


We study the class of Azéma–Yor processes defined from a general semimartingale with a continuous running maximum process. We show that they arise as unique strong solutions of the Bachelier stochastic differential equation which we prove is equivalent to the drawdown equation. Solutions of the latter have the drawdown property: they always stay above a given function of their past maximum. We then show that any process which satisfies the drawdown property is in fact an Azéma–Yor process. The proofs exploit group structure of the set of Azéma–Yor processes, indexed by functions, which we introduce. We investigate in detail Azéma–Yor martingales defined from a nonnegative local martingale converging to zero at infinity. We establish relations between average value at risk, drawdown function, Hardy–Littlewood transform and its inverse. In particular, we construct Azéma–Yor martingales with a given terminal law and this allows us to rediscover the Azéma–Yor solution to the Skorokhod embedding problem. Finally, we characterize Azéma– Yor martingales showing they are optimal relative to the concave ordering of terminal variables among martingales whose maximum dominates stochastically a given benchmark.


The state of collagen aggregation in hepatic granulomas produced in experimental murine schistosomiasis and harvested at different phases of the disease was estimated by staining histological sections in Picrosirius and studying them under polarized light. Two different types of collagenous fibres appeared successively during granuloma evolution, the first population, of thin, weakly birefringent, greenish fibres being replaced by thicker collagen fibres which display a stronger yellow-red birefringence. A simple morphometric technique (a point-counting procedure) was used to quantify the two distinct populations of collagenous fibres. Curve-fitting procedures were then employed, using the state of collagen aggregation as the dependent variable and time as the independent variable. The results showed that there is a progressive organization of the collagenous scaffolding of hepatic granulomas, such that quantitative study of the degree of collagen organization allows an adequate determination of the age of each granuloma. The combination of the Picrosirius-polarization method with simple and efficient morphometric approaches will clearly provide useful information on the natural history of schistosomal granuloma scarring.


We study under which conditions it is possible to assert that a joint demolition measurement cannot be simulated by Local Operations and Classical Communication. More concretely, we consider a scenario where two parties, Alice and Bob, send each an unknown state to a third party, Charlie, who in turn interacts with the states in some undisclosed way and then announces an outcome. We show that, under the assumption that Alice and Bob know the dimensionality of their systems, there exist situations where the statistics of the outcomes reveals the nature of Charlie's measurement.


This paper proposes a novel approach to extract opinion targets based on wordbased translation model (WTM). At first, we apply WTM in a monolingual scenario to mine the associations between opinion targets and opinion words. Then, a graphbased algorithm is exploited to extract opinion targets, where candidate opinion relevance estimated from the mined associations, is incorporated with candidate importance to generate a global measure. By using WTM, our method can capture opinion relations more precisely, especially for long-span relations. In particular, compared with previous syntax-based methods, our method can effectively avoid noises from parsing errors when dealing with informal texts in large Web corpora. By using graph-based algorithm, opinion targets are extracted in a global process, which can effectively alleviate the problem of error propagation in traditional bootstrap-based methods, such as Double Propagation. The experimental results on three real world datasets in different sizes and languages show that our approach is more effective and robust than state-of-art methods.


Mobile Ad hocNetworks (MANETs) are becoming more important to wireless communications due to increasing popularity of mobile devices. The main challenge for future wireless networks is the quality of service for consumer satisfaction. The tool is supporting us with instant video transmissions such as video conferences and webinars. Multiple network hops are necessary to deliver and exchange data across a network Each Mobile node also performs as a router which forwards the packets to their nearest hop and thus finally the packet reaches to the destination. First, describes the uniqueness of Mobile Ad hoc Networks and their Routing protocol, and second a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) which consists of set mobile wireless nodes and one fixed wireless server are design using ns-2. In this research paper simulation of threeMANET routing protocols AODV, DSR and DSDV are done on the basis of three performance parameters i.e. Packet Delivery Ratio (PDR), End-to-End delay and Throughput.


Biochemical study of the methemoglobin concentration (60 cases) and histological examination (40 of intracranial hematomas removed in different periods after the trauma confirmed the assumption that the main volume of these hematomas forms within the first minutes and hours after the trauma as a rule. The curve of the dependence of the methemoglobin concentration in the hematoma on the time of its formation allows the period of time which had elapsed after the trauma to be determined.


The thermal photon emission rate is determined by the spatially transverse, in-medium spectral function of the electromagnetic current. Accessing the spectral function using Euclidean data is, however, a challenging problem due to the ill-posed nature of inverting the Laplace transform. In this contribution, we present the first results on implementing the proposal of directly computing the analytic continuation of the retarded correlator at fixed, vanishing virtuality of the photon via the calculation of the appropriate Euclidean correlator at imaginary spatial momentum. We employ two dynamical O(a)-improved Wilson fermions at a temperature of 250 MeV.


Abstract. The Islamic revolution, as a modern concept and political pattern has made a huge impact on western world's domination. The imperialism worked out all means of subversion such as riot, coup and military war against the revolution, but Iranian's resistance under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini made arrogant powers to comprehend how vain it is to threaten Iran by applying harsh and military methods, regarding such deep faith amongst Iranians; On the contrary this provides unity and solidarity for the nation. They, therefore, had to confess to being unsuccessful in using tough strategies against Islamic Republic system and embarked on a more complex fight since the beginning of second decade that is referred to, by 'the latest approach with the framework of utilizing deliberate methods' which the great leader reminded about by using different terms such as cultural invasion, cultural ambush or cultural NATO and called the authorities to remedy the situation. Today, what has become problematic is cultural invasion, for instance the growing trend of manipulating cultures specially, Islamic culture, by establishing western way of life that has caused moral insecurity in different communities. Different manifestations of cultural invasion can be divided into two categories: Internal manifestations. For instance; attempts to remove religion, destroying confidence in one's culture, promotion of western thoughts and ideology, etc. and external manifestations. For instance; making countries lag behind in all aspects (scientific, industrial), economic deprivation, cultural affairs' authorities negligence, etc. In this essay we will discuss the abovementioned aspects of cultural invasion and propose solutions to handle the situation and we will proceed with considering four different political dialectics for cultural invasion from Ayatollah Khamenei's point of view that are observational, reflective, ideal or desired and prescriptive or contemplative dialectic. The main focus in the first part, where we will analyze three concepts as a single conceptual network, based on crisis theory while all concepts will be processed on the basis of two concepts; the world of Islam and enemy-centric view. So the issue that is going to be assessed is cultural invasion as the major problem our society greatly suffers from.


To meet increasing demand for education and experience with commercial-scale, coal-fired, integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plants with CO2 capture, the Department of Energy's (DOE) National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) is leading a project to deploy a generic, full-scope, real-time IGCC dynamic plant simulator for use in establishing a world-class research and training center, and to promote and demonstrate IGCC technology to power industry personnel. The simulator, being built by Invensys Process Systems (IOM), will be installed at two separate sites, at NETL and West Virginia University (WVU), and will combine a process/gasification simulator with a power/combined-cycle simulator together in a single dynamic simulation framework for use in engineering research studies and training applications. The simulator, scheduled to be launched in mid-year 2010, will have the following capabilities: • High-fidelity, dynamic model of process-side (gasification and gas cleaning with CO2 capture) and power-block-side (combined cycle) for a generic IGCC plant fueled by coal and/or petroleum coke. • A fully integrated virtual reality Immersive Training System which allows for training of field personnel using a full scale three dimensional IGCC plant environment that is tied to the simulation and emulated DCS. • Highly flexible configuration that allows concurrent training on separate gasification and combined cycle simulators, or up to two IGCC simulators. • Ability to enhance and modify the plant model to facilitate studies of changes in plant configuration, equipment, and control strategies to support future R&D efforts. • Training capabilities including startup, shutdown, load following and shedding, response to fuel and ambient condition variations, control strategy analysis (turbine vs. gasifier lead, etc.), representative malfunctions/trips, alarms, scenarios, trending, snapshots, data historian, etc.Copyright © 2010 by ASME


The recent Fukushima daiichi Nuclear power plant (NPP) accident caused by Tsunami has changed the shape of the world towards the safety of nuclear power generation. The view on NPP has changed literally not because of the accident itself, but more to the perspective of the global society to the advance technology and high integrated and discipline country which unfortunately is not enough to secure the NPP from natural disaster. The latest draft of the National Energy Policy (NEP) from the National Energy Council (DEN) of Indonesia, which will be discussed in the Commission VII of the house representatives, revealed a target of electricity consumption of between 710 to 910 TWh in 2030 and around 2,100 to 2,710 TWh in 2050. However, due to the low capacity of the currently available power plants (30.5 GW) the state owned electricity company (PLN) needs to boost its capacity to up to 450 GW by 2050, i.e. the capacity needs to go up by a factor of 15. For achieving the 2050 target PLN needs to invest in the range of 27.3bn US$ for an all natural gas power plant scenario (NG) up to 1.47tn US$ for a solar cell scenario by 2050 (without considering fuel cost, operational and maintenance as well as other costs). The Optimum energy mix involves a 30% share of renewable energy (RE) and new energy (NE) and 70% fossil based fuel in 2030. However these optimum electricity mixes do not include the objective estimation of the optimum cost (minimum cost) as well as how to minimize CO2 emissions. Considering the huge increase in capacity that will be required in the future to meet these targets, the optimum function in terms of the economics of the system should be analyzed in order to minimize the costs. This paper will analyze the possible optimum cost (minimum cost) for the Indonesian electricity power generations mix in 2030 and 2050 and compare it to current NEP draft which will be used as a reference scenario.


The review covers the problems of environmental safety of industrial microbial strains derived by genetic engineering techniques and used to prepare biologically active substances. E. coli was used as an example to show the significance of studying their biological characteristics, taxonomy, interaction with other microorganisms and macroorganisms. Based on the data available in the literature it is concluded that there is a need to work out a set of measures to continuously monitor recombinant microorganisms used in biotechnological industry.


. Indonesia is located at the junction of three tectonic plates and has many active faults. The consequence of this tectonic arrangement makes Indonesia prone to earthquakes. Therefore, earthquake mitigation efforts based on an early warning system need to be done. The design of an earthquake strength estimation system, based on python, for this early warning, analyzes the initial phase of the first three seconds since the arrival of the P wave, using parameters in the form of Pd (the maximum amplitude of the first three seconds of the arrival of the P wave). The resulting tools and systems consist of hardware in the form of Raspberry Pi3B + and ADXL345. The system will detect in real time and automatically trigger an earthquake using the STA / LTA method. When the Pd and Td parameters have been obtained, the system will calculate and issue earthquake strength information, in the form of magnitude and intensity scale of earthquake damage MMI (Modified Mercally Intensity), which will then be sent automatically via the telegram application. Testing of tools and systems was carried out in an earthquake simulator, using the Padang earthquake parameters on 30 September 2009, 17:16:09 WIB. The results of the test produce an intensity scale of VIII MMI, these results are close to the results of the BMKG for the earthquake, with an intensity scale of VIII MMI. From these results the designed tools and systems can be used to provide early warning in the event of an earthquake.


Key word: Diabetes Mellitus TCF7L2 gene, Designed Primers Diabetes Mellitus (DM) is a disease characterized by high glucose levels because of the lack of insulin hormone in the body. Prevalence of Type-2 Diabetes Mellitus is associated with the variant of the TCF7L2 gene polymorphism, or SNP. The purpose of this study was to construct a specific primer to amplify the TCF7L2 gene fragment and their capabilities to detect the targeted area. This research was a descriptive study that design the primers using Geneious software version 5.4.7. The study was conducted at the Laboratory of Genetics and Biotechnology FMIPA Universitas Negeri Padang. Based on this research, a 10qF forward primer (NG_012631.1) and 10qR reverse primers (NG_012631.1) has successfully designed. The primers can amplify the targeted area of the TCF7L2 gene with 1208 bp length. The amplified gene region has many variants that are strictly related to the appearance of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Article history: Received: 30/05/2020 Revised: 04/08/2020 Accepted:12/08/2020


Background: Patients with multiple myeloma may be susceptible to osteonecrosis of the jaw (ONJ) and stress fractures due to long-term aminobisphosphonate (aBP) therapy. However, it is unknown whether urinary N-telopeptide (NTX) or other bone biomarkers are predictive of skeletal-related events (SRE) or the impact of cessation of aBP therapy on bone remodeling. Methods: We studied markers of bone turnover over a 6-month period after a single dose of zoledronic acid in 29 patients with multiple myeloma in remission who previously received 8 to 12 doses of pamidronate or zoledronate (NCT00577642). Our primary objective was to determine the duration of time urinary NTX levels remain suppressed after a single dose of zoledronate. A secondary objective was to identify and correlate other markers of bone remodeling with NTX changes. Thirty cytokines, based on their possible role in bone remodeling, were tested using cytokine arrays. Candidates were confirmed by ELISA. Results: All patients had continued suppression of NTX levels, except 1 patient who had an increase in NTX levels associated with an SRE. GDF-15 and decorin were found to decrease, whereas bone-specific alkaline phosphatase (BSALP) increased. Although not significant in aggregate, osteopontin and osteoprotegerin levels increased in at least half of the patients. Conclusion: Our data show that NTX levels continue to be suppressed after aBP therapy, and suggest that suppressed NTX levels may be predictive of freedom from SRE in this patient population. Furthermore, osteoblast suppression by aBP may be reversible in myeloma. These data provide the basis for less frequent dosing of aBPs. Clin Cancer Res; 20(15); 3955–61. ©2014 AACR.


Abstract: A 13‐year‐old boy had progressive pigmentary changes affecting his limbs which began when he was 9 months of age. He also had a history of café au lalt macules on his trunk since birth which were becoming more numerous. The diagnosis of reticulate acropigmentation of Dohi (dyschromatosis symmetrica hereditaria) and neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF‐1) was made on the basis of the clinical features. To our knowledge, this is the first report of these two conditions occurring in the same patient.


COVID-19 was first detected in Wuhan, China, in December 2019 and spread rapidly in many other countries. This situation, defined now as a pandemic, has turned into a worldwide public health problem that threatens health security, especially that of healthcare professionals. Nurses, particularly those at the forefront of healthcare and directly involved in COVID-19 patient care, have been affected not only physically but also mentally. Because nurses have longer communication and interaction times with patients, they are more concerned about becoming infected or infecting others. Nurses have the highest level of occupational stress compared to other groups and are accordingly subjected to anxiety and depression. For many reasons such as intense working hours, working in a shift system, an insufficient number of personnel, severe conditions of the unit, being in constant contact with patients and their relatives and showing intense empathy for them, nurses experience primary and secondary traumatic stress, job burnout, compassion fatigue, and moral injuries. For this reason, conducting appropriate prevention activities and planning prevention strategies for future pandemic situations is important to support nurses psychologically and to protect their mental health.


Non-Hermitian (NH) Hamiltonians have been shown to exhibit unique signatures, including the NH skin effect and an exponential spectral sensitivity with respect to boundary conditions. Here, we investigate as to what extent these remarkable phenomena, recently predicted and observed in a broad range of settings, may also occur in closed correlated fermionic systems that are governed by a Hermitian many-body Hamiltonian. There, an effectively NH quasiparticle description naturally arises in the Green's function formalism due to inter-particle scattering that represents an inherent source of dissipation. As a concrete platform we construct an extended interacting Su-Schrieffer-Heeger (SSH) model subject to varying boundary conditions, which we analyze using exact diagonalization and non-equilibrium Green's function methods. That way, we clearly identify the presence of the aforementioned NH phenomena in the quasi-particle properties of this Hermitian model system.


Computational chemists frequently use molecular simulations in
computer-aided drug design. As input, these simulations require
molecules that have been parameterised with atom charges. Typically,
these charges are obtained from complex quantum-mechanical calculations,
which are only feasible for small molecules. We propose a new approach
for molecule parameterisation, which uses matching fragments
from a repository of molecules that have already been parameterised.
This approach has been implemented in a system called OFraMP, for
which two dierent interaction designs have been compared in a user
study. We found that a reactive interaction design without automation
yields better results than one that proactively makes suggestions
to the user. This version is also preferred by the experiment participants.
With a few improvements to the fragment matching algorithm,
OFraMP should become a system that produces high-quality results
in a shorter time than the current quantum-mechanical calculation
systems.


Objectives: This report is aimed to investigate the efficacy of Korean medicine including intravenous Cultivated Wild Ginseng(Panax ginseng C.A. Meyer) Pharmacopuncture(CWGP) with intractable cervical dysplasia patient. Methods: A 49-year-old woman who was diagnosed as cervical dysplasia on Feb 2012 was treated with Korean medicine for 3 months. Korean medicine includes intravenous CWGP, acupuncture, moxibustion and herbal medicine. The effect of therapies was evaluated with human papillomavirus deoxyribonucleic acid(HPV DNA) testing. And lower limb cold sense and genital pruritus were recorded with Visual Analogue Scale(VAS). Results: Lower limb cold sense and genital pruritus were decreased from VAS 8-9(2012.04.11.) to VAS 1-2(2012.07.10.). HPV DNA test result was changed from positive to negative. From these results, this report suggests that the Korean medicine, especially CWGP may be a useful method to treat intractable cervical dysplasia. Conclusions: This report shows that Korean medical treatments are effective on intractable cervical dysplasia.


PICARD SOL is the ground component of the PICARD mission and is operational since March 2011. A set of instruments including the replica of the space instrument and several atmospheric monitors was set up at Calern observatory in order to compare solar radius measured in space and on ground and to better understand and calibrate atmospheric effects on ground based measurements. SODISMII provides full disk images of the chromosphere and photosphere of the Sun in five narrow pass bands ranging from the near ultraviolet to the near infrared. Our preliminary results show a very good instrumental stability. After plate scale calibration using star doublet observations and corrections for atmospheric refraction, first estimates of the mean solar radius at the five wavelengths (393.37, 535.7, 607.1, 782.2, and 1025.0nm) are deduced from measurements recorded between May 2011 and December 2012.


Since the reform and opening-up of China, the nation's rural development has been accompanied by a series of land reform policies, largely concerning agricultural land, homestead land and rural construction land. Have rural land reform policies achieved their original objectives and contributed to the socioeconomic and spatial development of rural China? To answer these questions, this paper examines the case of Qidu Town of Suzhou, Jiangsu Province and conducts a three-step analysis of the effectiveness of both nationaland locallevel rural land reform policies. It first reviews the policies to clarify their economic, social and spatial objectives. It then quantitatively analyses the economic, social and spatial performance of these policies in Qidu Town since 1998; this analysis is performed with economic, social and land-use data and quantitative-analysis methods. Finally, it assesses the policies' effectiveness by comparing their objectives with the results of the quantitative analyses. It concludes that at both the national and local levels, the effectiveness of land reform policies has varied across different periods, across different measures, and between one another. The reason for this variation rests predominantly on the attitudes of the affected villages and villagers. By taking the town, China's basic administrative unit, as the research object and bringing spatial performance into policy effectiveness, this research seeks to develop a methodology for objective and accurate assessments of the effectiveness of rural land reform policies.


Current brain white matter fiber tracking techniques show a number of problems, including: generating large proportions of streamlines that do not accurately describe the underlying anatomy; extracting streamlines that are not supported by the underlying diffusion signal; and under-representing some fiber populations, among others. In this paper, we describe a novel unsupervised learning method to filter streamlines from diffusion MRI tractography, and hence, to obtain more reliable tractograms. We show that a convolutional neural network autoencoder provides a straightforward and elegant way to learn a robust representation of brain streamlines, which can be used to filter undesired samples with a nearest neighbor algorithm. Our method, dubbed FINTA (Filtering in Tractography using Autoencoders) comes with several key advantages: training does not need labeled data, as it uses raw tractograms, it is fast and easily reproducible, it does not rely on the input diffusion MRI data, and thus, does not suffer from domain adaptation issues. We demonstrate the ability of FINTA to discriminate between "plausible" and "implausible" streamlines as well as to recover individual streamline group instances from a raw tractogram, from both synthetic and real human brain diffusion arXiv:2010.04007v1 [eess.IV] 7 Oct 2020 PREPRINT. PAPER UNDER REVIEW-OCTOBER 9, 2020 MRI tractography data, including partial tractograms. Results reveal that FINTA has a superior filtering performance compared to state-of-the-art methods. Together, this work brings forward a new deep learning framework in tractography based on autoen-coders, and shows how it can be applied for filtering purposes. It sets the foundations for opening up new prospects towards more accurate and robust tractometry and connectivity diffusion MRI analyses, which may ultimately lead to improve the imaging of the white matter anatomy.


In a solution to large eigenvalue problems, the number of required eigenvalues and corresponding vectors is usually much smaller than the order of matrices. For small bandwidth problems, the determinant search method is very efficient and the oldest. Its from a family of nonlinear Eigen solution techniques also referred to as frequency scanning methods. By using the shift technique, it can also calculate the largest eigenvalues. This calculation process involves three steps: polynomial iteration, inverse iteration, and polynomial deflation. The polynomial iteration determines the eigenvalues of interest by looking at a plot of characteristic polynomial versus the eigenvalue λ, which involves evaluating the determinant |K–λM| at fine intervals of λ selected from accelerated secant iteration. The method was developed in the 1970s and was extensively used for only small-size problems due to its limitations. During that time, the memory available was very low for the in-core solver. Also, the numbers generated in polynomial iteration overflows the float point variables in a computer program. Of course, scaling was the obvious choice. However, the method still suffered the numerical scaling difficulties as a determinant of the matrix |K–λM| in structural problems is generally a very fast varying function. Despite different scaling, the number gets overflows after dozens of eigenvalues which made the technique unattractive. The variables type float, double and long double in a computer program can store values up to 1049, 10308, and 104932, respectively, which is not comparatively much smaller than the determinant of small size structural models. In the present paper, a power number representation is proposed in the polynomial iteration. The determinant |K–λM| can be stored in the power form ρD¯n, where prefactor ρ stores the determinant sign, n is the size of the matrix, and D¯ can be calculated and stored accordingly. The order analysis shows the storage of D¯ requires a variable of range 108 to 1010, which can be stored by float or double type variable. The determinant search method gets to be free from limitations and may easily estimate each large eigenpair at higher frequencies independently from all those previously calculated. The determinant search method can also estimate the clustered eigenvalues accurately. The models' practical significance is in the FEA analysis of beams, frames, buckling analysis, and stress analysis of pipes in the industry. In the present work, the proposed approach has been applied to the piping model. The results show the determinant search algorithm can extract modes in a higher frequency range without any limitations. The modal analysis is the basis of dynamic analyses of structures such as Response spectrum analysis. The inclusion of higher modes ensures that more than 95% of modal mass has been included in the calculation.


The objective of this longitudinal study was to examine the predictive value of early numeracy skills of counting, logical operations and magnitude comparison abilities evaluated in Kindergarten on the formal and informal aspects of mathematical performance in 2nd grade of Primary School. The initial sample consisted of 209 preschoolers aged 5 to 6 years, 180 of whom were retested two years later. In Kindergarten, different tasks of the TEDI-MATH battery (Gregoire, Noel, & Van Nieuwenhoven, 2005) were applied, which evaluate counting skills (procedural and conceptual), logical operations (seriation, classification, conservation and inclusion) and magnitudes comparison abilities (symbolic and non-symbolic). Two years later, the TEMA-3 test (Gingsburg & Baroody, 2003) was administered to assess different aspects related to mathematical performance. The results showed that 5 of the 8 tasks applied in Kindergarten are able to predict the subsequent mathematical performance, with a special weight of the ability to manage verbal numerical sequence (procedural counting). The implications of these findings for psychoeducational research and practice are discussed.


ABSTRACT In this article, we empirically investigate regional unemployment in Russia. We first detect the existence of two unemployment clubs, that is, regions with high (low) unemployment surrounded by regions with high (low) unemployment, and a group that comprises the remaining regions. We then apply a specially designed class of spatial-econometric models to regional data 2005–2012, using difference GMM, and we obtain partial confirmation of our two main hypotheses: (i) spatial effects for the high-high and low-low clubs regions differ significantly; and (ii) the determinants of unemployment of the two clubs significantly differ with respect to those of the remaining regions. Our results have key implications for the national- and regional-level policies.


An immunological study of nine strains of pure-cultured members of the order Actinomycetales isolated from symbiotic root nodules was undertaken to establish the taxonomic relationships of these organisms. Based on the data from a simple double-diffusion (Ouchterlony) precipitation procedure, these isolates, which tentatively have been classified in the genus Frankia (family Frankiaceae), could be divided into two major groups. The first group, designated serotype I, included all of the Actinomycetales strains isolated from Alnus, Comptonia, and Myrica host plants. The second group, serotype II, included Actinomycetales strains isolated from Elaeagnus host plants. No ambiguous cross-reactions with unrelated members of the Actinomycetales were observed. Crushed nodule suspensions cross-reacted in the same manner as pure-cultured frankiae, suggesting that the technique could be important in screening for novel, naturally occurring strains. A comparative study in which an immunofluorescence procedure was used failed to show reliable correlations among the Actinomycetales strains tested. We concluded that the immunodiffusion technique was the better of the two methods for Frankia strain characterization.


In this paper, we have discussed the stochastic comparison of the smallest and largest ordered statistic from independent heterogeneous Weibull-G random variables and Gompertz Makeham random variables. We compare systems arising from taking different model parameters and obtain stochastic ordering results under the condition of multivariate chain majorization. Using the notion of vector majorization, we compare different systems and obtain stochastic ordering results.


Abstract The Journal encourages and welcomes submissions of general interest to emergency nurses for the Update section. Please refer to the Information for Authors section for specific advice on manuscript preparation. All materials should be sent to the Managing Editor, Journal of Emergency Nursing, PO Box 489, Downers Grove, IL 60515; E-mail: email@example.com .


Electric rail transport is positioned as environment-friendly technology that has good future prospects for development. The supply of electric rail transport from DC or AC power lines requires the use of specialized transformers that form the three-phase system in the lowvoltage circuit to power this load. Solid State Transformer (SST) are very attractive for use in power systems of electric locomotives. This paper examines a new architecture for the realization of SST transformers for their use in power systems of electric locomotives. The proposed SST transformer has the bidirectional high-frequency power transmission capability and at the same time ensures multiplication of phases in the low voltage circuit. The SST transformer is a single-phase / three-phase transformer, which can be supplied both from the high-voltage DC power network and from the AC network frequently used in electric rail transport. Changing the power supply type (of the current) does not lead to changes in the topology of the SST. The transformer is designed as an object made of identical functional modules. The ferromagnetic core is made of separate portions for each functional module. This simplifies the problem of ensuring the electrical stiffness of the transformer. The transistors of the module operate at variable switching frequency, have soft switching mode. Energy conversion takes place in a single step. This ensures that losses are diminished and transformer efficiency is increased in all load regimes. Mathematical simulations have confirmed that this transformer has a very low impact on the power supply, whether the power supply is DC or AC. Under-load operation of the SST transformer does not lead to pollution of the power supply network with higher current harmonics.


Review communities typically display contributions in list format, using participant feedback in determining presentation order. Given the volume of contributions, which are likely to be seen? While previous work has focused on content, we examine the relationship between communication tactics and prominence. We study three communities, comparing front-page reviews versus those on latter pages. We consider 3 types of devices: structural features, textual features, and persuasive writing. Structural features, such as profiles, convey information about authors. Textual properties, such as punctuation use, can make an impression on others. Rhetorical writing strategies are used by reviewers to convince readers of their opinions. When controlling for content, the most salient tactics distinguishing prominent reviews are textual properties and persuasive language.


The effects of external nonmagnetic perturbations on a fiber-optic magnetic sensor are analyzed theoretically. It is shown that the deleterious effects of these perturbations can be controlled by maintaining the DC magnetic field at prescribed levels. Experiments have been performed with externally applied stresses and accelerations (vibrations) that validate the theory and yield values for the stress and acceleration responsivities of the sensors studied in this investigation. The analysis and techniques given apply equally well to any interferometric sensor using nonlinear transduction mechanisms. >


The progressive stage of remarkable development in the studies conducted at the fields of multiculturalism and indigenous arts has the key role for revealing the perception of cultural differences, believes and traditions. As a way for plenty of thoughtful readings has presented the value of cultural and social theories, it could also be useful ways for presenting thoughtful accepting on intercultural boundaries. Such themes are included constantly to deal with the perceptions of people discrimination, cultural diversity and social and cultural identity. The current study presents a review on the multicultural issues that are tackled mainly for verifying the salient values of cultural intersection and cultural connections with concerning indigenous arts. The article will also consider to review the influence of multiculturalism in the most applicable types of indigenous arts. It reviews, through relevant studies, the recent issues of cultural transformation, effective roles of indigenous art, and multiculturalism that are emerged in the social and cultural field. The article aims to tie the reviewed intercultural issues with the external influential factors that are assumed to impact the community fabric compressively. The present study could approve that cultural diversity causes differences in perception of cultural identity and ways of producing indigenous arts. Since most results emphasize that indigenous artists produce different artistic products at various multicultural environments with the basis of cultural background, ethnicity and identity. Instead, the study confirms that existing diverse culturally environments are essential for providing original aspects of traditional products.


Most members of the genus Prasophyllum (Leek Orchids) are threatened and restricted in distribution in Australia. Prasophyllum species are obligate mycotrophic plants and current conservation proto- cols for terrestrial orchids in Australia require propa- gation with symbiotic mycorrhizal fungi. Unfortunately there is a paucity of knowledge regard- ing the mycosymbiont in this genus, hampering con- servation and re-introduction efforts.


As the population ages, clinicians will encounter a growing number of nonagenarians suffering from severe aortic stenosis who may be candidates for transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR). By virtue of a healthy survivor effect or a referral bias, these patients may paradoxically have greater resilience and fewer comorbidities than their octogenarian counterparts. They tend to, on average, tolerate the TAVR procedure quite well with low in‐hospital and 1‐year mortality rates of 5.5% and 23%, respectively. Appropriate patient selection should consider individualized estimates of procedural risk, potential for functional recovery and for improved quantity and quality of life. Frailty is much more revealing than chronological age, and it can be measured by brief tools such as the Essential Frailty Toolset. Ultimately, the process of shared decision‐making is paramount to ensure that the course of action is patient‐centered and balances the procedure's expected risks and benefits with the nonagenarian's preferences and values.


The recently updated "Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Chronic Hepatitis B" in China have brought about significant changes. The new treatment indications almost mandate the implementation of a Treat-all strategy for the chronically HBV-infected population in China. While simultaneous negativity for hepatitis B surface antigen (HBsAg) and hepatitis B virus (HBV) DNA has long been an accepted criterion for treatment discontinuation, there has been controversies over the initiation of treatment criteria starting with HBsAg and HBV DNA positivity. Despite the inconsistent treatment criteria, the academic community has started supporting treat-all strategies in recent years due to the decreasing cost of treatment, prolonged management duration, and growing evidence of poor outcomes in untreated populations. Therefore, this update to the Chinese HBV guidelines represents a new direction that suggests "The greatest truths are the simplest." However, in the process of rolling out the Treat-all strategy, we must remain cautious of possible issues arising from the new strategy. Among them, the problem of partial response or low-level viremia following treatment may become more prominent due to the inclusion of a significant number of patients with normal or low levels of alanine transaminase. As existing evidence suggests that low-level viremia increases the risk of HCC in patients, it is essential to monitor and explore optimal therapeutic options for these patients.


Interpersonal intelligence is one of Howard Gardner's nine multiple intelligences which relates to how skillful an individual learner is in understanding and dealing with other learners in language learning activities such as group discussions, panel interviews, group projects and surveys. This study aimed at exploring the benefits of Interpersonal intelligence-based activities versus the traditional lecture method in developing English essay writing skills of a group of second-year law undergraduates (n=64), randomly divided into the experimental and control group. The data collection was conducted employing a pre and post-test design, interviews conducted with the students in the experimental group and classroom observations of both the groups. A pre-test was conducted to measure the students' existing proficiency in English essay writing skills. The experimental group was instructed using Interpersonal intelligence based activities while the control group was instructed using traditional lecture method to let them develop English essay writing skills. The statistical analysis of the experimental group students' pre and post-test scores showed that there was a significant difference between the mean scores of the pre-test and the post-test than the mean difference of the students in the control group. The findings show that the Interpersonal intelligence based teaching is more effective in developing English essay writing skills than the traditional method. The participants of the experimental group responded to the Interpersonal intelligence based activities more positively. This study suggests that using Interpersonal intelligence based techniques stimulate thinking ability, which enhances students' performance in essay writing. In that regard, Interpersonal intelligence based activities are beneficial and can be easily applied in the English language classrooms in which students are less motivated.


Graphing univariate distributions is central to both statistical graphics, in general, and Stata's graphics, in particular. Now that Stata 8 is out, a review of official and user-written commands is timely. The emphasis here is on going beyond what is obviously and readily available, with pointers to minor and major trickery and various user-written commands. For plotting histogram-like displays, kernel-density estimates and plots based on distribution functions or quantile functions, a large variety of choices is now available to the researcher.


At the 2010 NABET conference, the presenters argued that the call by Taylor (2001) to use complexity theory as a foundation for 21 st -century pedagogy is "uniquely compatible with both the goals of entrepreneurship and with current scholarship regarding best practices in teaching." If our radically hyperlinked environments lead to changes in business conditions at the speed of wireless communications, then, as Taylor suggests, students must be prepared to respond to conditions that are continuously in re-formation. As a result, a traditional, closed pedagogical system that seeks pre-determined answers could never, by itself, be sufficient to handle the complexities of 21 st -century business environments. In response, the presenters continue to see an opportunity to link complexity theory to current scholarship involving best practices in teaching. We reason that if complexity is rooted in the speed of digital communications among shifting networks of interdependent orgnizations, then greater student adaptability to changing conditions would have to emerge out of simulations that feature use of the following best practices in teaching: Connection (Whetten, 2007; Kolb, 2005; Proserpio & Gioia, 2007; Bell, Kanar, & Kozlowski; Boyce, 2008); Communication (Chickering & Gamson, 1987; Green); Interaction (Chickering & Gamson, 1987; Xu Y Reflection (Chickering & Gamson, 1987; Wills & Clerkin, 2009; Lainema & Lainema, 2007; Whetten & Clark; 1996, 2005). Through connection, communication, interaction, and reflection, students can be guided through complex simulations, discover new interdependencies, and reflect on their decision-making processes in order to raise awareness and improve competency with finding innovative solutions at the point that is "just short of chaos." To emulate workplace complexity and follow the four-point framework for effective teaching, an online, group-based simulation was implemented in a capstone business course. The simulation included such reflective activities as five journal entries and a larger case study. While group members' discussion and decision-making created excellent opportunities for enhanced communication and interaction, the written component offered specific points for students to connect with and reflect upon the material individually and uniquely. At the end of the course, students (n=45) completed a brief survey about the effectiveness of the simulation and related course activities for learning about the complexities of decision-making. Initial descriptive statistics suggest that students perceive they gained a deeper understanding of the complexities of decision making from the simulation itself. On a scale of 1 to 5, students gave the simulation the highest average rating (4.51) for helping to gain a deeper understanding of the complexities of decision making. When asked how much they learned from the simulation as compared to other learning activities during their undergraduate education, students' average rating (4.22) indicates that they perceive the simulation to promote learning more effectively. Students also were asked about the effectiveness of writing assignments, group work, and instructor's communication with them for understanding complexities of decision-making and course material in general. Average ratings (3.69 to 4.11) indicated that students' perceive all activities and interaction useful; however, they gave the highest ratings to instructor's communication (e.g., describing expectations, giving feedback, answering questions) (4.11) and to the larger case study (3.96). While the descriptive statistics provide simplistic indicators of the effectiveness of the simulation coupled with writing, group work, and instructor communication, this paper will more fully examine how the student perceptions align with simulation rankings and rubric scores on course assignments. Encouraged by the initial survey results, presenters will conclude with a reflection upon next steps to measure the effectiveness of the use of complexity in business pedagogy, particularly in courses involving entrepreneurship and business management. Workshop Facilitators: Dr. Cori J. Myers Since 2005, Dr. Cori Myers has taught business administration at Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania (LHUP). She primarily teaches undergraduate students in such courses as human resource management, international business, management concepts and strategies, and strategic management. Previously, Dr. Myers worked in private industry (hotel management) and held positions at LHUP in the areas of human resources, continuous improvement, strategic planning, and assessment. Her research interests include student learning styles, experiential learning, assessment and student learning outcomes, accountability, and organizational governance. Dr. Richard Van Dyke Since his arrival at Lock Haven University in 2005, Dr. Van Dyke has directed the writing center, coordinated campus writing assessment, and taught the full range of writing classes, including business writing. Previously, Dr. Van Dyke taught literature and writing at Massasoit Community College, where he coordinated the writing across the curriculum program, and at Quincy College, where he founded and directed the writing center. Specializing in critical and rhetorical theory, Dr. Van Dyke's current research interests include the development of online and offline writing ecologies and the relationship of writing to the circulations of global capital.


About 3% of ovarian cancer (OC) metastases reportedly involve inguinal lymph nodes, but little published data on their radiosensitivity is available. Here, we report a 53-year-old woman with clear cell OC and left inguinal, supra-inguinal and obturator lymph node metastases (LNMs), and a huge, unresectable mass of adherent inguinal nodes. After standard hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, omentectomy, and pelvic lymphadenectomy, she underwent various chemotherapy regimens over 12 months, as the inguinal mass enlarged. Radiotherapy was subsequently successful but complicated by an inguinal hernia. Combined cytoreductive surgery, inguinal metastasectomy, and radiotherapy may be appropriate for patients with OC with inguinal LNMs.


This paper investigates the entanglement evolution of a two-qubit anisotropic Heisenberg XYZ chain in the presence of Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction. The time evolution of the concurrence is studied for the initial pure entangled states cos θ |00 + sin θ |11 and cos |01 + sin |10 at zero temperature. The influences of Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction D, anisotropic parameter Δ and environment coupling strength γ on entanglement evolution are analysed in detail. It is found that the effect of noisy environment obviously suppresses the entanglement evolution, and the Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction D acts on the time evolution of entanglement only when the initial state is cos |01 + sin |10. Finally, a formula of steady state concurrence is obtained, and it is shown that the stable concurrence, which is independent of different initial states and Dzyaloshinskii–Moriya interaction D, depends on the anisotropic parameter Δ and the environment coupling strength γ.


This multinational research study was carried out between 2004 and 2006 in four teacher education institutions in Cyprus, England, Switzerland, and Germany. With the help of a written questionnaire, the confidence and perceived competence of preservice primary teachers (N = 690) to deliver biodiversity education in school were investigated. Data were triangulated with findings from a previous stage of the overall research project. Study participants' confidence to carry out certain outdoor activities in school increased with the number of similar experiences they had during their own secondary school education, and the more personal classroom experiences they had during their teacher education. A sound knowledge of local wild organisms strongly added to their confidence. However, preservice teachers' perceived competence, and thus motivation to implement biodiversity education later on in school, was related even more strongly to the extent of preparation they had received during their teacher education. The results indicate that teacher education programmes that focus exclusively on filling (biodiversity) knowledge gaps might fail to raise confidence and competence in their students to carry out biodiversity education in school. Programmes that have a higher possibility of attaining effectiveness in biodiversity education seek to strike a balance between background knowledge development, pedagogical content knowledge, and opportunities during teaching practice that leads to experiential gains in enacting meaningful activity sequences and engaging students in holistic educational innovations. Within such programmes, it would be fruitful to further explore the relationship between confidence, perceived competence, and actual teaching performance.


Diabetic Retinopathy is a sickness of membrane that affects patients with diabetes, and it is a main reason for vision defect. It is a sickness within which the retinal blood vessels swell. These damage the membrane of eye and should cause vision defect if the extent of diabetes is high. In this project are going to the information's are collected as dataset that feed into a Machine learning model which can classify the patient's detail and analyses whether they have retinopathy or not, just in case if the having retinopathy python with image processing, we are going to analyse the kind and stage of the sickness.


Cooling systems play a vital role in the design and operation of Data Centers (DCs), as they consume a considerable amount of energy. Hot air infiltration from the servers' outlets into their inlets, which creates hot spots and flow short-circuiting, is one of the main sources of thermal inefficiency inside air-cooled DCs. This inefficiency increases the total energy consumption of DCs especially when the allocated workload and heat dissipation of the servers are increased. Therefore, efficient thermal management of DCs is considered as one of the main challenges of the DC industry. In order to highlight the importance of this inefficiency, an operational DC has been considered in this study. The thermal behaviour of the DC has been evaluated by conducting a numerical analysis of the flow and temperature fields based on the experimental measurements in a real DC. Numerical simulation highlighted a number of undesirable hot spots near the racks. Cold aisle containment, which is one of the efficient and industrially affordable methods of thermal inefficiency reduction, has been considered. The effectiveness of this method has been evaluated using three non-dimensional metrics known as Supply Heat Index (SHI), Rack Cooling Index (RCI) and the Coefficient of Performance (COP) of the cooling system. In this case study, by applying the proposed method, SHI, RCI and COP of the cooling system have been improved by more than 0.45, 17% and 19.5%, respectively. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of cold aisle containment for energy efficiency enhancement of DCs.


This paper explored the visual aesthetics of Carlos Francisco in a dialogical manner using Diego Rivera's visual aesthetics as a point of reference. In particular, this paper comparatively analyzed Francisco's "Filipino Struggles through History" and Rivera's "Man, Controller of the Universe." The comparative analysis covered the following aspects of these two murals: 1) the dimensions of their works and media used, 2) the styles that influenced them, 3) their figures and colors, 4) their themes and the way they plotted or narrativized them, 5) their underlying political ideology, 6) their underlying religious ideology, 7) their underlying gender ideology, 8) their nationalism, and 9) the hidden tensions between their colonialism and post-colonialism.


In the serum and the liver of rats levels of chloramphenicol (CAP) following its i.v. administration (200 mg/kg) in the control groups and in the rats irradiated with whole-body air exposure to 500 R were determined with spectrophotometric methods. The CAP-levels in the serum increased in the group of rats 3 days after irradiation, but only during the 1st hour. At later time intervals the values were lower than in the controls. This decrease at the 60th min is striking even in the groups 6 and 9 days after exposure. Free CAP in the liver of rats irradiated 6 and 9 days before was lower at interval 30 min after CAP-administration, but the group irradiated 9 days before was unaltered. However, 120 min after CAP-administration the values of free CAP decreased at all intervals investigated following the irradiation. The levels of conjugated CAP in the liver of the rats 3 and 6 days after exposure were lower than in controls in both intervals after drug administration; but in rats 9 days after irradiation they increased. Our results indicate that the kinetics of CAP is altered and corresponding changes in its conjugation are effected under the condition of acute radiation syndrome.


Radio systems are affected by rainfall, and the attenuation increases significantly with rain rate and frequency. Above about 10 GHz rainfall must generally be considered for estimating expected link availability with sufficient attenuation margin included. Rain rate is a key factor, and depending on climate, it will dictate the possible path length and other factors such as antenna size, for the planned performance of a system that operates at higher frequencies than about 10 GHz. This paper presents results from an analysis of Norwegian tipping bucket rain gauge data from 1967 to 2013. It is found that the rain rate currently used by the Radiocommunication Sector of the International Telecommunication Union recommendation for attenuation prediction, R0.01—the rate exceeded for 0.01% of an average year—has actually increased in all parts of the country from where long‐term data exist. Moreover, the year to year variability is significant. The increase may well be seen as a consequence of climate change. Such a change may cause higher attenuation effects than expected when radio links are designed following "normal" dimensioning procedures.


The concentrations of total cadmium were determined in 448 samples of processed fishery products comprising crustaceans, molluscs, marine fish and brackish water fish. Shrimp product, the major export item, contained on an average 0.122 ppm cadmium and 20 % of crustaceans analysed did not contain cadmium on detectable level. Average content of cadmium in 68 marine fish of 9 species was 0.153 ppm and 35 % of the samples did not contain the element. Of the total number of crustaceans analysed only 2 % showed a level > 0.5 ppm. All the 174 samples of molluscan products, except 3 canned oysters, showed cadmium concentration far below the limit allowed. The average cadmium content in molluscan products was 0.552 ppm.


This study was aimed to evaluate how personal perceptions of exercise facility accessibility affect moderate physical activity in Korea. We selected research subjects using data from 2012, 2014, and 2016 community health surveys. We explored whether accessibility to exercise facilities was associated with moderate or higher physical activity. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was performed. Of the 652,954 individuals included in the analyses, 146,725 engaged in moderate physical activity (22.5%) and were more likely to have easier access to exercise facilities. Those who could access exercise facilities very easily were more likely to engage in moderate weekly physical activity compared with those who found access difficult or very difficult (odds ratio = 1.32; 95% confidence interval = 1.28–1.35). The results confirmed that in areas with good accessibility to community exercise facilities, subjects engaged in more moderate physical activity compared with subjects in areas lacking good access.


Masonry structures are complex systems that require detailed knowledge and information regarding their response under seismic excitations. Appropriate modelling of a masonry structure is a prerequisite for a reliable earthquake-resistant design and/or assessment. However, modelling a real structure with a robust quantitative (mathematical) representation is a very difficult, complex and computationally-demanding task. The paper herein presents a new stochastic computational framework for earthquake-resistant design of masonry structural systems. The proposed framework is based on the probabilistic behavior of crucial parameters, such as material strength and seismic characteristics, and utilizes fragility analysis based on different failure criteria for the masonry material. The application of the proposed methodology is illustrated in the case of a historical and monumental masonry structure, namely the assessment of the seismic vulnerability of the Kaisariani Monastery, a byzantine church that was built in Athens, Greece, at the end of the 11th to the beginning of the 12th century. Useful conclusions are drawn regarding the effectiveness of the intervention techniques used for the reduction of the vulnerability of the case-study structure, by means of comparison of the results obtained.


We propose a method for extracting goniospectral information of three-dimensional objects from multiband images obtained under several illuminants and reproducing the objects under various kinds of illuminants. Using the dichromatic reflection model, goniophotometric information of both diffuse component and specular component is estimated from the images acquired under the illuminant from several illumination directions. On the other hand, spectral information is estimated from five band images using the minimum mean square error criterion. Experimental results using simple three-dimensional objects are presented to demonstrate the basic performance of the proposed method.


We demonstrate the in-plane emission of highly polarized single photons from an InAs quantum dot embedded into a photonic crystal waveguide. The spontaneous emission rates are Purcell-enhanced by the coupling of the quantum dot to a slow-light mode of the waveguide. Photon-correlation measurements confirm the sub-Poissonian statistics of the in-plane emission. Under optical pulse excitation, single photon emission rates of up to 19 MHz into the guided mode are demonstrated, which corresponds to a device efficiency of 24%. These results herald the monolithic integration of sources in photonic quantum circuits.


This paper shows the developed new lightning arrester LCM (Leakage Current Measuring device) which is important element of GIS (Gas Insulated Switchgear) Preventive & Diagnostic system and verify its performance though strengthened test standards. The existing lightning arrester LCM was modified to solve measuring errors which happened frequently. At first, we explained the principle of measuring leakage current. Through analyzing some problems which the existing LCM have. we got some improvable items. For the performance verification of the improved LCM, we manufactured prototype LCM which is applied some improvable items such as improving LCM circuit, adding protection circuit, optimizing inner structure of LCM and changing ground design. After then we carried out the performance test. Accredited testing laboratory carried out the performance verification test according to performance test criteria and procedure of reliability test standards, IEC-60225, 61000 and 60068 etc. We confirmed the test results which correspond with the performance test criteria. Also, we confirmed the performance of the improved LCM installed & being operated at G Substation through the immunity test against the normal noise and open/close surge etc.


The clinical assessment of haloperidol as adjuvant to thiopentone and ketamine anesthesia in dogs was studied. Induction of anesthesia with thiopentone was rapid (1.50±0.07 minutes) smooth and without any complications whereas induction with ketamine was a little slower (1.94±0.04 minutes).The mean duration of surgical anesthesia in thiopentone group (I) and ketamine group (II) were 41.0±0.94 and 28.0±4.09 minutes respectively. Complete recovery took place within 120.0 ±3.9 minutes in group I and at 46.0±0.24 minutes after the last incremental dose in group II. The mean rectal temperature were 101.66±0.53OF and 101.96±0.38OF in group I and II respectively and the values remained within the normal range Haloperidol not only potentiated the anesthetic effects of thiopentone but helped to prolong the duration of anesthesia.


In a series of flavour aversion experiments, rats received different schedules of pre-exposure to two compound flavours (AX and BX). Discrimination between them was assessed by establishing an aversion to AX and measuring generalization of this aversion to BX. Experiment 1 demonstrated that alternating pre-exposure to AX and BX resulted in less generalization than did blocked exposure, where animals received all exposure to AX before exposure to BX (or vice versa). This difference was not accompanied by any difference in the strength of the aversion conditioned to the common X element. Varying the interval between exposure to AX and BX in the alternating condition from a minute or two to several hours had no effect on generalization. However, Experiments 2 and 3 showed that when the interval between exposure to AX and that to BX was reduced to zero sec, the alternating schedule increased generalization between AX and BX. In this case, the increase in generalization was accompanied by an increase in the strength of the aversion conditioned to X.


Dr. Festus I. Arunaye was born in Egbo-Kokori in Ethiope East of Delta State of Nigeria for about 47 years ago. He obtained both primary and Secondary Schools Certificates in Ethiope East, and in 1989 baged a B.Sc degree in Industrial Mathematics with Second class hounors Upper division from the University of Benin, Nigeria. In 1996 he obtaind an M.Sc degree in Mathematics from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria specializing in Numerical Analysis. He further went to the University of the West Indies, Mona; Jamaica in 2005 where he obtained his Ph.D degree in Mathematics in 2009 specializing in Symmetry of Differential Equations. After his B.Sc degree, Dr. Arunaye has been a Lecturer while studying for higher degrees. He has alot of article publications in highly refereed international and local Journals. He is a Senior Lecturer with the Delta State University, Abraka; Nigeria.He has a good teaching experiences at the University level of over twenty years. He has taught and supervised Bachelors and Masters degree graduates over the years. Some of his students are now Ph.D degree holders.He has presented several results of his research in several international confrences.


This chapter explores the theoretical mechanisms underpinning the participation of Members of Parliament (MPs) in legislative debates across a wide range of parliaments. It argues that researchers must examine both strategic interactions within political parties and political institutions to develop an understanding of which MPs take the floor and how researchers can use legislative speeches to measure the essential concepts of polarization, intra-party dissent, and representation. The chapter discusses the basic institutional framework that governs debate across parliamentary democracies, provides an overview of an intra-party theory of parliamentary debate, and considers various possible extensions of the theory. Finally, the chapter illustrates how scholars can integrate insights from theories of parliamentary debates and text analysis of parliamentary speeches.


The design of a linear phase Nyquist filter is introduced. The technique is based on setting a target function with a strictly linear phase and attempting to approximate the filter transfer function to the target function using the least-mean-square method. Further, the analysis is extended to cover the practical case of a pulse response rather than the impulse response. In all cases excellent results have been obtained, which compare favourably with other results available in the literature


Proliferation of CD4+ T cells harboring HIV-1 proviruses is a major contributor to viral persistence in people on antiretroviral therapy (ART). To determine whether differential rates of clonal proliferation or HIV-1-specific CTL pressure shape the provirus landscape, we performed the intact proviral DNA assay (IPDA) and obtained 661 near-full length provirus sequences from eight individuals with suppressed viral loads on ART at time points seven years apart. We observed slow decay of intact proviruses but no changes in the proportions of various types of defective proviruses. The proportion of intact proviruses in expanded clones was similar to that of defective proviruses in clones. Intact proviruses observed in clones did not have more escaped CTL epitopes than intact proviruses observed as singlets. Concordantly, total proviruses at later timepoints or observed in clones were not enriched in escaped or unrecognized epitopes. Three individuals with natural control of HIV-1 infection (controllers) on ART, included because controllers have strong HIV-1-specific CTL responses, had a smaller proportion of intact proviruses but a similar distribution of defective provirus types and escaped or unrecognized epitopes as the other individuals. This work suggests that CTL selection does not significantly check clonal proliferation of infected cells or greatly alter the provirus landscape in people on ART.