We construct a joint distribution of fertility and children's activities treating the Poisson process generating the number of children as being endogenous in the multinomial logit process generating children's activities using a latent factor structure. Latent factors are incorporated into the equations for number of children and children's activities to allow for unobserved influences on fertility to affect children's activities, thus enabling us to make a distinction between selection on unobservables and selection on observables. We apply maximum simulated likelihood (MSL) techniques to estimate the parameters of our models. We find that the effect of fertility has a large downward bias in naive models. The marginal effect of fertility on child labor and schooling are twice as large when common unobserved heterogeneity in fertility and activity decisions are accounted for.


1218 Curcumin, a polyphenolic compound derived from turmeric which commonly found in Asian diet, has been well known of its potent anti-tumourigenic and anti-proliferative property at certain doses. Its apoptosis-inducing effect and targeting of NF-Kappa B pathway have been recently reported, however, the other molecular mechanism(s) of action of this drug remain to be elucidated. Telomerase, a reverse transcriptase that maintains telomere length, is highly activated in tumor cells and practically absent in somatic cells and hence considered a potential marker for tumorigenesis Telomerase, therefore, has been proposed to represent a novel and potentially selective target for cancer therapy. In our present study, we have investigated the anti-proliferative activity, DNA damage induction, telomere-telomerase regulation in human glioblastoma (A172, KNS60 and U251) and medulloblastoma cell line (ONS76) following different doses of curcumin. Normal human primary fibroblasts and BJ1-hTERT cell line were used as control cell types. Curcumin induced a dose-dependent effect (doses from 0 to 100 µM) on cell viability in the different brain tumour cell lines. Telomerase-positive cell lines used in the study exhibited higher sensitivity to curcumin compared to the normal human fibroblasts. Curcumin concentrations which induced LC50 for each cell line were selected for subsequent experiments. LC 50 concentrations were higher for normal cells (90 µM) compared to the telomerase positive cancer cell lines (30 to 50 µM). Most of the brain tumour cell lines showed higher percentage of cells in sub-G1 phase except the glioblastoma cell line (A172).The extent of DNA damage induced by curcumin was measured by single cell gel electrophoresis (comet) assay. Normal human fibroblasts displayed greater DNA damage compared to the cancer cell lines. Inhibition of telomerase activity was seen in all the telomerase-positive cell lines tested following treatment with curcumin. Long-term treatment with curcumin has also resulted in significant telomere shortening in cancer cell lines. Curcumin suppressed key signalling pathways which are elevated in cancer cell lines as analysed by gene expression analysis. Results from the present study suggest that telomerase status plays an important role in the induction of cell cycle arrest, anti-proliferative effect and apoptosis in human brain tumour cell lines by curcumin.


Three studies were conducted to investigate effects of invasive Erodium species on re-establishment of native species in the California coastal sage scrub (CSS) plant community, and how both chemical and non-chemical techniques might be used to reduce Erodium and increase success of restoration efforts. First, the effects of a range of Erodium densities were tested on the establishment of native shrubs and forbs in two experimental sites, one a seeding experiment and the other a weeding experiment. Analyses were done to detect a threshold value where Erodium density decreased the establishment of the native species, and showed that Erodium species inhibited the establishment of native shrubs at about 66 Erodium plants/m2. Erodium species often germinate at very high densities (thousands of plants/m 2 ), indicating land managers will often need to actively control Erodium species densities in order to restore CSS vegetation after disturbance. Second, varying treatments of the non-chemical agricultural technique of solarization were tested without irrigation, as supplementing water may not be possible in some wildland situations. Laying sheets of clear plastic over tilled soil during the hot summer months reduced invasive annuals the most of all the treatments, even without the addition of water. Third, chemical control experiments tested a variety of herbicides with different modes of action and at varying rates at two sites. Some herbicides labeled as grass-specific also have activity on Erodium species but do not damage most CSS native forbs and shrubs, and were tested in a variety of concentrations. Chemicals tested in this study did not provide season-long control of Erodium species at rates allowed by the label, but one above-label rate proved effective. Multiple applications of herbicides with this mode of action (e.g., fluazifop) within approved rates should be tested to determine efficacy on Erodium . The broadleaf-selective chemical triclopyr provided the best control but will have to be used with caution in the CSS community as it also has activity on native shrubs and forbs. The broad spectrum herbicide glyphosate had good control at one site, but the second site had germination of a second cohort of Erodium after the first cohort was sprayed.


The paper considers the town of Kirensk economic and geographical features of location in different periods. Due to the advantageous geographic location the Kirensky prison, which served as a springboard for the development of the Irkutsk region northern territories, was founded at the intersection of two rivers ‒ Lena and Kirenga. It is given the population dynamics in Kirensks and highlighted the prospects for its development in modern conditions.


It is well recognized that LSD (lysergide) can give serious adverse reactions, including suicide and prolonged psychosis; Smart and Bateman (1967) have reviewed the subject thoroughly. However, examples reported refer largely to cases where the LSD was self-administered. Medical case reports usually cover small case numbers, and publication may be determined by high adverse reaction rates. There has been no methodical survey of the pooled experience of psychiatrists since Cohen's study in 1960. This reported 44 replies sent out to 62 American investigators who had published papers or whose work was known to the author. Replies covered 5,000 subjects with 25,000 LSD or mescaline sessions. In this series, there were only two suicides that Cohen regarded as directly related to the LSD, and there were psychotic reactions (lasting more than 48 hours) at a rate of 0·8 per 1,000 experimental subjects and 1·8 per 1000 patients. It is unfortunate that one-third of the investigators failed to reply to Cohen's questionnaire.


As a reminiscent prose, The Sight of Father's Back was written by the modern writer, Zhu Ziqing, in 1925. A wave of warm current floods a large body of readers since this essay describes, in earnest, love of father. This research performs a contrastive analysis of interpersonal function between the Chinese and English versions of The Sight of Father's Back in terms of mood, modality, and evaluation meanings. We find that mood and evaluation meanings display parallel distribution. Declarative and exclamatory moods occur most frequently in both the Chinese and English versions, whereas interrogative mood is at a premium. Besides, various evaluative adjectives and adverbs are used in both versions. However, modality shows remarkable discrepancies. The English version tends to adopt modal verbs with median-and-low value, while most median-and-high value modal verbs are presented in the Chinese version. In our view, the exercise of median-and-high value modal verbs reflects the thoughts more directly. While the selection of median-and-low value modal verbs might be concerned with the need for politeness. Besides, diverse choices of modal verbs are incident to various modal meanings along with research purposes.


Background Palliative care education for undergraduate medical students has not been well established in Japan. A foundation supported our university to have a department of palliative care medicine for undergraduate palliative education for three years. Fortunately, a nationwide consensus syllabus of palliative medicine for undergraduate medical education had been developed. Objectives To reflect the development of curriculum of palliative care for undergraduate. Materials & Methods Materials; (1) source of the syllabus, (2) source of teaching materials, (3) teaching staffs and supporters. Methods; evaluation by (1) development of the curriculum, (2) analysis of the budget, (3) analysis of the access of our website with Google analysis®. Results (1) Development of the curriculum; Number of the annual classes of palliative care increased from 13, 18, 22, respectively. (2) Analysis of the budget; 66.4% of annual expenditure was personnel expenses, 10.0% for administrative expenses, 6.0% for supplies expenses, 4.1% for travel expenses, 3.9 % for appliances, 9.6% for others. (3) Effect of disclosure of educational resources; the daily access to our website was significantly concentrated just before the national medical practitioners qualifying examination in Japan compared with that after the exam (p<0.0001). Conclusions Experienced palliative staffs, total support by the university, moderate financial resource and developed syllabus enabled systematized palliative education for undergraduate medical students. It might propagate related to the national medical practitioners qualifying examination.


BACKGROUND
Invasive green crabs contain high-quality proteins that have potential as functional ingredients in formulated foods. This study evaluated the functional properties and compositional characteristics of green crab proteins recovered by isoelectric solubilization/precipitation (ISP).

RESULTS
Mechanically separated green crab mince (control) was solubilized at pH 2 (PP2) and pH 10 (PP10), then proteins were precipitated at pH 5.5 and subsequently dried. Yield of recovered protein powder was approximately 1.5 times higher for PP2 than for PP10. Compared with the control (230 g kg-1 ), ash content was reduced in PP2 (54 g kg-1 ) and PP10 (23 g kg-1 ) samples. PP2 contained predominantly large-molecular-weight proteins, while small-molecular-weight proteins were distributed in PP10. With regard to functional properties, at pH 7 and 8, solubility of PP10 was significantly higher than that of PP2. At pH 7.5, PP10 exhibited significantly higher emulsifying activity (1482 m2 g-1 ) than PP2 (858 m2 g-1 ) and the control (958 m2 g-1 ). PP2 showed statistically higher gelation activity and had higher L* value than PP10 and the control.

CONCLUSION
The results indicate that recovered green crab proteins have functional properties potentially useful for formulated foods, and that these functional properties can be modified by the solubilization pH during the recovery process. © 2018 Society of Chemical Industry.


Purpose: To investigate the efficacy and safety of unfractionated heparin (UFH) anticoagulant administered upstream in the ambulance or emergency room during primary percutaneous coronary intervention (pPCI) for patients with acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI).Methods: The study included STEMI patients who received either early UFH subcutaneously (SC) (n = 163) or intraoperative UFH (SC) during pPCI (n = 476) between January 2017 to August 2018. Baseline characteristics, infarct-related artery (IRA) status, and procedural characteristics were analyzed. The primary endpoint was thrombolysis in myocardial infarction (TIMI) flow grade 2 - 3 before intervention. The secondary endpoints were time from first medical contact to guidewire passage, postoperative TIMI 3 flow grade, acute stent thrombosis, and in-hospital bleeding events.Results: Baseline characteristics were similar between the groups, with no significant difference in IRA location. Both groups underwent coronary angiography, with most patients receiving pPCI. The primary endpoint occurred in 18.1 % of patients in intraoperative UFH group and 27.6 % in the early UFH group, with a significant difference between the groups (p < 0.05). There was no significant difference in postoperative TIMI 3 flow grade or acute stent thrombosis, but bleeding events (BARC 2-5) were similar between groups (1.1 % in intraoperative group and 1.8 % in early UFH group, p > 0.05)Conclusion: Early upstream administration of UFH anticoagulation in STEMI patients improves coronary artery potency before pPCI, and early use of fixed-dose UFH is safe and does not increase major bleeding complications.


The creation of global value chains (GVCs) has changed the dominant manufacturing paradigm, shifting focus away from producing complete goods and toward manufacturing activities or tasks that are organized along trans-border value chains called global production networks (GPNs). This paper describes the state of the art of Canadian small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector, as well as their competitive strategic orientation to production in the context of the GVC framework. It presents an analysis of data from the manufacturing industry in Canada, the World Trade Organization (WTO), and the Organization for Economic Co-ordination and Development (OECD), and demonstrates that the competitiveness of Canadian manufacturing sectors in which Canada's natural resources are not sufficient as raw materials is highly dependent on participation in GVCs. Through exploration of Canadian participation in GVCs, this study emphasizes their strategic importance for Canadian manufacturers. It concludes that the competitiveness of Canadian manufacturers depends on their integration into fragmented production chains within GVCs. It also finds that their overall manufacturing competitiveness depends on their participation in collaborative production networks involving both local production and foreign activities. Manufacturing SMEs need to focus on activities and tasks in which they have comparative advantages, and procure intermediate components from foreign sources through competitive market-based arrangements. This study recommends that re-industrialization policies be developed within a co-industrialization framework that includes complementary firms across geographic space, and that is not based on the "local vs. foreign" mindset of the past. The formulation of public policy should thus focus on facilitating exchanges among actors engaging in complementary activities and increasing collaboration among private sectors.


A 47 year-old male patient attended to our emergency clinic 3 hours after gunshot injury. There was a wide defect in scrotal area, each testicle and each corpus cavernous was injured and corpus spongiosum and urethra was totally disrupted. Right testicle was orchiectomised left one was repaired. We also repaired each cavernosal bodies, urethra and spongiosum as anastomosed in end to end style. In postoperative 6 weeks control patient was happy with outcome and declared that he had normal erections. His only complaint was slight loss of sensation in glans penis. In the treatment of genital injuries all possibilities should be considered in order to preserve the penis and testicles.


The concept of biorthogonal partners has previously been shown to provide a unifying link for various applications in digital signal processing. In particular, the multiple input multiple output (MIMO) case has been associated with several different contexts such as multiwavelet theory and MIMO channel equalization, especially with fractionally spaced equalizers. In most of these applications, the construction of FIR solutions is of high practical importance. In this paper we derive the most general form of FIR MIMO biorthogonal partners. These findings are tested on a MIMO channel equalization example.


This paper represents an Orthodox Christian perspective on globalization and also claims that interfaith dialogue is a missionary imperative. Globalization, the fundamental trait of our time, requires a rising to the opportunity offered by the ever larger and increasingly dense network of interconnections and interdependences of the social life—a new view of the world, of man, of life and faith. In other words, between globalization—perceived as a socially determined substrate for post–modernity—and the manifest subjectivity of the religious beliefs and practices (by means of a spiritual superstructure), an inseparable two–way relationship will be generated, which may prove stimulating for the interaction of ideas, religious beliefs and practices that, inevitably, will integrate into the multitude of connections feeding the ever more open character of the society. This paper attempts to answer several general questions on the relationship between globalization and dialogue. Therefore, under the circumstances, what particular trait of globalization may come to (re)define and (re)calibrate the dialogue among the great religions of the world? In other words, why does globalization—which reduces the contemporary man to the temporal flow of production and consumption—make a dialogue inevitable and socially necessary? And why such dialogue meets the significant challenges brought about by the global interconnection?


Background: Chronic myelogenous leukemia is a clonal disorder of the pleuripotent stem cells which accounts for about 15% of leukemias. Tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) are the first line therapy for CML which have substantially improved the prognosis of CML. Nilotinib is a second generation TKI which is being used widely. as a frontline drug for CML treatment and also for imatinib resistant cases. Nilotinib has been reported to induce hepatotoxicity and to affect renal function Objectives: The current study aims to evaluate the effect of nilotinib on liver and renal function in a sample of Iraqi patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia (chronic phase) treated with Nilotinib and its possible association with grades of other haematological parameters. Patients and Methods: Thirty three patients with chronic myeloid leukaemia and the same number of healthy controls were enrolled in this cross sectional study. All the patients were on Nilotinib hydrochloride for at least 6 months. Switching to Nilotinib treatment was due to intolerance or resistance to Imatinib. ALT, AST, blood urea, creatinine as well as other haematological parameters were measured. Results: only one patient out of thirty three( 3%) had a very high ALT and AST with grade 3 and only 2 patients (6%) were classified as grade 1 for ALT level. All the patients were within the normal range values of blood urea, creatinine and eGFR . Conclusion: Hepatotoxicity is a serious adverse effect of nilotinib that mandates regular check-up of liver function.


Background: Long noncoding RNA secretory carrier membrane protein 1 (SCAMP1) has been recently reported to be an oncogene in glioma and ovarian cancer. However, little is known about the clinical significance and functional role of SCAMP1 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).Methods: The expression of SCAMP1 was determined in tissue samples and cell lines using quantitative reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR). The clinical significance of SCAMP1 in HCC was evaluated using chi-squared test, Kaplan-Meier survival, as well as univariate and multivariate analysis. Cell proliferation, cell cycle distribution and apoptosis were evaluated using CCK-8 assay, colony formation assay, Flow cytometry analysis. Related protein expression levels were measured by western blot analysis.Results: We found SCAMP1 expression levels were remarkably up-regulated in HCC tissues compared to that in matched adjacent tissues. Increased SCAMP1 expression was significantly correlated with large tumor size, advanced TNM stage and poor survival prognosis in HCC. Knockdown of SCAMP1 significantly inhibited cell proliferation, induced G0/G1 phase arrest and apoptosis in HepG2 and SNU-182 cells. More importantly, knockdown of SCAMP1 downregulated the protein levels of CDK4, Cyclin D1 and Bcl-2, while upregulated the protein levels of p21, p53 and Bax.Conclusions: In summary, our study clarified a positive correlation of the SCAMP1 levels with the HCC cell proliferation.


The noise generation mechanism of flat belts on a timing pulley, trapezoidal tooth profile timing belts and circular tooth profile timing belts has been experimentally studied. The results of this study are as follows. (1) The noise generation mechanisms of the three kinds of belts are all the same. The noise is mainly an impact sound due to the collision of the belt and the top land of the pulley tooth at the entry point of the driving pulley. (2) The impact noise is reduced by the interference of either the belt and the pulley tooth flanks or the top land of belt tooth and the bottom land of the pulley tooth groove. (3) The noise level of the trapezoidal tooth profile timing belt is high when the belt pitch, expanded by the tension, is equal to the pulley pitch.


This study aims to assess the role of financial institutions in promoting tourism entrepreneurship in the state of Kerala; Kerala is a brand of Indian tourism and the destiny of world tourism. The study highlights the acumen behind the promotion of tourism entrepreneurship, tourism opportunities in Kerala and identifies the role of financial institutions in exploring tourism opportunities with the primary data sourced from 222 tourism entrepreneurs of Kerala. The study found that financial institutions significantly assist tourism enterprises in asset creation. Further, the findings reveal a positive association between financial assistance in the innovation of recreation facilities and a stimulus to start enterprises in the tourism sector. The study provides deeper insights to managers and academicians that the financial institutions should extend credit to the tourism industry as Priority Sector Lending (PSL) along with other prime lending sectors.


Since 2001 the European Commission has paid increasing attention to two-way communication in its institutional communication strategy. Besides informing the public, the Commission's strategy has become orientated towards listening to and engaging in a dialogue with citizens. This article explores the rhetoric of the Commission regarding its institutional communication strategy from 2001 to the present time and studies in depth the dialogic dimension of this strategy. This contribution extends the study of the Commission's communication strategy by offering new insights into the development of the dialogic approach and the Commission's current understanding of communication. Furthermore, defining institutional two-way communication as a means to facilitate a link between decision making and public opinion, I contribute to the debate on the European public sphere. The data used for the analysis originate from document analysis and semi-structured elite interviews with Commission officials. The analysis indicates the gradual nature of the shift between 2001 and 2009 from a one-way informing approach to a two-way communicating approach. The dialogic dimension in the Commission's communication strategy is found to be more restricted in terms of subjects for discussion and facilitation. There are indications that engaging in a dialogue and interaction have been played down and are being managed through other means outside the formal communication strategy.


Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic inflammatory disease that results in progressive functional limitation, physical disability and premature death. RA extracts a considerable economic toll, particularly in terms of indirect costs related to lost productivity and premature mortality. Given these considerations, any therapy for RA that slows or prevents disability would be expected to confer economic benefit. Determination of drug efficacy does not automatically imply economic benefit, however. Establishment of economic benefit requires a rigorous analysis of both the benefits and the total costs of a given therapy The cost of drug therapy, including treatment of side-effects, currently constitutes only 15% of the total direct cost of RA, so it is important to assess other costs in any economic analysis. Common guidelines with regard to methods, units and data treatment are necessary to permit comparison of the economic benefit of different therapies within and across disease states. Such guidelines are being established for economic evaluations of medical interventions in RA. Application of these guidelines to future pharmacoeconomic studies of RA therapy will permit more accurate assessment of the economic benefit of such treatments. Given the current fiscal constraints on health care, demonstration of economic benefit will become an increasingly important factor for drug acceptance.


The conditions and timetable under which TVA would consider installing and/or integrating photovoltaic systems into its generation mix were examined. It was found that a central station PV plant could be justified in a given year if its initial installed system cost was equal to or less than the "breakeven" values given in Tables I and II. These values were based on given amortization, O&M cost, and power planning assumptions. As an example, with a 10-percent cost of money, 30-year plant life and amortization period, annual O&M costs equal to 0.5 percent of the initial installed system price, and using current TVA power planning medium load forecast data, in the year 2000 the PV "breakeven" prices (in current dollars) were $1.12 per installed peak watt for fixed flat plate systems; and $1.52 per installed peak watt for tracking flat plate systems. Optimal geographic location in the TVA region of such a plant could increase the breakeven prices about 10 percent.


Global trends, showing gradual increase in the numbers of 'street children', are alarming. This book focuses on the children, living on the street without having family contact and support and are addressed as 'roaming working children'(RWC). The objective of the book, based on exploratory study, is to explore the everyday lives of RWC in order to understand their life styles, reasons for being in such a position, their coping strategies and aspirations for the future. Findings reveal though RWC primarily establish friendship to get protection, emotional bonding also arise and although they are detached from their families, desire to establish their own families strongly exist. Though RWC are mostly freedom loving, attitude towards risk influence their notion of freedom to a great extent. While negotiating with police, drug dealers, family members living on the street and workers of non-governmental-organizations etc., RWC are found to be more comfortable in seeking protection from drug dealers and family members living on the street. In spite of exhibiting adult-like-behavior, the childlike innocence of RWC often reminds that they are 'children'- who require care and protection.


The transformation of the world order, the change in the geopolitical and geo-economic picture of the world, the new vectors of the socio-economic policy of the Russian Federation imply the actualization of research strategies in the field of socio-economic sciences and the achievement of the maximum level of their relevance to the challenges of the current stage. To achieve the sovereignization of the domestic sector of socio-economic research, it is important to formulate a new conceptual apparatus of the current socio-economic policy, as well as to develop instrumental and methodological support for the trend tracking process.The analysis of professional and open trendwatching algorithms used in this study gives grounds to note that the only area in which the trend monitoring process relies on developed methodology and tools is the creative industries. To adapt these algorithms to the tasks of monitoring socio-economic policy, the development of the TrendWatching agency, which has patented the Purpose-Driven Innovation methodology, which is an analytical scheme that turns multidirectional trends into significant trends, is especially promising.


Over the last few years, electric vehicles (EVs) have turned into viable urban transportation alternatives. Charging infrastructure is an issue, since high investment is needed and there is a lot of demand uncertainty. Seeking to fill gaps in past studies, this investigation proposes a set of procedures to identify the most adequate places for implementing the EV charging infrastructure. In order to identify the most favorable districts for the installation and operation of electric charging infrastructure in Sao Paulo city, the following public available information was considered: the density of points of interest (POIs), distribution of the average monthly per capita income, and number of daily trips made by transportation mode. The current electric vehicle charging network and most important business corridors were additionally taken into account. The investigation shows that districts with the largest demand for charging stations are located in the central area, where the population also exhibits the highest purchasing power. The charging station location process can be applied to other cities, and it is possible to use additional variables to measure social inequality.


In the spirit of Leamer's commitment to sensitivity analysis, we employ Farrell's nonparametric efficiency methodology and compare our results with those of Sexton, Wilson, and Wann. Testing the implicit assumption of technical efficiency in the methodology employed by Sexton, Wilson, and Wann, we find that the lack of technical efficiency is the cotton gins' main cause of overall inefficiency. We extend the nonparametric methodology by subjecting the shadow prices of technical efficiency to nonparametric statistical tests to draw stronger conclusions. In addition, the nonparametric methodology permits us to make gin-specific recommendations to improve the performance of the gins.


Protozoan parasites belonging to the genus Perkinsus elicit severe inflammatory responses and are associated with mass mortality of commercially important marine shellfish worldwide. In the present study, we examined the external features of P. olseni zoospores in detail using light and scanning electron microscopy. Our study showed that the zoospores have an oval body with a long anterior flagellum and a short posterior flagellum. The anterior flagellum has a unilateral array of mastigonemes. Mean body dimensions were 3.37 ± 0.33 μm × 1.72 ± 0.22 μm. The average length of the anterior and posterior flagella was 16.34 ± 1.52 μm and 8.25 ± 1.39 μm, respectively. Zoospores of P. olseni found in Korean waters have shorter and narrower bodies, longer anterior flagella, and shorter posterior flagella than zoospores of Perkinsus spp. found in the mollusks of North America and Europe.


Current vascular investigations permit a better understanding and placing of Raynaud's Phenomenon from the nosological point of view. This work contains a study of the contributions made by digital rheography, arteriography and pulp biopsy. These methods allow us on the one hand to define the concept of Raynaud's diathesis, an essential element necessary to the appearance of vasomotor crises, and on the other hand to identify the possible triggering causes on which depend certain cases of Raynaud's phenomenon of idiopathic appearance, sometimes clinically latent. The general conception of Raynaud's Phenomenon, defined from the semeiological point of view and corresponding to a pathology and a diathesis common to the various conditions in which it may appear, is confirmed by the data provided by these investigations. The diagnostic approach in Raynaud's phenomenon has thus a double perspective: --to identify and define the Raynaud's diathesis, --to seek the possible causes which may be clinically latent.


We consider uncharged fluids without any boost symmetry on an arbitrary curved background and classify all allowed transport coefficients up to first order in derivatives. We assume rotational symmetry and we use the entropy current formalism. The curved background geometry in the absence of boost symmetry is called absolute or Aristotelian spacetime. We present a closed-form expression for the energy-momentum tensor in Landau frame which splits into three parts: a dissipative (10), a hydrostatic non-dissipative (2) and a non-hydrostatic non-dissipative part (4), where in parenthesis we have indicated the number of allowed transport coefficients. The non-hydrostatic non-dissipative transport coefficients can be thought of as the generalization of coefficients that would vanish if we were to restrict to linearized perturbations and impose the Onsager relations. For the two hydrostatic and the four non-hydrostatic non-dissipative transport coefficients we present a Lagrangian description. Finally when we impose scale invariance, thus restricting to Lifshitz fluids, we find 7 dissipative, 1 hydrostatic and 2 non-hydrostatic non-dissipative transport coefficients.


Differences in the degree of malignancy of malignant tumors have been recognized by pathologists for many years. Indeed, Virchow9s original conception of a malignant tumor was one composed of cells, derived from the tissue cells of the individual, but differing from the normal cells in the rapidity and independence of their growth. Hansemann (1) carried this idea somewhat further and introduced the word "anaplasia" to indicate the process by which cancer cells came to differ from the normal type cell of the body tissue concerned. Anaplasia involves a loss of differentiation and an increase of reproductive power, so that the anaplastic cell fulfils only in abortive fashion, if at all, its normal function, such as secretion or keratinization; while it shows by increased number of mitotic figures, and especially by the irregularity and abnormality of its nuclear chromatic elements and figures, the increase in rapidity of cell division and of cell growth which is characteristic of malignancy. A number of attempts have been made to grade the malignancy of different breast tumors by distinguishing their histological characteristics, such as adenocarcinoma, medullary, scirrhus, colloid, etc.; but with the exception of adenocarcinoma and colloid, these divisions have proved of little value in prognosis. There the matter rested till 1921, when, under the influence of MacCarty (2) of the Mayo Clinic, Broders published a paper suggesting the classification of cancer tissue according to the degree of malignancy, as estimated by loss of differentiation and increase of reproductive characteristics.


this protocol describes the design and development of a tool for evaluation of the internal validity of in vitro studies, which is needed to include the data as evidence in systematic reviews and chemical risk assessments. the tool will be designed specifically to be applied to cell culture studies, including, but not restricted to, studies meeting the new approach methodology (NaM) definition. the tool is called iNVites-iN (iN Vitro experimental studies iNternal validity). in this protocol, three of the four studies that will be performed to create the release version of iNVites-iN are described. in the first study, evaluation of existing assessment tools will be combined with focus group discussions to identify how characteristics of the design or conduct of an in vitro study can affect its internal validity. Bias domains and items considered to be of relevance for in vitro studies will be identified. in the second study, group agreement on internal validity domains and items of importance for in vitro studies will be identified via a modified Delphi methodology. in the third study, the draft version of the tool will be created, based on the data on relevance and importance of bias domains and items collected in studies 1 and 2. a separate protocol will be prepared for the fourth study, which includes the user testing and validation of the tool, and collection of users' experience.


A sensitive spectrophotometric micromethod was developed for estimation of ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) activity in animal tissues. Distinct increase in the enzymatic activity was found in regenerating and malignant liver tissues as well as in hepatomas G-27 and G-46 as compared with the corresponding tissues of control animals. The linear relationship between the optic density and content of dinitrophenyl putrescine was maintained over the range of 0 to 150 nmol per a sample. The ODC pH optimum was observed within the zone pH 6.4-6.8; it did not depend on the nature of the buffer, used for tissue homogenization. The recovery of putrescine added into the sample was equal to 102.97 +/- 2.22%. The method had an error less than 3%, its sensitivity was 0.1 nmol/sample and the reproducibility was about 100%.


Objectives The objective was to the undertake nominal group technique (NGT) to evaluate current exercise adherence measures and isolated domains to develop stakeholder consensus on the domains to include in the measurement of therapeutic exercise adherence for patients with musculoskeletal disorders. Design A 1-day NGT workshop was convened. Six exercise adherence measures were presented to the group that were identified in our recent systematic review. Discussions considered these measures and isolated domains of exercise adherence. Following discussions, consensus voting identified stakeholder agreement on the suitability of the six offered adherence measures and the inclusion of isolated domains of exercise adherence in future measurement. Setting One stakeholder NGT workshop held in Sheffield, UK. Participants Key stakeholders from the UK were invited to participate from four identified populations. 14 participants represented patients, clinicians, researchers and service managers. Results All six exercise adherence measures were deemed not appropriate for use in clinical research or routine practice with no measure reaching 70% group agreement for suitability, relevance, acceptability or appropriateness. Three measures were deemed feasible to use in clinical practice. 25 constructs of exercise adherence did reach consensus threshold and were supported to be included as domains in the future measurement of exercise adherence. Conclusion A mixed UK-based stakeholder group felt these six measures of exercise adherence were unacceptable. Differences in opinion within the stakeholder group highlighted the lack of consensus as to what should be measured, the type of assessment that is required and whose perspective should be sought when assessing exercise adherence. Previously unused domains may be needed alongside current ones, from both a clinician's and patient's perspective, to gain understanding and to inform future measurement development. Further conceptualisation of exercise adherence is required from similar mixed stakeholder groups in various socioeconomic and cultural populations.


Particle acceleration at stationary and moving internal shocks is one of the principal mechanisms to explain the variable emission, seen from the radio to the γ -ray band, from relativistic jets in radio-loud active galactic nuclei. To reproduce the synchrotron light curves associated with these shocks, we perform SRMHD simulations of magnetised relativistic transverse-structured jets using the AMRVAC code. Perturbations are injected at the base of a steady jet that carries stationary shocks to study the interaction between the moving and the stationary shocks. Synchrotron emission and radiative transfer are simulated in post-treatment. In a first application, the radio core of the radio-galaxy M 87 is modelled to study the flux evolution from such perturbations in the radio band and compare them against archival data. High Relativistic VII


The 2008 paper of Sikkink and Keane compared several methods to estimate surface fuel loading in western Montana: two widely used inventory techniques (planar intersect and fixed-area plot) and three methods that employ photographs as visual guides (photoload, photoload macroplot and photo series). We feel, however, that their study design was inadequate to evaluate the accuracy of these methods when measured against a series of reference sites. Incorrect use may have contributed to the authors' inferences that the photo series method was the least accurate in this case. Furthermore, sampling efficiency was not adequately taken into account when evaluating overall efficacy of the five methods studied.


The 1980s have seen the beginnings of a change of heart among developing country policymakers, as the import-substitution consensus of the previous decade has all but evaporated. It is paradoxical that the 1980s should have become the decade of trade liberalization in LDCs, since this has also been a decade of macroeconomic instability. The benefits of liberalization become muted under conditions of macro instability. This paper discusses three questions that arise with this experience. First, how can the credibility and sustainability of the reforms be enhanced? Second, what role should trade reform play when it is implemented in the context of macroeconomic instability? Third, should we worry about the consequences of trade reform in the imperfectly competitive environments that characterize the developing economie.


A network is presented which embodies the orthogonal type of association. A remarkable point of the network is that the weights of the connections between neurons can be determined directly from the correlation matrix derived from the prototype patterns, requiring no pseudoinverse calculation. As a result, the connection weights can also be obtained by an unsupervised, local learning procedure based on the conventional Hebbian principle. >


Purpose. To report the case of a patient with high hyperopia and bilateral keratoconus. Methods. A high hyperopic patient was evaluated using Orbscan corneal topography and slitlamp biomicroscopy to confirm suspected keratoconus. Results. A male patient (32 years old) with a long history (10 years) of daily hydrogel contact lens wear with severe hyperopia was examined (RE +8.25–5.00 × 070°, visual acuity [VA] 0.7 and LE +8.00–3.00 × 100°, VA 0.9). The patient's Orbscan topography was compatible with bilateral asymmetric keratoconus (asymmetry of central dioptric power, irregular astigmatism, high anterior (110 and 63 &mgr;m for RE and LE, respectively) and posterior (200 and 128 &mgr;m for RE and LE, respectively) corneal elevation values; and corneal thinnest point (450 and 471 &mgr;m for RE and LE, respectively, in the cone). Slitlamp biomicroscopic findings included Vogt striae in RE. High Dk rigid gas-permeable CLs with keratoconus design (Z-B4P, Menicon, Japan) were fitted in both eyes (in RE the back optic zone radius [BOZR] was 7.70 mm, the total diameter was 10.00 mm, and the power was +4.00D, which provides a VA of 1.0; the LE BOZR was 7.65 mm, the total diameter was 10.00 mm, and the power was +4.25D, which provides a VA of 1.0). Conclusions. Although rare, keratoconus may occur in cases of high hyperopia. Management of hyperopic keratoconus with rigid gas-permeable contact lens fitting may be similar to that applied with other cases of keratoconus.


The Academic Medical Center (AMC) is one of the largest hospitals in the Netherlands and it is located in the Bijlmer district. The complex was built in 1981 and consists of 64 hectares of land. The complex is surround by a green belt where also the former psychiatric center was located. The AMC can be seen as a stand-alone city, with daily facilities, the hospital, the university en its big variety of users. The characteristic feature of the AMC monolith, that it manifests itself as an inner city, with large streets and squares and a wide range of facilities, is why it can be compared to a big city as Amsterdam. Where life takes place inside the city. As a result, the AMC has never been built with a connection to its surroundings and is there no connection with the new park to be built near the main entrance. The main entrance is an unclear element from the parking space and also creates a certain boundary between inside and outside. When patients, employees, visitors and students enter the AMC through the main entrance, they enter the city through a dark, depressed corridor, which makes people feel even more inclined to feel ill. In particular, a hospital such as the AMC should contribute to the well-being of its patients and inhabitants. Climate change is an important point of attention for the whole world. Especially in big cities as Amsterdam, which is one of the most polluted cities in the Netherlands. Global warming is dangerous for the living environment in the cities and are in densely populated cities as Amsterdam a real thread and is one of the greatest effects of climate change. A second problem is the disappearance of greenery in the city, and the increasing air pollution. Nature, such as parks, shrubs, plants and trees (green) can contribute to creating a healthier living environment in the city. But instead of more green being realised in the city, it disappears by the fact that cities are getting overcrowded. In the past centuries parks were built to enhance the urban climate. Meanwhile the urban ground is developed in such a high density, and the costs for sites have risen so quickly that (new) parks are very rare in the urban structure. Urban parks disappear and they are transformed into "stamp" parks. The result: the city becomes more and more polluted and gets warmer. This report attempts to evaluate the positive effects of integration of nature on building scale. Research shows that green/nature can filter this air pollution and make a positive contribution to counteracting the rising temperature. The integration of a green facade and green roof in the built environment can play an important role in this. The green elements have besides an esthetically value, also psychological and energetic benefits. When these elements are designed correctly, the building can contribute to a healthier living environment.


Aims To review postnatal glucose tolerance testing (GTT) in women with gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and to determine whether there is an essential role for 2 hour GTT in screening for both impaired glucose tolerance and type 2 diabetes. Methods All women with gestational diabetes diagnosed between January 2008 and June 2011 were included. Patients were offered a post-natal GTT at 6 weeks after delivery. Fasting blood glucose results were compared to the results of 2 hours post glucose challenge. Results The total number of women with GDM was 811. 191 (24%) women declined or failed to attend their post-natal GTT. 71 (11%) had an abnormal result. Of this, 14 were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes and 57 with impaired glucose tolerance (IGT). 42 (40 IGT and 2 type 2 diabetes) of these with abnormal GTT had fasting glucose ≤6 mmol/l. A fasting glucose of ≥6.1mmol/l correctly identified 29 of 71 cases of abnormal GTT, with a sensitivity of 40%. Sensitivity 40%, specificity 94%, PPV 50%, NPV 92% Conclusions Impaired post-natal glucose tolerance has both implications for future pregnancies and long term health. It is also a strong predictor of developing type 2 diabetes. Formal diagnosis, education and subsequent management is therefore essential. GTT is crucial in identifying these patients, since fasting blood glucose alone is not sufficiently sensitive. Abstract PM.45 Table 1 Results of GTT 2 hour < 7.8 mmol/l 2 hour ≤ 7.8 mmol/l Fasting ≥ 6 mmol/l 520 42 Fasting ≤ 6.1 mmol/l 29 29


This recently revised textbook of surgery represents a major step forward in the continuing improvement of surgical reference books. It is well organized and beautifully executed. Emphasis has been placed on physiology and basic principles of surgery without loss of detail on specific therapy. The selection of authors has been outstanding; each is a recognized contributor and an authority in his field. Subjects are covered in depth with surprisingly up-to-date information. The initial 21 chapters are devoted to basic physiology and pathophysiology common to all surgery and surgical patients. There are excellent chapters on shock, fluid and electrolyte problems, metabolism in surgical patients, sepsis, and surgical complications. The chapter on transplantation is a complete summary of the current state of knowledge in this rapidly developing field and is outstanding. The remainder of the book is devoted to chapters on the diseases of specific organs and organ systems. Of note here


ABSTRACT Few studies have examined the relationship between basic psychological needs (BPN), depression and quality of life (QOL) in people living with HIV (PLWH). This cross-sectional study (N = 65; 37% females, 37% Caucasian, mean age = 55 ± 6 years, mean CD4 count = 668 ± 368 cells/mm3, average duration of HIV = 18 ± 4 years) found that BPN frustration was related with lower QOL. The strength of this relationship was reduced after controlling for depression. This suggests that depression partially mediated the relationship between BPN and QOL. BPN and depression may be specific targets for psychosocial interventions aimed at improving QOL in PLWH to promote successful aging.


Current cosmological data exhibit a tension between inferences of the Hubble constant, $H_0$, derived from early and late-universe measurements. One proposed solution is to introduce a new component in the early universe, which initially acts as "early dark energy" (EDE), thus decreasing the physical size of the sound horizon imprinted in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and increasing the inferred $H_0$. Previous EDE analyses have shown this model can relax the $H_0$ tension, but the CMB-preferred value of the density fluctuation amplitude, $\sigma_8$, increases in EDE as compared to $\Lambda$CDM, increasing tension with large-scale structure (LSS) data. We show that the EDE model fit to CMB and SH0ES data yields scale-dependent changes in the matter power spectrum compared to $\Lambda$CDM, including $10\%$ more power at $k = 1~h$/Mpc. Motivated by this observation, we reanalyze the EDE scenario, considering LSS data in detail. We also update previous analyses by including $Planck$ 2018 CMB likelihoods, and perform the first search for EDE in $Planck$ data alone, which yields no evidence for EDE. We consider several data set combinations involving the primary CMB, CMB lensing, SNIa, BAO, RSD, weak lensing, galaxy clustering, and local distance-ladder data (SH0ES). While the EDE component is weakly detected (3$\sigma$) when including the SH0ES data and excluding most LSS data, this drops below 2$\sigma$ when further LSS data are included. Further, this result is in tension with strong constraints imposed on EDE by CMB and LSS data without SH0ES, which show no evidence for this model. We also show that physical priors on the fundamental scalar field parameters further weaken evidence for EDE. We conclude that the EDE scenario is, at best, no more likely to be concordant with all current cosmological data sets than $\Lambda$CDM, and appears unlikely to resolve the $H_0$ tension.


Acquired disturbances of color vision are a highly varied group of defects with frequent departures from established patterns. They can progress from normal trichromatism to anomalous trichromatism on to a dichromatic stage and to monochromatism where most color vision is lost, or they may be relatively stable [1]. A significant "modern effort" to present such conditions was published for first time in 1972 [2], attention was drawn in a significant account given 15 years later by Jaeger and Krastel emphasizing pharmaco-therapeutical effects [3]. Normally, dopaminergic neurons act in the outer and inner retina at multiple levels, producing alterations to the flow of visual information in a complex fashion. Dopamine is a chemical messenger for light adaptation, promoting the flow of information through cone circuits while diminishing that through rod circuits [4]. Color vision relies on the cone photoreceptor population and is therefore largely confined to the central retina. Because there is a segregation of color-specific information at the retinal into blue-yellow and red-green pathways, it is possible to use color discrimination tasks to assess cone and retinal ganglion cell subpopulations [4]. It has been reported that color vision is impaired in Parkinson's disease (PD) [5] and some works have suggested that these disturbances to color vision affect predominantly the short-wave cone pathway [6]. Birch suggested that the acquired type three (tritan) defect at the retinal level as an early diagnostic sign of Parkinson's ∗Correspondence to: Anna Piro, Neuroimaging Research Unit, IBFM-CNR, Germaneto, Catanzaro, Italy. Tel.: +393402529194; Fax: +39 0 9613695919; E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com. disease [7]. We examined 49 PD Calabrian all male patients (age range, 50–85 years, mean age, 67 years) to avoid that genetic appearance of the "lionization" which can be present in the heterozygous females for color vision deficiency who mimic the vision of the normal females [8]. All patients underwent the L-DOPA doses subdivided into two different groups: 125–300 mg/day, low daily dose; 400–1000 mg/day, high daily dose. 25 age and sex matched controls showing a normal color vision, in comparison with the patients (chi square = 25.3, df = 1, p < 0.0005) were enrolled in comparison with 25/49 PD patients showing a defect of bleu/yellow axis. Controls did not show any PD signs, or other acquired ophthalmological disease. After informed consent, all patients, and controls had an examination by an ophthalmologist in order to rule a diabetic retinopathy, or a cataract, or an optic neuritis, or a senile maculopathy, or ocular fundus' anomalies that could influence the color vision analysis. All PD patients who made more than 5 mistakes during their reading from the first 17 Ishihara plates were diagnosed as being color-blind, and this diagnosis was confirmed by their reading from the next four (numbers 18–21) Ishihara plates. The last four Ishihara plates (numbers 22–25) were utilized to define the type of color-blindness (the red or green colorbindness) and the grade of color-blindness: protanopy, the absence of red vision or protanomaly, the small deficiency of red color vision, and deuteranopy, the absence of green color vision or deuteranomaly, the small deficiency of green color vision [9]. PD colorblind patients were excluded from the analysis. So,


Erysipelas is an infectious disease seen mainly in growing pigs and characterized clinically by fever, arthritis, skin lesions and sudden death. The disease may be acute, subacute, or chronic. Swine erysipelas is a disease caused by a specific micro organ Erysipelothrix rhusiopathiae which is a zoonotic ubiquitous gram-positive bacterium that causes erysipelas in swine, mammals, birds and erysipeloid in humans. People in contact with animals, animal products or animal wastes are at greatest risk. The acute form of swine erysipelas may have been confused for other diseases in pigs which are characterized by acute symptoms such as sudden death (for example, African swine fever). It can be diagnosed by its clinical signs, necropsy findings, bacteriology, and anti-microbial response, molecular and serological examinations. It is recommended to increase awareness of the disease among animal and human practitioners as treatment is easy and available and vaccination is possible. However, the disease is still unknown to local veterinarians, clinical doctors, meat inspectors, butchers and laboratory personnel. Proper hygiene, regular pork inspection, use of protective wear among people working/ in contact with animals should be promoted. The disease causes high economic loss in pig rearing areas and influences the public health being a severe zoonotic disease. So the objective of this review is to create a better understanding of the disease for proper control and prevention of the disease.


To the Editor: During room-temperature storage, platelets progressively lose their in vitro responsiveness to single aggregating agents such as ADP. However, no loss of sensitivity to ADP or epinephrine was observed when the agents were used as a pair.' It has also been r e p ~ r t e d ~ . ~ that fresh platelets are more reactive to ADP when they are examined at room temperature than at the conventional study temperature of 37°C. In our study, platelet concentrates were stored in PL-1240 bags. After 120 hours of storage, their aggregation response to 10 phf ADP was measured in an aggregometer at both 25 and 37°C. A representative comparison is shown in Fig. 1. While almost no aggregation occurred at 37"C, marked aggregation is seen at 25°C. Aggregation expressed as the maximal change in light transmission was 41 & 16 percent (n = 25) at 25"C, whereas the mean was under 10 percent in tests at 37°C. The findings suggest that stored platelets may behave differently in the skin, where the actual temperature is similar to room temperature, than in wanner parts of the body. 2. Trenchard PM, Morgan RA. Sub-ambient aggregometry: a tool for examining platelet storage at any temperature between 4-22°C. Haemostasis 1986;16:352-61. 3. Trenchard PM. Room temperature hyperaggregation of human blood platelets. Br J Haematol 1987;67:248-50.


Abstract We followed the daily and seasonal foraging patterns of the solitary bee Proxylocopa olivieri during two springs and summers in Har Gilo, Israel. During the foraging season, the bees exhibited a clear bimodal daily activity pattern. They foraged mostly before sunrise and after sunset. We hypothesized that this activity schedule entails foraging benefits. We found that snapdragon (Antirrhinum majus L.) was a major source of nectar for P. olivieri. Nectar production rates in snapdragon were significantly higher during the morning activity period of P. olivieri than during mid-day. Bees of numerous other species foraged on snapdragon, but their activity periods hardly overlapped with P. olivieri. Foraging activity in P. olivieri was highest at a combination of high (25–35°C) temperatures and low (1–100 Lux) illumination levels. We suggest that P. olivieri benefits from foraging at dawn and dusk on snapdragon, and possibly additional food plants, because of exploitation of the large amounts of nectar produced. A nectar enrichment experiment revealed that P. olivieri does not cease foraging because of lack of available nectar. We suggest that the P. olivieri's ability to fly at low light levels enables it to dominate a unique foraging niche.


USING ONLINE VIDEO SCRIBED ANIMATION TO TEACH WRITING SELFREGULATION Jonathan Beer Advisor: University of Guelph Dr. Blair Nonnecke In a world that is increasingly digital, the ability to communicate clearly in writing is of utmost importance. An important part of writing in both professional and academic settings is selfregulation. In academics, the use of video as a teaching tool in online environments is becoming more popular. This thesis investigated whether or not video scribed animation could be used to teach writing self-regulation strategies in an online course. Student perceptions of video scribed animation and its use in education were also examined. Students completed self-report measures of their grade goals, self-efficacy for grade achievement, and self-regulation strategy use on blogging assignments. Results showed that there were statistically significant increases in students' environmental selfregulation and goal setting. For example, students worked in quieter environments and set more concrete, challenging goals after watching the video scribed animation that modeled selfregulation strategies. Students found the video both entertaining and educational, and indicated that it caught and sustained their attention. Treatment group students that opted not to watch the video scribed animation were more likely to have achieved their grade goals on the previous assignment than the students that watched the video.


Building a strategic oversight model of organizational architecture entails conducting a
thorough conceptual review of control and its various historical classifications. This review
arrived at the conclusion that these classifications have been made with a focus on functional
bases, always referring to environments where control is segmented by responsibilities,
opportunities, and specialties or coverage with an overall commitment to the Anglo-Saxon
paradigm. There is an absolute lack of conceptual definitions, and this poses a challenge
to embarking on the task of rebuilding or improving the concept based on a schema that
characterizes it as social control within an organizational environment. The process begins
by redefining the concept of organization, for which the author turns to a historical
reconstruction of the concept. Having redefined the concept of organization, the concept
of control is defined as establishing barriers to prevent unbridled exercise of power on the
part of corporate stakeholders in pursuit of their interests by using organizational actions
as a starting point.


In this study, the correlations between AST850 and precipitation, and those between WDT and precipitation in the Yeongdong coastal region under the direct/indirect influence of the expansion of cP (continental polar air mass) high were quantitatively analyzed based on the winter season data for the last 20 years, according to surface pressure patterns such as Type 1 (cP high expansion type), Type 2 (cP high expansion + trough type), Type 4 (South trough type), and Type 5 (East Sea trough type). Here, AST850 represents 'sea surface temperature minus temperature on 850 hPa level' and WDT represents 'a speed of 1000 hPa wind projected onto a certain wind direction times precipitation duration in hour'. First, the correlation coefficients between AST850 and precipitation in Type 1, Type 2, and Type 5 cases were 0.253, 0.384, and 0.398 respectively, indicating that a tendency of increasing precipitation linearly with the value of AST850 is slightly presented. In the case of Type 4, however, the coefficient was −0.15, representing almost no linear correlation between AST850 and precipitation. In the correlation between WDT and precipitation, there was the largest correlation coefficient (0.464) between WDT along a direction of 90° and at EN1 in Type 1 cases. In the case of Type 2, there was the largest correlation coefficient (0.767) between WDT along a direction of 67.5° and at ES1. In the case of Type 4, there was the largest correlation coefficient (0.559) between WDT along a direction of 22.5° and at EN2. Finally, in the case of Type 5, there was the largest correlation coefficient (0.945) between WDT along a direction of 315° and at SE1, representing the largest coefficient among the types. It was found that surface wind directions with the highest correlations to precipitation in the Yeongdong coastal area on winter season were varied according to surface pressure patterns, and that the correlations between WDT and precipitation were higher than those between AST850 and precipitation.


The result of the break up of the Soviet Union empire in 1990 saw the emergence of China as the sole super power which still clings to the Communist ideology. China thus has the potential of taking over the previously held role of the Soviet Union. The re-emergence of China in the international arena after a long period of isolation may create a great impact on other super powers. China's intention and aspiration to be a new economic hegemonic power not only at regional but also at global levels makes China a country to be reckoned with. The writer will seek to discuss in this article three factors that contribute to China's economic success; firstly, the developments that have taken place in the transformation of China's economic policy from centrally controlled economy to that of the open and free economy as implemented by the Chinese leadership as part of their efforts to generate economic activities and increased competitiveness; secondly, the efforts in safeguarding China's interests in the WTO; and lastly, the role of Hong Kong's and Macau's participation in China's economic development.


Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of employing preservice teachers as leaders in technology to change teacher education curriculum, and to mentor and support inservice teachers, teacher education faculty and preservice teachers. We describe the evolution of the design of this program by comparing the first and fourth year, and examining the mutual benefits for 49 members of the Technology Leadership Cadre (TLC) and the people they influenced. Using design-based research, we used an iterative approach to revise the structure of the program based on data we collected and analyzed. This data included 121 postings from an electronic discussion board, 964 surveys, observations, interviews with four faculty consultants, and focus group interviews with members of the Technology Leadership Cadre. TLC members collaborated with faculty in changing the porfolio assessment process from paper to electronic. This change in turn prompted faculty to incorporate technology-based artifacts for students to incorporate in their e-portfolios. Most important, as TLC members taught others technology skills through workshops and mentoring, they developed leadership in technology and in the classroom through this mutually beneficial relationship.


Cancer registry data provide a very important source of information for improving our understanding of the epidemiology of various cancers. In this work, we estimated the 5‐year crude probabilities of death from cancer and from other causes for five common cancers, namely stomach, lung, colon‐rectum, prostate and breast, in Japan, using population‐based registry data. Based on data on 344 676 patients diagnosed with one of these cancers between 2006 and 2008 in 21 prefectures participating in the Monitoring of Cancer Incidence in Japan (MCIJ) and followed‐up for at least 5 years, we used a flexible excess hazard model to compute the crude probabilities of death for different combinations of sex, age and stage at diagnosis. For tumours diagnosed at the distant stage, as well as for regional lung tumours, the vast majority of deaths at 5 years in cancer patients were attributable to the disease itself (although this proportion was only around 60% in older prostate cancer patients). For localised and most regional tumours, the impact of other causes of death on the total mortality increased with age at diagnosis, especially for localised breast, colorectal and gastric cancer. By allowing the partition of the mortality experience of cancer patients into a cancer‐ and an other‐cause‐specific component, crude probability of death estimates provide insight into how the impact of cancer on mortality might differ among populations with different background mortality risks. This might be useful for informing discussions between clinicians and patients about treatment options.


Construction projects are characterised by supply chains with multiple contracts and significant transaction costs. An example of these costs is to be found in the management of project delays. The operationalisation and measurement of transaction costs, especially in the construction context, has hitherto proved difficult. The work reported here is concerned with defining and measuring the resources required for the management of contractual disputes relating to project delays. Its main argument is that concepts from transaction cost economics (TCE) theory (bounded rationality, uncertainty, information asymmetry, and opportunistic behaviour) present serious problems for transaction efficiency. This is exemplified in forensic analysis of construction project delays. Data from twelve case studies are analysed, to reveal that up to 90% of time spent on delay analysis was concerned with searching for and validating information which could, ostensibly, be automatically and reliably captured using digital technologies. This research forms part of a wider study that considers the implications of the identified inefficiencies and makes a case for the exploitation of advances in information technology on the more efficient resolution (or even avoidance) of contractual disputes. It concludes that there is a prima facie case for this, and therefore for the reduction in the transaction costs that relate to the management of construction project delays.


Caffeic acid phenethyl ester (CAPE) is an active ingredient of beehive propolis with a structure similar to phenolic acid. The estrogenic effects of propolis were previously demonstrated through the activation of an estrogen receptor. To identify the estrogenic properties of propolis, CAPE was evaluated using in vitro and in vivo methods. CAPE showed selective binding affinity to human estrogen receptor β (hERβ) rather than hERα. CAPE also reduced ERα expression in MCF‐7 and MDA 231 cells. In the yeast estrogen receptor transcription assay, CAPE produced the transcriptional activity of estrogen‐responsive element with EC50 values of 3.72 × 10−6 M. CAPE did not increase the growth of MCF‐7 estrogen receptor‐positive breast cancer cells in doses ranging from 10−7 to 10−5 M. In order to understand how CAPE acts in animals, CAPE was tested by a uterotrophic bioassay. Treatment with CAPE (100, 500 mg/kg) did not increase the uterine weight relative to 3 μg/kg 17β‐estradiol treatment. The results indicate that CAPE, which is a selective agonist to hERβ, but does not show any estrogenic effect on estrogen receptor‐positive breast cancer cells and in immature rat uterine tissue, is a potential selective estrogen receptor modulator. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Recent developments in the pattern of international knowledge sourcing have highlighted a new international division of labor in knowledge production which now is affecting emerging as well as advanced countries. The source of this division of labor has been identified as residing in the changing economic endowments of these countries. We extend this by suggesting that the new international allocation of knowledge-related activities is related strongly to a country's "non-economic" endowments. Our arguments provide context to the papers in this special section.


Slotted waveguide linear arrays are quite commonly enclosed in a parallel plate structure, to suppress cross-polar lobes in the case of inclined-slot arrays, and to suppress wide angle grating lobes in the case of shunt slot arrays. However, design equations for such arrays generally assume that the slots radiate into a half space and consequently for arrays designed on this basis significant pattern degradation can occur when the parallel plate structure is introduced. By imaging the slot in the enclosing parallel conducting planes it is shown that the conventional half-space analysis can be enlarged to accommodate the presence of a parallel plate polarizer with very little difficulty, since no more than about ten images are required to model a typical geometry.


Flow to subsurface drain tubes was investigated using numerical solutions to the Richards equation for combined unsaturated and saturated flow. Solutions to three sets of problems involving steady infiltration and transient drainage of initially curved and flat water tables were obtained for two soils and various profile depths. The numerical solutions were used to illustrate various aspects of the drainage process and to evaluate simple analytic expressions for calculating drain flow rates and water table elevations. An approximate method was developed for predicting transient drainage events by combining the Hooghoudt equation with analytic expressions for radial flow into drain tubes and for mass balance. The predictions of the approximate method were found to be in agreement with the numerical solution for drainage of an initially elliptic water table.


For cultural reasons, medical students in the United Arab Emirates UAE are not offered postmortem studies. In a collaborative project between the medical schools of Aberdeen University and the UAE University the feasibility, acceptability and effectiveness of telepathology teaching were evaluated. The transmission of postmortem video images at a quality high enough for teaching purposes was achieved at a data transmission speed of 384 kbit s. Videoconferencing as a method of presentation was viewed by the students as both interesting and useful. All students participating in the telepathology teaching sessions exceeded the minimum acceptable score of 60 in a multiple-choice examination. Although international videoconferencing at 384 kbit s is expensive, the costs involved in the telepathology project were small in relation to the educational benefits.


The project aims in designing a system which makes operating of electrical appliances in home through Android mobile phone possible. The controlling of electrical appliances is done wirelessly through Android smart phone using the Bluetooth feature present in it. Here in this project the Android smart phone is used as a remote control for operating the electrical appliances. Android is a software stack for mobile devices that includes an operating system, middleware and key applications. Android boasts a healthy array of connectivity options, including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and wireless data over a cellular connection (for example, GPRS, EDGE (Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution), and 3G). Android provides access to a wide range of useful libraries and tools that can be used to build rich applications. In addition, Android includes a full set of tools that have been built from the ground up alongside the platform providing developers with high productivity and deep insight into their applications. Bluetooth is an open standard specification for a radio frequency (RF)-based, short-range connectivity technology that promises to change the face of computing and wireless communication. It is designed to be an inexpensive, wireless networking system for all classes of portable devices, such as laptops, PDAs (personal digital assistants), and mobile phones. It also will enable wireless connections for desktop computers, making connections between monitors, printers, keyboards, and the CPU cable-free. The controlling device of the whole system is a Microcontroller. Bluetooth module, 4-Relays board are interfaced to the Microcontroller. The data received by the Bluetooth module from Android smart phone is fed as input to the controller. The controller acts accordingly on the Relays to switch connected electrical appliances. Also, In achieving the task the controller is loaded with a program written using Embedded 'C' language. .


The invention aims at providing a process for producing a sparkling fermented beverage which can have improved foam retention properties without affecting the flavor thereof. The process for producing a sparkling fermented beverage is characterized in that a soybean protein decomposition product which is produced by decomposing a soybean protein, defatted soybean or an enriched soybean protein with a neutral protease is used as a raw material for a fermentation raw solution prior to the fermentation with yeast. Preferably, the soybean protein decomposition product has a phenylalanine content of 5% or less relative to the total nitrogen content thereof.


In view of lack of precision in current techniques for cycle-identification in Loran-C receivers, a new method is presented for use in Loran-C receivers based on delay-locked loop trying to improve the precision of cycle- identification and describe the algorithm of the principles, design process and implementation process. Therefore, applying the DLL cycle-identification algorithm to Loran-C timing receivers, the validity and efficiency of the presented algorithm is demonstrated. Test result shows that the algorithm has higher performance of detecting the standard zero-crossing point of Loran- C pulse signal and the cycle-identification precision can really achieve ,it's performance of the algorithm is better than other cycle- identification techniques, so as to meet the requirement of modern Loran-C digital receiver designing.


While linear prediction (LP) has become immensely popular in speech modeling, it does not seem to provide a good approach for modeling audio signals. This is somewhat surprising, since a tonal signal consisting of a number of sinusoids can be perfectly predicted based on an (all-pole) LP model with a model order that is twice the number of sinusoids. We provide an explanation why this result cannot simply be extrapolated to LP of audio signals. If noise is taken into account in the tonal signal model, a low-order all-pole model appears to be only appropriate when the tonal components are uniformly distributed in the Nyquist interval. Based on this observation, different alternatives to the conventional LP model can be suggested. Either the model should be changed to a pole-zero, a high-order all-pole, or a pitch prediction model, or the conventional LP model should be preceded by an appropriate frequency transform, such as a frequency warping or downsampling. By comparing these alternative LP models to the conventional LP model in terms of frequency estimation accuracy, residual spectral flatness, and perceptual frequency resolution, we obtain several new and promising approaches to LP-based audio modeling.


As we know, a novel adaptive visual servoing strategy has been proposed for the control of robot manipulators with an eye-in-hand configuration, where an adaptive law is used to estimate the unknown parameters determined by the products of the unknown 3D coordinates and the unknown camera parameters. From a practical point of view, in this paper, we propose a novel strategy for the estimation of these two types of unknown parameters. The new strategy is very useful in that it can reduce the number of the unknown parameters to be estimated. To demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method, preliminary simulation results based on a two-link planar robot manipulator are presented in this paper.


The insertion reactions of lithium silylquinolylamide dimers [{8-(2-R-C9H5N)N(Me3Si)}Li·OEt2]2 (R = H, 1a; R = Me, 1b) with dimethylcyanamide afforded dimeric lithium 8-quinolylguanidinates [{8-(2-R-C9H5N)NC(NMe2)N(SiMe3)}Li]2 (R = H, 2a; R = Me, 2b) with a cisoid arrangement of the ligands. Further reaction of 2b with MCl2 (M = Co or Fe) formed the eight-membered binuclear metallic 8-quinolylguanidinate complexes [{8-(2-CH3-C9H5N)NC(NMe2)N(SiMe3)}MCl]2 (M = Fe, 3; Co, 4). The reaction of 2a with (MeC5H4)TiCl3 afforded a centrosymmetric dimeric titanium(IV) complex [{8-(C9H6N)NC(NMe2)N}Ti(MeC5H4)Cl]2 (5) via a metathesis reaction and the elimination of SiMe3Cl. The guanidinate ligand 2b was hydrolyzed with an equimolar amount of water, and reacted with (MeC5H4)TiCl3 forming a monoligated half-titanocene compound {8-(2-CH3-C9H5N)N(H)C(NMe2)N}Ti(MeC5H4)Cl2 (6). Therefore lithium silylquinolylamide dimers provided various coordinative multi-dentate ligands and resulted in a family of metal complexes.


One of the main questions posed at the very beginning of this study concerns the relation between textual data and practice: were the rituals such as those described in the Kâåyapaåilpa and related texts ever performed? And, if this was the case, did it occur in accordance with the texts? The present chapter focuses on finding the answers to these questions through an analysis of the material traces of construction rituals as documented in the archaeological reports and through the accounts of eye-witnesses.


The coupled conduction and convection heat transfer from a protruding heated module in a horizontal channel with a variation of channel height is experimentally investigated. The input power to the module is 3, 7W and thermal resistance of module support is 0.06, 1.03 and 158K/W. The Reynolds number ranged from 350 to 4500 corresponding to the inlet velocity (0.4~1.3㎧) and channel height (11~35㎜). The results were obtained that the decrease of thermal resistance of module support reduces the module temperature by redistributing the heat flux and the overall thermal resistance of the module. In the study the effect of channel height is very significant in the adiabatic condition, but negligible in the conjugate condition. Finally, correlations for Nusselt number and Q_B/Q with a variation of Reynolds number were developed respectively.


Alzheimer's disease (AD) has been recognized as the most important cause of dementia, which is estimated to contribute more than 2 trillion USD in medical costs. AD patients encounter progressive neurodegenerative dementia associated with behavioural, linguistic, and visuospatial deficits. Although studies on the discovery of amyloid β (Aβ) and tau (the essential elements of plaques and tangles in AD) have shed light on the molecular pathological processes of AD, the exact cause of the condition is still largely unknown. The involvement of various proteins, such as amyloid-β, prion protein, tau, and α-synuclein has been linked to AD pathogenesis. The current AD treatments are mainly based on symptomatic management and restoration of neurotransmitters' balance. There is a significant need to develop medications that can alter the underlying disease process and prevent its progression. The present manuscript provides a review of various hypotheses that have been proposed for AD pathogenesis. The manuscript has also explored the development of novel anti-AD drugs based on various pathogenic pathways, which are recently under various clinical trial phases.


This study proposes to examine the learners' informatization process that was taken place in order to support a set of urban revitalization projects developed as an architectural design task. For the purpose, two different in content but deeply integrated to each other courses(architectural design 3B studio and site design) held in Fall semester 2013 were organized to operate and manage the process. The former is largely planned to focus on practice-oriented task performance, while the latter is designed to support it by providing a teaching and learning organization of work for stimulating the informatization process. The study is likely to be a reporter of the author"s liable teaching and learning experience as related to the latter part. Theoretical debate on design as results of a series of informatization process was undertaken. In addition, a teaching and learning conceptual model for solving ill-defined problems in urban revitalization and public design was developed for use. Two types of informatization were identified in the model for test; (1)situational and (2)problem solving. In order to validate results of the study, a set of multiple analytical tools such as student reports submitted, interview/survey/observation summary scripts were utilized. A total of 3 research problems were developed. Each is related to (1)informatization contents and characteristics among learners, (2)the effect of the informatization process on problem solving, (3)easiness of learning it between learners in different grades. Results of the study show that different strategies for teaching and learning the informatization process are necessary for students of different task performance abilities, because learners in A grade are significantly different with ones in B grade in terms of how to cognitively view, organize, set a basic direction to solve an identical set of problems. To students in a lower grade, informatization might be perceived to be a possibility for solving multiple and diverse ill-defined problems as well as difficulty for understanding.


The effect of the concentration of extramitochondrial adenine nucleotides on oxidative phosphorylation was studied in isolated rat liver mitochondria. Mitochondria were incubated with succinate and hexokinase or creatine kinase at constant or varying extramitochondrial adenine nucleotide concentrations ranging over 0.3-5 mM. As parameters of oxidative phosphorylation, rate of respiration, membrane potential as well as intra- and extra-mitochondrial adenine nucleotide concentrations were determined. Below a threshold concentration of extramitochondrial adenine nucleotides of 2 mM, the free Gibb's energy for the adenine nucleotide transport increased but the extramitochondrial ATP/ADP ratio decreased at intermediate rates of respiration with decreasing extramitochondrial adenine nucleotide concentrations. In this range the rate of respiration was dependent on the extramitochondrial ADP concentration. No effect of the extramitochondrial adenine nucleotide concentration on the relationships between the rate of respiration and the membrane potential, the intramitochondrial adenine nucleotide pool and the intramitochondrial ATP/ADP ratio was found. This suggests that the decline of extramitochondrial ATP due to adenine nucleotide degradation and the limitation of adenine nucleotide transport may be of importance in the postischemic phase as nucleotide resynthesis and reorganization of physiological ion distribution are ATP consuming processes.


A clinical diagnosis suggestive of dermatitis repens was made in a patient in whom a bacterial culture grew Escherichia coli. There was a prompt response after appropriate antibiotic therapy was initiated, and the patient's condition cleared within one week.


This paper addresses the design of a secure interval state estimator for linear continuous-time systems in the bounded error context with discrete-time measurements subject to external attacks. The attacker capabilities are assumed limited in the sense that only a subset of all the sensors can be attacked although this subset is unknown. For a given upper bound on the number of attacked sensors, we propose a new selection strategy, which is able to achieve resiliency to attacks, using the width of estimated intervals. The interval observer is modelled as an impulsive system, where impulsive corrections are made periodically using measurement. The nonnegativity of the observation error between two successive measurements is preserved by applying the internal positivity of the system. The theoretical result is supported by numerical simulations.


Abstract This study aims to analyze the relationship between corruption with poverty and a two-way relationship between corruption and poverty. The method used in this research is quantitative analysis method using Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) model. The data used are time series data from 1996 to 2017. The variables used are Corruption Perception Index (CPI) issued by Transparency International, and the World Bank's Poverty Rate Ratio. The results show that there is a positive and significant correlation between corruption and poverty in Indonesia. The relationship also applies in the short term and in the long run. From the research results also found a strong indication of a two-way relationship between corruption and poverty. The implication of this research is that decision makers in Indonesia need to constantly improve perceptions of Indonesia's corruption by improving oversight, improving the quality of governance and enforcing the law to improve perceptions of Indonesia's corruption. Keywords: Corruption, Poverty, Two-Way Relationship, ARDL, Indonesia


An atomic force microscope was used to measure forces between self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of hexadecanethiol as a function of solvent type. Solvents alter interactions between surfaces by changing the wetting properties of the surface. Adhesive forces decrease with solvent dielectric constant and vary monotonically for mixtures of water and ethanol, ethanol and methanol, and water and ethylene glycol. This study demonstrates that interactions and adhesion between hydrophobic SAMs can be manipulated through changes in the contact angle of the surface. Copyright 1999 Academic Press.


Through sequence-based classification, this paper tries to accurately predict the DNA binding sites of transcription factors (TFs) in an unannotated cellular context. Related methods in the literature fail to perform such predictions accurately, since they do not consider sample distribution shift of sequence segments from an annotated (source) context to an unannotated (target) context. We, therefore, propose a method called "Transfer String Kernel" (TSK) that achieves improved prediction of transcription factor binding site (TFBS) using knowledge transfer via cross-context sample adaptation. TSK maps sequence segments to a high-dimensional feature space using a discriminative mismatch string kernel framework. In this high-dimensional space, labeled examples of the source context are re-weighted so that the revised sample distribution matches the target context more closely. We have experimentally verified TSK for TFBS identifications on 14 different TFs under a cross-organism setting. We find that TSK consistently outperforms the state-of-the-art TFBS tools, especially when working with TFs whose binding sequences are not conserved across contexts. We also demonstrate the generalizability of TSK by showing its cutting-edge performance on a different set of cross-context tasks for the MHC peptide binding predictions.


In this paper, we describe an efficient Xilinx Spartan3A DSP implementation of 2D DWT (Discrete Wavelet Transforms) using polyphase filterbank architecture with Distributed Arithmetic (DA) to speedup wavelet computation. Results show that the distributed arithmetic formulation results in a considerable performance gain while reducing the consumption of logic resources significantly. This architecture supports any size of Image and any level of decomposition. With minor changes this core can be implemented on any FPGA device. This irreversible Discrete Wavelet Transform uses 9/7 Daubechies coefficients which are used for lossy compression in the JPEG2000 standard. We can plug this core directly in any JPEG ENCODER / TV display controller for any crontel device (BT656 standard, interface of CH7009).


Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum (Chinese Fringe Flower) is widely distributed in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, as well as northern India. It is a popular landscape plant for its red evergreen foliage and its showy red flowers in the spring. In July 2020, This leaf blight was discovered in Chengdu city (30°42'41"N, 103°51'58"E). In June 2021, the disease incidence rate at two places in Wenjiang District of Chengdu was 76% and 64%, respectively. The symptoms began to appear from May to June, worsened from July to August, and then disappeared gradually in November. Initially, brown-edged irregular necrotic patches appeared at the leaf margins. Progressively, the patches increased in number, expanded to leaf middle, and turned grayish-white. The scattered black fruiting bodies (conidia) were appeared at patches under humid conditions. Eventually, the leaves tended to dry up and fall off. Infected tissues from five samples and collected were cut into small pieces 2×2 mm, surface sterilized for 30 s in 3% sodium hypochlorite, 60 s in 75% ethanol, rinsed three times in sterile water, placed onto potato dextrose agar (PDA), and incubated at 25℃ in the dark. A total of eight isolates were collected, five isolates exhibited similar culture characteristics while two were Nigrospora sp. and one was a Fusarium sp.. The five similar isolates produced sparse, grayish-withe mycelia with a flat elevation and curled margin. Abundant globose and yellow pycnidia were formed on the PDA surface and arranged in irregular concentric zones. Conidia were 18.20 to 22.36 × 2.64 to 3.05 μm (average 20.36 × 2.82 μm, n=50) in size, fusiform, sickle-shaped, aseptate. DNA was extracted from the representative strain (HMcj B03), and the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region, the large subunit of the nuclear ribosomal DNA (LSU), translation elongation factor 1-alpha (tef1-α), and the DNA-directed RNA polymerase II second largest subunit (rpb2), were amplified by polymerase chain reaction and sequenced with primers ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990), LR0R/LR7 (Rehner and Samuels 1994; Vilaglys and Hester 1990), 728F/986R (Carbome and Kohn 1999), and 5F2/7cR (Alvarez et al. 2016), respectively. The sequences were deposited in GenBank, viz. OL468959, OL469170, OL489770, and OL855833, respectively. BLAST analysis showed >98.7% identity with several reference sequences of Coniella koreana strain CBS 143.97 and Coniella quercicola strain CBS 904.69, deposited in GenBank. A conidial suspension (1 × 107 conidia/mL) having 0.05% Tween 80 buffer was used for foliar inoculation of 6-year-old Loropetalum chinense var. rubrum plants for pathogenicity test. Ten leaves of each plant (10 pots in total) were inoculated with spore suspensions (20 μL onto the wounded sites). An equal number of control leaves were sprayed with 0.05% Tween 80 buffer to serve as a control. The experiment was repeated three times, and all plants were incubated in a growth chamber (a 12h light and 12h dark period, 25°C, RH > 80%). Twenty days later, all the inoculated leaves showed similar symptoms as the original diseased plants, however, the controls remained asymptomatic. The C. koreana was re-isolated from the infected leaves. To our knowledge, this is the first report of L. chinense var. rubrum caused by C. koreana in China. The discovery of this new disease will provide useful information for developing effective control strategies, and prove beneficial in reducing economic losses in floral product.


Islands have traditionally been considered to be any relatively small body of land completely surrounded by water. However, their primary biological characteristic, an extended period of isolation from a source of colonists, is common also to many situations on continents. Accordingly, theories and predictions developed for true islands have been applied to a huge array of systems, from rock pools, to single tree species in forests, to oceanic islands. Here, we examine the literature on islands in the broadest sense (i.e., whether surrounded by water or any other uninhabitable matrix) as it pertains to terrestrial arthropods. We categorize islands according to the features they share. The primary distinction between different island systems is "darwinian" islands (formed de novo) and "fragment" islands. In the former, the islands have never been in contact with the source of colonists and have abundant "empty" ecological niche space. On these islands, species numbers will initially increase through immigration, the rate depending on the degree of isolation. If isolation persists, over time species formation will result in "neo-endemics." When isolation is extreme, the ecological space will gradually be filled through speciation (rather than immigration) and adaptive radiation of neo-endemics. Fragment islands are fundamentally different. In these islands, the ecological space will initially be filled as a consequence of connection to the source of colonists prior to insularization. Species numbers will decrease following fragmentation through the process of relaxation. If these islands become more isolated, species will eventually arise through relictualization with the formation of "paleo-endemics." Given sufficient time, this process can result in generic level endemism on ancient fragment islands, a phenomenon well illustrated in Madagascar and New Zealand. Recognizing the distinction between the different kinds of islands is fundamental for understanding emerging patterns on each, in particular speciation, biodiversity (e.g., neo-endemics versus paleo-endemics), and conservation (e.g., naiveté in interactions with alien species).


The antimicrobial activity and the MIC values of the diethyl ether, acetone, chloroform, petroleum ether, and ethanol extracts of the lichen Hypogymnia tubulosa and its 3-hydroxyphysodic acid constituent have been investigated against some microorganisms. At least one of the extracts or 3-hydroxyphysodic acid showed antimicrobial activity against Aeromonas hydrophila, Bacillus cereus, Bacillus subtilis, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Listeria monocytogenes, Proteus vulgaris, Salmonella typhimurium, Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus faecalis, and Candida albicans. No antifungal activity of the extracts has been observed against ten filamentous fungi.


Over the years it has been proven that fruit and vegetable farmers use certain metrological parameters to determine the yield in the cultivation of vegetables. One such parameter is the hours of sunshine that fruit and vegetable plants are exposed to during a specific period in a particular season.


In elections, voters sometimes compensate for post-election bargaining processes by electing parties that are more extreme than themselves. We investigate compensatory voting in direct democracy. Our goals are to develop and test a measure of compensatory voting in direct legislation and assess its extent of compensatory voting. Empirically, we draw on the case of Switzerland, a country with frequent popular votes. We operationalize compensatory voting as voting 'yes' on a popular initiative in spite of endorsing arguments that speak against this initiative, under the condition of being well-informed about the initiative. Using data from post-ballot surveys on 17'570 individuals having voted on 63 popular initiatives in the period 1993 to 2015, our analysis shows that compensatory voting has not significantly increased in Switzerland in this period.