ObjectiveTo determine trends in commercial sexual risk behaviour among drug-using prostitutes in Amsterdam after local and national prevention campaigns began in 1987. DesignA subgroup of 281 drug-using prostitutes was selected from a comprehensive, open cohort study of drug users in Amsterdam. MethodsCross-sectional (at intake) and within-person trends in sexual behaviour were evaluated. Person—time analysis was used to determine trends in incidence of sexually transmitted disease (STD). ResultsFrom 1986 to 1992, 'always' use of condoms in the 6 months preceding intake increased from 21 to 58% (P < 0.001) and the number of commercial contacts declined from 84 to 64 per month (P=0.06). Consequently, the mean number of unprotected commercial contacts declined from 26 to nine per month (P < 0.001). Temporal trends within individual prostitutes from visits 1 to 8 (mean interval between visits, 4 months) showed a somewhat larger risk reduction than the cross-sectional trends. From 1989 to 1992, the STD incidence declined from 61 to 40 episodes per 100 person-years (P=0.06). Prostitutes residing in Amsterdam for shorter time periods reported more STD and a relatively small core group reported the majority of STD episodes. At intake, when < 10% of all participants knew their HIV serostatus, HIV-positive prostitutes reported significantly lower levels of condom use and more STD than HIV-negatives, while, after learning their serostatus, levels of condom use and the STD-incidence were comparable. Prevalent and incident HIV infections were not observed among non-injecting prostitutes. ConclusionsDrug-using prostitutes have reduced sexual risk behaviour. There is evidence for the effectiveness of HIV testing and counseling. At present, new infections among clients of drug-using prostitutes are expected to occur, although not on a large scale. Since the incidence of STD continues to be high, it is important to monitor the spread of HIV among heterosexuals, including prostitutes and their clients, closely.


Mikalson's approach to his subject is a soundly historical one: he is interested in the 'practiced religion' of a particular place (Athens), at particular times (within the Hellenistic period, defined as 323 to 86 BC), and in the interaction between religion and the changing circumstances of the state and the individual. Ch.l, 'The Age of Lycourgos', takes the relatively richly documented ten years following the battle of Chaeroneia as a benchmark for personal religious beliefs and state cultic activities at Athens. Against this, the subsequent chapters chart elements of continuity and change within seven more or less distinct historical periods: a decade under Demetrius of Phaleron (317-307/6), twenty years of intermittent Macedonian intervention under Demetrius Poliorcetes (307/6-287/6), twenty years of relative peace and independence (287/6-c. 267/6), the period of the Chremonidean War and its aftermath (268/7-229), thirty years of independent neutrality followed by participation in the anti-Macedonian alliances of the Second and Third Macedonian Wars (229-168), the period of Athenian occupation of Delos (167/6-86), first from the point of view of Athenians living on the island, then from that of Athens herself. A conclusion reviews major events and lines of development, relating religion in Hellenistic Athens to the larger context of religion and society in the Hellenistic world.


textabstractThe faecal flora of patients with Crohn's disease has been found to differ
from that of healthy subjects in that the numbers of anaerobic gramnegative
rods and of gram-positive coccoid anaerobes, belonging to
species of Eubacterium and Peptostreptococcus were higher. The flora composition
was independent of duration of illness and was not influenced
by ileocaecal resection. Serum agglutinins against some strains of coccoid
rods were found in a considerable percentage of patients with Crohn's
disease, whereas percentages of positive sera were much lower in healthy
subjects and in patients with various diseases. The interpretation of
these data established by Wensinck and the use of the agglutination reactions
as a diagnostic test are the subject of this thesis.
In Chapter 2 recent microbiological and immunological findings in patients
with Crohn's disease are reviewed. They show that in Crohn's disease
as well as in other intestinal diseases, like ulcerative colitis,
antibodies to dietary and microbial antigens are found frequently.
In Chapter 3 results are presented of investigations on the prevalence
of agglutinins to four strains of anaerobic coccoid rods in patients
with Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, a number of other diseases
and in healthy subjects. Antibodies to coccoid rods were found much more
frequently in Crohn's disease than in ulcerative colitis and other diseases.
Using the interpretation of agglutination reactions as described
in Chapter 7, the percentage of false positive results of sera submitted
for diagnosis was found to be satisfactorily low.
The data in Chapter 4 show that the presence of antibodies to the coccoid
rods in patients with Crohn's disease is correlated with colonic
disease, the presence of fistulae and with serum immunoglobulin levels.
No correlation was found between antibodies and any index of disease activity.


We read with interest the paper by Shan et al. [1] in a recent issue. It is an interesting paper concluding that Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) omp18 is indirectly affecting long term bacterial colonization by successfully influencing IFN-γmediated immune response. Nevertheless, we found that some statements could not support the final conclusion. H. pylori infects the gastric mucosal layer of half of the human population worldwide and causes various digestive disorders such as chronic gastritis, gastric ulcer, duodenal ulcer, and gastric cancer [2]. To date, it has been established that such complexmechanismof bacterial interactionwith humanhost can shape the successful and persistent colonization of H. pylori [3, 4]. Undoubtedly, understanding the mechanisms of immune evasion could provide new options for better management of infection. To our knowledge, the host immune response to the infection is ineffective; accordingly, the bacterium persists and remains for decades. In brief, Shan et al. [1] reported the oipA as a critical factor affecting bacterial colonization. However, we know that, in chronic process of colonization adopted byH. pylori, the connection of a unique factor to the drive of the final pattern of this phenomenon could be too speculative. Despite the interesting report of Shan et al. [1], we may hypothesize more factors involved in H. pylori colonization. Surprisingly, H. pylori colonization is not comparable with that of other pathogens [5]. Indeed, different mechanisms are contributing to this mysterious and long term biologic function. Conclusively, more studies are necessary to draw a direct and final conclusion on "the mystery" of H. pylori colonization.


Twenty patients (14 males, six females) were assessed at an average of 32 months (ten to 156 months) after ray amputation using the disability shoulder, arm, hand (DASH) questionnaire, physical examination and functional testing. There were 14 border (eight index, six little) and six central ray (five middle, one ring) amputations. Our results showed on average 27% less grip and 22% three-point pinch strength in the operated hands. Peak power output was 22% and average work output 14% less on the operated side than the contralateral hand. The DASH function score was 29.2 (range 3.3-74.2). Nine patients returned to their previous occupation, two had to change jobs and two did not return to work. Six patients were not working, one was of school age. The ensuing disability remained within limits reflected by our measurements and the acceptance of the patients.


Background In 2014, the Japanese Society for Bone and Mineral Research (JSBMR) updated their guidelines for the management and treatment of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis (GIO) and incorporated a new scoring method that does not use the Fracture Risk Assessment Tool (FRAX®). Objectives In this study, using the JSBMR guidelines (1) and the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) 2010 recommendations (2) for the prevention and treatment of GIO, we compared our evaluations of Japanese patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) who were treated with glucocorticoids. Methods The Institute of Rheumatology Rheumatoid Arthritis (IORRA) study, which began in 2000, was a prospective cohort study of RA patients conducted at the Institute of Rheumatology, Tokyo Women's Medical University (Tokyo, Japan). Applying ACR recommendations and JSBMR guidelines, we evaluated 1,752 of these Japanese patients who were over the age of 50 years (mean age 63 years) and had been treated with glucocorticoids. The ACR recommendation is to prescribe osteoporosis treatments for patients treated with ≥7.5 mg/day prednisolone or whose 10-year risk of major osteoporotic fractures is >10%. The Japanese GIO guidelines identify age, glucocorticoid dose, lumbar bone mineral density, and prior fragility fractures as factors predictive of bone fracture, and the fracture risk for an individual can be calculated as the sum of the scores for each risk factor with a score of 3 representing the optimal cut-off score for pharmacological intervention. Results Among the female RA patients older than 50 years who were treated with glucocorticoids (n=1,438), in accordance with the ACR recommendations and the Japanese guidelines, 1,183 (82%) and 1,119 (78%) patients, respectively, should have received osteoporosis treatments (Table). Among the male RA patients older than 50 years who were treated with glucocorticoids (n=314), the ACR recommendations and the Japanese guidelines propose that 217 (69%) and 267 (85%) patients, respectively, should have received osteoporosis treatments (Table). Among the male patients, the Japanese guidelines would recommend significantly more patients receive osteoporosis treatments compared with the ACR recommendations (P<0.0001). Recommendations/guidelines Female (n=1,438) Male (n=314) ACR 182 (12.7%) 3 (1.0%) JSBMR 118 (8.2%) 53 (16.9%) ACR and JSBMR 1001 (69.6%) 214 (68.2%) None 137 (9.5%) 44 (14.0%) Conclusions The updated Japanese GIO guideline appears to be a simple and useful tool to use when treating Japanese RA patients with glucocorticoids. The ACR recommendations may have underestimated the need for osteoporosis treatment in male patients with RA compared with the Japanese guideline, although prospective studies are necessary to conclude. References Suzuki Y, et al. Guidelines on the management and treatment of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis of the Japanese Society for Bone and Mineral Research: 2014 update. J Bone Miner Metab. 2014;32(4):337–50; Grossman JM, et al. American College of Rheumatology 2010 recommendations for the prevention and treatment of glucocorticoid-induced osteoporosis. Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken). 2010;62(11):1515–26. Acknowledgement We thank Dr. Eisuke Inoue and all of the members of the Institute of Rheumatology, Tokyo Women's Medical University for the successful management of the IORRA cohort. Disclosure of Interest T. Furuya: None declared, S. Momohara Grant/research support from: AbbVie, Inc., Asahi Kasei Pharma Corp., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Chugai Pharmaceutical Co., Daiichi Sankyo Co., Ltd., Eisai Co., Ltd., Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Co., Nakashima Medical Co., Ltd., Santen Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Taisho Toyama Pharmaceutical Co. Ltd. and Takeda Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd, A. Taniguchi: None declared, H. Yamanaka Grant/research support from: Abbott, AbbVie, Asahikasei, Astellas, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squib, Chugai, Daiichi Sankyo, Eisai, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Mitsubishi Tanabe, MSD, Nippon Kayaku, Pfizer, Santen, Taishotoyama, Takeda, and Teijin; has received consulting fees from Abbott, AbbVie, Astellas, AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squib, Chugai, Daiichi Sankyo, Eisai, Mitsubishi Tanabe, Nippon Kayaku, Pfizer, Takeda, and Teijin, Speakers bureau: Abbott, AbbVie, Astellas, Bristol-Myers Squib, Chugai, Eisai, Mitsubishi Tanabe, Pfizer, Takeda, and Teijin


Phase-field models have emerged as a successful class of models in a wide variety of applications in computational materials science. Multiphase field theories, as a subclass of phase-field theories, have been especially useful for studying nucleation and growth in polycrystalline materials. In theory, an infinite number of phase-field variables are required to represent grain orientations in a rotationally invariant free energy. However, limitations on available computational time and memory have restricted the number of phase-field variables used in the simulations. We present an approach by which the time and memory requirements are drastically reduced relative to standard algorithms. The proposed algorithm allows us the use of an unlimited number of phase-field variables to perform simulations without the associated burden on computational time or memory. We present the algorithm in the context of coalescence free grain growth.


Abstract : This goal of this project is to develop a large-scale, longitudinal registry of PTSD in combat-exposed OIF/OEF/OND male and female veterans. The objective of the current study is to systematically expand the longitudinal assessment by collecting follow-up data at additional time points for multiple domains of interest. Patterns of longitudinal change in the VALOR cohort will be empirically classified into trajectory subtypes by means of latent growth mixture modeling. The availability of comprehensive data on PTSD symptoms and related exposures and outcomes at multiple time points in a cohort of VA users with and without PTSD provide a unique opportunity to examine a number of hypotheses regarding longitudinal trajectories in combat-exposed veterans. In addition, the large proportion of women in our sample will allow us to examine variation in the associations by gender.


Morlet et al (1982, this issue) showed the advantages of using complex values for both waves and characteristics of the media. We simulated the theoretical tools we present here, using the Goupillaud-Kunetz algorithm. Now we present sampling methods for complex signals or traces corresponding to received waves, and sampling methods for complex characterization of multilayered or heterogeneous media. Regarding the complex signals, we present a twodimecsional(2-D) method of sampling in the time-frequency domain using a special or "extended" Gabor expansion on a set of basic wavelets adapted to phase preservation. Such a 2-D expansion permits us to handle in a proper manner instantaneous frequency spectra. We show the differences between "wavelet resolution" and "sampling grid resolution." We also show the importance of phase preservation in high-resolution seismic. Regarding the media, we show how analytical studies of wave propagation in periodic structured layers could help when trying to characterize the physical properties of the layers and their large scale granularity as a result of complex deconvolution. Analytical studies of wave propagation in periodic structures are well known in solid state physics, and lead to the so-called "Bloch waves." The introduction of complex waves leads to replacing the classical wave equation by a Schriidinger equation. Finally, we show that complex wave equations, Gabor expansion, and Bloch waves are three different ways of 'introducing the tools of quantum mechanics in highresolution seismic (Gabor, 1946; Kittel, 1976, Morlet, 1975). And conversely, the Goupillaud-Kunetz algorithm and an extended Gabor expansion may be of some use in solid state physics.


Ready or not, the Internet of things (IoT) is here. No longer just a buzz term, it'll continue to grow at an unprecedented pace over the next few years expecting to reach over 25 billion connected devices by 2020. History shows us that most fast growth technology solutions focus on solving business problems first and security is an afterthought. Unfortunately, IoT is following the same trend. Most IoT devices, apps, and infrastructure were developed without security in mind and are likely going to become targets of hackers. According to some security experts, major cyberattacks against the IoT devices are looming. According to the FBI, criminals can gain access to unprotected devices used in home health care, such as those used to collect and transmit personal monitoring data or time-dispensed medicines. Once criminals have breached such devices, they gain access to any personal or medical information stored on the devices, as well as the power to change the coding that controls the dispense mechanism of medicines or health data collection. This can result in major health issues and potential loss of lives. Are organizations ready to protect themselves? What are the key vulnerable points? There are various steps that companies can take to raise the barrier. In this article, we'll talk about the background, issues, potential attack vectors liable to be hacked, protection strategies, and more.


Objective
Black female youth have been disproportionately burdened by the HIV epidemic. Emerging literature suggests that individual and social-structural factors may uniquely increase HIV risk within this population during key developmental periods, namely adolescence (ages 10-17 years) and emerging adulthood (ages 18-25 years). Few studies, however, have compared drivers of risk within and between these key developmental periods. Therefore, we conducted a systematic review of recent literature to characterize and identify important gaps in our understanding of the individual, psychosocial, and social-structural determinants of HIV risk among Black adolescent girls and emerging adult women.

Design
Using a replicable strategy, we searched electronic databases for articles and abstracts published between October 1, 2017 and September 30, 2019 in which the primary focus was on HIV prevention among Black adolescent girls and emerging adults in the United States.

Results
In total, 21 studies met the inclusion criteria. Most of the studies on Black adolescent girls assessed family functioning, parental monitoring, and parent-adolescent communication as determinants of HIV-related behaviors. However, equivalent studies were lacking for Black emerging adult women. Moreover, few studies assessed neighborhood characteristics, social networks, or other community-level factors as determinants of HIV-related behaviors, which are known drivers of HIV disparities.

Conclusions
Our findings highlighted several gaps in the literature, including failure to recognize the ethnic and cultural differences among Black women that may contribute to behavioral differences within this population and insufficient acknowledgment of the role of HIV protective factors (eg, resilience and community assets). Implications and future directions are discussed.


In the present work we calculate multiple ionization cross sections, as a function of the orientation of the molecular axis with respect to the ion beam, for impact of highly charged ions on N2 and O2molecules. We use different approaches to obtain the single ionization probabilities that are necessary to compute these quantities into the Independent Electron Model. The in.uence of the molecular orientation on differential cross sections is analized. An adequate description of existing data is obtained.


A new method for diagnosing power and switching electromagnetic mechanisms containing a control electromagnet and a movable armature is proposed. The movable element of the diagnosed electromagnetic mechanism (EMM) is irradiated with a high-frequency probing electromagnetic field and the reradiated electromagnetic field from it is recorded. The source of the probing field and the receiver of the re-radiated field is the EMM electromagnet winding. The probing electromagnetic field is formed by imposing on the low-frequency high-voltage operating voltage of the supply winding of the electromagnet EMM an additional high-frequency low-voltage voltage. The diagnostic parameter is determined by algorithmic processing of the measurement results of the magnitude of the voltage increment on the EMM winding, caused by exposure to a reradiated electromagnetic field, and the technical condition of the diagnosed electromagnetic mechanism is determined by the absolute value of the di-agnostic parameter. The method allows to diagnose the current state of the main functional units of the EMM and to control its operating modes as a whole.


PURPOSE
Language sample analysis is widely regarded as the gold standard of language assessment. However, the uncertainty regarding the optimal length of sample and the limited availability of developmental language data for nonmainstream languages such as Afrikaans complicate reliable use of the method. The study aimed to provide guidelines on representative length of sample and concurrently provide a preliminary description of the spoken language skills of Afrikaans-speaking children.

METHOD
The study involved 30 typically developing Afrikaans-speaking children aged between 3;6 and 9;6 (years;months). A descriptive research design was used to transcribe and analyze 1-hr interactions collected in natural environments of participants who were recruited using referral sampling. Video and audio recordings of the samples were transcribed using adapted Sampling Utterances and Grammatical Analysis Revised analysis procedures.

RESULTS
Results indicated that mean length of utterance in words per minute, number of different words per minute, and total number of words per minute stabilized at 30 min and no significant differences were found between 30 min and longer time segments. Morphology results concur with existing developmental findings in Afrikaans. Lexical diversity results correlated with the findings of the lexical specificity and accuracy in the Prutting and Kirchner Pragmatic Protocol (Prutting & Kirchner, 1987). The developmental trajectories for pragmatic and phonological development were consistent with existing guidelines.

CONCLUSIONS
The study concluded that a 30-min interaction segment provides a representative language sample for Afrikaans-speaking children who are between 3;6 and 9;6. It provides promising preliminary developmental data and clinical guidelines, confirming the potential of language sample analysis (LSA) as a reliable component of language assessment in Afrikaans.


Billing, charging and accounting are the most critical operational support activities for any telecommunications network operator. Through these activities operators recover costs for service provision, and make business profits. IMS charging is required at the services level as well as the transport level. In networks with QoS guarantees, it is necessary for user preferences of service quality levels be accommodated. This is critical when the cost of service has a strong relation to the service quality. There is a need to minimize resource utilization and costs related to charging and billing. Customized, efficient and user friendly service provision systems will enable the network operator to remain competitive. In this paper we explore the design of a user friendly efficient charging, billing and accounting system for 3GPP based IMS networks. We implement the system in a real IMS prototype, and perform a series of tests to determine the best charging schemes to apply for popular IMS services. User interaction with the system is achieved through interfaces created on the user agent.


Overload management is of vital importance in wide-area publish/subscribe systems, yet current solutions are best-effort. In this paper, we present an admission control scheme for overload management in large-scale and scalable content-based publish/subscribe systems. We analyze the stumbling block for implementing admission control in publish/subscribe systems, and point out how it differs from admission control schemes in other research areas. We propose a cover relation based algorithm to compute subscription resource requirements and an admission control algorithm based on subscription routing. The scheme ensures time, space and flows decoupling without sacrificing scalability of publish/subscribe systems. Finally, we conduct experiments to verify the effectiveness of the scheme.


Importance
Hereditary factors play a key role in the risk of developing several cancers. Identification of a germline predisposition can have important implications for treatment decisions, risk-reducing interventions, cancer screening, and germline testing.

Objective
To examine the prevalence of pathogenic germline variants (PGVs) in patients with cancer using a universal testing approach compared with targeted testing based on clinical guidelines and the uptake of cascade family variant testing (FVT).

Design, Setting, and Participants
This prospective, multicenter cohort study assessed germline genetic alterations among patients with solid tumor cancer receiving care at Mayo Clinic cancer centers and a community practice between April 1, 2018, and March 31, 2020. Patients were not selected based on cancer type, disease stage, family history of cancer, ethnicity, or age.

Exposures
Germline sequencing using a greater than 80-gene next-generation sequencing platform.

Main Outcomes and Measures
Proportion of PGVs detected with a universal strategy compared with a guideline-directed approach and uptake of cascade FVT in families.

Results
A total of 2984 patients (mean [SD] age, 61.4 [12.2] years; 1582 [53.0%] male) were studied. Pathogenic germline variants were found in 397 patients (13.3%), including 282 moderate- and high-penetrance cancer susceptibility genes. Variants of uncertain significance were found in 1415 patients (47.4%). A total of 192 patients (6.4%) had incremental clinically actionable findings that would not have been detected by phenotype or family history-based testing criteria. Of those with a high-penetrance PGV, 42 patients (28.2%) had modifications in their treatment based on the finding. Only younger age of diagnosis was associated with presence of PGV. Only 70 patients (17.6%) with PGVs had family members undergoing no-cost cascade FVT.

Conclusions and Relevance
This prospective, multicenter cohort study found that universal multigene panel testing among patients with solid tumor cancer was associated with an increased detection of heritable variants over the predicted yield of targeted testing based on guidelines. Nearly 30% of patients with high-penetrance variants had modifications in their treatment. Uptake of cascade FVT was low despite being offered at no cost.


Qi (Scott) Wang Solution architect, Healthcare and Life Science, Intel Corporation The Noah robot is an excellent substitute for human labor. A logistics worker can usually handle up to 30 kg at a time, while the Noah robot can carry up to 300 kg. As labor costs increase and hospitals require more stringent logistics management, a traditional human labor approach will make it hard to meet these challenges. In the future, hospitals will have trends similar to factories: more robots will gradually assist with these changing demands.


This paper proposes a novel signal scheme called "hybrid OFDM/CDMA/SFH approach" which combines OFDM with CDMA and SFH to generate a system functionally superior to MC-CDMA systems. The paper describes the merits and demerits of the proposed system and compares it to the MC-CDMA system. Finally, we present simulation results in AWGN and fading channels with perfect and imperfect estimation.


We found 10 individuals from 7 unrelated families among 170 severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) patients who exhibited 9 different Janus kinase 3 (JAK3) mutations. These included 3 missense and 2 nonsense mutations, 1 insertion, and 3 deletions. With the exception of 1 individual with persistence of transplacentally transferred maternal lymphocytes, all infants presented with a T-B+NK- phenotype. The patient mutations all resulted in abnormal B-cell Janus kinase 3 (JAK3)-dependent interleukin-2 (IL-2)-induced signal transducer and activator of transcription-5 (STAT5) phosphorylation. Additional analyses of mutations permitting protein expression revealed the N-terminal JH7 (del58A) and JH6 (D169E) domain mutations each inhibited receptor binding and catalytic activity, whereas the G589S JH2 mutation abrogated kinase activity but did not affect c association. Nine of the 10 patients are currently alive from between 4 years and 18 years following stem cell transplantation, with all exhibiting normal T-cell function. Reconstitution of antibody function was noted in only 3 patients. Natural killer (NK) function was severely depressed at presentation in the 4 patients studied, whereas after transplantation the only individuals with normal NK lytic activity were patients 1 and 5. Hence, bone marrow transplantation is an effective means for reconstitution of T-cell immunity in this defect but is less successful for restoration of B-cell and NK cell functions.


We discuss the thermophoresis of colloidal suspensions and derive their Soret coefficient in terms of known thermodynamic functions. For solid nanoparticles, ST is determined by the ratio of the heat capacities of the solute and the solvent, and is in general much larger than the ideal gas value ST = 1/T. For aqueous suspensions of most solid materials, we obtain a strong inverse Soret effect (ST < 0), whereas a positive sign occurs for common organic solvents such as toluene and cyclohexane. These findings provide an explanation for recent experiments on ferrofluids.


A guarded, sterile swab is used to obtain samples for uterine culture. With the mare in stocks, the tail bandage and the perineum washed, the culture rod is introduced into the vagina with a gloved hand. After the rod is guided through the cervix, the guard cap is dislodged and the swab is rubbed along the endometrium, after which the rod is extracted. Samples for uterine culture should only be obtained during full estrus. Swabs should be directly plated onto agar within 2 hours of collection. Blood agar is appropriate for initial screening, but use of specialized types of agar expedites identification of microbes. Plates are incubated at 37 C and inspected for growth every 12 hours. The type and number of bacterial colonies should be coupled with the history and clinical signs in deciding on the necessity and type of treatment. Pure, heavy bacterial growth is usually accompanied by clinical signs of infection. Interpretation of the significance of moderate bacterial growth may be aided by cytologic examination of endometrial smears, made by rolling the swab onto a glass slide and staining with Diff - Quik . Large numbers of neutrophils indicate the need for antibiotic therapy. Mixed bacterial growth and variable numbers of neutrophils usually indicate faulty sampling technic. Microaerophilic or anaerobic cultures may aid diagnosis in cases of equivocal aerobic culture results.


This paper considers the attitude stabilization problem for the rigid body that evolves on the Lie group with external unknown disturbances. The attitude kinematics of the rigid body are developed directly on the special orthogonal group SO(3), which can describe the rigid body's rotation uniquely and globally in comparison with the common parameterization method such as Euler angles and quaternion that have singularity or ambiguity. Based on the rotation matrix of the rigid body, a disturbance observer is developed to estimate the unknown deterministic disturbance. Then the disturbance observer-based attitude stabilization controller is proposed to guarantee that the rotation matrix converges to the identity matrix with the complete disturbance rejection. Finally, a simulation is given to illustrate the validity of the theoretical results.


Antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity mediated by K cells against chicken erythrocytes was measured in 113 patients with malignant lymphoreticular disorders and compared with 230 controls. The results were expressed as the specific cytotoxicity of a fixed number of cells and also by cytotoxic capacity, which measures the number of cytolytic units in 1 ml of blood. The values for cytotoxic capacity were normal in the group of untreated patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphomas, multiple myeloma or chronic lymphocytic leukemia and in most of the patients with Hodgkin's disease or acute lymphoblastic leukemia. However, decreased specific cytotoxicity was observed in these same lymphoid leukemia patients, which may be due to dilution of effector cells. The effect of chemotherapy in reducing K-cell activity is more evident in patients with multiple myeloma, followed by patients with Hodgkin's disease, and finally by patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphomas. No case of K-cell neoplastic disease was observed in this series.


: Experiments were performed in 9 dogs and 20 rats. The effect of heparin (3-4 mg/kg of the body weight) on the lung surfactant was studied under conditions of bacterial endotoxic shock. Heparin was found to decrease the surfactant content in lungs by 57.6% in intact animals, while under conditions of endotoxic shock by 92.2% as compared with the initial level.


The objective of this paper is to test whether the effect of variables such as knowledge, attitudes, trust, risk perception, and psychometric risk characteristics changes in the different stages of risk-related information processing. To address this question, a distinction is made between two information-processing steps, reception (measured as a person's ability to retain the information communicated) and acceptance (measured as a person's level of agreement with the communicated information). An empirical study was conducted, using a radiological accident (2008) in Belgium as a communication case study. Face-to-face interviews were conducted on a large sample of Belgian population representative with respect to province, region, level of urbanization, gender, age, and professionally active status (N = 1031) and among the population living in vicinity of the accident (N = 104). All factors were measured on reliable scales (Cronbach's α > .75). The reception–acceptance model was used to produce new insights into risk communication. The results demonstrate that knowledge was the driving factor only for the reception of risk messages, while heuristic predictors such as psychometric risk characteristics, attitudes, and trust were most influential for the acceptance of risk messages. It is discussed how the results will facilitate a more thorough understanding of information processing and how they could be used to design more focused risk communication strategies.


Abstract The main purpose of this article is to employ the C-type passive filters for maximization of the loading capability of transformers under non-sinusoidal conditions. For this aim, an optimal passive filter design approach is proposed regarding minimization of the harmonic loss factor (FHL), which is defined in IEEE standard C57.110 to represent the loading capability of the transformers supplying non-sinusoidal load currents. With respect to IEEE standard 519, displacement power factor and individual harmonics & total harmonic distortions of the voltage and current are considered as constraints of the proposed optimal filter design approach. In addition, numerical results are presented to figure out that the proposed approach provides higher loading capability of the transformers under non-sinusoidal conditions when compared with the other two optimal filter design approaches based on minimization of the current total harmonic distortion and minimization of the voltage total harmonic distortion.


This paper ,based on the "knowledge ,ability and quality",establishes knowledge integration modular curriculu m system. For the first time in Henan Province ,this paper creates a professional ability standard module for tourism management ,establishes the diversified teaching method which p ossesses the characteristics of teaching process integration. To enhance the learning assessment met hod of students'self-learning ability ,and to explore the effectiveness of the change of teacher's role from the perspective of improving teachers'ability of CD IO,it will be beneficial to improve the quality of tourism manage ment.


Tomato agar and soybean agar were found to be comparable to or in some cases better than the popular V8 vegetable juice agar in supporting linear growth of Phytophthora cactorum, Phytophthora capsici, Phytophthora parasitica, Pythium aphanidermatum, and Pythium splendens; sporangium production of P. capsici, P. palmivora, and Pythium splendens; and oospore formation of P. cactorum, P. parasitica, Pythium aphanidermatum and Pythium splendens. These two media with readily accessible ingredients can be used to substitute for V8 juice agar in pathological and physiological studies of these two important groups of fungi in countries where V8 vegetable juice is not available or difficult to obtain.


Digital Marketing is a processual and causeful, accomplishment of daily obstacles mix. It is a broad term, refers to advertising using offline and online marketing channels. As long as there are no widely available and complete educational courses of digital marketing it becomes highly demanded almost in every field in Tbilisi, Georgia. Digital marketing requires a unique set of knowledge and a person with a classical marketing degree cannot sufficiently run digital campaigns, thus organizations mainly outsource the digital marketing to agencies or do it independently and frequently with major mistakes. Even though "Digital marketing" is a new term in Tbilisi, Georgia, still many realize its importance for business. Proper digital marketing campaigns are most vital for some business industries. One of those industries is a tourism sector, in particular the hotel business. Tourism industry is one of the successful and rapidly growing spheres in Georgia, where digital marketing channels play a huge role for finding customers. The key determinant of the hotel business success is the proper digital marketing campaign, though inaccuracy and lack of knowledge of managing digital marketing channels negatively affect the hotels' sustainable development. Goal of the paper is to investigate, develop and define digital marketing online communication channel strategy based on the hotel industry. Research Objectives: • Investigate online marketing channels in the hotel industry; • Create online marketing channels' allocation guide; Research Question: • Which are the most effective online marketing channels in hotel business? This work aims to come up with a practical digital marketing online communication channel strategy and ready to use guidelines in hotel industry. Research Methods: As mentioned before, the aim of this paper is to investigate, analyze and develop digital marketing online channels strategy for hotel industry. Accordingly quantitative approach was conducted during the research. From quantitative data sources was conducted: • Questionnaire – 70 hotels (in Tbilisi).


This study investigates Model Intercomparison Projects (MIPs) as one example of a coordinated approach to establishing scientific credibility. MIPs originated within climate science as a method to evaluate and compare disparate climate models, but MIPs or MIP-like projects are now spreading to many scientific fields. Within climate science, MIPs have advanced knowledge of: a) the climate phenomena being modeled, and b) the building of climate models themselves. MIPs thus build scientific confidence in the climate modeling enterprise writ large, reducing questions of the credibility or reproducibility of any single model. This paper will discuss how MIPs organize people, models, and data through institution and infrastructure coupling (IIC). IIC involves establishing mechanisms and technologies for collecting, distributing, and comparing data and models (infrastructural work), alongside corresponding governance structures, rules of participation, and collaboration mechanisms that enable partners around the world to work together effectively (institutional work). Coupling these efforts involves developing formal and informal ways to standardize data and metadata, create common vocabularies, provide uniform tools and methods for evaluating resulting data, and build community around shared research topics.


This paper presents hardening techniques against fault attacks and the practical evaluation of their efficiency. The circuit technology investigated to improve the resistance against fault attacks is asynchronous logic. Specific properties of asynchronous circuits make them inherently resistant against a large class of faults. An analysis of their behavior in the presence of faults shows that they are an interesting alternative to design robust systems. A behavior diagnosis enables us to propose hardening techniques that improve fault tolerance and resistance. They are applied at design time and aim at exploiting quasi-delay insensitive (QDI) circuit properties to significantly harden the architecture with a very low area overhead and a reasonable performance penalty. To validate these techniques, a hardened DES crypto-processor is presented. The countermeasures are evaluated using laser beam fault injection


The in vitro production of recombinant protein molecules has fostered a tremendous interest in their clinical application for treatment and support of cancer patients. Therapeutic proteins include monoclonal antibodies, interferons, and haematopoietic growth factors. Clinically established monoclonal antibodies include rituximab (targeting CD20-positive B-cell lymphomas), trastuzumab (active in HER-2 breast and gastric cancer), and bevacizumab (blocking tumor-induced angiogenesis through blockade of vascular-endothelial growth factor and its receptor). Interferons have lost much of their initial appeal, since equally or more effective treatments with more pleasant side effects have become available, for example in chronic myelogenous leukaemia or hairy cell leukaemia. The value of recombinant growth factors, notably granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) and erythropoietin is rather in the field of supportive care than in targeted anti-cancer therapy. Adequately powered clinical phase III trials are essential to estimate the true therapeutic impact of these expensive compounds, with appropriate selection of clinically relevant endpoints and sufficient follow-up. Monoclonal antibodies, interferons, and growth factors must also, and increasingly so, be subjected to close scrutiny by appropriate cost-effectiveness analyses to ensure that their use results in good value for money. With these caveats and under the condition of their judicious clinical use, recombinant proteins have greatly enriched the therapeutic armamentarium in clinical oncology, and their importance is likely to grow even further.


There are several challenges for search and rescue robots: mobility, perception, autonomy, and communication. Inspired by the DARPA Subterranean (SubT) Challenge, we propose an autonomous blimp robot, which has the advantages of low power consumption and collision-tolerance compared to other aerial vehicles like drones. This is important for search and rescue tasks that usually last for one or more hours. However, the underground constrained passages limit the size of blimp envelope and its payload, making the proposed system resource-constrained. Therefore, a careful design consideration is needed to build a blimp system with on-board artifact search and SLAM. In order to reach long-term operation, a failure-aware algorithm with minimal communication to human supervisor to have situational awareness and send control signals to the blimp when needed.


Virtual Reality (VR) is an emerging technique with various applications in education, navigation, remote communication, and gaming. In virtual reality software, VR objects, which are graphics units linking with script files, play an important role and they often need to be updated together with correlated source code in the script files. However, traditional code dependency analysis tools detect only direct source code dependencies and can hardly detect code dependency across VR objects. In this paper, we propose a novel technique, VRDepend, to extract code-asset dependency within VR software projects. In particular, we extract (1) the direct association between VR objects and script files, (2) the compositional relations between VR objects, (3) event triggering relations between scripts and VR objects. We evaluated VRDepend based on script dependency extracted from file co-revisions. Our evaluation results show that VRDepend can cover 64% script file dependencies in historical commits of our subject VR software projects.


In order to evaluate the efficiency of inoculation of chickpea seeds with Mesorhizobium and application of nitrogen and zinc on yield and yield components of rainfed chickpea an experiment was carried out in research station of Shirvan-Chardavel, Ilam. The experiment was conducted in randomized complete block design (RCBD) with six treatments including Mesorhizobium inoculation, nitrogen (40 kg.ha-1 from urea source), zinc (25 kg.ha-1 from zinc sulphate source), nitrogen+zinc, inoculation+zinc application and the control (no inoculation or fertilizer application) with four replications. Differences of grain and biological yield among treatments were significant (p<0.01). Inoculation and application of 25 kg.ha-1 zinc sulfate resulted in the highest grain and biological yield (with 48.7% and 34.7% increase compared to control, respectively). Increases of number of pods per plant and 100 seed weight in those treatments compared to control were 50% and 6.5%, respectively. Increase of grain yield mostly was related to increase of number of pods per plant. Differences between treatments for nitrogen uptake and nitrogen content were also significant (p<0.01). The highest nitrogen uptake observed in treatment of integrated nitrogen and zinc application, a 74.3% increase as compared to control. Differences between treatments in cases of grain protein and zinc concentration were also significant (p<0.01). Integrated nitrogen and zinc application and control showed the highest and lowest grain protein content (23.1% and 19.4%, respectively). The highest zinc fortification of grain was obtained by zinc sulphate and integrated inoculation and zinc sulphate application.

Key words: Bacteria, Nitrogen, Protein, Zinc


Vibration Analysis and Structural Dynamics for Civil Engineers - Essentials and Group-Theoretic Formulations is a book written by Prof Alphose Zingoni of the University of Cape Town and published by CRC Press in November 2014. The book is concise, but thorough, and gives the reader a broad and fundamental understanding of structural dynamics. The emphasis is on the governing physics, the mathematical representation and the corresponding numerical solution of the problem. Although dynamics of structures is usually an intimidating topic for students and engineers, the logical progression and the succinctness of Prof Zingoni's book alleviate the daunting nature of the subject.


The problems associated with flux mapping in the Plum Brook Research Reactor, which employs an 18 plate Materials Testing Reactor type fuel element, are discussed fully. Design of a flux survey instrument is presented which, utilizing four solid state fission probes, makes it possible to map the complete Plum Brook core in a little over 6 hours, with the data presented in a form immediately available for analysis. Mapping a fuel element (from even 30 ft. above the core) does not require an accurate above water positioning system, yet a high degree of accuracy (±0.1 in.) in referencing in-core measurements has been obtained. The effect of radiation on the semiconductor detectors and the operating characteristics of the instrument, along with typical flux profiles obtained in mapping the Plum Brook Reactor are presented.


Oral cancer poses a serious threat worldwide owing to its soaring case-fatality rate and its metastatic characteristics of spreading to the other parts of the body. Despite the recent breakthroughs in biomedical sciences, the detection of oral cancer at an early stage is still challenging. Conventional diagnosis in clinics and optical techniques to detect oral cancer in the initial stages are quite complicated as well as not completely accurate. To enhance the survival rate of oral cancer patients, it is important to investigate the novel methodologies that can provide faster, simpler, non-invasive, and yet ultraprecise detection of the onset of oral cancer. In this review, we demonstrate the promising aspects of an electrochemical biosensor as an ideal tool for oral cancer detection. We discuss the cutting-edge methodologies utilizing various electrochemical biosensors targeting the different kinds of biomarkers. In particular, we emphasize on electrochemical biosensors working at the molecular levels, which can be classified into mainly three types: DNA biosensors, RNA biosensors and protein biosensors according to the types of the analytes. Furthermore, we focus on the significant electrochemical methods including cyclic voltammetry (CV), differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) to analyze the oral cancer biomarkers (such as IL-6, IL-8, CYFRA 21-1, CD 59 and CIP2A) present in body fluids including saliva and serum, using non-invasive manner. Hence, this review provides essential insights into the development of pioneering electrochemical biosensors for the detection of oral cancer at an early stage.


Background: There are six Anesthesiology training
centers in Thailand that are approved to operate the training program. An
evidence of residents' knowledge about pediatric postoperative pain management
is needed for improving the program. Objective: To assess the third year
anesthesiology residents' knowledge about pediatric postoperative pain management. Materials and Methods: The questionnaire was adapted from
previous studies. The questionnaire has 35 questions consisted of 17 multiple
choice questions and 18 true or false questions to cover 2 domains: 1) use of age-appropriate pediatric
pain assessment (10 questions) and 2) pediatric pain treatment (25 questions).
Minimal passing level of the questionnaire rated by three young anesthesiology
staffs was 76.2%. All 62 participants were the 3rd year
anesthesiology residents from 6 training centers. Data were analyzed by
descriptive statistics. Results: The response rate was 95.2%.
Seventy-one percent of participants reported that they had learned about
pediatric pain treatment. Of those, 55.9% rated their remaining knowledge at
median level. The proportion of the correct score was 67.7% (mean 23.7 ± 2.9
SD) which was lower than the minimal passing level. The highest score was 29
and the lowest score was 16. For pain assessment domain; the mean proportion of
correct score was 65% (range 90%-40%). For pain treatment domain; the mean proportion
of correct score was 68.8% (range 88%-44%). Conclusion: Anesthesiology
residents' knowledge about
pediatric postoperative pain management needs to be improved.


Here we introduce a method for the evolution of dynamic gaits on a physical robot requiring no prior assumptions about the locomotion pattern beyond the fact that it should be rhythmic. The dynamic gaits were physically evolved in hardware using a parallel-actuated pneumatic robot. We have formulated a genetic algorithm that evolves open-loop controllers; the encoding allows evolution to shape both the speed and pattern of locomotion while ensuring rhythmicity. In future, we plan to evolve closed-loop controllers for the physical robot and integrate our previously developed methods to reduce the number of hardware trials.


As regards river restoration, it is fundamental to better link human pressures and environmental responses and to take into consideration not only target species or habitat but diverse ecological elements. This permits to assess sustainable restoration plan, especially concerning sediment augmentation below dams. The use of a hierarchical multicriteria approach on the Ain River permits us to assess a diagnosis of sediment deficit impact integrating several morphological (channel shifting, river bed degradation and river bed coarsening) and ecological components (Riparian and floodplain lake and fish communities). Our diagnosis also integrates a temporal and spatial approach better to link human pressures and environmental responses and to identify the dam effects amongst other drivers (e.g. grazing decline and channel regulation). The results confirm causality links between sediment deficit and slight channel bed degradation (0.01 m.year−1) or channel bed paving and thus highlight the impact of the dam on the drying of the riparian forest and on former channel community. However, the relationship between incision and reduction in active channel lateral mobility is more difficult to establish. The role of sediment deficit in the current variability of the riparian regeneration capacity and, thereby, landscape diversity along the lower valley remains unclear. This study also confirms the relevance of using different ecological indicators, notably because all components present different adjustment time scales, whereas some of them are more sensitive to other impacts. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


Herein, a novel algorithm for characterizing stress chains using a large parallel computer system is presented. Stress chains are important for analyzing the results of large-scale discrete element method (DEM) simulations. However, the general algorithm is difficult to parallelize especially when selecting networks longer than several particles. Therefore, we propose a new parallel algorithm to count the number of particles that are tightly connected, based on iterative operations with nearest-neighbor computations and communications. The new algorithm is examined via a realscale numerical sandbox experiment using 2.4 billion particles. We successfully compute the stress chains with a reasonable computational cost comparable to the single-step DEM computation time. The visualization of the stress chains from the large-scale DEM simulation result reveals the existence of arcuate stress structures that may control accretionary prism formation, which is an important scientific discovery.


The Stahl model is one of the most applied consumer search models, with many applications and an empirical background. The present paper explores an extension where sellers have asymmetries, which is mostly excluded by the literature. Sellers with heterogeneous numbers of stores are introduced, reflecting a typical market structure. As in the original Stahl model, a market consists of several sellers, and consumers, where some face a cost when sequentially searching. The paper shows that no symmetric Nash equilibrium exists in the extension. Additional results suggest that smallest sellers will be the ones offering the lowest prices, in line with several real world examples provided in the paper. However, profits remain in most cases fixed per store, making a larger firm more profitable, yet with lower quantity sold. The findings suggest that on some level price dispersion will still exist, together with some level of price stickiness, both observed in reality.


The correlation between tuberous sclerosis complex 1 (TSC1) gene polymorphism and epilepsy was studied. In total, 38 patients with epilepsy treated in People's Hospital of Rizhao from May 2015 to June 2016 were selected as study subjects, as the observation group, 38 healthy people in the same period were selected as the control group. Polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) was used to study the polymorphism of TSC1 gene in the above study subjects. The mRNA expression of TSC1 gene in the observation group and the control group was measured by fluorescence quantitative PCR, the expression of TSC1 protein in the control and observation group was measured by western blotting and ELISA. The polymorphisms of TSC1 gene in control group and observation group were analyzed by PCR-RFLP. There were three genotypes of TCS1 gene locus 142 in healthy population: CC (79.3%), CA (13.9%) and AA (6.8%), there were also three genotypes at locus 142 in the observation group: CC (21.3%), CA (26.4%) and AA (52.3%), there was significant difference in the genotypes at locus 142 between healthy population and the patients with epilepsy (P<0.05). It was observed by fluorescence quantitative PCR that there was no significant difference in the mRNA expression of TSC1 gene between the control group and the observation group (P>0.05). The expression of TSC1 gene was detected by western blot method. Western blotting showed no significant difference in TSC1 protein expression between the two groups (P>0.05). However, by determining the activity of TSC1 protein in the observation group and the control group by ELISA, it was found that TSC1 activity in healthy human body (8.95±2.41 U/ml) was much lower than that in the patients with epilepsy (29.27±4.06 U/ml), the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). It was found that locus 142 may be located at the active center of TSC1 enzyme by homology modeling of SWISS-MODEL, the mutation of locus 142 could lead to the change of TSC1 activity. The polymorphism of locus 142 in TSC1 gene is correlated with epilepsy, that is, the increase of CA and AA content in locus 142 leads to the occurrence of epilepsy.


The entanglement of multiatom quantum states is considered. In order to cancel noise due to inhomogeneous light-atom coupling, the concept of matched multiatom observables is proposed. As a means to eliminate an important form of decoherence this idea should be of broad relevance for quantum information processing with atomic ensembles. The general approach is illustrated on the example of rotation angle measurement, and it is shown that the multiatom states that were thought to be only weakly entangled can exhibit near-maximum entanglement.


In the last years, neural networks achieved ground-breaking successes in a wide variety of applications. However, for safety critical tasks, such as robotics and healthcare, it is necessary to provide some specific guarantees before the deployment in a real world context. Even in these scenarios, where high cost equipment and human safety are involved, the evaluation of the models is usually performed with the standard metrics (i.e., cumulative reward or success rate). In this paper, we introduce a novel metric for the evaluation of models in safety critical tasks, the violation rate . We build our work upon the concept of formal verification for neural networks, providing a new formulation for the safety properties that aims to ensure that the agent always makes rational decisions. To perform this evaluation, we present ProVe (Property Verifier), a novel approach based on the interval algebra, designed for the analysis of our novel behavioral properties. We apply our method to different domains (i.e., mapless navigation for mobile robots, trajectory generation for manipulators, and the standard ACAS benchmark). Results show that the violation rate computed by ProVe provides a good evaluation for the safety of trained models.


The tunnel field-effect transistor (TFET) utilizes a metal-oxide-semiconductor MOS structure to control the Zener tunneling current in a p+n+ junction. Current understanding and status in the development of TFETs with steep inverse-subthreshold-slope is reviewed.


We investigate ways in which international evangelical Christian humanitarians talk about time as they engaged in humanitarian assistance and development work in South Sudan. Our focus on Christian development work is motivated by a desire to understand how and why people persevere in humanitarian work and reconcile seemingly impossible circumstances and to further elaborate sociological conceptions of time as experienced by people in their own lives. We argue that their faith commitments produce ways of understanding time and causality which make possible their attachment to risky and dangerous work. Our work is based on in-depth interviews with people who work or have recently worked for Christian faith-based organizations in South Sudan (n = 30). Drawing on Tavory and Eliasoph's () concepts of life narratives and life projects, we treat our participants as culturally competent actors who skilfully construct their stories through drawing on collectively shared faith-inflected ideas about temporality and causation. We argue that these ideas represent an important resource for getting through the risks, challenges and uncertainties of doing humanitarian work in complex crises.


Dummies allow the analysis of the effects of striking visual traits free of the confounding variation and interaction seen in live stimuli. In the Midas cichlid ('Cichlasoma' citrinellum), gold morphs (G) dominate normal (N) ones, apparently because an all-gold fish is a 'supernormal releaser' of fear. Although in other fish a dummy that looks like a territory holder or a dominant individual usually evokes the most aggressive response, we wondered whether the gold color was special and would depress aggressiveness. If so, when shown four differently colored passive dummies, gold ones would be approached and attacked least. The other three colors, all naturally occurring, were gray, white and black. Based on earlier, indirect evidence, we predicted that the N and G subjects would not differ in their responses, nor would males and females. We found that gold dummies were attacked at the highest rate, not the lowest, but all dummies were approached about equally. G and N subjects did not differ, nor did males and females based on attack rates. Females, however, spent more time close to the dummies than did males, possibly prospecting for a mate. To 'calibrate' the responses, we then presented to male subjects dummies colored gold, gray, and two novel colors, green and blue. The dummies were attacked from most to least in that order. The novel colors produced greater differences in responses than did colors normally found in the Midas cichlid. Other tests using dummies altered the position of the gold patch that is normally found on the throat, eye color, eye position, proportion of body colored gold, and species-typical markings; a patch of gold covering just the face was particularly evocative. The response to G may depend on whether the encounter is symmetrical or asymmetrical. Gold and gray dummies that threatened back were alternated with passive ones of the same color. Reactive gold and gray dummies were attacked at the highest rates and about equally; they were approached less than were the passive dummies, however. The results of testing with dummies can produce contrary results depending on whether the dummy is reactive or passive, and on the color of the background.


The photofragmentation of ketene to triplet methylene and carbon monoxide is a paradigm for unimolecular dissociation over an exit channel barrier. The geometric structures, quadratic force fields, and harmonicvibrational frequencies of the triplet ketene reactant, the 3B1 CH2+1Σ+ CO products, and both in-plane (CsII) and out-of-plane (CsI) transition states have been determined at the TZ(2d1f,2p) coupled-cluster singles and doubles (CCSD) level of theory. An unusual, shallow minimum at long range [R(C–C)=4.0 A] has also been discovered and characterized. A rigorous mapping and analytic parametrization has been performed of the TZ(2d1f,2p) CCSD intrinsic reaction paths connecting the CsII transition state to both the reactant and products. Final potential-energy functions along the entire reaction path have been determined with the aid of [(C,O)/H] atomic-orbital basis sets as large as [6s5p4d3f2g1h/5s4p3d2f1g] and electron correlation treatments as extensive as the coupled-cluster method through triple excitations [CCSDT or CCSD(T)]. The final theoretical curve is highlyanharmonic in the transition-state region, displaying a classical barrier of1045 cm-1, a critical C–C distance of 2.257 A, and a barrier frequency of321i cm-1. Effective barrier frequencies in the 100i cm-1 range which resultfrom RRKM modelling with tunnelling corrections of the observed steplike structure in the triplet ketene dissociation rate constant are thus shown to be physically untenable. Various implications of such abinitio predictions on unravelling the intricacies of the fragmentation dynamics are discussed.


A novel splitting method is presented for the $\ell^1$-$TV$ restoration of degraded images subject to impulsive noise. The functional is split into an $\ell^2$-$TV$ denoising part and an $\ell^1$-$\ell^2$ deblurring part. The dual problem of the relaxed functional is smooth with convex constraints and can be solved efficiently by applying an Arrow-Hurwicz-type algorithm to the augmented Lagrangian formulation. The regularization parameter is chosen automatically based on a balancing principle. The accuracy, the fast convergence, and the robustness of the algorithm and the use of the parameter choice rule are illustrated on some benchmark images and compared with an existing method.


Water wells are usually dug by artisans who lack professional skills. Such wells are used at various homes in Gwagwalada Area Council of Abuja for domestic purpose, on the assumption that underground water is safe. Thus, the suitability of such well water was assessed. The objectives were to assess their properties and compare with regulatory standard for domestic purpose. Thirty (30) water samples were purposely collected from six wards (Dobi, Ibwa, Paikon-Kore, Tungan Maje, Zuba and Ikwa). Five water samples were randomly collected from each ward for laboratory analysis. Laboratory results were statistically analyzed using range, mean, correlation and multiple determination coefficients. Suitability of water properties for domestic purposes was determined by comparing range and mean values with NSDWQ and WHO standard for domestic uses. Result showed that the concentrations of water properties ranges as follows: temperature (26.59-30.73oC), pH (7.17-8.23), electrical conductivity EC (222-354 μs/cm3), TDS (12.14-21.54mg/l), Turbidity (0.29-0.93NTU) hardness (13.58-39.72mg/l), chloride Cl-(4.29-8.93mg/l), Fe (0.54-0.71mg/l) and Cu (0.02-0.06mg/l).Water samples generally had low electrical conductivity (222-354 μs/cm3), and mineral nutrients but elevated concentration of some heavy metals. The twenty- three water quality parameters tested could explain 96% of the overall water quality leaving only 4% unexplained. All the samples fell short of regulatory standard in terms of EC, Fe and Cu while well water from Ikwa fell short of many heavy metals for domestic purpose. It was concluded that well water in Gwagwalada Area Council are not potable. Thus, treatment before direct consumption and precautionary use of well water were recommended for the residents.
Keywords: Water quality, Heavy metals, Water pollution, Well


With the increase in fossil fuel prices and the increase in demand for renewable energy sources, wind turbines play an important role in becoming the alternative technology in the generation of electricity. Since wind is clean and unbounded, wind energy is one of the best renewable sources of energy for the generation of electricity. This paper presents the ideas of designing a small-sized wind turbine or micro wind turbine for low wind speed areas which can be used in many applications like homes, villages, and so on to produce electricity. A small-sized wind turbine or micro wind turbine is a type of turbine that converts the kinetic energy of wind into electrical energy and it is used to generate power for small power needs. Additionally, this type of micro wind turbine can be used in rural areas, requiring a very low cost for installation.


The monoclonal antibodies cetuximab and panitumumab are approved for the treatment of metastatic colorectal cancers (mCRC). When used as monotherapy, the anti-EGFR antibodies are effective in approximately 15% of patients. It is now well established that colorectal tumors carrying KRAS and BRAF mutations (40%) are refractory to EGFR targeted therapies (primary resistance). Virtually all-responsive patients eventually become insensitive to anti-EGFR antibodies (secondary resistance) within 3 to 12 months of initiating therapy. Primary and acquired resistance therefore limits the clinical benefit of EGFR blockade in CRC patients. We postulated that concomitant inhibition of multiple members of the HER (ErbB) receptors family might suppress the growth of CRC cells more effectively than selectively targeting only the EGFR with cetuximab or panitumumab. Accordingly, we assessed the pharmacological activity of momelotinib and afatinib- two pan-HER tyrosine kinase inhibitors- in a collection of 40 CRC cell lines, which recapitulate the genetic profiles commonly detected in CRC patients. We report that primary resistance to pan-HER inhibition is associated with KRAS and BRAF mutations thus suggesting that this patients9 population will unlikely benefit from momelotinib and afatinib treatments. Notably, however, pan-HER blockade was effective in a subset of KRAS/BRAF wild type CRC cell lines refractory to cetuximab and panitumumab indicating that a subgroup of patients, which do not benefit from EGFR blockade, may profit from pan-HER inhibition. To define the molecular mechanisms of acquired resistance to ErbB inhibitors, three KRAS/BRAF/NRAS wild type CRC cell models were continuously treated with cetuximab, momelotinib and afatinib, until resistant derivatives emerged. Genetic characterization of such derivatives unveiled that, regardless of the drug used, the resistant populations were a mixture of clones carrying distinctive mutations in KRAS or NRAS. Detailed biochemical analyses of the ErbB signalling pathway revealed that resistant variants displayed high levels of MEK and ERK activation, which persisted upon ErbBs inhibition. Collectively, these results identify KRAS, BRAF and NRAS mutations as major drivers of primary and/or acquired resistance to HERs inhibition in colorectal cancer cells and suggest that a molecularly defined subset of CRC patients might benefit from pan-HER blockade. Citation Format: Mariangela Russo, Alessandra Riggio, Carlotta Cancelliere, Federica Di Nicolantonio, Alberto Bardelli. Primary and acquired resistance to HERs inhibition in colorectal cancer cells: All HERs go to RAS. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 1843. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-1843


This study provides evidence on the effectiveness of community controls in regulating the use of common agricultural land in Côte d'Ivoire and tests for factors such as group size, ethnic and income heterogeneity of the group, income and resource stock levels, in explaining the variation in effectiveness across communities. The results indicate significant deterioration in community controls. These results point towards the need for a comprehensive policy framework towards agriculture in general and land tenure in particular. The study also finds that smaller and ethnically homogenous communities are better able to coordinate their actions, thereby internalizing a higher proportion of the value of land as a factor of agricultural production than their large ethnically heterogenous counterparts. No evidence is, however, found in favour of income heterogeneity hindering or facilitating collective action.


The green technology is an innovation form of energy and has become the popular issue in Malaysia. This paper is to explore the opportunities by support of innovation development which brings to sustainability of green technology in Malaysia. Through literature review and empirical evidence, the Malaysian government has played a role in a strong condition to make sure the sustainability of environmental by introducing the strong policies. The establishment of incentive and budget of green technology can be fully utilized by the nation. The study is the first attempt to explore the innovation development in green technology in Malaysia


The paper deals with a step-wise analytic hierarchy process (AHP) applied by a group of decision makers wherein nobody has a dominant position and it is unlikely to come to terms with respect to either the weights of different objectives or expected utilities of different alternatives. One of the AHP outcomes, that is the consistency index is computed for each decision maker, for all other decision makers but that one, and for the whole group. Doing so, the group is able to assess to which extent each decision maker alters the group consistency index and a better consistency index could be achieved if the assessment procedure is being resumed by the most influential decision maker in terms of consistency. The main contribution of the new approach is the algorithm presented in as a flow chart where the condition to stop the process might be either a threshold value for the consistency index, or a given number of iterations for the group or decision maker, depending on the degree to which the targeted goal has been decomposed into conflictual objectives.


The life cycle of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla) remained a mystery until the 20th century, when Schmidt discovered that the Sargasso Sea was its spawning area. However, many aspects of the eel's life cycle remain poorly understood. Among these is the bimodal distribution in head shape, with broad- and narrowheaded phenotypes reported in the yellow eel stage. Although this has been linked to dietary preferences of the yellow eels, very little is known about why, how and when this dimorphism arises during their ontogeny.
To find out whether this dimorphism indeed appears in relation to trophic niche segregation, we examined head shape variation at an earlier ontogenetic stage, the glass eel stage, as at this stage, eels are considered to be non-feeding. Head shape was studied in glass eels captured from the Yser river mouth (N=275), the Leopold Canal (N=112; Belgium) and from the rivers Severn, Trent and Parret (N=153; U.K.) by both taking measurements (head width/head length) and using an outline analysis. Our results show that there's already considerable variation in broadness and bluntness of the head at the glass eel stage, but no unambiguous support for head shape dimorphism was found. However, as variation in head width/head length ratios in non-feeding glass eels shows a similar range as in feeding yellow eels, head shape in European eel might be at least partially determined through other mechanisms than trophic segregation.


Commencing with a brief history of mobile communications and the portrayal of the basic concept of wireless multimedia communications, the implications of Shannon's theorems regarding joint source and channel coding for wireless communications are addressed. Following a brief introduction to speech, video, and graphical source coding as well as the cellular concept, a rudimentary overview of flexible, reconfigurable, mobile radio schemes is provided. We then summarize the fundamental concepts of modulation, introduce an adaptive modem scheme, and argue that third-generation transceivers might become adaptively reconfigurable under network control in order to meet backward compatibility requirements with existing systems and to achieve best compromise among a range of conflicting system requirements, complexity and power consumption, robustness against channel errors, etc.


Black tiger shrimp (Penaeus monodon) is a major aquaculture commodity among Southeast Asian producers and remains a popular food export worldwide. Food brokers in Japan and the United States purchase huge quantities of these farmed shrimp and return significant foreign exchange earnings to developing nations like Thailand, a major producer and exporter since the early 1990s. However, coastal areas cannot sustain intensive shrimp farm production and local growers often end up in debt. Can the needs of farm communities around the world be suitably met when they join into a corporate-managed and export-oriented food system? What are the sustainable benefits and eventual costs to susceptible localities? The shrimp industry in Thailand reveals the difficult terrain to cross and powerful obstacles to overcome if authentic sustainable development is to be realized.


Levels of 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) and 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) were measured in amniotic fluid obtained at membrane rupture during labour and at amniotomy before the onset of labour. The levels of both 5-HT and 5-HIAA were higher during labour. The implications of this finding are discussed.


Low delta-T syndrome refers to the situation where the measured differential temperature of the overall terminal air-handling units is much lower than the normal value expected. It widely exists in the existing heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems and results in increased energy consumption. This paper presents a model-based method to evaluate the energy impact on the chilled water pumps due to the low delta-T syndrome in a complex chilled water system. When the low delta-T syndrome occurs, the chilled water pumps would deviate from their normal working conditions with increased power consumption. Models are developed to predict the reference benchmarks of the chilled water pump power based on the current cooling load, control rules, and preset set-points. The energy impact on the chilled water pumps can be determined by comparing the measured current pump power with the predicted benchmark. Support vector regression method is introduced for predicting the chilled water flow rate of the overall terminal units. Adaptive concept is employed to enhance the prediction accuracy of the overall pressure drop of the hydraulic water network under various working conditions. The proposed method is tested and validated in a dynamic simulation platform built based on a real complex heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning system. Results show that the proposed method can accurately evaluate the impact of the low delta-T syndrome on energy consumption of the chilled water pumps. Practical application: Low delta-T syndrome widely exists in existing HVAC systems and results in increased energy consumption. This paper presents a model-based method for practical applications in assessing the energy impact on the chilled water pumps due to the low delta-T syndrome in a complex chilled water system. When the low delta-T syndrome occurs in a system, this method can be used to predict the reference benchmark of energy use of chilled water pumps based on the measured cooling load profiles, the control rules used, and the preset set-points. The energy impact can be determined by comparing the measured actual energy consumption with the predicted benchmark. The evaluation results could help the operators to conveniently monitor the energy performance of the chilled water distribution system as well as to judge whether or not taking measures to identify and correct the related faults that result in the low delta-T syndrome.


An ink cassette comprising a spool rotatably supported four (36, 37) of the box (30). The spool (38) comprises a transmission having a gear wheel (47) a first rotary member (46) and the shaft member (48) having a flange (48a) of. In an aperture formed in the support (50) (30) of the box body, the first rotary member (46) non-detachably engaged with the shaft member (48) while the side plate (51a) sandwiched the drive gear (47) and the flange (48a) between. An intermediate connector (46) comprises an elastic pawl (59), the projection (61) for mating with the respective grooves (60) and engaging a locking groove (62), the locking groove (62) formed in a roll the base end of the core tube (41), and engaged with the shaft member (48) of the flange (48a).


SUMMARY Carcass data for 1053 steers from the Meat and Livestock Commission's beef breed evaluation programme were used to examine the prediction of carcass composition from conformation-related characteristics corrected to equal fatness. The data were from four trials and comprised both dairy-bred and suckler-bred cattle by a wide range of sire breeds. When used with carcass weight (W) and a visual assessment of carcass subcutaneous fat percentage (SFe) (the most precise simple assessment of carcass lean percentage, residual S.d. = 2·28), m. longissimus area (MLA) at the 10th rib was the most effective conformation-related assessment (residual S.d. = 2·10). Precision was improved by the further addition of a visual conformation assessment (C15) on a 15-point scale (residual S.d. = 2·06). The use of equations combining W, SFe, MLA, C15 and other simple assessments of fatness improved the precision further (residual S.d. = 1·94). The measurement combinations above also provided a significant prediction of the percentage of total carcass lean distributed in the higher-priced joints. Residual S.d.s were: W + SFe, (1·12); W + SFe + MLA (1·07); W + SFe + MLA + C15 (1·06). When the equations were applied to the breed means, there was substantial bias (predicted – actual carcass lean percentage). Bias ranged from approximately + 1·5 (purebred Canadian Holsteins and Luings ) to – 1·6 (Limousin crosses). The accuracy of carcass lean prediction was not improved by the addition of bone measurements to the equations but there was some improvement in the prediction of lean to bone ratio: cattle with light, thin bones tended to have higher ratios. Similar combinations of independent variables were found to provide the most precise prediction within breed.


The continuous use of the synthetic chemicals to mitigate the damage by pests is generally fraught with problems of undesirable poverty-inducing effects. These problems necessitated the use of indigenous method by rural farmers as a possible alternative. However, there is a paucity of information on the potential ability of the indigenous method to improve the welfare of farmers. Hence, this study examined the utilisation of indigenous pest management method and poverty status of cocoa farmers in Osun State. Cross sectional data were collected from 300 cocoa farmers used for study. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, poverty depth analysis and propensity score matching method. Results indicated that poverty lines estimated for the users and non-users showed different levels of welfare for the two categories of farmers. The poverty incidence, depth and severity were 25%, 7% and 2.9% for the adopters respectively while 33%, 9% and 3.1% were for the non-adopters. The propensity score matching estimates revealed a positive and significant effect (t= 5.51 at p < 0.05) of the indigenous method on adopter's income. The study concluded that the adoption of indigenous pest management method has positive effect on welfare of cocoa farmers.


The prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection during pregnancy is relatively unknown. In this study we report the potential impact of undiagnosed SARS-CoV-2 infection on pregnancy loss in the first half of pregnancy by comparing the prevalence of the infection in a retrospective group of pregnant women with miscarriage (n=62) and a prospective control group with no pregnancy loss in the first trimester (n=218). Of 62 women who had miscarriage, 2 (3.2%) resulted IgM for SARS-CoV-2 negative and IgG seropositive, while of 218 pregnant women, 5 (2.3 %) resulted IgM for SARS-CoV- 2 and IgG seropositive. The SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence was not significantly different in the two groups of women, therefore excluding a significant role of SARS-CoV-2 infection in pregnancy loss. Therefore, our data show that SARS-CoV-2 infection within the first trimester does not seem to predispose to early pregnancy loss and that the impact of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection on pregnancy appears limited.


Isolated renal tubules from vitamin D-deficient chicks catalyse the in vitro conversion of 25-hydroxycholecalciferol to 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol. This conversion is stimulated by 5 x 10(-10) M bovine parathyroid hormone, or by 10(-6) M cyclic AMP. It is inhibited by 10(-9) M porcine calcitonin. It is concluded that these hormonal controls of the synthesis of the renal hormone 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol are of particular physiological significance in coordinating the activities of the various organs involved in extracellular calcium homeostasis.


The systemic effects of the radiation protective agent, S-3-(3-methylaminopropylamino) propylphosphorothioic acid (WR-151327), were studied in unirradiated B6CF1 male mice. Fifty mice were injected intraperitoneally with 540 mg/kg WR-151327, and groups of five mice were sacrificed at 14-day intervals up to and including 140 days post-treatment. Ten mice served as sham-injected controls. A necropsy was performed and gross morphological abnormalities were noted. Tissues (brain, eyes, harderian gland, salivary glands, sternal bone marrow, thyroid, lung, thymus, esophagus, trachea, skeletal muscle, heart, liver, kidney, adrenal gland, spleen, small intestine, pancreas, and testes) were fixed in 10% formalin, embedded in paraffin, and sectioned. Slides were routinely stained with hematoxylin and eosin while Alizarin red stain was used to test specifically for the presence of calcium salts. Histopathological effects of WR-151327 were restricted to the testes, salivary gland, and pancreas. The caudal pole of the testes was observed to undergo progressive changes from coagulation necrosis to dystrophic calcification. The cells of the submandibular salivary gland showed mainly hyperchromatic nuclei while the pancreas showed enlarged islets of Langerhans.


Introduction: The serosurveillance of COVID-19 antibody levels and their difference between symptomatic and asymptomatic groups can help in understanding the immune status of the community and the factors affecting it. Hence, the study was undertaken to find the differences between these two groups with respect to antibodies level and other socio-demographic variables in the South Andaman district. Methods: A population-based serosurveillance study covering more than 4,000 samples was carried out in the South Andaman district. The participants were selected by multistage cluster sampling. The venous blood samples were tested for IgG COVID-19 antibodies by Erba Lisa Elisa kit. Results: 5.3% of total individuals (217) were symptomatic whereas 94.7% (3,872) were asymptomatic. The symptomatic individuals had lower antibodies (33.6%) as compared to asymptomatic individuals (40.1%) (p-value=0.059). In the age group of 31-45 years, antibody positivity in the asymptomatic group was significantly higher than in the symptomatic group (p-value 0.031). The antibody positivity was higher in moderate to severe cases who needed hospital admission. The antibody positivity was found similar in both the groups in front-line workers as well as in non-front-line workers (p-value=0.104, 0.274, respectively). Conclusion: The antibody positivity was higher in asymptomatic individuals as compared to symptomatic individuals, particularly in the age group of 31-45 years. The higher level of antibody positivity in asymptomatic individuals reflected a stronger immune response which led to no clinical manifestations. The antibody positivity was also found higher in moderate to severe cases undergoing hospital admission whereas antibodies positivity was found similar in front-line and non-front-line workers.


Approximately 3% of the adult population have a genetic basis for decreased PChE enzyme activity. Levels of PChE activity in healthy term newborns and infants up to 4 months of age have been reported to range from 22-86% of normal adult values. The degree of decreased enzyme activity in premature infants is unknown. Levels of PChE were measured in 39 healthy premature infants (single determinations in 12 and serial weekly determinations in 27).Birth weight ranged from 1430-2070g and GA ranged from 28-37 wks. Ten adult donor and 20 term newborn blood samples were analyzed for comparison purposes. Levels of PChE were measured in duplicate by a kit dye reduction method (normal adult reference value 7-19U/ml). Abnormally low PChE levels were found in 10% of adult, 15% of term newborn and 20% of premature infant blood samples(NS). This incidence of low PChE activity is 3-5 times that reported for adults using a different method. In 6 premature infants with initially low PChE levels, the enzyme activity rose to normal adult range within 2 weeks. In 2 other premature infants PChE levels remained low and most likely represented congenital PChE deficiency. There was no difference in PChE activity on the basis of sex, race or GA. Hospitalized premature infants exhibit similar rates of quantitative PChE deficiency when compared to adults and term infants and are at potential risk for significant complications when exposed to depolarizing muscle relaxant agents. When succinylcholine use is considered in premature infants, measurement of PChE levels or use of alternative drugs may be indicated on the basis of transient PChE deficiency.


This paper presents a short review of the state in physics education at the beginning of the 21st century. Short reviews of investigations into physics teaching and application of new technologies, i.e. computers, in physics teaching are given as well. Different ways of computer applications are presented. Teaching method requirements are suggested in order to improve teaching by using PCs.


The Internet environment has transformed the concepts of service failure and recovery strategies from a dyadic
customer-provider focus into a multidimensional web quality scope. In traditional encounters, the research
spectrum of service failure and recovery strategies is very much developed from a customer service approach,
and the responsibility of recovery has been traditionally assumed to be something that is assigned to the
marketer. Studies pay little or no attention to the multidimensional nature of service failures contingent to
recovery strategies in developing countries. To date, empirical studies have focused on service failures and
recovery strategies in developed countries. This paper aims to provide some insights on the need for a contextspecific
development of recovery programmes and strategies suitable for developing countries


of laryingeal canier took place nine, seven. andcl seven years respcctively aftcr operation. In readinc the statistics of the results of operationis for calncer inl different parts of the body it has ofteni been assumiied thlat if tllere is lno recturrence wvithlinl tlhree years the disease lhas beenl cured. Suclh experielnces as Mr. Mouillin's anid imy own unforttunately do nlot warrant such optimismn, altlhouiglh at present lno imetlhod of treatnment otlher than radical intervenition in early cases of cancer offers anytlhinDg lilke the samiie prospect of a long imlmlunity. This is particularly the case with laryngeal cancer if the disea-se is limllited to the vocal cords or to their iiimmediate vicinity, becauLse the lymyiplhatic connexion w%itlh sturroundiing regions is fortuLnately very restrictedl. As to the lighlt in -which we are to regfard suchi expCeriences opiniions will differ very widel!. In miiy first case a growtl appeared on one vocal cord anid was removed. Thle patienit lived -for thliTteen years an'id tllen clied as a resuLlt of a simIlilar dlisease in the opposite cord. It is improbable that at the primary operation cancer cells were detachied and inf-ected tlle Ilealtliy cord, but laid dlormanit tlhere for tllirteen years. Is it possible that lthe primary growth confers an inll-lllity on tlhe patient, and that the period of this depends on certain conlstituttional predisposinig factors of wlliclh welhave at present little or no knowledge? HERBERT TILLEY, F.R.C.S., Surgeon, Ear and Throat Departmiient, University London, W. College Hospital.


with practice 1 was soon able to do the same: so that the probIems arising from leaving N 2 0 mixtures in the apparatus for several minutes does not arise. The only disadvantage I have found with the KOH was that the tubing containing it goes black and hard after some months and has to be replaced (incidentally neither the apparatus I first used in 1960, nor the one I ordered last year for this department, had any gap beteeen the glass pieces, such as appears in Dr Nagarajan and Dr Murrin's illustration). In my experience a more important source of error is possibly due to leakage of gases from the reservoir bag (the black thin-walled anaesthetic bag used to collect the sample). Three samples can be estimated in 5 minutes from this bag, but, after 10 minutes or if the bag is nearly empty, the readings vary considerably beyond the range of +0.1:/, error which is claimed for the apparatus. Somc observations on the differential leakage of nitrous oxide and carbon dioxide from the walls of an anaesthetic bag might prove a more useful exercise than the one described.


. Proglacial margins form when glaciers retreat, and create zones with distinctive ecological, geomorphological and hydrological properties in Alpine environments. There is extensive literature on geomorphology and sediment transport in such areas as well as surface and glacial hydrology; but there is much less research into the specific hydrological behavior of the landforms that develop after glacier retreat in and close to proglacial margins. Recent reviews have highlighted the presence of groundwater stores even in such steep, rapidly draining environments. It remains however largely unclear where groundwater 5 recharge and storage occurs and the limited studies of the hydrological functioning of specific landforms has not been put into the perspective of the catchment-scale storage-discharge behavior driven by proglacial margins. Here, we provide a detailed literature review of the geomorphological structure of proglacial landforms in the context of their hydrological processes, as well as a summary of the timescale of their hydrological response. We then propose a recession-analysis based framework to understand how different landforms contribute to catchment-scale discharge. We applied the proposed methods to the case 10 of a Swiss proglacial alpine margin and summarize the insights that follow from a complete perceptual model of how such a proglacial catchments works. We identify the relative groundwater storage volumes of different superficial landforms and show how steep zones only store water on the timescale of days, while flatter areas maintain baseflow in the order of several weeks. We show that those geomorphological landforms themselves fail to explain the catchment-scale recession analyses and discuss the presence of an unidentified storage compartment of the order of 40 mm which releases water during the cold months, 15 which we propose to attribute to deeper bedrock flowpaths. Finally, the key insights on the interplay of different landforms as well as the analysis framework is readily transferable to other similar proglacial margins and should contribute to a better understanding of the future hydrogeological behavior of such catchments.


Recent studies suggested that glucagon, or blockers of glucagon action, injected into the hypothalamus of rodents can regulate hepatic glucose production (HGP). Direct hepatic glucagon action stimulates HGP but this effect rapidly wanes for reasons that are unclear. To test the hypothesis that this is due to an inhibitory CNS effect of glucagon, as previously proposed, the hormone was administered via a peripheral vein or the head arteries to conscious dogs. After tracer equilibration and basal sampling periods somatostatin was used to disable the endocrine pancreas (0-240 minute) and insulin and glucagon were replaced intraportally at basal rates. Glucagon was also infused either into a leg vein to raise its level at the liver (2.3 ng/kg/minute; CON; n=6) or into the carotid and vertebral arteries (2.8 ng/kg/minute; HEAD; n=6) to create the same increase in glucagon at the liver as in CON, while further increasing brain glucagon exposure. Plasma insulin levels remained basal in both groups. Hepatic glucagon increased from 40±4 to 87±7 and 34±3 to 91±8 pg/ml in CON and HEAD, respectively. The levels of glucagon entering the brain were 85±9 vs. 196±19 pg/ml, respectively, based on jugular vein glucagon levels (brain glucagon extraction was 20%). Hypothalamic cAMP was 2-fold greater in HEAD (140±26 vs. 296±46 pmol/g, respectively). HGP increased from basal (3.0±0.2 and 2.4±0.2 mg/kg/minute in CON and HEAD, respectively) in response to glucagon, peaking rapidly within 30 minutes (6.5±0.5 vs. 6.2±0.4 mg/kg/minute, respectively; P=0.6), quickly declining over the next 30 minute, and then falling slowly to near-basal rates at 240 minute (2.7±0.2 vs. 2.8±0.2 mg/kg/minute, respectively). Arterial plasma glucose levels increased from basal (∼110 mg/dl) and plateaued over the last 3 hours (178±10 vs. 192±5 mg/dl, in CON and HEAD, respectively). Despite the differences in the glucagon level and engagement at the brain, no difference in hepatic glucose metabolism was detected. This suggests that brain glucagon action is not responsible for the waning of its effect on HGP. Disclosure D.S. Edgerton: Speaker9s Bureau; Self; Novo Nordisk A/S. G. Kraft: Consultant; Self; Metavention. B. Farmer: None. M.S. Smith: None. A.D. Cherrington: Board Member; Self; Biocon, Fractyl Laboratories, Inc., Metavention, Sensulin, LLC., vTv Therapeutics, Zafgen, Inc. Consultant; Self; Abvance, Boston Scientific Corporation, California Institute for Biomedical Research, Galvani Bioelectronics Limited, MedImmune, Novo Nordisk Inc., Thetis Pharmaceuticals LLC. Research Support; Self; Abvance, Diasome Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Novo Nordisk Inc. Stock/Shareholder; Self; Abvance, Biocon, Fractyl Laboratories, Inc., Metavention, Novo Nordisk Inc., Sensulin, LLC., Thetis Pharmaceuticals LLC, Zafgen, Inc. Funding National Institutes of Health


Osteochondritis dissecans of the patella is a rare condition. 15 patients who had been treated by surgery were evaluated retrospectively by clinical examination, standard radiographs of the patellofemoral joint and using the Lysholm-Score. The results of treatment were classified as good, sometimes excellent. The worst results were found in centrally located lesions or in chondromalacia changes occurred at the time of surgery.