As President of the Canadian Council on International Law (CCIL), it is my honor to make this tribute on behalf of the CCIL to Professor Ronald St. John Macdonald, who passed away on September 7, 2006. When Professor Macdonald passed away a few months ago, we in the CCIL lost our founder, our Honorary President, and our most loyal supporter. We also lost our friend. Thirty-five years ago, Professor Macdonald and a small group of Canadian international law scholars established the Canadian Council on International Law to promote the study and analysis in Canada of international legal issues. Professor Macdonald was elected Founding President. He remained a leading member and supporter of the CCIL for the rest of his life. The CCIL held a special session to honor Professor Macdonald at our last annual conference in October 2006. It was a remarkable event. Contributors spoke of the profound influence that Professor Macdonald had not only on international law, but also on their lives, both personally and professionally. It became evident that Professor Macdonald had mentored and assisted many in their studies and careers in international law. We learned that the CCIL was only one of Professor Macdonald's creations, for he seems to have been responsible for launching countless international law careers in Canada and abroad. The CCIL set up a page on its website where members could write tributes to Professor Macdonald. If you have a few moments, you would do well to read through the many essays and comments that tell the story of who was Professor Macdonald in a way no obituary ever could. Professor Macdonald's friends and admirers remembered so many special things about him and had come to know him in so many different ways. Many praised Professor Macdonald as a leading scholar and proponent of international law generally, and human rights law in particular. He contributed numerous articles and essays to various journals and books and was the impetus behind innumerable international law projects. Even during the last year of his life he was collaborating on yet another project he conceived dealing with the human fight to peace. Some spoke of Professor Macdonald as an influential teacher of international law; graduates from Osgoode Hall (1955-1959), University of Western Ontario (1959-1961), University of Toronto (1961-1972) and Dalhousie Law School (1972-1990) had the good fortune of having him as professor and dean. …


In this paper, we present a logistic fault-dependent detection model where the dependent-rate of detected faults in the software can grow much faster from the beginning but grow slowly as the testing progresses until it reaches the maximum number of faults in the software. The explicit function of the expected number of software failures detected by time t, called mean value function, of the proposed model is derived. Model analysis is discussed based on normalized-rank Euclidean distance (RED) and other criteria to illustrate the goodness-of-fit criteria of proposed model and compare it to several existing NHPP models using a set of software failure data. The confidence interval for the parameter estimates of the proposed model is also presented. A numerical analysis based on a real data set of the 7 or higher magnitude earthquake in the United States to illustrate the goodness-of-fit of the proposed model and a recent logistic growth model is also discussed. The results show that the proposed model fit significantly better than all the existing software reliability growth models.


In the pharmaceutical field, and more precisely in quality control laboratories, robust liquid chromatographic methods are needed to separate and analyze mixtures of compounds. The development of such chromatographic methods for new mixtures can result in a long and tedious process even while using the design of experiments methodology. However, developments could be accelerated with the help of in silico screening. In this work, the usefulness of a strategy combining response surface methodology (RSM) followed by multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA) applied to predictions from a quantitative structure–retention relationship (QSRR) model is demonstrated. The developed strategy shows that selecting equations for the retention time prediction models based on the pKa of the compound allows flexibility in the models. The MCDA developed is shown to help to make decisions on different criteria while being robust to the user's decision on the weights for each criterion. This strategy is proposed for the screening phase of the method lifecycle. The strategy offers the possibility to the user to select chromatographic conditions based on multiple criteria without being too sensitive to the importance given to them. The conditions with the highest desirability are defined as the starting point for further optimization steps.


This paper aims to investigate how competitiveness and structural factors have impacted on the dynamic of market shares in eight major world economies - China, France, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, The United Kingdom, The United States - over the period 1998-2007. To this end we apply the «constant market share» analysis by decomposing the growth in the exports of manufacturing sectors into five separate components according to the formulation suggested by Fagerberg and Sollie (Fagerberg and Sollie, 1987). In the empirical analysis we also use a sector breakdown following Pavitt's (1984) taxonomy, in order to highlight the relationship between innovation activities and export performance. Our main findings suggest that although Italian market shares have decreased both in the traditional sectors and specialized suppliers, the foreign trade structure is still strongly linked to these industries.


Introduction: Chest pain is a common reason for patients to attend emergency departments and be admitted to coronary care units. However, the cause of pain is non-cardiac in more than 50 % of these patients and many patients remain undiagnosed and symptomatic. Patients with non-cardiac chest pain do not differ from the general population in terms of long-term mortality, but they suffer from recurrent chest pain and frequently seek both primary and emergency care. There is therefore a need for targeted interventions in order to support patients with non-cardiac chest pain and minimize healthcare utilization and costs. Previous studies point out different psychosocial factors to be related to non-cardiac chest pain. However, to date there are few models taking into account the complex relationship between different clinical and psychosocial components that may cause non-cardiac chest pain.Purpose: To study the prevalence of and relationship between pain, depressive symptoms, anxiety, somatization, fear of bodily sensations, illness perception and quality of life in patients with non-cardiac chest pain in order to design a treatment programme.Methods: The study will have a descriptive design. Eligible for the study will be patients over the age of 18 who have been diagnosed with non-cardiac chest pain in four hospitals within a region in southeast Sweden. One thousand patients will be recruited, through patient registers provided by the hospitals, within one month from the day of admission. Data collection will start in the fall of 2013. Study information, written informed consent, all questionnaires, and a pre-stamped envelope will be sent to all eligible patients. Two reminders will be sent to patients who do not respond within 3 weeks from mail-out.Outcomes: The study will report on the relationship between chest pain, depressive symptoms, anxiety, somatization, fear of bodily sensations, illness perception, and quality of life. Data will be collected using the Brief Pain Inventory-Short Form, Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Cardiac Anxiety Questionnaire, Patient Health Questionnaire-15, Bodily Sensations Questionnaire, Brief Illness Perception Questionnaire, and EuroQol 5D.Study significance: This study will survey the complex relationship between different psychosocial factors and non-cardiac chest pain. This information will be of great interest when designing the optimal interventional programme in order to support patients with non-cardiac chest pain.


This viewpoint focuses on "platforming" as a major service innovation, which importance is now recognized in the organization of contemporary supply chains. On a technical level, "plat-forming" is based on the hub-and-spokes model, widely used in air transport, but also in retail logistics. Three historical examples show that the origins of "platforming" can be traced back to the often dramatic events that have marked the course of humanity, which puts the real originality of this service innovation into perspective.


Cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology and smart contracts could fundamentally change the way how financial products and financial services are implemented and operated. While many frameworks for implementing such blockchain applications already exist, these are usually implemented using languages either considered "fancy" today, like e.g. Go, or are traditionally used for system software, such as C++. On the other hand, the core business applications e.g. in financial services are typically implemented using enterprise platforms such as Java Enterprise Edition (EE) and/or COBOL. Therefore, to improve the integration of blockchain technology in such applications, in this paper we argue in favor of a legacy-friendly distributed ledger solution by introducing QWICSchain, an implementation build on web services using established open-source enterprise technologies such as Java EE and PostgreSQL. It supports the parallel execution of transactions on the blockchain and in existing legacy applications, thus enabling the blockchain-based modernization of existing IT infrastructures.


In this paper, we conducted a study on place-free and time-free cloud computing (CC) adoption decision-making model. Panel survey data which is collected from 65 people and CART (classification and regression tree) which is one of data mining approaches are used to construct decision-making model. In this modeling, there are 2 steps: In the first step, significant questions (variables) are selected. After that, the CART decision-making model is constructed using the selected variables. In the variable selection stage, the 25 questions are reduced to 5 ones. The benefits of question reduction are quick response from respondent and reducing model-construction time.


Sesquioxide single crystals, such as Y2O3, LU2O3, and SC2O3, have excellent thermal conductivity, thermal expansion coefficient, and relatively small phonon energy. They are the desired host materials for high power solid state lasers [1]. However, due to their high melting temperature it is extremely difficult to grow large size good optical quality sesquioxide single crystals, which prevented the wide applications of the materials as solid-state laser gain hosts. Different from the single crystal growth, ceramics are sintered at a temperature below the melting point, especially with the progress of nano-material synthesis technology high sinterability nano-powders could now be produced. Using nanopowders high quality ceramics can be sintered at even lower temperature. In this talk we show that by using the in-house synthesized nano-powders and the vacuum sintering plus hot isostatic pressing (HIP) method, high optical quality transparent sesquioxide ceramics can be produced even without using sintering aids. Rare-earth doped sesquioxide laser ceramics are fabricated and their high efficiency laser emission at 1.0μm, 2.μm, and 3.0μm wavelength regions are experimentally demonstrated.


Developmentally important signal transduction pathways such as those controlled by the secreted Wnt and Hedgehog (Hh) ligands are frequently exploited in cancerous cells to promote unfettered growth. We describe functional and chemical genomics-based efforts to recover actionable mechanisms sustaining cancer-associated Wnt and Hh signaling. We discuss chemically tractable strategies for disrupting the fatty acylation of Wnt proteins and unanticipated vulnerabilities in Hh signaling to inhibitors of the Bcl-2 antiapoptotic proteins. Our findings extend the portfolio of druggable enzymes with anti-cancer relevance and reveal novel compensatory prosurvival mechanisms in cancerous cells that incorporate developmental pathway components. Citation Format: Lawrence Lum. Targeting cancer cell dependencies on developmental signal transduction pathways. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Third AACR International Conference on Frontiers in Basic Cancer Research; Sep 18-22, 2013; National Harbor, MD. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2013;73(19 Suppl):Abstract nr IA32.


Management systems may influence the structural quality of soils. Tensile strength (TS) and friability (F) are indicators of soil structural quality. The aim of this study was to evaluate the TS and F of an Alfisol under different management systems. The treatments were as follows: (i) soil under conventional system with growing maize after tobacco cultivation, (ii) soil under conventional system with growing maize after use as pasture, (iii) soil under natural pasture, and (iv) a natural area with predominance of spontaneous vegetation. TS and F were evaluated at depths of 0.00-0.05 and 0.05-0.10 m. The water content of soil aggregates, soil particle-size distribution, total organic carbon, carbon in the coarse fraction and carbon associated with minerals were also determined. The increase in clay content and soil organic carbon influences the values of TS. The lowest TS was for the soil under maize cultivation after tobacco in the conventional system. Soil under natural area in the 0.05-0.10 m layer was classified as slightly friable, while other systems were classified as friable. Evaluations of the structural quality of soils under management systems can be performed using TS. However, F was not efficient in detecting changes between the different management systems.


Dr. Kori Inkpen is the CHCCS Achievement Award winner for 2017. For the past 25 years, she has worked in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), including ten years as a faculty member, first at Simon Fraser University and then at Dalhousie University, followed by another ten years in industry at Microsoft Research. Her research has focused on supporting collaboration in a variety of domains.

For the invited publication by the award winner that CHCCS includes in the proceedings, again this year we are experimenting with an interview format rather than a formal paper. This permits a casual discussion of the research area(s), insights, and contributions of the award winner. What follows is an edited transcript of a conversation between Kori Inkpen and Kellogg Booth that took place on April 13, 2017, via Skype.


This paper presents a motion planning framework for three-dimensional body shape control of snake robots. Whereas conventional motion planning approaches define the body shape of snake robots in terms of their individual joint angles, the proposed framework allows the body shape to be specified in terms of Cartesian coordinates in the environment of the robot. This approach simplifies motion planning since Cartesian coordinates are more intuitively mapped to the overall body shape of the snake robot. The paper demonstrates the applicability of the framework for realizing different types of three-dimensional motion patterns.


Pre-trained language models, such as BERT, have achieved significant accuracy gain in many natural language processing tasks. Despite its effectiveness, the huge number of parameters makes training a BERT model computationally very challenging. In this paper, we propose an efficient multi-stage layerwise training (MSLT) approach to reduce the training time of BERT. We decompose the whole training process into several stages. The training is started from a small model with only a few encoder layers and we gradually increase the depth of the model by adding new encoder layers. At each stage, we only train the top (near the output layer) few encoder layers which are newly added. The parameters of the other layers which have been trained in the previous stages will not be updated in the current stage. In BERT training, the backward computation is much more time-consuming than the forward computation, especially in the distributed training setting in which the backward computation time further includes the communication time for gradient synchronization. In the proposed training strategy, only top few layers participate in backward computation, while most layers only participate in forward computation. Hence both the computation and communication efficiencies are greatly improved. Experimental results show that the proposed method can achieve more than 110% training speedup without significant performance degradation.


Mucinous adenocarcinoma is an unusual histological type of lung cancer, and its clinicopathological feature is distinctive from that of other histopathological types of lung adenocarcinoma. Mucinous adenocarcinoma has a mucus-producing function, which explains its name. The present study reports a rare case of a mucus-producing adenocarcinoma of the lung. A 60-year-old Chinese female patient was diagnosed with mucinous adenocarcinoma of the lung, which manifested as respiratory symptoms, including fever, cough and expectoration. The patient received thoracic exploratory operation and right pneumonectomy, since the above respiratory symptoms seriously affected her daily life, and other inspections could not establish the diagnosis. Histopathology revealed no mutations in epidermal growth factor receptor. The patient received adjuvant chemotherapy using taxol and cisplatin. However, metastases in the left lung were detected 7 months after the operation. Pemetrexed and cisplatin were used as the second-line treatment. The patient survived 3 years after the initial diagnosis. The present study reports a rare mucus-producing adenocarcinoma of the lung, which is of bad prognosis. Therefore, further studies on this type of cancer are urgently required.


Night‐time observations of OH(3–1) rotational temperatures with SCIAMACHY (SCanning Imaging Absorption spectroMeter for Atmospheric CHartographY) on Envisat are used to study the sensitivity of equatorial mesopause temperatures to the 27‐day solar forcing. Fourier and cross‐correlation analysis are first used to demonstrate the presence of a solar‐driven 27‐day cycle in OH rotational temperatures. The temperature sensitivity to solar forcing is quantitatively evaluated based on a superposed epoch analysis that also demonstrates that the solar signal in the OH temperature time series is significant at the 99.9 % confidence level. The most remarkable result is that the temperature sensitivity to solar forcing in terms of the 27‐day solar cycle (βF10.7= 2.46 (±0.93) K/(100 sfu)) agrees within uncertainties with the majority of published sensitivity values in terms of the 11‐year solar cycle. This implies that the same underlying physical mechanism drives the mesopause temperature response to solar variability at both the 27‐day and the 11‐year time scale.


This paper examines the determinants of economic growth for Pakistan over a period of 1975-2005, using Autoregressive Regressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to Cointegration. The relation ship between economic growth, trade, external debt, labor force and education has been discussed in long term and short term. And it is found that labor force and trade have significant impact on economic growth whereas external debt has no association with economic growth in long term or short term indicating that it has not been used efficiently and productively. An appropriate policy to educate and develop the human resources of the country coupled with export oriented policies can help in accelerating the process of economic development and growth and that in turn can have multidimensional positive effects on the economy and economic conditions of common man.


A method for the on-line calculation of conversion rates and yield coefficients under dynamic process conditions was developed. The method is based on cumulated mass balances using a moving average method. Elemental balances were used to test the measured cumulated quantities for gross errors and inappropriate stoichiometry definition followed by data reconciliation and estimation of non-measured conversion rates, using a bioprocess set-up including multiple on-line analysis techniques. The quantitative potential of the proposed method is demonstrated by executing transient experiments in aerobic cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae on glucose. Rates and yield coefficients could be consistently quantified in shift-up, shift-down, and accelerostat experiments. The method shows the capability to describe quantitatively transient changes in metabolism including uncoupling of catabolism and anabolism, also for the case when multiple components of metabolism are not measured. The validity of the experiment can be evaluated on-line. Additionally, the method detects with high sensitivity inappropriate stoichiometry definition, such as a change in state of metabolism. It was shown that concentration values can be misleading for the identification of the metabolic state. In contrast, the proposed method provides a clear picture of the metabolic state and new physiological regulations could be revealed. Hence, the novelty of the proposed method is the on-line availability of consistent stoichiometric coefficients allowing a significant speed up in strain characterization and bioprocess development using minimal knowledge of the metabolism. Additionally, it opens up the use of transient experiments for physiological studies.


The ability of cytochalasin to alter phosphoinositide metabolism was evaluated in naive, murine splenic B lymphocytes. The generation of total inositol phosphates was stimulated by treatment with cytochalasin D, as was the generation of inositol trisphosphate. The cytochalasin-induced increase in inositol phosphates appeared to depend on interaction with actin, and it was inhibited by phorbol esters. Inositol phosphate production was not stimulated in splenic T lymphocytes. The results suggest that the previously observed increase in intracellular calcium produced by cytochalasin is part of a more generalized signaling event that includes phosphoinositide turnover, and, further, raise the possibility of a functional association between actin and phospholipase C.


The wheat grain comprises three groups of major components, starch, protein, and cell wall polysaccharides (dietary fiber), and a range of minor components that may confer benefits to human health. Detailed analyses of dietary fiber and other bioactive components were carried out under the EU FP6 HEALTHGRAIN program on 150 bread wheat lines grown on a single site, 50 lines of other wheat species and other cereals grown on the same site, and 23-26 bread wheat lines grown in six environments. Principal component analysis allowed the 150 bread wheat lines to be classified on the basis of differences in their contents of bioactive components and wheat species (bread, durum, spelt, emmer, and einkorn wheats) to be clearly separated from related cereals (barley, rye, and oats). Such multivariate analyses could be used to define substantial equivalence when novel (including transgenic) cereals are considered.


The Advanced Scatterometer (ASCAT) onboard the Metop-A satellite became operational shortly after launch in 2006, and an absolute calibration using three transponders was achieved in November 2008. In this paper, we describe how the CMOD5.n ocean backscatter geophysical model function (GMF), which was derived using data from previous scatterometers onboard the European Remote Sensing 1 and 2 satellites (ERS-1 and ERS-2), was used to derive backscatter bias correction factors. The purpose is to remove the bias between ASCAT backscatter data and the CMOD5.n GMF output which allows these data to be used in place of ERS data in existing wind processing algorithms. The ASCAT Wind Data Processor, developed at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute (KNMI), applies the bias correction factors to ASCAT data and uses CMOD5.n to retrieve wind vectors in order to produce an operational wind product. This resulted in a stable and high-quality ASCAT wind product since February 2007. We validate this product by comparing it to the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) winds and buoy measurements. The bias correction factors indicate that ASCAT data and the GMF differ by roughly 0.3 dB below 55 ? and up to 0.8 dB above 55 ?. A possible explanation lies in CMOD5.n which has been poorly validated in this incidence angle regime. Validation of ASCAT data using the ocean calibration method confirms this result and also indicates that bias-corrected data are everywhere within 0.3 dB of CMOD5.n. The wind product validation shows an rms error of 1.3 m ?s-1 in wind speed and 16 ? in wind direction when compared to ECMWF winds. This is better than the results achieved using ERS scatterometer data. Against buoy winds, we find an rms error wind component error of approximately 1.8 m ?s-1 . These results show that the ASCAT wind product is of high quality and satisfies its wind component accuracy requirement of 2 m ?s-1.


The demands are increasing on material properties, lowering the mass of components, and lowering production costs are all strong drivers for the development of low-alloyed steels with high strength, which are low cost owing to their low content of alloying elements. Modern advanced low-alloyed steels processed in unconventional ways of heat or thermomechanical treatment can reach substantially better mechanical properties when compared to conventional treatments. Experiments were carried out to test several strategies of thermomechanical treatment of a newly designed low-alloyed high-strength steel 42SiCr with about 0.4% C and 2% Si. The aim of the experiment was to develop and optimize a new type of heat treatment based on the Q&P process (Quenching & Partitioning) which should be capable of achieving strengths of up to 2000 MPa with ductility of 10%. During the optimization process, the main focus was on the influence of various intensities of incremental deformations and the speed of cooling on the development of the structure. By modelling the treatment, a microstructure was obtained formed of a martensite matrix, bainite and finely diffused retained austenite. The influence of the technological process parameters on the structure development was analyzed using several microscopic methods and the resulting mechanical properties were measured by means of a tensile test. The volume fraction of the retained austenite was established by X-ray diffraction phase analysis.


Summary An attempt was made to partition changes in milk yield during lactation in the rat between changes in the size of the secretory cell population and changes in cellular activity. Groups of rats were studied on d 2, 7, 14, 21 and 28 of lactation. Milk yield increased between d 2 and 7, less markedly between d 7 and 14 and decreased between d 14 and 21. Milk secretion had apparently ceased on d 28. Total mammary DNA (DNAt) and RNA (RNAt) increased from d 2 to 14. It is concluded that of the increase in milk yield between d 2 and 14, an increase in cell population accounted for 75% and an increase in cellular activity for 25%. A decrease in activity appeared to be entirely responsible for the decrease in yield between d 14 and 21.


Sequences of the HIV-2 envelope C2-C3 region were obtained after direct PCR amplification of proviral DNA from the brain and peripheral blood mononuclear cells of an HIV-2-infected AIDS patient. Tissue-specific sequences confirmed previous observations that HIV-2 is indeed present in the central nervous system of infected individuals. Distinct but related quasi-species were present in these two different tissues of the same individual. Residues at position 18 and 19 of the V3 loop and overall charge of the loop suggest that the brain virus was NSI/macrophage tropic; whereas the sequences from the two blood samples were indicative of a SI/T-cell tropic virus. This is the first description of these two genotypes in the same HIV-2-infected individual. Analysis of more samples from different compartments would help to better understand tissue-specific factors in quasi-species evolution in vivo.


Abstract Ultramafic xenoliths enclosed in Plio-Quaternary alkali basalts from Tallante near Cartagne (southern Spain) are composed mainly of spinel lherzolites which are probably upper mantle residues. In many xenoliths, the spinel lherzolite is cut by pyroxenite or gabbroic anorthosite veinlets generally 0.2–3 cm thick. The clinopyroxenite veinlets were formed by high-pressure crystal-liquid segregation from alkali basalt magmas formed earlier than the host basalts, whereas mantle metasomatism played a role in the genesis of gabbroic anorthosites. Close to the contact with the veinlets, the spinel lherzolites are enriched in Ca, Fe, and some incompatible elements including light REE due to the migration of a fluid from the veinlets into the surrounding lherzolites. The host alkali basalts were derived from a heterogeneous, incompatible element-enriched upper-mantle source probably similar in composition and nature to the composite xenoliths, but were formed in a garnet stability field.


: Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) must have the capability and strategy to seize opportunities and renew the market. The business's success shows by being able to survive and be able to provide prosperity for entrepreneurs. This research examines business success in SMEs in Mataram City, which is associated with entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial competence, and entrepreneurial leadership. The research sample takes from all SMEs in Mataram City, which has official permission from the government. Data collection was carried out by distributing questionnaires to SME leaders. The results show that entrepreneurial orientation, entrepreneurial competence, and entrepreneurial leadership can be aspects that can increase business success.


Non-indigenous species (NIS) represent one of the most relevant threats to biodiversity, ecosystem functioning and human activities, and their occurrence and spread have been the subject of numerous works and revisions. However, the information available is rather confused for several taxa, including polychaetes, which are characterised by having a high number of cryptogenic and questionable species. This work aims at providing a revised checklist of alien polychaetes occurring along the coasts of Italy, based on the examination of newly collected and deposited material and on the critical analysis of published and gray literature, and whenever possible on the re-examination of historical material. Of the 86 polychaete species reported as NIS in Italian waters, 25 are confirmed as alien species, while 3 are cryptogenic, and 40 should be considered questionable. Finally, 18 species were excluded from non-indigenous species checklists, either because they are native, or because they represent misidentifications of other species. The high number of cryptogenic and questionable species points at the need of molecular studies and taxonomic revisions for the majority of polychaete taxa reported as NIS, in order to clarify their taxonomy, origin, introduction pathways and spreading patterns.


This research focus on Islamic ideology in the redactional policy, that was one of the internal factor when creating a Republika news product towards PKB conflict, Ahmadiyah cult and Fitna controversy. The analysis of content at PKB's conflict was shown Republika's neutral display. Its neutral display was shown by the theme, the option of people who was being the source. While, at the Fairclough text analysis, Republika was shown the negative effect from that conflict which didn't have the good effect for two sides, but could bring the negative effect for the party. For the news of Ahmadiyah, the content analysis was shown Republika's position as one side which against Ahmadiyah with used perception that Ahmadiyah is untrue side. From the research the researcher done, there 's a conclusion that islamic ideology in the Republika redactional policy, can be categorized as the form of conservative Islamic ideology.


Acute gastric volvulus requires emergency surgery, and a laparoscopic approach for both acute and chronic gastric volvulus was reported recently to give good results. The case of a 50-year-old patient with acute primary gastric volvulus who was treated by laparoscopic reduction and percutaneous endoscopic gastrostomy is described here. This approach seems to be feasible and safe for not only chronic gastric volvulus, but also acute gastric volvulus.


Intraoperative echographic studies of the ascending aorta were carried out on 100 of 222 patients having primary coronary bypass surgeries between May 1987 and December 1988. The purpose of this study was to investigate the feasibility of echographic study in evaluating the nature of atherosclerotic disease of the ascending aorta and its incidence and relationship to perioperative cerebrovascular complications in coronary bypass surgery. It was possible to obtain clear echographic images of the aortic wall in these 100 patients which were divided into two groups according to the degree of the degenerative process. Three of 13 patients (23%) (Group II) with severe atherosclerotic changes, suffered perioperative cerebrovascular complications, and early surgical mortality in 2 patients (15%) was caused by cerebrovascular complications. These complications were not seen in 87 patients with less than moderate atherosclerotic changes (Group I).


The "Law on Civil Unions of Same-Sex" has caused a strong polarization of opinios. For this study was chosen an exploratory methodology involving the application of 94 structured interviews of people from different social groups. It is presented the arguments agree and against, the perceptions of the group, the possible effects if it is approved the project, knowledge and image of the same sex and knowledge of the law project. Some results are: religion-God-is as central in the discussion, the marriage is seen as sacred and perfect, procreation is presented as a main objective of the couples, sexuality is a source of love or sin; homosexuality is stigmatized by people against as a source of social deterioration.


Abstract The majority of the biomass and biodiversity of life on the Earth is accounted for by microbes. They play pivotal roles in biogeochemical cycles and harbour novel metabolites that have industrial uses. For these reasons the conservation of microbial ecosystems, communities and even specific taxa should be a high priority. We review the reasons for including microorganisms in conservation agenda. We discuss some of the complications in this endeavour, including the unresolved argument about whether microorganisms have intrinsic value, which influences some of the non-instrumental motivations for their conservation and, from a more pragmatic perspective, exactly what it is that we seek to conserve (microorganisms, their habitats or their gene pools). Despite complications, priorities can be defined for microbial conservation and we provide practical examples of such priorities.


The clinical signs, gross and microscopic appearance, treatment, and follow-up results of 35 dogs with primary ocular melanomas are reviewed. The melanomas are classified as epibulbar or intraocular based on the site of origin. The intraocular tumors are classified as spindle A, spindle B, mixed spindle B and epithelioid, and purely epithelioid based on cytologic criteria. The pathologic findings are matched with the follow-up history in an attempt to determine which features have prognostic significance. The findings are contrasted to those of similar studies of spontaneous ocular melanomas in man.


The local stability of the Tokamak is discussed and a general approximate criteria β < 2c|η |ψc obtained, where η is the longitudinal magneticwell. Furthermore, the influence of multipole' fields on the longitudinal magnetic well and the magnetic shear is discuss. It is observed that small triangular and octopole field components may considerably stabilize a Tokamak of elliptical cross-section.


To get insight into the fluid regime evolution during formation of Guli massif (Maymecha-Kotuy magmatic complex, Syberia) carbonatites we have studied C, N and Ar isotopic and elemental ratios in foure carbonatite samples by stepwise crushing method. Mineral separates representing different formation stages of the massif have been selected for the investigation: two early calcites (Cal) and a late stage dolomite (Dol) and siderite (Sid).
The early calcites are carachterized by significantly lower CO 2 content and lower δ 13 C values than the late Dol and Sid (-14.1, -13.6‰ and -9.0, -10.5‰ in average respectively). Fractionation during melt degassing (when system is closing) could lead to a higher CO 2 content with higher d 13 C values in the late minerals. But the results on C, N and Ar elemental compositions in the fluid inclusions have shown that C/N and C/Ar ratios also dramatically increase from the early to the late samples (C/N: from 7 in Cal to 210 in Sid and 2100 in Dol; C/Ar ; from 870 in Cal to 12300 in Sid and 159000 in Dol), which could not be caused by a simple magmatic fractionation. An additional source of CO 2 could appear at the late stages of the fluid-magmatic evolution of the massif. The data on C, N and Ar concentration variations in crushing steps support this assumption: well-defined correlations between concentrations of these elements in fluid inclusions are observed in the early Cal (i.e. all gases in the inclusions have the same elemental composition and concequently the same source). For the late Sid and Dol the situation is different: when N and Ar concentrations decrease with crushing steps, the C concentration is increasing, suggesting different sources for (N+Ar) and for most of CO 2 . Moreover, 40 Ar/ 36 Ar ratios in early and late samples are quite different: 3680 in Cal and 657 and 549 in Sid and Dol, respectively. This suggests the air-like argon component to be domineted in fluids during formation of the late minerals.
Thus, relationships between C, N and Ar concentrations as well as differences in C and Ar isotopic compositions in fluid inclusions of the early and late carbonitites suggest that at the late stages of Guli massif carbonatites formation an additional CO 2 source with havier carbon and atmosphere-like Ar have contributed to the system.


Abstract. Indoor maps are required for multiple applications, such as, navigation, building maintenance and robotics. One of common methods for map generation is laser scanning. In such maps, not only geometry of the map is of interest, but also its quality. This study aims at developing methods for real-time generation of indoor maps using features extracted from pointclouds obtained by a robot with their simultaneous quality assessment. We investigate, how this quality can be quantified for feature-based maps. First, we introduce a method for modeling 2D maps into 3D models that enable their usage for localization. Second, we review and evaluate a number of algorithms that can enable us to address features in a map. Hence, we enable the generation of objects from a pointcloud that has been sensed. Finally, we study several aspects of the map quality and we formalize them into metrics that can be applied to quantify their quality.


Endomicrobia represent a candidate class in the Elusimicrobia phylum (formerly Termite Group 1) and were originally described as obligate intracellular symbionts of gut flagellates in lower termites. However, 16S rRNA gene sequences of Endomicrobia have been detected also in the gut of insects that do not possess such flagellates, e.g. higher termites and cockroaches. When we eliminated the large gut flagellates of Reticulitermes santonensis by feeding a starch diet, we discovered novel lineages of Endomicrobia that were hitherto undetected in normally faunated specimens. The new phylotypes are clearly separated from the endosymbionts of gut flagellates and fall into the radiation of those from flagellate-free insects. Comprehensive phylogenetic analysis documented that Endomicrobia comprise an apical cluster of endosymbionts that is not necessarily monophyletic and several apparently basal lineages that include bacteria present in the gut of defaunated lower termites, the naturally flagellate-free guts of higher termites and scarab beetle larvae, and in the cow rumen. We propose that these lineages represent hitherto undetected free-living Endomicrobia that share a common ancestor with the intracellular symbionts.


The purpose of this paper is to examine the risks of HIV transmission to children through sexual abuse and exploitation in sub-Saharan Africa. The paper is based on a review of pertinent literature. Child sexual abuse in this region must be defined broadly enough to encompass widespread coercion or violence in early sexual relations in some regions, the practice of 'transactional sex' and constructions of masculinity, emphasising multiple sexual partners and power over women and girls. The high HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa is briefly described. Research evidence showing the link between child sexual abuse and HIV transmission is reviewed, although this is a topic where very little direct empirical work has been conducted. Particular methodological and ethical difficulties have been encountered by researchers. Future research directions are indicated. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


In Chagar Hutang, Redang Island, Dorylus laevigatus and Pheidologeton affinis were the dominant predatory ant species of the green turtle nests, and it was hypothesized that they were competitors to each other. Both species consisted of polymorphic workers, and conducted mass raiding upon turtle nests. As a result of the observation of foraging behavior of ant species in 2004 by using food traps, D. laevigatus (a subterranean species) shared the bait with some terrestrial ant species in the early stage of the experiment except P. affinis. However, P. affinis was a terrestrial species and established satellite nests in the traps to occupy the bait. Traps placed in the habitat of Anoplolepis gracilipes were immediately occupied by them during whole experimental period and other terrestrial ant species were not found in the traps. Anoplolepis gracilipes seemed to be the strongest competitor among the terrestrial ant species in Chagar Hutang, which might result in reduction of the population number of P. affinis with the existence of A. gracilipes. As a result, D. laevigatus became a major predator upon turtle nests, which might have caused the high rate of predation incidences in this area in 2004. The elimination of A. gracilipes may reduce predation incidences upon turtle nests by D. laevigatus.


This study investigated the perception of conductors' body movements under different viewing conditions with a multi-modal within-subjects design. Five conductors with different levels of experience each conducted four excerpts from a Beethoven symphony that varied in musical expressiveness. Video recordings were manipulated according to three occlusion conditions: a) only the face was visible, b) only the arms were visible and c) the whole body was visible in simulated peripheral vision. 127 musically trained or untrained participants first watched, without sound, randomly presented video sequences according to these conditions. For each sequence, they were asked to rate affective and communicative items. Complete video sequences with sound were then presented as a reference and rated similarly. Video sequences that presented the conductors' faces resembled the reference significantly better than the arms-only or the peripheral conditions in terms of expressiveness ratings. Sequences showing the arms were judged higher in amount of information. For the movements of all conductors, clear interpretation differences between the four musical excerpts appeared even for conditions without sound. Differences between conductors were related to their general affective behaviour and to evaluations of four conducting experts. The findings generally highlight the importance of facial affective behaviour for expressive conducting.


This study aims to present environmental sensitivity and awareness of university students. The first and fourth year students of landscape architecture, town and regional planning and environmental engineering undergraduate programs at universities throughout Ankara, Turkey were selected as participants since these programs' curricula focus on environment. A questionnaire survey was applied to 212 students face to face. Research findings show that even though students take many courses on the environmental issues, their environmental awareness and environmentally responsible behaviors are lower than the expected and students' grades show no significance on the results. It is concluded that environmental knowledge do not always influence awareness and behavioral intentions,  a national strategy is needed for environmental education in higher education, and current curricula should be reconsidered in terms of effectiveness.

 Key words:  Environmental awareness, environmental sensitivity, environmental education, higher education.


Jamie Mayerfeld has written a wise and morally sensitive book that he hopes will compel readers to take seriously their "prima facie duty to relieve suffering" (p. 9). Insofar as "attention to suffering has been a casualty of a long series of attacks on hedonistic utilitarianism" (p. 3), Mayerfeld offers a thorough account of the nature of suffering and argues for the view that its badness imposes a universal prima facie duty for people to try to avoid suffering. Since the purpose of moral inquiry is "to identify wrong kinds of behavior so that we can avoid them" (p. 7), Mayerfeld, not himself a utilitarian, follows a catholic approach and skillfully draws upon arguments from utilitarians, deontologists, Aristotelians, hedonists, psychologists, and philosophers to support his moral intuitions.


Modelling and prediction of vortex-induced vibrations (VIV) of marine risers is a challenging task due to the associated multi degrees of freedom in both cross-flow/in-line directions and the multi-mode fluid-structure interactions. In addition, the axial motion and its geometrically nonlinear coupling with lateral responses can be significant, especially at higher-order modes. Nevertheless, several papers in the literature dealing with VIV predictions have often overlooked such aspects. Therefore, this study aims to investigate and understand the effect of axial or longitudinal motion through a theoretical model and numerical approach in time domain. Attention is paid to VIV of vertical risers subjected to linearly sheared currents. To capture a three-dimensional aspect of the flexible cylinder experiencing VIV, a semiempirical model is developed consisting of nonlinear equations of cross-flow, in-line and axial structural oscillations which are coupled with the distributed van der Pol-type wakeoscillators modelling the fluctuating fluid lift/drag forces. The mean drag force is also taken into account. These model equations are numerically solved via a space-time finite difference scheme, and the obtained numerical results highlight several aspects of VIV of elastic cylinders along with the axial motion effects. Apart from the validation of the numerical model with published experimental results, this study reveals how the effect of axial motion and its nonlinear coupling with the two lateral cross-flow/in-line motions can be very important. These depend on the flow velocity, the fluid-structure parameters, the single or multi-mode lock-in condition, and the standing-wave or travelling-wave feature. We recommend that the axial response should be accounted for in VIV analysis and prediction model.


The present study evaluates the feasibility of partially dealuminated natural mordenite as a catalyst support by studying improvement in its textural properties. This is the first study that reports the dealumination of natural zeolite-based tuffs from Ecuador. For this purpose, mordenite-rich tuffs were obtained from deposits close to Guayaquil, Ecuador. The raw material was micronized in order to increase its surface, and treated with NH4Cl. NH4+ cation-exchanged samples were finally reacted with HCl(aq) to complete the dealumination process. The partially dealuminated samples were characterized using techniques such as XRD, FT-IR, SEM-EDS, and identification of their textural properties. Dealumination with HCl(aq) increased the Si/Al ratio up to 9 and kept the crystallographic structure of natural mordenite, as XRD results showed that the structure of mordenite was not altered after the dealumination process. On the other hand, textural properties such as surface area and microporosity were improved as compared to natural mordenite. In view of these results, the feasibility of using natural mordenite as a catalyst support is discussed in this study.


Purpose
Though shopkeepers in small enterprises (SSEs) are pioneers in rethinking retirement, working ages and the lifestyles of an aging society, some pertinent health issues remain unexplored. Using narratives of shopkeepers in small, rural enterprises, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the ways of thinking about health maintenance.

Design/methodology/approach
This study employed an ethnographic approach. In total, 20 shopkeepers and residents in a rural shopping street in Tohoku, in northeast Japan, were interviewed between June 2016 and May 2017. These interviews were analysed inductively.

Findings
The ways shopkeepers think about health maintenance are expressed through an interaction with their personal history. Shopkeepers and customers used narratives to arrive at novel methods to re-think health maintenance. Through data analysis, the cultural theme of maintaining vitality through long-lasting self-struggle supported by cooperation and familiar membership was identified. This cultural theme was related to three sub-themes: struggle stimulated by flexibility and responsibility; cooperation by devoting personal capital; and compensation through family support.

Practical implications
There is a growing focus on the important role that SSEs play in rural health. The results of this study will enable rural nurses to approach and develop health via communal interaction. In addition, the support of the family through cooperation at home should be enhanced.

Originality/value
There exists the potential for shopkeepers to develop a care strategy for small enterprise-related work. This strategy could enhance active ageing and promote a sustainable healthy life.


The stability of linear detectors for signals nominally known except for amplitude in correlated nominally Gaussian noise is considered. Stability is defined in terms of bounds on the distribution of the test statistic as the true probability measure on the observation space varies in a Prokhorov neighborhood of the nominal; the derived stability index is independent of the neighborhood size. An optimization problem is formulated and solved to give the most stable linear detector meeting a Constraint on the nominal level of detectability.


This paper presents a systematic methodology to design efficient sub-90-nm split-gate Flash-memory cells and optimize the cell performance within the presently known scaling constraints. The device-simulation results show that the high-performance sub-90-nm split-gate cells can be realized by a proper optimization of the channel and asymmetric halo-doping profiles and shallow source/drain junctions. In this paper, the halo-and channel-doping profiles were optimized to achieve the target drain-programming voltage Vsp = 6.5 V for an efficient cell programming, whereas keeping the breakdown voltage BV > Vsp with tolerable leakage currents. It is shown that, using the properly optimized technology parameters, 65-nm split-gate Flash memory can be achieved with cell-read current, Ir1 ap 235 mum, programmed cell-leakage current, Ir0 < 2.2 nA/ mum at the read condition, time-to-program ap 30 mus, and time-to-erase ap 40 mus. This paper clearly demonstrates the feasibility of high-performance 65-nm split-gate Flash-memory cells.


Objectives. The aim of this study was to evaluate clinical and US-PD parameters in PsA during adalimumab treatment. Methods. A retrospective study has been conducted in forty patients affected by moderate-to-severe peripheral PsA. Clinical, laboratory, and US-PD evaluations were performed at baseline, after 4, 12, and 24 weeks of treatment. They included erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), visual analogue scale (VAS), Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) modified for Spondyloarthritis, Psoriasis Area Severity Index (PASI) score, the 28-joint Disease Activity Score (DAS 28), and US-PD assessment. US-PD findings were scored according to a semiquantitative scale (ranging 0–3) for synovial proliferation (SP), joint effusion (SE), bone erosions (BE), and PD. Results. Data obtained for clinical, laboratory findings and US-PD evaluation showed statistical significant improvement in all the measures performed except for BE. A significant parallel decrease in SE, SP, and PD values were demonstrated. Conclusion. This study demonstrated that US-PD is a valid technique in monitoring the response to adalimumab in moderate-to-severe PsA.


A new method of synthesizing neural network for comparing, identifying, and classifying various objects through bipolar encoding of their attributes is offered. The mentioned method broadens the neuron network applicability sphere for solving tasks of identification and classification due to the use of proximity functions applying finer proximity attributes for discrete objects than the Hemming's distance.


The paper elaborates on the issues of social entrepreneurship. Discusses the main trends definitional concepts of social economy "and" social enterprise. The second part includes an analysis of selected forms of social enterprises operating in rural areas – social cooperatives, organizations and associations and thematic villages. The Polish countryside is dominated by social cooperatives and foundations and associations. The new form which requires further development are thematic villages.


The problem of designing a locally optimum (LO) detector to remove narrowband interference from spread spectrum signal is considered here. The interference is modeled as pth order autoregressive (AR(p)) process. A new exact expression is derived for the AR(l) model signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) whereas for the general AR(p) case, an approximate expression for the SIR is presented. Simulation results are presented to prove the validity of the model


It is essential to lighten the weight of switch girders in order to reduce their costs of manufacturing and make it easier to use them in construction. Lightening the weight of switch is also important to the Maglev 3-way switches system, however, the design variables should be considered very carefully if lightening is to be applied to the system, because these variables are vitally related to the levitation stability. Because Urban Maglev trains have a structure in which train bogie wraps around the guiderail, the adjustment of a girder's height is a possible way to reduce the weight. The safety of the application of this concept is ensured by repeated experiments in a test bed, however, due to a lack of space and budget limits, the design parametric study for the system model can substitute for actual application. The purpose of this paper is to study the design parameters that are concerned with levitation stability while a Maglev train is running on the Maglev 3-way system depending on the weight of the switch girders. In this study, switch girder weight is reduced by adjustment of girder height and girders are and modeled as a flexible body. The effect of the adjustment of girder height on the levitation stability can be analyzed by comparing the velocity of the train when it passes the switch girders, with the lateral gap, and the levitation gap which are obtained from the co-simulation of the Maglev train's dynamics model and flexible switching system. The results of this research will be used to design a Maglev switch.


Abstract. Historic monuments and buildings are critical cultural assets which cannot be presented by again by human beings. Longer affected by natural climate, environment and biological behavior (including human), resulting in damage and the need for repair. Therefore, UNESCO proposed periodic reporting and reactive monitoring in 2007, in order to achieve "early detection, early repair". This study discusses about suitable preservation monitoring methods for Taiwan. To shed light on damage and impact factors of historical buildings and cultural relics, the study is based on impact and sensor, monitoring method, monitoring period and maintenance personnel in order to propose standard operating procedures of monitoring method. To reduce the rate of the human and sensor monitoring, with the long-term monitoring data analysis, it is calculated that 30 minutes is the best period of data collecting. Besides, the study is adopted regression analysis to select temperature variable only then calculate humidity variable function. This study provides a reference monitoring method for monitoring personnel and maintenance personnel, and establishes a long-term monitoring data based information for damage and destroy in the future. Monitoring period and maintenance personnel can follow the data based to find out the damage points and problems, to keep the value of cultural assets.


The notion of theatre has escaped from its conventional consistency into a state of amorphousness that seems to admit practically every form of physical interaction between people. This inconsistency is a consequence of the growing disaffection with conventional Western theatre's textuality and illusionism, and the influence of the postmodern critique of received orthodoxies. These conditions have enabled the emergence of performance as the practical and analytical category and the consequent accommodation of 'other theatres' and popular cultures within the discipline of theatre studies. This paper furthers this critical direction by examining the manner in which popular Pentecostalism in Africa deploys the technologies of performance in its evangelism. Adopting a performance studies perspective, the paper focuses on Chris Oyakhilome, the renowned Nigerian pastor, and credits his evangelical success to his dexterity as a performer; one who consciously exploits his body and every available media to influence an audience in pre-determined directions.


INTRODUCTION
The patient-centered medical home model stresses the importance of team-based care as a foundation to improving care, costs, and patient experience. Medical assistants (MAs) are being used as key care team members even as traditional educational programs may not equip them for this new way of working.

METHODS
This paper describes an on-the-job, predominantly virtual training program aimed at building care teams by redefining the role of the MA and fostering team-based functioning. Participating MAs, clinic managers, and clinicians in 11 primary care clinics completed 18-item pre- and post-training surveys to assess confidence in MA skills and performance. In-depth 1-hour qualitative interviews were conducted with selected participating MAs, managers, and clinicians to assess MA self-efficacy and to understand their use of new skills.

RESULTS
MAs, clinicians, and managers agreed that MAs improved skills in planned care and population management, self-management support and health coaching, and interdisciplinary communication and collaboration. MAs reported a positive training experience, that they shared their knowledge with other MAs in their clinic, and that their job satisfaction increased.

DISCUSSION
A predominantly virtual 12-week program built the skills and confidence of MAs in proactive population management, health coaching, and collaboration and communication. This program shows the promise of a virtual approach to training that identifies, trains, and recognizes high-potential MAs.


The promotion of non-hydrocarbon investments remains the main occupation of the Algerian government. The Algerian economy's dependence on hydrocarbons sector remains with 95% of export earnings, despite all the efforts and attempts token by the Algerian state. Over the last few decades, several measures have been adopted to encourage entrepreneurship and boost investment, by lessening the constraints that face the entrepreneur, in particular, the access of finance. To alleviate this problem, the Algerian government has created, in 20014, the Guarantee Fund for Loans to SMEs (FGAR). It provides guarantees on loans to borrowers by covering a share of the default risk. The aim of this paper is to evaluate the performance of this fund, as a guarantee provider, by analyzing its data and examining its effect on the level of the development of entrepreneurship in Algeria since its creation. The main result is that this guarantee fund has a positive tangible impact on the development of entrepreneurship. Though it has grown in terms of number, entrepreneurship still face various challenges and issues in both enterprise and environment levels that undermine their business conduct. Therefore, much effort is needed in the future to promote and boost the entrepreneurship in order to benefit from all the advantages it gives. Keyword: entrepreneurship, SMEs, FGAR guarantee fund, economic development, finance.


Novel three-dimensional (3D) interconnected hierarchical sponge-like porous carbons (PCs) using Zn-based MOFs (Zn(tbip)) with two distinct particle sizes as precursors were prepared via a one-step pyrolysis process. The size effect of the precursor on the porous architecture has been evaluated in detail. The porous carbon derived from small-sized Zn(tbip) at 900 °C (denoted as C-S-900) possesses a hierarchical porous structure with the highest specific surface area (1356 m2 g−1), which benefits ion immersion and retention. C-S-900 demonstrates an ultrahigh specific capacitance of 369 and 226 F g−1 at 10 and 400 mV s−1 in a 6 mol L−1 KOH electrolyte, respectively. In addition, a symmetric flexible all-solid-state supercapacitor device was assembled with the electrode of C-S-900 and PVA/KOH gel electrolyte. The device can offer 96% capacity after 2000 stretching–bending cycles and operate micro-electronic devices displaying excellent mechanical robustness and cycling stability. The present work explored the relationship between the size effect of MOF precursors and the porous carbon architectures to optimize the performance of supercapacitors.


With the increase in frequency and severity of flash flood events in major cities around the world, the infrastructure and people living in those urban areas are exposed continuously to high risk levels of pluvial flooding. The situation is likely to be exacerbated by the potential impact of future climate change. A fast flood model could be very useful for flood risk analysis. One-dimensional (1D) models provide limited information about the flow dynamics whereas two-dimensional (2D) models require substantial computational time and cost, a factor that limits their use. This paper presents an alternative approach using cellular automata (CA) for 2D modelling. The model uses regular grid cells as a discrete space for the CA setup and applies generic rules to local neighbourhood cells to simulate the spatio-temporal evolution of pluvial flooding. The proposed CA model is applied to a hypothetical terrain and a real urban area. The synchronous state updating rule and inherent nature of the proposed model contributes to a great reduction in computational time. The results are compared with a hydraulic model and good agreement is found between the two models. doi: 10.2166/hydro.2012.245 Bidur Ghimire Albert S. Chen (corresponding author) Michele Guidolin Edward C. Keedwell Slobodan Djordjević Dragan A. Savić Centre for Water Systems, College of Engineering Mathematics & Physical Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, EX4 4QF, United Kingdom E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com


Protein-energy malnutrition (PEM) is associated with decreased host immune defense. Glutathione (GSH) status is reported to be decreased in PEM, and GSH is important for lymphocyte function. The objective of the present study was to investigate the effects of PEM and dietary repletion (RP) on GSH status in various tissues and splenocytes and on CD3-mediated calcium mobilization and cell proliferation of splenic T-lymphocytes. For the PEM model, mice were fed a 0.5% protein diet (LP group) for 4 or 6 wk, and control mice were fed a 15% protein diet (CP group). In the RP study, LP mice were fed the 15% protein diet for 3 d, 1 wk, 2 wk or 3 wk (RP groups). Glutathione concentrations were significantly lower in liver, lung, heart and spleen of LP mice compared with CP mice at 4 and 6 wk. Splenocytes from LP mice were significantly lower in number and had a lower intracellular GSH concentration, depressed CD3-stimulated T-lymphocyte proliferation in culture media without thiol supplementation (2-mercaptoethanol), and enhanced CD3-stimulated proliferation in thiol-supplemented culture media compared with splenocytes from CP mice. CD3-stimulated calcium mobilization was significantly lower in CD8, but not CD4, splenocytes from LP mice. Within 1 wk of dietary repletion, splenocyte GSH concentration was normal and splenocyte numbers were greater, and in vitro sensitivity of CD3-stimulated T-lymphocyte proliferation to thiol was lower, compared with LP mice. Glutathione status in vivo and thiol supplementation in vitro seem to modulate the signal transduction pathway for T-lymphocyte proliferation in mice with PEM. J. Nutr. 127: 44–


BACKGROUND
We report a case of a large blue mongolian spot which led to early diagnosis of Hurler's syndrome. This association is uncommon and should be recognized by dermatologists for early diagnosis and management.

CASE REPORT
A male infant from Guinea, born to first-cousin parents, was seen at the age of 4.5 months for multiple, particularly extensive blue mongolian spots. Growth was +2 SD for age and the infant's psychomotor development was normal. A slight thickening of the skin was noticed without real dysmorphism. The blue spots extended over the entire posterior aspect and part of the anterior aspect of the trunk and involved all four limbs and the eyelids. The elbow and knee joints were moderately stiff and liver enlargement was palpated. The skin biopsy showed fusiform cells with melanin pigment tattooing the cytoplasm. No vacuolized epidermal cells were observed. Blood cell counts and liver and kidney tests were normal. Tests were positive for vacuolized lymphocytes and Gasser lymphocytes. Urine was positive for mucopolysaccharides and the enzymology study showed an alpha-L-iduronidase deficiency in serum and leukocytes, confirming the diagnosis of Hurler's disease. As no HLA compatible donor was available, no bone marrow graft was attempted. The child is a candidate for organoid gene therapy.

DISCUSSION
Mongolian spots predominate in Asian, American Indian and black population (90% of the cases) compared with Caucasians (10%). The pathogenesis and pathogenic associations are unknown. The incidence of large widespread mongolian spots is also unknown and no precise criteria are available to define this entity. A few cases of extended mongolian spots associated with type 1 gangliosidosis and about 20 cases associated with Hurler's disease have been reported in the literature. The association with Hurler's disease is probably not fortuitous and several hypotheses have been put forward. Bone marrow transplantation can improve prognosis if performed early before onset of irreversible visceral disorders, emphasizing the importance of early diagnosis in children.


Hard educational technologies received more attention today while soft educational technology has been considered as one of the keys and effective technologies in teaching and learning. The main purpose of this study was to investigate the use of soft educational technologies in teaching environmental issues in the first to the third grade of elementary science textbooks of Iran and Russia. This study is a descriptive analysis of the content. The statistical population of the study is all the first, second, and third-grade textbooks of sciences in Iran and the world around us in Russia. The statistical sample included environmental issues in the first, second, and third-grade elementary science textbooks of Iran and Russia. The research tool was a researcher-made checklist made by soft educational technology and an environmental health checklist from Yale University. The results showed that allegory and role-playing hadn't used at all to teach environmental issues in Iran. Questions and answers Iran 31.95, Russia 31.64)and comparisons of objects, the discovery of similarities and differences, and conclusions )Iran  20.61, Russia  17.72) have been widely used in both countries. In Iran, more emphasis has been placed on solving problems and carrying out projects(13.40), and more emphasis has been placed on the use of daily life activities(16.45) in teaching in Russia. The results also showed that the use of soft educational technology to teach environmental issues was given more significance in the third grade of an elementary school in both of the countries. Soft technology has been used less in the first grade of the elementary school of Iran but in the second grade of the elementary school of Russia.


ABSTRACT Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) group N from Cameroon is phylogenetically close, in env, to the simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) cpz-gab from Gabon and SIVcpz-US of unknown geographic origin. We screened 29 wild-born Cameroonian chimpanzees and found that three (Cam3, Cam4, and Cam5) were positive for HIV-1 by Western blotting. Mitochondrial DNA sequence analysis demonstrated that Cam3 and Cam5 belonged to Pan troglodytes troglodytes and that Cam4 belonged to P. t. vellerosus. Genetic analyses of the viruses together with serological data demonstrated that at least one of the two P. t. troglodytes chimpanzees (Cam5) was infected in the wild, and revealed a horizontal transmission between Cam3 and Cam4. These data confirm that P. t. troglodytes is a natural host for HIV-1-related viruses. Furthermore, they show that SIVcpz can be transmitted in captivity, from one chimpanzee subspecies to another. All three SIVcpz-cam viruses clustered with HIV-1 N inenv. The full Cam3 SIVcpz genome sequence showed a very close phylogenetic relationship with SIVcpz-US, a virus identified in aP. t. troglodytes chimpanzee captured nearly 40 years earlier. Like SIVcpz-US, SIVcpz-cam3 was closely related to HIV-1 N inenv, but not in pol, supporting the hypothesis that HIV-1 N results from a recombination event. SIVcpz from chimpanzees born in the wild in Cameroon are thus strongly related inenv to HIV-1 N from Cameroon, demonstrating the geographic coincidence of these human and simian viruses and providing a further strong argument in favor of the origin of HIV-1 being in chimpanzees.


MPSO, mono-column hull type FPSO, is attracting the interest as a floating production system which has high performance for motion and large tank capacity in recent years.The authors had performed a mooring system safety evaluation of a MPSO named 'MONOBR' which was assumed to be installed at the Gulf of Mexico in the international collaborative research and development project between PETROBRAS and JOGMEC.There exists a strong current called the Loop current in the Gulf of Mexico. It is known that cylindrical floaters like SPARs or MPSOs sway with the long period and large amplitude in the transverse direction of the current. The motion is called Vortex Induced Motion (VIM), and is caused by vortex shedding from the sidewall of the floater. VIM is one of the important issues in the safety evaluation of mooring system of MPSO.Generally, the combined environmental conditions in which wind, waves and current exist are concerned for the safety evaluation of mooring systems. Therefore, it needs to estimate VIM in waves and current. The authors had performed the VIM measurement tests in order to investigate the estimation method of VIM in waves and current. The results of the VIM measurement test in waves and current and the results of the mooring safety evaluation method using the estimation method of VIM in waves and current are described in this paper.© 2012 ASME


Stem cell biology is scientifically, clinically, and politically a current topic. The hematopoietic stem cell, the common ancestor of all types of blood cells, is one of the best-characterized stem cells in the body and the only stem cell that is clinically applied in the treatment of diseases such as breast cancer, leukemias, and congenital immunodeficiencies. Multicolor cell sorting enables the purification not only of hematopoietic stem cells, but also of their downstream progenitors such as common lymphoid progenitors and common myeloid progenitors. Recent genetic approaches including gene chip technology have been used to elucidate the gene expression profile of hematopoietic stem cells and other progenitors. Although the mechanisms that control self-renewal and lineage commitment of hematopoietic stem cells are still ambiguous, recent rapid advances in understanding the biological nature of hematopoietic stem and progenitor cells have broadened the potential application of these cells in the treatment of diseases.


In this work, we developed an efficient "molecularly imprinted polymer microzymes and inorganic magnetic nanozymes" synergistic catalysis strategy for the formation of disulfide bonds in peptides. The polymeric microzymes showed excellent selectivity toward the template peptide as well as the main reactant (linear peptide), and the Fe3O4 magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) nanozymes inhibited the intermolecular reaction during the formation of disulfide bonds in peptides. As a result, the integration of the two different artificial enzymes in one process facilitates the intramolecular cyclization in high product yields (59.3%) with excellent selectivity. Mechanism study indicates the synergistic effect was occurred by using a "reversed solid phase synthesis" strategy with an enhanced shift of reaction balance to product generation. We believe the synergistic catalysis by "polymeric microzymes and inorganic nanozymes" presented in the present work may open new opportunities in creation of multifunctional enzyme mimics for sensing, imaging, and drug delivery.


A linear-time algorithm is presented for the construction of the Gibbs distribution of configurations in the Ising model, on a quantum computer. The algorithm is designed so that each run provides one configuration with a quantum probability equal to the corresponding thermodynamic weight. The partition function is thus approximated efficiently. The algorithm neither suffers from critical slowing down nor gets stuck in local minima. The algorithm can be applied in any dimension, to a class of spin-glass Ising models with a finite portion of frustrated plaquettes, diluted Ising models, and models with a magnetic field.


This article presents a small open economy model which is a part of the world that consists of a continuum of infinitesimal open economies. New Keynesian Investment Saving Line (IS) and Phillips curves are derived for the small open economy and the rest of the world. For five different policies, (i.e. domestic inflation targeting, consumer price index (CPI) inflation targeting, exchange rate peg, domestic inflation Taylor rule and CPI inflation Taylor rule) the effects of domestic and world technology shocks are analysed. The degree of openness is discussed and the effect of openness is addressed by comparing the impulse responses of a small open economy and closed economy that face productivity shocks.


Serum protein electrophoresis (SPE) is usually ordered to diagnose multiple myeloma (MM). Although levels of proteins in the serum change in predictable way in response to different clinical situations that can be detected from SP bands on a gel; people tend to use other multiple laboratory tests. 44 patient's samples negative for MM were analyzed using automatic agarose gel electrophoresis system/compact Microgel Interlab. Readings for bands were compared to each other's and compared to albumin/globulin ratio (G/A). Bands studied showed 14 cases with polyclonal bands, one with sign of hemolysis, other hyperlipidemia, and one with low serum globulin. All bands showed significant positive correlation with A/G except for α2 negative correlation; p<0.05. SPE can predict clinical situation other than MM when used with trained personnel.


The main part of this thesis consists of the experimental results. Chapters 4 and 5 contain those obtained on Calliphora erythrocephala, under constant conditions and under visual stimulation, which consisted of presenting light flashes and moving striped patterns to the insect. In chapter 6 some experiments on insects other than Calliphora are presented together with some ideas about a function of the clock-spikes. The experimental and technical aspects - experimental set-up and data processing - are treated in chapter I and a number of biological aspects, localization of the clock-spikes and electrophysiological evidence as to the relation with the muscle, in chapter 2. This chapter concludes with a justification for regarding a series of action potentials as a special case of a stochastic point process. The necessary terminology and some theory of these processes are formulated in chapter 3 together with a description of all analyses used in this thesis. It also contains some thoughts on and an approximate way of analysing nonstationary spike trains. This chapter may be omitted on first reading if one is familiar with the theory of these processes. Finally, the last chapter is devoted to models which may reproduce action potential series with the characteristics of the clock-spikes.


A theoretical model of an internal transport barrier (ITB) is developed. The transport model based on the self-sustained turbulence theory of the current diffusive ballooning mode is extended to include the effects of E × B rotation shear. Delayed formation of the ITB is observed in transport simulations. The influence of finite gyroradius is also discussed. Simulation of the current ramp-up experiment successfully described the radial profile of density, temperature and safety factor. A model of ITB collapse due to magnetic braiding is proposed. Sudden enhancement of transport triggered by overlapping of magnetic islands terminates the ITB. The possibility of destabilizing global low n modes is also discussed.


Natural Language Processing (NLP) research has made great advancements in recent years with major breakthroughs that have established new benchmarks. However, these advances have mainly benefited a certain group of languages commonly referred to as resource-rich such as English and French. Majority of other languages with weaker resources are then left behind which is the case for most African languages including Wolof. In this work, we present a parallel Wolof/French corpus of 123,000 sentences on which we conducted experiments on machine translation models based on Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) in different data configurations. We noted performance gains with the models trained on subworded data as well as those trained on the French-English language pair compared to those trained on the French-Wolof pair under the same experimental conditions.


Protected natural areas such as national parks (NP's), marine reserves, forests and other conservation estates are developing into an increasingly important tourism resource. Forecasted growth in visitor numbers suggests that it is imperative that these areas receive the correct balance of conservation and tourism management attention. In addition to their traditional stronghold of conservation, agencies mandated to care for these estates have similarly become involved in the management of visitors as well as the environment. Consequently, the measurement and management of visitor satisfaction has become a prerequisite for these agencies. While many have a history of surveying visitors, little empirical research into "visitor satisfaction" in a natural environment context has been conducted. This paper reports on a two-year process of survey development and implementation across three survey periods. Structural modeling is used to test confirmatory and path models. Consistent structures and significant indicators of "value for money" and "overall satisfaction" are identified.


OBJECTIVE
Impaired mood regulation is a key deficit of major depressive disorder that is primarily mediated by an interaction between the paralimbic cortex (i.e., orbitofrontal, cingulate, insular, parahippocampal, and temporopolar cortices) and limbic regions. The authors investigated whether depressed patients and healthy comparison subjects have differences in cortical thickness in the paralimbic cortex and whether potential differences are evident only during a depressive state or are trait related.

METHOD
Forty patients with a first episode of major depressive disorder participated: 20 medication-naive currently depressed patients and 20 medication-free recovered patients. The patients and 31 matched healthy comparison subjects underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging. Group differences in mean cortical thickness of the paralimbic cortex were measured by using FreeSurfer software, with adjustment for age, sex, and intracranial volume, and subgroup analyses were performed to assess state and trait effects.

RESULTS
The medial orbitofrontal cortex was thinner in the depressed patients than in the comparison subjects. Greater thickness was present in the temporal pole and the caudal anterior and posterior cingulate cortex. All changes were trait related.

CONCLUSIONS
The data provide evidence that even early in the course of depression brain regions involved in mood regulation show trait-related differences in cortical thickness.


Introduction General Survey Population and Labor Force Agriculture Industry Transportation, Postal and Telecommunication Services Investments in Fixed Assets Finance, Trade and Price People's Livelihood Education, Science, Culture, Public Health and Sports


Recently neurosurgical operations have been carried out with water irrigation such as endoscopic third ventriculostomy and tumor resections in ventricles. Water irrigation is one of several published methods that promote hemostasis; however, not enough experimental evidence exists on its efficacy. In this study, we investigate whether hydrostatic pressure and persistent irrigation promote hemostasis in neuroendoscopic surgery. We dissected tails of 12–16-week-old C57BL/6 male mice at 5 mm proximal from the tip and checked for bleeding times under dry and wet conditions at pressures of 0 cmH2O, 10 cmH2O, 15 H2O, and 20 cmH2O without persistent irrigation to bleeding point and 10 cmH2O with persistent irrigation. We then examined the dissected edge with hematoxylin–eosin staining and measured the size of vessels. The average bleeding time of each group is as follows: dry: 203.4 sec, wet: 164.4 sec, 5 cmH2O: 138.6 sec, 10 cmH2O: 104.6 sec (P <0.001), 20 cmH2O: 56 sec (P <0.001), and 10 cmH2O with persistent irrigation: 72.8 sec (P <0.01 compared to 10 cmH2O without persistent irrigation). The maximum caliber of mice's tail artery was 50–60 μm. Hydrostatic pressure and irrigation are important factors contributing to hemostasis.


BackgroundThe research interest in COVID-19, one of the most serious pandemics in recent human history, is unprecedented. This study aims to determine the volume of COVID-19 research and to assess the characteristics of its production and publication.MethodsWe searched Scopus, Embase, PubMed, and the Web of Science databases for publications, up to August 20, 2020. We included all types of documents except corrections, interviews, personal narratives, and retracted publications. We analyzed publication count, type, status, research themes, publication venues, authorship trends, language, institutions, countries, collaboration, and funding.ResultsOf 40,519 eligible documents, 49% were original articles. Forty-nine percent of the original articles and reviews were published in top quartile journals, and 19% were single-authored. More than half of the documents were produced in the United States, China, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Twenty-two percent of the documents involved international collaboration and 17% reported financial support by at least one agency, with the National Natural Science Foundation of China being the most frequently reported funding source (n=982). There are already more documents published on COVID19 than documents ever published on the Ebola, MERS, HIN1, and SARS combined.ConclusionsThe first few months' research output on COVID-19 is relatively large and originated mostly from four countries. Single-authored publications, international collaboration, and governmental funding activities were relatively common.


Spontaneous coronary artery dissection is rare cause of acute coronary syndrome. It is diagnosed by coronary angiography which shows dissection flap and false lumen. Patients might be presented different clinical conditions from asymptomatic to sudden cardiac death. A 52 year-old man with acute coronary syndrome was performed coronary angiography, his sircumflex artery had spontaneous dissection. Due to unrelieved symptomes with medical treatment, percutanous coronary stenting was succesfully performed to sircumflex artery of the patient. If there are suitable vessel and experienced physican, percutanous coronary intervention can be performed to the patients with spontaneous coronary artery dissection


A guide to some of the topics covered during Library Orientation. You may not recall everything, so come here and refresh your memory.


The article starts with a discussion about the transfer of power from democratic institutions to technocratic institutions. It goes on with the hypothesis of a trade-off between efficient economic policies and social justice, the former ones being possible only in an environment that tolerates more inequalities. It concludes with the implications of such a trade-off on European institutions.


Aim: To study the histomorphological pattern of disease in endobronchial biopsy in Nepalgunj Medical College Teaching Hospital (NGMCTH), Kohalpur.Background: Study of endobronchial biopsy is mainly indicated for malignancies, however, various other conditions including inflammatory pathology can be correctly identified.Material And Methods: This is a hospital based descriptive study carried out at Department of Pathology, NGMC, Kohalpur from August 2017 to July 2018. The study included 51 cases of endobronchial biopsy. All bronchial biopsies were processed according to the standard method and the detail microscopic findings were studied and the data were analysed statistically.Result: The age of patients ranged from 20-80 years. Cough was the most common presenting symptom. Most common benign pathology was tuberculosis and among malignancies squamous cell carcinoma was common histopathologicaldiagnosis.Conclusion: Identification of lung pathology at early stage with correct histological morophology is important to decrease morbidity and mortality related to both benign and malignant condition.


Convolutional neural networks have been the focus of research aiming to solve image denoising problems, but their performance remains unsatisfactory for most applications. These networks are trained with synthetic noise distributions that do not accurately reflect the noise captured by image sensors. Some datasets of clean-noisy image pairs have been introduced but they are usually meant for benchmarking or specific applications. We introduce a dataset [NIND] of DSLR-like images with varying levels of ISO noise which is large enough to train models for blind denoising over a wide range of noise. We demonstrate a denoising model trained with the NIND and show that it significantly outperforms BM3D on ISO noise from unseen images, even when generalizing to images from a different type of camera. The Natural Image Noise Dataset is published on Wikimedia Commons such that it remains open for curation and contributions. We expect that this dataset will prove useful for future image denoising applications.


During the previous years, technology has been used for assisting immigrants with language learning in Norway. Using technology to teach languages contributes to increased effectiveness in learning for students. Students perceive this as more fun. Now that mobile devices have been developed to the point that they are powerful mini-computers, the potential for learning with these devices is getting bigger. That means people can learn by using interactive technology whenever and wherever they would like to, using their own personal devices. M-learning is used to define the applications that are used on mobile devices to assist learning. Using m-learning is evidently increasing motivation for learning. To further increase motivation, gamification can be used as a design approach. The target group in focus of this thesis is immigrants in Norway that currently learns the Norwegian language. The thesis focuses on how to implement gamification in mobile language learning applications, and if this affects the students satisfaction during learning. Initially, qualitative user studies were used to gather an understanding of the current situation on e-learning in Norway how e-learning is currently used, and how receptive the current students were towards a digital alternative to learning. After this information was gathered and a prototype was designed, an experimental design was developed and conducted. Data was gathered to form the hypothesis and result of the thesis. The thesis concluded with that gamification, even though it pointed to increased satisfaction, could not increase the users perceived satisfaction.


This paper describes the development of a ground truth dataset of culturally diverse Romanized names in which approximately 70,000 names are matched against a subset of 700. We ran the subset as queries against the complete list using several matchers, created adjudication pools, adjudicated the results, and compiled two versions of ground truth based on different sets of adjudication guidelines and methods for resolving adjudicator conflicts. The name list, drawn from publicly available sources, was manually seeded with over 1500 name variants. These names include transliteration variation, database fielding errors, segmentation differences, incomplete names, titles, initials, abbreviations, nicknames, typos, OCR errors, and truncated data. These diverse types of matches, along with the coincidental name similarities already in the list, make possible a comprehensive evaluation of name matching systems. We have used the dataset to evaluate several open source and commercial algorithms and provide some of those results.


Forty-eight male rats were divided into equal groups by pairing as regards body weight. One group of 24 were injected subcutaneously 14 hours after the withdrawal of food with C 14 -l-histidine; the second group was not injected. Twelve rats in each group were fasted for 72 hours and twelve others were fasted for 48 hours and then fed for 24 hours. At 72 hours the wet and dry weight of the entire glandular stomach and small intestine was determined separately, and the C 14 -histamine in each of those which had received C 14 -l-histidine was determined. Realimentation for 24 hours increased the wet and dry weight of the stomach by 15% and 13%, respectively, and of the intestine by 58% and 40%, respectively. Therefore, after 48 hours of fasting realimentation for 24 hours affects the composition of the intestine more than the stomach. Twenty-four hours of realimentation reduced the C 14 -histamine content of the stomach by 58% and of the intestine by 30%. It was found by calculation that a maximum of only 10% of the C 14 -histamine lost from the stomach and 30% from the intestine could be accounted for by desquamation of superficial cells. The rate of loss and renewal of superficial cells in the intestine during 24 hours of realimentation after 48 hours of fasting was approximately three times faster than that in the stomach.


A substantial volume of the workload of our laboratory concerns the production of large format histological sections from osteoarticular specimens of large size and complex shapes. The sheer size of the resultant glass slides makes them difficult to examine microscopically. We have overcome this difficulty by using either a Durst M605 colour enlarger or a De Vere 504 black and white enlarger. Placing the glass slide in the negative carrier of either of these allows an image (in full colour) to be projected onto the enlarger base board. The De Vere 504 enlarger can accept a maximum glass slide size of 13-5 x l[ Ocm, and the size of the projected area can be reduced by several standard masks available with the instrument. Large fields of view are obtained, and the magnification range is x 0 5x 10. Small areas of the image can be examined in greater detail by a Paterson focusing telescope producing results superior to those obtained with a dissecting microscope. To obtain a photographic record we discovered two useful stategies. Firstly, the glass slides were thoroughly cleaned and replaced in the negative carriers of the enlargers to produce positive images recordable as colour prints. After experimentation with several commercially available products we found the best results were obtained with Agfachrome-Speed 312 photographic material. This permitted better colour correction (with filters on the Durst M605 and Kodak colour compensating filters on the De Vere 504), and correct exposure times were more easily determined using test strips. The results were colour prints available within eight minutes by following the standard processing instructions supplied by the manufacturer. The second strategy was to use the Agfachrome-Speed material to obtain colour photomicrographs of conventionally sized sections. The material was placed in a large format camera back on a Vickers M 17 research microscope. Colour balance was achieved with Kodak colour compensating filters, the correct exposure quickly and easily obtained for each objective, and the print processed to become available within eight minutes. These techniques avoid the necessity of purchasing specific equipment to make a 35mm colour film and enlarging this to a Letters


In this paper, we present a new fast algorithm for achieving motion-based object detection in an image sequence. While in most existing object-detection algorithms, segmentation of the image is done as the first step followed by grouping of segments, the proposed algorithm uses the motion information to first identify what we call region of interest. Segmentation is done only within a square of interest which completely encloses the region of interest. Then the segments are combined to obtain the final segment, which closely matches the shape of the object to be detected. Since the region of interest is always smaller than the image, the proposed algorithm is 2 to 4 times faster than every existing algorithm for object detection. In terms of the accuracy with which desired object is detected, the performance of our algorithm is comparable to the existing algorithms.


Video analysis is the task of perceiving the world as it changes. Often, though, most of the world doesn't change all that much: it's boring. For many applications such as action detection or robotic interaction, segmenting all moving objects is a crucial first step. While this problem has been well-studied in the field of spatiotemporal segmentation, virtually none of the prior works use learning-based approaches, despite significant advances in single-frame instance segmentation. We propose the first deep-learning based approach for video instance segmentation. Our twostream models' architecture is based on Mask R-CNN, but additionally takes optical flow as input to identify moving objects. It then combines the motion and appearance cues to correct motion estimation mistakes and capture the full extent of objects. We show state-of-the-art results on the Freiburg Berkeley Motion Segmentation dataset by a wide margin. One potential worry with learning-based methods is that they might overfit to the particular type of objects that they have been trained on. While current recognition systems tend to be limited to a "closed world" of N objects on which they are trained, our model seems to segment almost anything that moves.


Our work builds largely on Nagasaka's stabilizer in multi-contact motion [1]. Using a sequence of contact stances from an offline multi-contact planner, we use first a Model Predictive Controller to generate a dynamic trajectory of the center of mass, then a whole-body closed-loop model-based controller to track it at best. Relatively to Nagasaka's work, we allow frame changes of the preferred force, provide a heuristic to compute the timing of the transition from purely geometrical features and investigate the synchronization problem between the reduced-model preview control and the whole-body controller. Using our framework, we generate a wide range of 3D motions, while accounting for predictable external forces, which includes transporting objects. Simulation scenarios are presented and obtained results are analyzed and discussed.