—Scalable robot learning from seamless human-robot interaction is critical if robots are to solve a multitude of tasks in the real world. Current approaches to imitation learning suffer from one of two drawbacks. On the one hand, they rely solely on off-policy human demonstration, which in some cases leads to a mismatch in train-test distribution. On the other, they burden the human to label every state the learner visits, rendering it impractical in many applications. We argue that learning interactively from expert interventions enjoys the best of both worlds. Our key insight is that any amount of expert feedback, whether by intervention or non-intervention, provides information about the quality of the current state, the optimality of the action, or both. We formalize this as a constraint on the learner's value function, which we can efficiently learn using no regret, online learning techniques. We call our approach Expert Intervention Learning (EIL), and evaluate it on a real and simulated driving task with a human expert, where it learns collision avoidance from scratch with just a few hundred samples (about one minute) of expert control.


The results of preliminary tests of natural ionising radiation performed in the area of mining plants and their surroundings have been presented. The survey included measurements of radon concentration and gamma-ray dose rate in free air at 25 locations, 40K, 226Ra and 228Th determination in 48 samples of ore, ore concentrate, floatation tailings, rock and soil as well as 226Ra determination in 11 samples of mine water and river. It was found that the natural radioactivity of ore, rock, concentrate and tailings from mine is higher than the environmental background. For that reason a technologically enhanced natural radiation may occur at some places of mining plants and surrounding areas. Those places must undergo full dosimetric investigation and be under control. It was impossible to estimate how much the environment is contaminated by radon and water coming from mine. However one can say that generally the gamma ray background and radon concentration in free air of this region are at the level considered as a normal.


Background Functional genomics uses unbiased systematic genome-wide gene disruption or analyzes natural variations such as gene expression profiles of different tissues from multicellular organisms to link gene functions to particular phenotypes. Functional genomics approaches are of particular importance to identify large sets of genes that are specifically important for a particular biological process beyond known candidate genes, or when the process has not been studied with genetic methods before. Results Here, we present a large set of genes whose disruption interferes with the function of the odoriferous defensive stink glands of the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum . This gene set is the result of a large-scale systematic phenotypic screen using RNA interference applied in a genome-wide forward genetics manner. In this first-pass screen, 130 genes were identified, of which 69 genes could be confirmed to cause phenotypic changes in the glands upon knock-down, which vary from necrotic tissue and irregular reservoir size to irregular color or separation of the secreted gland compounds. Gene ontology analysis revealed that many of those genes are encoding enzymes (peptidases and cytochromes P450) as well as proteins involved in membrane trafficking with an enrichment in lysosome and mineral absorption pathways. The knock-down of 13 genes caused specifically a strong reduction of para-benzoquinones in the gland reservoirs, suggesting a specific function in the synthesis of these toxic compounds. Only 14 of the 69 confirmed gland genes are differentially overexpressed in stink gland tissue and thus could have been detected in a transcriptome-based analysis. However, only one out of eight genes identified by a transcriptomics approach known to cause phenotypic changes of the glands upon knock-down was recognized by this phenotypic screen, indicating the limitation of such a non-redundant first-pass screen. Conclusion Our results indicate the importance of combining diverse and independent methodologies to identify genes necessary for the function of a certain biological tissue, as the different approaches do not deliver redundant results but rather complement each other. The presented phenotypic screen together with a transcriptomics approach are now providing a set of close to hundred genes important for odoriferous defensive stink gland physiology in beetles.


NAD(+)-dependent malic enzyme was cloned from the Escherichia coli genome by PCR based on the published partial sequence of the gene. The enzyme was overexpressed and purified to near homogeneity in two chromatographic steps and was analyzed kinetically in the forward and reverse directions. The Km values determined in the presence of saturating cofactor and manganese ion were 0.26 mM for malate (physiological direction) and 16 mM for pyruvate (reverse direction). When malic enzyme was induced under appropriate culture conditions in a strain of E. coli that was unable to ferment glucose and accumulated pyruvate, fermentative metabolism of glucose was restored. Succinic acid was the major fermentation product formed. When this fermentation was performed in the presence of hydrogen, the yield of succinic acid increased. The constructed pathway represents an alternative metabolic route for the fermentative production of dicarboxylic acids from renewable feedstocks.


Purpose
The integration of internet of things (IoT) devices into daily life introduces challenges for the privacy of their users and those who are affected by these devices. This paper explores the factors that affect individual concerns regarding IoT use and how those factors affect the dynamics of privacy management with the presence of an IoT device.

Design/methodology/approach
Four focus groups of individuals and IoT experts were studied to understand the groups' privacy concerns. The authors adopted a qualitative research method based on grounded theory to find relevant dimensions of situational privacy concerns in IoT use situations.

Findings
The results revealed that fourteen dimensions of individuals' privacy concerns regarding the IoT are relevant and can be categorized under four key influential factors: collection, IoT device, collected data storage and use of collected data. The authors also analyzed the focus groups using genres of disclosure theory and explored how privacy concerns affect individual privacy management regulations.

Research limitations/implications
This paper contributes to how future research can employ genres of disclosure as a theoretical framework to identify situations where privacy violations occur.

Practical implications
This study can assist service providers and IoT manufacturers in deriving design principles and decreasing concerns by addressing the information that must be communicated to their users.

Originality/value
As opposed to the previous research, which was more inclined to dispositional privacy concerns, this study provides insights into situational privacy concerns when individuals are confronted with the IoT. This study represents the first attempt to investigate the process individuals experience in managing their privacy.


Abstract:Port Bán Nature Reserve, a peatland in south-western Ireland, is a complex system of cutover lowland blanket bog, wet meadow, willow scrub, heathland and riparian vegetation. The plant communities of the reserve were sampled and described using the Braun-Blanquet stratified random sampling technique, with a view to compiling an ecological inventory of the site to aid future conservation management. A total of 99 species of vascular plants were recorded from an area of twelve hectares. Ordination of the relevé data was carried out using detrended correspondence analysis (DCA). The presentation of the vegetation data follows the Braun-Blanquet system. The vegetation described ranged across four phytosociological classes and was placed in seven different plant communities: Narthecio-Ericetum tetralicis, Ulici gallii-Ericetum cinereae, Senecioni-Juncetum acutiflori, Valeriano-Filipenduletum, Myricetum gale, Osmundo-Salicetum atrocinereae and Oenanthe crocata-Salix x calodendron. Each of these communities is discussed in terms of their occurrence at Port Bán and elsewhere in Ireland. In addition, the problems regarding conservation management of the reserve are outlined, with natural succession identified as the largest threat to the reserve's plant communities.


While sending data packets through the network some on-line dictionary based compression technique can be applied to reduce the data packet size for better bandwidth utilization and hence faster transmission of data. It has been observed that compression techniques works well, when repetition rate of the same symbols within the data are high i.e. when the redundancy within the data increases. During both encoding and decoding process, the online building of the dictionary in the primary memory ensures the single pass over the data, and the dictionary need not need to be transmitted over the network. Since this proposed technique scans the data byte-wise, hence chances of repetition of individual symbols is higher for text messages as we have limited number of key characters (0-127). Fixed length coding is simple to implement, as it transmits fixed length codes for all dictionary entries. Although for bigger messages better optimization in terms of size reduction can be achieved through variable length coding with L-Z technique, where transmitted code length corresponding to individual dictionary entries will vary according to the requirement dynamically.


Introduction: Cabozantinib has been approved by the European Medicine Agency (EMA) for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) previously treated with sorafenib. Cabozantinib is also being tested in combination with immune checkpoint inhibitors in the frontline setting. Real-life clinical data of cabozantinib for HCC are still lacking. Moreover, the prognostic factors for HCC treated with cabozantinib have not been investigated. Methods: We evaluated clinical data and outcome of HCC patients who received cabozantinib in the legal context of named patient use in Italy. Results: Ninety-six patients from 15 centres received cabozantinib. All patients had preserved liver function (Child-Pugh A), mostly with an advanced HCC (77.1%) in a third-line setting (75.0%). The prevalence of performance status (PS) > 0, macrovascular invasion (MVI), extrahepatic spread, and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) >400 ng/mL was 50.0, 30.2, 67.7, and 44.8%, respectively. Median overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival were 12.1 (95% confidence interval 9.4–14.8) and 5.1 (3.3–6.9) months, respectively. Most common treatment-related adverse events (AEs) were fatigue (67.7%), diarrhoea (54.2%), anorexia (45.8%), HFSR (43.8%), weight loss (24.0%), and hypertension (24.0%). Most common treatment-related Grade 3–4 AEs were fatigue (6.3%), HFSR (6.3%), and increased aminotransferases (6.3%). MVI, ECOG-PS > 0, and AFP >400 ng/mL predicted a worse OS. Discontinuation for intolerance and no new extrahepatic lesions at the progression were associated with better outcomes. Conclusions: In a real-life Western scenario (mostly in a third-line setting), cabozantinib efficacy and safety data were comparable with those reported in its registration trial. Data regarding the prognostic factors might help in patient selection and design of clinical trials.


As part of an effort to examine the transmission mechanism of paralinguistic information as well as phonation variation due to paralinguistic information, laryngeal observation was conducted using high-speed digital video image. The results showed that 'breathy' and 'creaky' phonation was observed for 'disappointment' and 'suspicion' utterances, respectively, while 'modal' phonation was observed for 'neutral' utterances. The phonation types characterizing each paralinguistic meaning were maintained throughout the vowel and consonant portions of the utterance. This fact suggests that the domain of phonation control due to paralinguistic information is the whole utterance. This parallels our previous findings about articulatory control, suggesting that paralinguistic information involves control of voice-quality rather than of individual segments. Acoustic comparison of more extended data is also discussed.


Studies in Interpolation and Approximation of Multivariate Bandlimited Functions. (August 2011) Benjamin Aaron Bailey, B.S., Texas Tech University; M.S., Texas Tech University Co–Chairs of Advisory Committee: Dr. Thomas Schlumprecht Dr. N. Sivakumar The focus of this dissertation is the interpolation and approximation of multivariate bandlimited functions via sampled (function) values. The first set of results investigates polynomial interpolation in connection with multivariate bandlimited functions. To this end, the concept of a uniformly invertible Riesz basis is developed (with examples), and is used to construct Lagrangian polynomial interpolants for particular classes of sampled square-summable data. These interpolants are used to derive two asymptotic recovery and approximation formulas. The first recovery formula is theoretically straightforward, with global convergence in the appropriate metrics; however, it becomes computationally complicated in the limit. This complexity is sidestepped in the second recovery formula, at the cost of requiring a more local form of convergence. The second set of results uses oversampling of data to establish a multivariate recovery formula. Under additional restrictions on the sampling sites and the frequency band, this formula demonstrates a certain stability with respect to sampling errors. Computational simplifications of this formula are also given.


We analyze the holographic description of non-singlet baryons in various backgrounds with reduced supersymmetries and/or confinement. We show that they exist in all AdS5×Y5 backgrounds with Y5 an Einstein manifold bearing five form flux, for a number of quarks 5N/8 < k 6 N, independently on the supersymmetries preserved. In the confining Maldacena-Nuñez background non-singlet baryons also exist, although in this case the interval for the number of quarks is reduced as compared to the conformal case. We generalize these configurations to include a nonvanishing magnetic flux such that a complementary microscopical description can be given in terms of lower dimensional branes expanding into fuzzy baryons. This description is a first step towards exploring the finite 't Hooft coupling region.


The objective of this work is to present how the decision support method IMO-DRSA, combining the Interactive Multiobjective Optimization (IMO) with the Dominance-based Rough Set Approach (DRSA), can be efficiently applied in the agricultural sector, in order to determine optimal and sustainable planning strategies for farms. The method, elaborated by Greco, Matarazzo and Slowinski in 2008, is a novelty in the multiobjective optimization sector. Through IMO-DRSA, we found an optimal multiobjective strategy related to the farm planning of our case study, conciliating four different objectives, one of economic and three of environmental nature. Concerning some practical problems for the application of the method in the agricultural sector, availability and completeness of both environmental and economic data represented a crucial aspect. Another important point concerned the level of subjectivity intrinsic in the method.


434 cases of primary vaginal carcinoma were treated from 1950 to 1984 at the Irradiation Department of the University Clinic for Obstetrics and Gynecology, Vienna. The five-year survival rate for various clinical stages is as follows: Stage I 76.7%, stage II 44.5%, stage III 31%, stage IV 18.2%. In this retrospective study 110 patients seen from 1975 to 1984 were reviewed in detail and evaluated with a view toward their clinical and morphological aspects and survival rates. Patients up to the age of 60 have a five-year survival rate of 50%, those over 75 years of age reach only 34.3%. If the carcinoma was discovered in a routine check up the survival rate is 61.1%, whereas in cases with symptoms the rate decreases to 36.9%. Survival differences were also observed for patients with a carcinoma in the upper third of the vagina (61.1%) versus patients with a carcinoma in the lower third (33.3%); for patients with well-differentiated tumours (62.5%) versus patients with grades II and III (41.5% and 34.9%). It can be seen, that with brachytherapy local control of the carcinoma can be achieved with excellent results in early stages. Treatment of patients with more advanced carcinomas should include external beam therapy. The importance of gynecological screening especially for older women is emphasized.


This paper examines the experience of work stress and its psychological consequences among Singapore's life insurance agents in the context of the institutional arrangements of the life insurance industry. Results showed that our insurance agents generally experienced a low level of work stress, probably due to the cushioning effects of a supportive work environment of the industry. The most stress was found to be derived from work demands, and the least stress from interpersonal relationships at the workplace. Work demands were also found to contribute to the overall experience of work stress. However, such stress did not deter them from having a satisfactory work life nor did it result in mental ill-health. Rather, job satisfaction and mental health were associated with emotional strains caused by professionalism. The professional expectation for working independently may predispose the agents to self-isolation and loneliness while trying to hide their weaknesses and keep their problems to themselves. These feelings were aggravated by the generally low level of acceptance of the insurance profession by Singapore society.


MicroRNAs, a type of small non-coding RNA specialized in regulation of gene expression, extensively participate in biological development, cell differentiation, apoptosis, and other cellular processes. MiRNAs evolved independently in different strains and generally conserved in the process of evolution. This review summarized the origin, regulation of methylation, and evolutionary conservation of miRNAs. In addition, application of miRNAs in diseases, animals and plants was discussed.


BACKGROUND
The pneumococcus is a frequent cause of pneumonia and other serious infections among young children in developing countries. Defining the pattern of pneumococcal infection in these countries is important so that, with the advent of pneumococcal conjugate vaccines, rational vaccination policies can be developed.

METHODS
Children younger than 5 years of age who attended clinics in a rural area of The Gambia, West Africa, were screened by assistants during a 2-year period. Children with predefined features suggestive of a diagnosis of pneumonia, meningitis or septicemia were referred to the Medical Research Council Field Station at Basse for investigation.

RESULTS
Of 2898 children investigated 103 cases of invasive pneumococcal disease (70 definite and 33 probable) were identified, suggesting that the incidence of this infection in the study community is at least 554/100,000/year in children younger than 1 year of age and 240/100,000/year in those younger than 5 years, rates many times higher than those found in industrialized societies. The mean age of presentation was 15 months; more boys than girls were affected. Cases of pneumonia were encountered 8 times more frequently than those of meningitis. Antibiotic resistance was rarely found and cases of pneumonia, but not meningitis, responded well to treatment. Case-fatality rates in children with pneumonia and meningitis were 1 and 55%, respectively. The most prevalent pneumococcal serotypes were types 6, 14, 19, 1 and 5.

CONCLUSION
About 60% of invasive pneumococcal infection in children in this community could potentially be prevented by a nine-valent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (types 1, 4, 5, 6B, 9, 14, 18, 19F and 23) given at the ages of 2, 3 and 4 months.


Abstract Computational modelling techniques are now widely employed in materials science, due to recent advances in computing power and simulation methodologies, since they can enable rapid testing of theoretical predictions or understanding of complex experimental data at relatively low cost. However, many problems at the leading edge of materials science involve collective phenomena that occur over a range of time and length scales which are intrinsically difficult to capture in a single simulation. This review summarises some of the latest developments in multiscale modelling techniques over the past decade, as applied to selected problems in materials science and engineering, thereby motivating the reader to explore how such techniques might be applied in their own area of specialty. Methods for accelerating molecular dynamics by enhancement of kinetic barrier crossing, such as hyperdynamics and metadynamics, are discussed alongside mesoscale simulation techniques, such as dissipative particle dynamics or adaptive coarse graining, for enabling larger and longer simulations. The applications are mainly focused on simulations of microstructure and mechanical properties, and examples of surface diffusion in metals, radiation damage in ceramics, strengthening of nanocrystalline metals and alloys, crack propagation in brittle solids, polymer chain relaxation in nanocomposites and the control of nucleation in biomimetic materials are discussed.


This thesis provides a critical edition of four Middle English versions of De remediis contra temptaciones by William Flete, along with an edition and modern English translation of the Latin De remediis. De remediis is a treatise of religious direction concerned with the spiritual temptations of doubt and despair. Despite its wide circulation and influence in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, it has received little scholarly attention. The Latin source text and the Middle English versions ME1a, ME1b, and ME2, each an independent translation of the Latin, are edited here for the first time. The version ME3, an expanded adaptation of ME2, is presented for the first time in a critical edition with variants from all of the witnesses. Two translations that have previously been classified together as 'ME1' are here identified as distinct. The texts are edited from the following base manuscripts: ME1a from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 131; ME1b from olim Foyle MS, Beeleigh Abbey, Essex (sold at Christie's 11 July 2000); and both ME2 and ME3 from Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Hh.1.11. Comprehensive variants from all of the manuscripts and printed witnesses are recorded in the apparatus to each edition. The Latin De remediis is edited from Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.6.44, with selected variants. The introduction discusses De remediis and the four Middle English versions, the treatise's treatment of religious doubt and despair, the fourteen manuscripts and two early printed editions of the Middle English versions, and the textual relationships between the witnesses.


The capacity to ventilate the lungs has led to the widespread application of this technique in the intensive care unit, where the number of patients ventilated and surviving has been increasing since the early 1950s.' The indications for ventilatory support are now broad and include postoperative ventilation, cardiac failure, trauma, and ventilatory support in multiorgan failure in addition to ventilation for respiratory failure.2 During recovery the transition from a positive pressure system (on the ventilator) to spontaneous, negative pressure breathing is in general accomplished without difficulty. Drugs are withdrawn, and the patient is allowed to make spontaneous efforts to breathe, either through the ventilator or from a simple breathing circuit. After a trial of unassisted breathing extubation usually follows, with or without supplemental oxygen. The ability of a patient to breathe spontaneously after mechanical ventilation depends on many factors, including the diagnosis on admission and the length of time spent on the ventilator. In patients receiving short term ventilation as many as 20% of initial trials of spontaneous respiration may not be successful,3 and further ventilation4 or reintubation is required.5 The incidence of weaning failure varies considerably, however; in a study of patients ventilated after cardiac surgery, where the period of elective ventilation had been a few hours, the overall incidence of initial failure to extubate was as low as 4%.6 Although 20% of patients ventilated acutely fail to be weaned initially, their progress and subsequent weaning is usually successful and rapid. Nett and coworkers showed that in such patients over 91% were able to breathe spontaneously after seven days.7 In patients in whom weaning was still being attempted at one week the problems were complex. This group consists of patients with pre-existing lung disease as well as those patients surviving after severe multiorgan failure or neuromuscular disease, who tend to require ventilation for several days. Patients who have prolonged ventilation are more likely to require many days for weaning, and may take days or months to achieve spontaneous respiration by day and night.8 How then can we decide whether or not a patient is ready to be weaned successfully? The possibility of judging when a patient is able to breathe spontaneously has been examined largely in patients ventilated acutely, where investigators have documented various respiratory measurements before and during a trial of spontaneous respiration and compared the results with outcome (table 1). Unfortunately, there is little agreement in published reports about the power of these measurements to predict patients who will be unable to sustain spontaneous ventilation. For example, Tahvanainen and colleagues measured a battery of physiological parameters before extubation in a group of patients ventilated for either the adult respiratory distress syndrome, left ventricular failure, or neuromuscular disorders.5 None of the conventional tests, including measurements of vital capacity, minute ventilation, respiratory rate, maximum voluntary ventilation (MVV), or maximum inspiratory pressure, distinguished patients that eventually required reventilation. It has been suggested that simple clinical signs will detect patients who will fail to be weaned, including rapid shallow breathing'5 and respiratory paradox and alternans.'6 Although such clinical assessment is widely practised, published evidence to corroborate these signs is scarce. For example, in only about half of the studies is failure of weaning associated with increasing tachypnoea." 14205 In some patients, although the tachypnoea is a sign of eventual weaning failure, the high respiratory rate does not indicate the exact point when reventilation is appropriate. In other studies there has been no difference between the respiratory rate in those who were weaned successfully and those who were not.5 1718 The absence of a consensus on the value of signs and measurements predicting an individual patient's ability to be weaned successfully is reflected in clinical practice within the United Kingdom. In a survey of weaning practices in which 72% of 235 intensive care units in the United Kingdom responded the most common measures used were fractional inspired oxygen (FIO2) and arterial oxygen tension (Pao2); vital capacity was measured by only 35%, and maximum inspiratory pressure


In this paper, a neural networks algorithm based on adaptive radial basis function (ARBF) is used to decompose the grid current drawn by nonlinear load, and the fundamental and harmonic components are estimated. The learning rate – considered as one of the most important parameters that govern the performance of the ARBF network - is investigated as well to reduce the system total error. Two methodologies are proposed to improve the estimation of the fundamental component of highly nonlinear current signal. One is based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) and the other is based on least mean square error (LMSE). The error between the reference signal and the reproduced signal (the sum of estimated fundamental and harmonic signals) is chosen as performance index. The obtained results unveil that both methodologies can be effective in enhancing the system accuracy, and that the proposed algorithm can provide better performance compared to the conventional RBF network.


We compared the displacement sensitivity between the first two symmetrical flexural resonant modes of a tuning fork crystal oscillator. An optical chopping method was employed to detect the vibrational modes of the tuning fork. Displacement sensitivities for the first two modes were extracted by applying a sinusoidal excitation voltage to the tuning fork crystal oscillator and detecting the oscillating amplitude of the focused laser beam chopped by the vibrating tine of the oscillator. We found that the ratio of the second mode sensitivity to the first one was 0.0113, in reasonable agreement with the theoretical value of 0.0131.


We analyse the most important clinical, CT, surgical, histopathological, biological, biochemical, mycological and bacteriological features of caseous sinusitis, i.e. chronic, poorly symptomatic sinusitis which are resistant to usual treatment. CT shows an opacity of the maxillary sinus with often a hyperdense foreign body (dental overfilling) but no valid predictive criteria for fungal etiology. The endoscopic or surgical procedures point out a caseous mass often called fungal mass or aspergilloma. The biochemical composition of this mass (water, proteins, lipids) is similar to that of tissues surrounding the sinus. The calcium value is variable and shows no correlation with CT imaging. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the metals (zinc, lead, silver, copper, iron) is of relevance for exogenic origin (dental overfilling). The fungal etiology is inconstant (20 cases) after the mycological investigations. We discuss the nosologic and diagnostic features of caseous sinusitis, fungal or not, and which are often or too often called aspergillosis sinusitis.


Background: The prevalence of Angiofibroma of juvenile variety is infrequent tumor of nasopharynx7. It grows aggressively and is locally destructive and extends into the cranium as well. Its symptoms usually involve nasal obstruction with or without nasal bleed. Aims: To compare two methods i.e 1. Carotid artery ligation per operatively and embolization of feeding artery pre operatively in order to assess which method is better in controlling per operative bleeding during its excision. Design: Comparative study Study setting: The study was conducted in the Department of Otorhinolaryngology of Jinnah Hospital, Lahore. The duration of the study is from 01st January 2020 to 31st January 2022. Methodology: A group 20 patients were taken having angiofibroma. 10 patients went for pre operative embolization of the feeding vessel of the angiofibroma after localizing the vessel by having MRA. The other 10 patients had their external carotid artery ligated before excising the angiofibroma. The bleeding which occurred during both procedures was quantified by weighing the gauze pieces soaked per operatively, the blood collected in suction bottle and then comparing the values. Results: Ten patients who had embolization had far more bleeding during excision as compared to the 10 patients who had their external carotid artery ligated per operatively before excision. Conclusion: Results showed that pre operative embolization is not a better procedure to control per op bleeding as compared to external carotid artery ligation during angiofibroma excision. Keywords: Embolization, angiofibroma, per operative ,


This research was aimed for knowing the influence between motivation and work stress against the employees' performance of staffing and Organization General Bureau, staffing and Organization the Ministry of Tourism. This research used a quantitative approach through survey to 40 employees. All population is used as sample. Hypothesis test (t test) result that shows that the variable compensation affect significantly to these performance proved by t value about 2.693n which is more than t table. But the variable of work stress do not affect significantly with t value about 1.994 which is less than t table.n The conclusion of this research is motivation is the most dominant variable over the performance of the employees. This means that increasing performance of the emplooyees can be seen from the way the institutions provide motivation to employees.
n
Keywords: motivation, work stress, employee's performance


Abstract This article examines the first novel written by a Chinese diaspora writer in Australia, The Poison of Polygamy (多妻毒), published in instalments in the Chinese-language newspaper Chinese Times (Melbourne) from 1909 to 1910. Set during the Gold Rush of the 1850s, the novel is nevertheless of its own time, reflecting the pressing concerns of a community in turmoil as the political upheavals of China in the final years of the Qing dynasty competed for attention with the disastrous effects of the White Australia policy. Taking the form of a picaresque and cautionary tale warning against traditional practices such as polygamy, opium smoking and foot-binding, the novel seeks to educate members of the lower classes of the Chinese community while embracing the republican cause against the Manchu rulers. The article argues that the progressive political agenda of the text (democratic, feminist) stands in sharp contrast to the view of the Chinese which prevailed in the white Australian community at the time.


In the large scale collaborative systems based on Internet, autonomous domains always share some resources between each other. So the access control mechanism of shared resources need to support multiple security policies, including the security policy of the domain it belongs to and various policies jbr requests from dSfferent cooperative domains. Because .the security policy is traditionally hard coded into the access control mechanism, onIy one kind of access control policy can be supported at the access control mechanism. This paper provides a method to build a flexible security mechanism that separates the access control policy from the access control decision function by using the concept of meta-policy. The flexible security mechanism can support multiple security policies dynamically. The methods has been implemented and verij?ed in a COMA based system.


Cardiovascular diseases create an important burden on the public health systems, especially in the elderly, mostly because this group of patients frequently suffer from multiple comorbidities. Accumulating cardiovascular risk factors during their lifetime has a detrimental effect on an older adult's health status. The modifiable and non-modifiable cardiovascular risk factors are very diverse, and are frequently in a close relationship with the metabolic comorbidities of the elderly, mainly obesity and Diabetes Mellitus. In this review, we aim to present the most important cardiovascular risk factors which link aging and cardiovascular diseases, starting from the pathophysiological links between these factors and the aging process. Next, we will further review the main interconnections between obesity and Diabetes Mellitus and cardiovascular diseases of the elderly. Lastly, we consider the most important aspects related to prevention through lifestyle changes and physical activity on the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases in the elderly.


Background Rugby Union has one of the highest reported incidences of match injuries among all professional sports. The Super Rugby tournament is played annually between professional rugby union teams from three rugby-playing nations in the Southern hemisphere. Objective To determine if the incidence of injuries in the Super Rugby tournament decreased over a 4-year period. Design Prospective cohort study. Setting Super Rugby tournament. Patients (or Participants) 774 male players from 5 South African teams. Assessment of Risk Factors) Medical staff of South African teams participating in the 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015 tournaments recorded all time loss injuries (all injuries and match injuries) and exposure hours (69 194 total playing hours; 6 132 match hours). Main Outcome Measurements Incidence of all injuries and match injuries (per 1000 hours play). Results The incidence of all injuries (per 1000 player hours; 95% CI) for each year was as follows: 2012 (9.2; 7.9–10.8); 2013 (11.6; 10.1–13.3); 2014 (11.4; 9.8–13.2), and 2015 (12.4; 10.9–14.1). The incidence of all injuries in 2015 was significantly higher compared to 2012. The overall incidence of match injuries (per 1000 player hours; 95% CI) for each year was as follows: 2012 (83.3; 69.4–99.2); 2013 (120.4; 103.6–139.2); 2014 (98.6; 83.3–116.0), and 2015(119.1; 102.9–137.2). The incidence of match injuries in 2013 and 2015 was significantly higher compared to 2012 and 2014. Conclusions There is an increased incidence of all injuries and match injuries in the Super Rugby tournaments between 2012–2015. After 2012, the incidence of match injuries is consistently higher than previously reported for senior male rugby players at elite/professional level (89–96 per 1000 hrs). There is an urgent need to introduce targeted injury prevention strategies in the Super Rugby tournament to reduce the risk of injuries.


BACKGROUND
Increased activity of the NF-κB signaling pathway boosts the progression of retinopathy in diabetic rats.

OBJECTIVES
Using a bioinformatics website, we identified a site where miR-874 binds to the NF-κB p65. Therefore, we speculated that miR-874 might improve retinopathy in diabetic rats by inhibiting the NF-κB signaling pathway.

MATERIAL AND METHODS
Ten healthy rats were taken as the control group. Sixty streptozotocin (STZ; 60 mg/kg)-induced diabetes model rats were randomly divided into the model group (injection of normal saline), negative control (NC) agomir group (injection of NC mimic), miR-874 agomir group (injection of miR-874 mimic), miR-874 anti-agomir group (injection of miR-874 inhibitor), EVP4593 group (injection of NF-κB signaling pathway antagonist EVP4593), and miR-874 anti-agomir+EVP4593 group (injection of miR-874 inhibitor and EVP4593). All injections were administered into the caudal vein.

RESULTS
miR-874 could target the degradation of p65. Compared with the control group, model rats had reduced miR-874 expression, increased vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and Ang2 protein expression, lowered end-diastolic velocity (EDV) and peak systolic velocity (PSV) of the central retinal artery (CRA) and blood velocity of central retinal vein (CRV) and CRA, heightened plasma viscosity (PV), blood viscosity (BV) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) at all shear rates, decreased capillary pericytes (IPCs), increased vascular endothelial cells (VECs), and ascended p65 expression in the retina (all p < 0.05). Thus, it was shown that pathological changes appeared in the retina of diabetic rats. These indices improved in diabetic rats injected with the miR-874 mimic or EVP4593, but deteriorated in those injected with miR-874 inhibitor (all p < 0.05). EVP4593 also could alleviate the aggravation of retinopathy that was caused by miR-874 inhibition in diabetic rats.

CONCLUSIONS
miR-874 modulates the NF-κB signaling pathway by targeting the degradation of p65 to further improve the retina of diabetic rats, thus demonstrating the beneficial effect of miR-874 on diabetic retinopathy in rats.


Nowadays, there are two primary problems in the gait recognition which are the complexity of modeling and the high-dimension of feature extraction. In the light of these two problems, we propose a method that we use the CS (compressed sensing (CS) Theory to extract the gait features on the basis of researching the CS theory. Based on the sparsity of the gait images, we use the projection matrix to extract the gait features to reduce the dimension of gait feature vector. Using the database provided by the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Automation as testing data, we confirm the optimal dimension of the feature vectors through experiments. The performances of experiments show the effectiveness of the algorithm we proposed.


The European avifauna on agricultural land has been permanently diminished over the past few decades. This phenomenon is clearly connected with agricultural intensification and the recent land cover changes. The main aims of this study were to identify the land cover preferences of a farmland bird species, the Eurasian Skylark Alauda arvensis in Hungary and investigate the link between the recent trend of the abundance of this species and the land-cover change. We employed GIS and statistical methods to assess the link between the abundance of this species based on the Hungarian common bird monitoring database (MMM) and the spatial proportion of the Corine Land Cover (CLC) categories in different buffer zones with 300, 600 and 1200 m from the observation points. Based on the significant statistical connections, we could identify and select land cover categories that serve as habitats and land cover categories that this bird species does not inhabit. The land cover preference of the Eurasian Skylark, in case of some land cover category, is depending on the grain scale (circle radius distance from the observation points). In analyses arable lands has been omitted because this land cover type is the well-known habitat of the species. According to our results, the Eurasian Skylark prefers permanent crops (vineyards, fruit trees and berry plantations) inside 600m and 1200m buffer zones, and pastures inside 1200m buffer zones, while it does not prefer urban fabric areas and heterogeneous agricultural, forests, and wetlands or water bodies inside 300m and 600m, scrub and/or herbaceous vegetation associations (transitional woodland-shrub and natural grassland areas) inside the 600m and 1200m radius buffer areas. The identification of these regional (European level) land-cover categories allowed us to analyse the recent (1990–2012) and the predicted (2006–2050) characteristics of habitat changes of this bird species, associated with land cover change. Based on our results, we could estimate that the Skylark habitat will decrease by 188 560 ha between 2006–2050 in Hungary.


The performance of quantum gates is often assessed using some form of randomized benchmarking. However, the existing methods become infeasible for more than approximately five qubits. Here we show how to use a simple and customizable class of circuits-randomized mirror circuits-to perform scalable, robust, and flexible randomized benchmarking of Clifford gates. We show that this technique approximately estimates the infidelity of an average many-qubit logic layer, and we use simulations of up to 225 qubits with physically realistic error rates in the range 0.1%-1% to demonstrate its scalability. We then use up to 16 physical qubits of a cloud quantum computing platform to demonstrate that our technique can reveal and quantify crosstalk errors in many-qubit circuits.


Adult rabbits were subjected to running on a treadmill three times daily for 1, 5, and 30 days. The animals were injected with 35S-sulfate and killed 24 h later. The concentration of free and bound glycosaminoglycans (GAG) in plasma, as well as the specific radioactivities of the fractions, was determined. Thirty days of running produced a statistically significant increase in the concentrations of both free and bound plasma GAG, whereas only the latter fraction was increased after 5 days of running. Consistent changes in the specific radioactivities of the fractions were not discernible.


This study aims to examine the effect of tax aggressiveness on corporate social responsibility disclosure. The dependent variable used in this study is the disclosure of social responsibility. While the independent variable in this study is the tax aggressiveness measured using the proxy Effective Tax Rates (ETR). This study uses four control variable; include capiral intensity, market to book ratio, return on asset (ROA), dan size.
This study is a replication of the study by Lanis and Richardson (2013) and using 192 manufacturing companies that listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in the perioed 2013-2016 as the sample. The sample is chosen by purposive sampling method and there are 24 data outlier. The company that meet the criteria of this research are 168 companies. Data were analyzed using ordinary least square regression analysis model.
The study indicate that tax aggressiveness has a positive and significant impact on the disclosure of Corporate Social Responsibility. The study indicate that the higher the level of tax aggressiveness of a company, the greater the disclosure of Corporate Social Responsibility. So this study justify the theory of legitimacy.


The paper on financing of road maintenance in Sub-Saharan Africa discusses the evaluation criteria for assessing second generation road funds and gives an overview of their performance. It also identifies the constraints encountered by road funds in their move towards second generation road funds. The objective of the analysis is to deepen the understanding of best practice in order to provide guidance to countries setting up or restructuring road funds. This paper presents the result of an analysis of a data base used as a tracking system that summarizes the state of advance of reform implementation in 30 countries in SSA with a particular emphasis on road funds performance. The findings are supported by visits to a number of SSA countries and a survey conducted among road fund managers to measure performance indicators of the road sector institutions. Overall, the road maintenance needs are becoming more visible. Road funds have secured a more stable and predictable flow of funds for road maintenance but country progress varies widely and, although a country might have established a road fund, this does not necessarily mean that it is either fully efficient, or fully autonomous. In most cases, the establishment of a road fund has not resolved the insufficiency of funds for road maintenance. The results also show that more efforts are required to capture and sustain the efficiency gains that could derive from the improvement of road management practices and better use of available resources.


In recent years, biometric identification has received general concerns around the world, and become a frontal and hot topic in the information age. Among the internal biometric traits, electroencephalogram (EEG) signals have emerged as a prominent characteristic due to the high security, uniqueness and impossibility to steal or mimic. In this paper, individual difference of visual evoked potentials (VEPs) with cognition task were investigated, in addition, a feature selection and channel optimization strategy was developed for the VEPs based biometric identification system, where three different methods, including genetic algorithm (GA), Fisher discriminant ratio (FDR), and recursive feature elimination (RFE) were employed. In our experiments with 20 healthy subjects, the classification accuracy by support vector machine(SVM)reached up to 97.25% with AR model parameters, compared to 96.25% before optimization, and 32 channels of most discriminative were eventually selected from 64 channels with best performance. Results in this study revealed the feasibility of VEPs based EEG to be used for biometric identification. The proposed optimization algorithm was shown to have the ability to effectively improve the identification accuracy as well as simplifying the system. Further investigate may provide a novel idea for the individual difference analysis of EEG and for its practical design and optimization in the field of biometrics in the future. Keywords—biometric; visual evoked potentials (VEPs); features selection; channels optimization


Background Understanding the reasons underlying the emerging trend and the changing demographics of Asian prostate cancer (PC) has become an important field of study. This study set out to explore the possibility that urinary calculi (UC) and PC may share an association by conducting a case-control study on a population-based database in Taiwan. Methods The cases of this study included 2,900 subjects ≥ 40 years-old who had received their first-time diagnosis of PC and 14,500 randomly selected controls without PC. Conditional logistic regressions were employed to explore the association between PC and having been previously diagnosed with UC. Results We found that prior UC was found among 608 (21.0%) cases and 2,037 (14.1%) controls (p<0.001). Conditional logistic regression analysis revealed that compared to controls, the odds ratio (OR) of prior UC for cases was 1.63 (95% CI = 1.47–1.80). Furthermore, we found that cases were more likely to have been previously diagnosed with kidney calculus (OR = 1.71; 95% CI = 1.42–2.05), bladder calculus (OR = 2.06; 95% CI = 1.32–3.23), unspecified calculus (OR = 1.66; 95% CI = 1.37–2.00), and ≥2 locations of UC (OR = 1.73; 1.47–2.02) than controls. However, there was no significant relationship between PC and prior ureter calculus. We also found that of the patients with UC, there was no significant difference between PC and treatment method. Conclusions This investigation detected an association between PC and prior UC. These results highlight a potential target population for PC screening.


This thesis describes the results from two published papers identifying spontaneous cellular immune responses against the transcription factors Foxp3 and Foxo3. The tumor microenvironment is infiltrated by cells that hinder effective tumor immunity from developing. Two of these cell types, which have been linked to a bad prognosis for patients, are regulatory T cells (Treg) and tolerogenic dendritic cells (DC). Tregs inhibit effector T cells from attacking the tumor through various mechanisms, including secreted factors and cell-to-cell contact. Tregs express the transcription factor Foxp3, which is necessary for their development and suppressive activities. Tolerogenic DCs participate in creating an environment in the tumor where effector T cells become tolerant towards the tumor instead of attacking it. The transcription factor Foxo3 was recently described to be highly expressed by tolerogenic DCs and to programme their tolerogenic influence. This thesis describes for the first time the existence of spontaneous cellular immune responses against peptides derived from Foxp3 and Foxo3. We have detected the presence of cytotoxic T cells that recognise these peptides in an HLA-A2 restricted manner in cancer patients and for Foxp3 in healthy donors as well. In addition, we have demonstrated that the Foxp3- and Foxo3-specific CTLs recognize Foxp3- and Foxo3-expressing cancer cell lines and importantly, suppressive immune cells, namely Tregs and in vitro generated DCs. Cancer immunotherapy is recently emerging as an important treatment modality improving the survival of selected patients. The current progress is largely owing to targeting of the immune suppressive milieu that is dominating the tumor microenvironment. This is being done through immune checkpoint blockade with CTLA-4 and PD-1/PD-L1 antibodies and through lymphodepleting conditioning of patients and ex vivo activation of TILs in adoptive cell transfer. Several strategies are being explored for depletion of Tregs and for modulation of Treg and DC suppressive activity, including CD25 antibodies and chemotherapy. The research presented in this thesis offer an alternative approach to targeting suppressive cells subsets, by activating the immune system against proteins expressed by these cell types.


Question semantic similarity (Q2Q) is a challenging task that is very useful in many NLP applications, such as detecting duplicate questions and question answering systems. In this paper, we present the results and findings of the shared task (Semantic Question Similarity in Arabic). The task was organized as part of the first workshop on NLP Solutions for Under Resourced Languages (NSURL 2019) The goal of the task is to predict whether two questions are semantically similar or not, even if they are phrased differently. A total of 9 teams participated in the task. The datasets created for this task are made publicly available to support further research on Arabic Q2Q.


Objective: This study was conducted in order to determine the self-efficacy perceptions in patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis. Method: The study was conducted with 92 patients in the physical therapy – rehabilitation and immunology outpatient clinics of Kafkas University Research and Application Hospital, and in the physical therapy and rehabilitation outpatient clinics of Kars State Hospital between November and June 2014. The Personal Information Form involving the descriptive characteristics of patients and the arthritis self-efficacy scale (ASS) were used to collect the data of the study. Results: Examining the most frequent symptoms in patients, it was determined that 72.9% of patients had intense pain, 40.3% had intense stiffness, 44.3% had joint swelling and 55.5% had emotional problems. Examining distribution of the mean scores obtained by patients from ASS and its subscales; they had lower mean scores of Self-Efficacy in Pain (20.22±3.89), Self-Efficacy in Foot-Leg Function (20.20±3.35) and SelfEfficacy in Hand-Arm function (20.66±3.00). Conclusion: The results of this study that low self-efficacy perception in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, suggesting that they felt inadequate to cope with daily living activities and pain


Natural Gas production and transportation are at risk of Gas hydrate plugging especially when in offshore environments where temperature is low and pressure is high. These plugs can eventually block the pipeline, increase back pressure, stop production and ultimately rupture gas pipelines. This study seeks to develops machine learning models after a kinetic inhibitor to predict the gas hydrate formation and pressure changes within the natural gas flow line. Green hydrate inhibitor A, B and C were obtained as plant extracts and applied in low dosages (0.01 wt.% to 0.1 wt.%) on a 12meter skid-mounted hydrate closed flow loop. From the data generated, the optimal dosages of inhibitor A, B and C were observed to be 0.02 wt.%, 0.06 wt.% and 0.1 wt.% respectively. The data associated with these optimal dosages were fed to a set of supervised machine learning algorithms (Extreme gradient boost, Gradient boost regressor and Linear regressor) and a deep learning algorithm (Artificial Neural Network). The output results from the set of supervised learning algorithms and Deep Learning algorithms were compared in terms of their accuracies in predicting the hydrate formation and the pressure within the natural gas flow line. All models had accuracies greater than 90%. This result show that the application Machine learning to solving flow assurance problems is viable. The results show that it is viable to apply machine learning algorithms to solve flow assurance problems, analyzing data and getting reports which can improve accuracy and speed of on-site decision making process.


This paper presents a 3-D finite-element modal analysis to reduce the acoustical power radiated by a brushless permanent-magnet synchronous machines and avoid any resonance phenomena. The method is able to analyze the impact of some design parameters on all the resonance frequencies for reducing the total sound power and gives some guidelines to their choice. A less noisy prototype has been analyzed in simulation without any acoustic calculation and then built and validated with experimental results.


The rat lungworm Angiostrongylus cantonensis is a nematode parasite that can cause potentially fatal eosinophilic meningitis in humans. The life cycle of A. cantonensis involves multiple hosts, with the most common terminal hosts being rodents and intermediate hosts comprising gastropods. One such gastropod is the invasive island apple snail Pomacea maculata, which is native to South America but is currently established in several states in the USA, including South Carolina. It has been identified as an intermediate host for A. cantonensis in several locations in Louisiana. The ability of the island apple snail to serve as an intermediate host for A. cantonensis poses significant potential threats to human health, yet no studies to date have determined the prevalence of this parasite in island apple snails in South Carolina. The objective of this study was to investigate the frequency of occurrence of A. cantonensis in South Carolina island apple snails by using a real-time PCR assay. One-hundred individuals from each of three distinct stormwater retention ponds were tested, and no positive detections were found. Determining the prevalence of A. cantonensis in island apple snails is critical in accurately informing the public as to the risks involved in handling and/or consuming island apple snails.


: This paper deals with the indoor localization problem for a SSMR (Skid Steering Mobile Robot) subjected to wheel-ground friction and with one LRF (Laser Range Finder). In order to compensate for some friction effect, a friction related coefficient is estimated by the recursive least square algorithm and appended to the maneuvering command. Also to reduce odometric information based localization errors, the lines are extracted with scan points of LRF and matched with the ones of the corresponding map built in advance. The present friction compensation and scan map matching schemes have been applied to a laboratory SSMR, and experimental results are given to validate the localization performance along an indoor corridor.


The application of high Tc superconductors, especially thin films, for magnetic lenses is discussed. If a thin film is patterned with a spiral, a small coil is obtained which can be utilized as a magnetic lens. However, because of field strength and rotational symmetry requirements, a number of thus patterned thin films need to be stacked. The concept was first tested in a single YBa2Cu3O7-x layer patterned with a 50-turn spiral, having an outer diameter of 8 mm and an inner diameter of 2 mm. The width of the track was 50 um. The maximum current density obtained in this pattern was 3 x 1O-4 A cm-2 at 30 K. We also designed a pattern suitable for face-to-face stacking. The alignment of the two stack components with respect to each other will be done by means of capacitive position sensors which are integrated in the pattern.


The concentration levels of biogenic magnetite nanoparticles in transgenic R6/2 Huntington's disease (HD) mice have been investigated, using seven control and seven HD mice each from an 8 week-old litter and from a 12 week-old litter. Hysteresis and isothermal remnant magnetisation data were collected on a SQUID magnetometer, and analysed using a model comprising dia/paramagnetic, ferrimagnetic and superparamagnetic contributions, to extract the magnetite and ferritin concentrations present. It was found that magnetite was present in both superparamagnetic and blocked states. A larger spread and higher concentration of magnetite levels was found in the diseased mice for both the 8 week-old and 12 week-old batches, compared to the controls.


We report on an optical setup for compact full-field transmission microscopy developed for imaging with laboratory scale X-ray sources such as gas discharge plasmas. The optical setup consists of a reflective condenser and a zone plate objective imaging in the water window region (wavelength 2.3 – 4.4 nm). The microscope is able to visualize object structures in the sub-40 nm region. The radiation for the microscope is generated by a gas discharge in nitrogen with an input power of 10 kW and few Watt/(2π·sr) narrowband line emission. A gold coated axially symmetrical elliptical mirror is used to collect the radiation and forms a focused spot on the sample. Having a diameter of several 100 μm the spot is larger than the utilized imaging field, which leads to uniform illumination of the object. The mirror can be adjusted by a 5–axes piezo driven translation stage to optimize the flux in the object plane. The He-α line emission (2.88 nm) is selected of the nitrogen emission spectrum by means of a titanium thin film filter providing monochromatic sample illumination. A micro zone plate generates a magnified image detected by a back illuminated TE-cooled CCD camera. At high repetition rates the source is suitable for imaging test objects like Siemens stars, latex spheres and diatoms with magnifications of 1000 at exposure times in the range of a few seconds.


Abstract For the general public and for scientists, interpersonal political communication is highly important; however, surveys based on self-reports often lack satisfactory validity and reliability, because political talk is embedded in everyday conversations and thus hard to remember. Furthermore, different people are likely to ascribe different meanings to the term 'politics'. The present paper aims to further our understanding of what people perceive or do not perceive as political. To determine the factors influencing the general public's understanding of politics, we conducted a representative telephone survey among 804 citizens of a German city. The findings indicate that people's classification of conversations as political is determined by the characteristics of the discussed issues. Furthermore, some respondents did not mention all conversations that might influence their political opinions and behavior. Nonetheless, the matter might be relevant for research when people are asked about their political conversation behavior.


High neutrophil counts in induced sputum have been found in nonasthmatic amateur runners at rest and after a marathon, but the pathogenesis of airway neutrophilia in athletes is still poorly understood. Bronchial epithelial damage may occur during intense exercise, as suggested by investigations conducted in endurance-trained mice and competitive human athletes studied under resting conditions. To gain further information on airway changes acutely induced by exercise, airway cell composition, apoptosis, IL-8 concentration in induced sputum, and serum CC-16 level were measured in 15 male amateur runners at rest (baseline) and shortly after a half-marathon. Different from results obtained after a marathon, neutrophil absolute counts were unchanged, whereas bronchial epithelial cell absolute counts and their apoptosis increased significantly (P < 0.01). IL-8 in induced sputum supernatants almost doubled postrace compared with baseline (P < 0.01) and correlated positively with bronchial epithelial cell absolute counts (R(2) = 0.373, P < 0.01). Serum CC-16 significantly increased after all races (P < 0.01). These data show mild bronchial epithelial cell injury acutely induced by intense endurance exercise in humans, extending to large airways the data obtained in peripheral airways of endurance-trained mice. Therefore, neutrophil influx into the airways of athletes may be secondary to bronchial epithelial damage associated with intense exercise.


The enzyme, glucosamine‐6‐phosphate isomerase (GNPI) or deaminase (GNPDA) (EC 18.104.22.168), catalyzes the conversion of GNP to fructose‐6‐phosphate and ammonia, with an aldo/keto isomerization and an amination/deamination. A hamster sperm‐derived protein (Oscillin) with high similarity to bacterial GNPI has been proved to be capable of inducing calcium oscillation in eggs at fertilization. GNPI/Oscillin was supposed to be an important factor in starting embryonic development. From the cDNA library of human dendritic cells (DC), we isolated a novel full‐length cDNA encoding a 276‐amino acid‐residue protein that shares high homology with human GNPI/Oscillin. So, the novel molecule is named as GNPI2. The GNPI2 gene consists of seven exons and six introns. It is mapped to chromosome 4. Northern blot analysis indicated that the tissue distribution of GNPI2 mRNA is different from that of human GNPI or Oscillin mRNA. GNPI2 is ubiquitously expressed in most of human tissues with high expression in testis, ovary, placenta, and heart. Like GNPI, the recombinant GNPI2 has been proved to have the enzymatic activity to catalyze the conversion of GNP to fructose‐6‐phosphate. Our results indicated that GNPI2 is a novel protein with definite function as a GNPI. J. Cell. Biochem. 88: 932–940, 2003. © 2003 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.


Presenters in this Workshop are project leaders or core directors in this first-ever National Cancer Institute/National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities jointly funded program project (P01 CA109091-01A1) based on community-based research and interventions in controlled trials to reduce a cancer health disparity affecting a racial/ethnic minority population group. As a result of thisWorkshop, presenters will discuss the (1) "Conceptual Framework for Community Interventions to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities"; (2) "Methodological Issues and Tools for Community-based Trials to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities"; (3) "Research and Biostatistical Design Issues in Interventions to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities" and (4) "Reducing Cancer Health Disparities through a Targeted Media Campaign to Promote Hepatitis B Screening among Vietnamese Americans". As a result of thisWorkshop, participants should expect to visualize the gamut of issues from conceptual through both qualitative and quantitative methodological and research design. In the final presentation, concepts, methods, and design issues are exemplified in one of the three research studies in this program project entitled "Liver Cancer Control Interventions for Asian Americans". In the Overview, the context for this program project will be described in terms of the rationale for focusing on liver cancer as the cancer health disparity of focus; the rationale for the three Asian American ethnic groups included; the formulation of goals and objectives; the preliminary work and studies that led to this research; and the operational conduct of this program project. Hepatitis B-induced liver cancer was chosen as the cancer health disparity of focus because of the overwhelming data and literature that documented this particular disparity as one that disproportionally affects Asian Americans the most and in particular, Vietnamese, Hmong, and Koreans who are the focus of this research. We based our focus on hepatitis B since it is not only a serious health condition but also a very common precursor to the development of almost invariably fatal hepatocellular carcinoma (primary liver cancer). Among Asian Americans, hepatitis B is typically transmitted from mother to child during the birthing process but it can also be transmitted through sexual intercourse. While universal infant vaccination for hepatitis B and successive requirements for hepatitis B vaccinations for school entry may eventually spare children and future generations from hepatitis B, the most recent CDC recommendations encourages adults from higher hepatitis B surface antigen lands of origin such as those from Southeast Asia and Korea to be serologically tested for hepatitis B. In this program project, the overall research goal is common for all three of our R01-level projects, namely, to increase the proportion of Asian American adults to be serologically tested for hepatitis B. With the knowledge of the serological test results and outside the scope of this research study, follow-up such as vaccination if not infected or earlier treatment to extend life as appropriate may be initiated. While the overall research goal is the same for all three projects, the three projects differ in research design and intervention approaches. Additionally, our program project is distinctive in that each of the three projects focuses on a single Asian American ethnic group rather than combining all ethnic groups in a single study. We believe there is considerable value to this approach and this approach will be explained. The program project was funded beginning in September 2006. In reality though this program project could not have been initiated without the years of previously conducted preliminary work and the earning of trust through collaborations among multiple investigators and community leaders scattered over several geographically dispersed sites. We believe the proper conduct of community-centered studies must be carefully conducted; applying lessons learned from various methodologies may be useful; however, the most important aspect is the requirement to earn the community9s trust and that once earned must be maintained as a privilege and not a right.


The data available in the literature data on the role of neoangiogenesis and extracellular matrix factors in the pathogenesis of acute and chronic leukemias and lymphoproliferative diseases are presented. Hematopoiesis and endothelial cells have a common pluripotential progenitor. Angiogenic and fibroblast growth factors are involved chronic leukemia. The phenotype of lymphoid cells determines the type of the cellular and extracellular factors.


A homomorphism φ of CNF formulas from H to F is a function mapping the set of literals in H to the set of literals in F and it preserves complements and clauses. If the formula H is homomorphic to the formula F, then the unsatisfiability of H implies the unsatisfiability of F. A CNF formula F is minimally unsatisfiable if F is unsatisfiable and the resulting formula deleting any one clause from F is satisfiable. MU(1) is a class of minimally unsatisfiable formulas with the deficiency of the number of clauses and variables to be one. A triple (H,φ,F) is called a homomorphism proof from H of F if φ is a homomorphism from H to F. In this paper, a method from the basic matrix of MU(1) formula is used to prove that a tree resolution proof for an unsatisfiable formula F can be transformed into a homomorphism proof from a MU(1) formula for F. Whence, the homomorphism proof system from formulas in MU(1) is complete, and this proof system and the tree resolution proof system can be transformed mutually in polynomial time on the size of proof.


The role of some surfactants in the corrosion of carbon steel in 1.0 M HCl has been studied using weight loss and galvanostatic polarization techniques. Results showed that the inhibition occurs through adsorption of the inhibitor molecules on the metal surface. The inhibition efficiency was found to increase with increasing inhibitor concentration and decreased with increasing temperature which is due to the fact, that the rate of corrosion of carbon steel is higher than the rate of adsorption The inhibiting action of these compounds are considerably enhanced by the addition of KI, due to the increase of the surface coverage and therefore indicate the joint adsorption of these compounds and iodide ions. Thermodynamic parameters for adsorption and activation processes were determined. Galvanostatic polarization data indicated that these compounds act as mixed-type inhibitors. Results obtained from the two techniques are in good agreement.


Background: Due to the Covid-19 epidemic, the closure of universities and the transition to distance education in our country as well as all over the world have made university students one of the groups most affected by this process. Aim: The aim of this research is to examine the aggression levels of university students who had to take online learning due to the Covid-19 epidemic in terms of some variables. Methods: The sample of the study consists of a total of 204 students, 130 (63.7%) male and 74 (36.3%) female, who had taken online learning during the Covid-19 epidemic period. In order to collect the data, the personal information form prepared by the researcher and the "Aggression Scale", which is the Turkish version of the scale developed by Buss and Perry in 1992 and updated by Buss and Warren in 2000, are used. In the analysis of the data, frequency and percentage values are taken to examine the personal information distribution of the participants, Skewness-Kurtosis values are examined to determine whether the data showed a normal distribution and it is determined that it shows a normal distribution. Independent Sample T test and One Way ANOVA tests are used to determine the differences between the variables. The significance level is taken as 0.05. Correlation analysis is performed to determine the direction and amount (strength) of the relationship between the sub-dimensions of the scale. Results: According to the findings, it is shown in this research that the university students had normal level of aggression tendency. When the mean scores of the physical aggression, verbal, hostility, anger, and indirect aggression sub-dimensions of the aggression scale are examined, it can be said that the mean scores of the anger sub-dimension are higher than the mean scores of the other sub-dimensions. According to the gender variable; A significant difference was found in favor of males in total aggression scores, physical-verbal aggression and anger sub-dimensions. According to the variable of the field of learning; There were significant differences in total aggression scores, physical-verbal aggression and hostility sub-dimensions. Between the aggression scale sub-dimensions, a moderate and high level of significant correlation was found at the level of 0.01. Conclusion: It has been concluded that the Covid-19 process has no effect on the aggression level of university students. It was observed that as the level of anger and physical aggression of the students who spent the quarantine period at home and received online learning increased with respect to the level of general aggression is also increased. It can be said that during the quarantine period, the fact that students take time for themselves while they are at home and stay away from environmental conditions that will increase their aggression levels causes these results. Keywords: Covid-19, University students, aggression


Background: With improvements in living donor liver transplantation (LDLT) techniques and the increased experience of surgeons in laparoscopic major liver resection, laparoscopic donor hepatectomy is performed increasingly. Therefore, expert opinion on this procedure is required. Objective: The study aimed to report the current status and summarize the expert opinion on laparoscopic donor hepatectomy. Methods: An expert consensus meeting was held on September 8, 2016, in Seoul, Korea. Results: Laparoscopic donor left lateral sectionectomy could be considered the standard practice in pediatric LDLT. In adult LDLT, laparoscopy-assisted donor hepatectomy or left hepatectomy is potentially the next need, requiring more evidence for becoming standard practice. Laparoscopic donor right hepatectomy is still in the developmental stage, and more supporting evidence is required. Waving the cost consideration, the robotic approach could be a valid alternative for the suitable approaches of laparoscopy. Conclusions: Laparoscopic donor hepatectomy is increasing its role in both pediatric and adult LDLT. However, for major donor hepatectomy, more evidence is needed.


The orbit loss current is calculated for the ASDEX Upgrade geometry using the 5D (3D in configuration space and 2D in velocity space) Monte Carlo code ASCOT. The balance between the obtained current and the analytical estimate of the return current shows an L-H transition for the normalized collision frequency as expected from analytic theory. The transition in ASDEX Upgrade, however, occurs at larger values of .


A pathologists' assistant (PA) is recognized as a well-trained clinical technologist in pathologic examinations. Some nations including the United States and United Kingdom have developed such roles with good results. In Japan, there are some serious problems with the PA system. The most important problem is the limitation of activity, such as cutting specimens and screening biopsy samples. The latter probably conflicts with Japanese medical law. Although a PA system would relieve the burden on pathologists it should be careful to introduce of a PA system in Japan.


Abstract I examine Gekkō Kamen (Moonlight Mask), one of the earliest postwar heroes, as a palimpsest of identity anxieties in postwar Japan. The turban-and-sunglass-wearing, motorcyclemounted, pistol-toting, shuriken-throwing hero dressed all in white drew as much on Captain America and Superman as it did on Japanese ninja stories and wartime hero stories, such as Golden Bat. Gekkō Kamen was also a template for a new kind of hero with a bike between his knees and a mask over his mouth. In 1958 when the series was launched, it may have been difficult to foresee Gekkō Kamen's future global impact as Capitan Centella, when translated into Spanish, but the local impact was immeasurable. Although the series was canceled after a child died attempting a stunt from the show, the cultural position of Gekkō Kamen continues today and can be seen in as varied venues as Ultraman in the 1960s, the Kamen Rider and Japanese Spiderman TV series of the 1970s, and Go Nagai's spoof Kekkō Kamen, the busty, underwear-clad female superhero. The hybrid and miscegenated figure of Gekkō Kamen represented a new mode of heroic selfidentification that carried with it nationalism pitched at the global level rather than national or regional levels. Close examination of the odd identities of the heroes and villains in the 1958 series reveals the fears endemic in the rebuilding nation and bipolar world order. As both a mirror and projector of masks, Gekkō Kamen provides stunning frame for focusing on cold war notions of heroism and bravery.


Abstract Objective This study was undertaken to determine the accuracy of the surgeon's assessment in detecting epithelial remnants over the malleus after de-epithelisation in tympanoplasty. Methods Intra-operatively, the umbo was assessed for epithelial remnants with the microscope. The umbo was then resected and sent for histopathological examination to detect epithelial remnants. Results Out of 42 cases, microscopic examination findings for epithelium were positive in 16 cases and negative in 26 cases. Histopathology findings were positive in 13 cases. The surgeons' assessment was accurate only in two cases. Conclusion Residents, with their limited experience, are more likely to leave residual epithelium. When the chance of residual epithelium over the umbo is significant, the surgeon has two choices: to place the graft medial to the umbo or to resect the umbo. It is our opinion that the malleus exteriorisation should be incorporated into tympanoplasty training, with the aim of preventing epithelial entrapment in the middle ear.


Acer negundo Sarg. (box elder) is a dioecious tree species that dominates riparian systems at mid elevations throughout the southwest and Intermountain West of the United States. Previous studies have shown that female A. negundo trees occur at higher frequencies along stream margins, whereas males occur at higher frequencies in drier microsites. To better understand the adaptive significance of sex ratio biases and their impact on the ecohydrology of riparian ecosystems, we examined whole-plant water relations and hydraulic properties of mature male and female A. negundo trees occurring within 1 m of a perennial stream channel. We hypothesized that (1) females would have significantly greater canopy water fluxes than males (particularly during periods of seed production: May-June), and (2) xylem in females is more hydraulically efficient but more vulnerable to cavitation than xylem in males. Mean sap flux density (J(s)) during the early growing season (May and June) was 43% higher in female trees than in male trees (n = 6 and 7 trees respectively, P < 0.0001). Mean J(s) in July and August remained 17% higher in females than in males (P = 0.0009). Mean canopy stomatal conductance per unit leaf area (g(s,leaf)) in May and June was on average 140% higher in females than in males (P < 0.0001). Mean g(s,leaf) in July and August remained 69% higher in female trees than in male trees (P < 0.0001). Canopy stomatal conductance scaled to basal area was 90 and 31% higher in females relative to males during May-June and July-August, respectively (P < 0.0001 during both periods). Conversely, there were no apparent differences in either branch hydraulic conductance or branch xylem cavitation vulnerability between genders. These results improve our capacity to describe the adaptive forces that shape the spatial distribution of male and female trees in dioecious species, and their consequences for ecohydrological processes in riparian ecosystems.


The synthesis of a chiral version of a triplesalen ligand has been performed in two steps starting from 2,4,6-triacetyl-1,3,5-trihydroxybenzene (1). Reaction with excess trans-(1R,2R)-1,2-cyclohexanediamine and trans-(1S,2S)-1,2-cyclohexanediamine provided the chiral triplesalen half units 2,4,6-tris[1-((1R,2R)-2-aminocyclohexylimino)ethyl]-1,3,5-trihydroxybenzene (2(RR)) and 2,4,6-tris[1-((1S,2S)-2-aminocyclohexylimino)ethyl]-1,3,5-trihydroxybenzene (2(SS)), respectively. The two enantiomeric pure triplesalen ligands H(6)chand(RR) and H(6)chand(SS) were obtained by reaction of the triplesalen half units with 3,5-di-tert-butylsalicylaldehyde. Reaction with MnCl(2) x 2 H(2)O under basic aerobic conditions afforded the chiral trinuclear triplesalen complexes 3(RR) and 3(SS). Single-crystal X-ray diffraction studies on both enantiomers showed the presence of the two ionization isomers [(chand){Mn(III)Cl(MeOH)}(3)] and [(chand){Mn(III)(MeOH)(2)}(3)]Cl(3) in the solid state, resulting in the formulation of 3 (either 3(RR) or 3(SS)) as [(chand){Mn(III)Cl(MeOH)}(3)][(chand){Mn(III)(MeOH)(2)}(3)]Cl(3). The crystal structures exhibit chiral hydrophobic channels of approximately 8 A diameter decorated with tert-butyl groups. These form left-handed helices in the 3(RR) enantiomer and right-handed helices in the 3(SS) enantiomer. Magnetic measurements are in accord with weak exchange interactions between the Mn(III) S(i) = 2 ions and strong local magnetic anisotropy as has been found in other trinuclear Mn(III)(3) triplesalen complexes. As a proof-of principal, we have investigated the catalytic ability of the two enantiomers in the enantioselective epoxidation of unfunctionalized olefins. The chiral trinuclear Mn(III)(3) triplesalen acts under non-optimized conditions as a catalyst with relatively good yields and moderate enantiomeric excess.


: Separation of the placenta was examined by the echoscopic and tocographic methods in 62 women who gave birth to healthy full-term babies. The placentas separated spontaneously, in 61 women. The amplitude time characteristics of the after-birth period are presented, and the echoscopic picture of separation of the placenta is described. The findings evidence the presence of symmetrical and asymmetrical contractions of the uterine walls, governed by the placental position in the uterus, and the growing tension of the placenta during labor because of its compression with uterine walls.


This study tackles the subject matter of the approval of al-Imam, the governor, and its impact on the rulings of worships. It aims to assess all the issues related to this theme in the perspective of the four schools of Islamic Jurisprudence including their evidence and the selected opinion for the researcher. This paper defines the approval as a term, and studies its impact on the prayer, Masjid, and the different types of group prayers. This is in addition to, its impact on al-Zakah and its duties and distribution, and its impact on the collection of the hidden property. Furthermore, this research sheds light on the impact of the Imam's approval on fasting and pilgrimage worships.


Low pathogenic avian influenza (LPAI) of subtype H9 outbreaks have been frequently occurring in major commercial hubs of Nepal including Chitwan, a central lowland area, causing substantial economic losses to the farmers. However, the risk factors associated with these outbreaks have been poorly understood, and hence, this case-control study was conducted in Chitwan, Nawalpur, and Makawanpur districts of Nepal from October 2019 to March 2020. A total of 102 farms were selected in which 51 were case farms, and 51 were controls. Case farms were avian influenza (AI)-subtype-H9-confirmed farms through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays on poultry samples. Control farms included farms that were AI-negative in the antigen test brought to the National Avian Disease Investigation Laboratory, Chitwan, for diagnosis during the study period. Each farm was visited to collect information using a semi-structured questionnaire. A total of 25 variables representing farm characteristics and biosecurity measures were considered as potential risk factors. The final multivariable model showed that distance of less than 0.5 km from the main road (OR = 4.04, 95% CI = 1.20–13.56, p = 0.023), distance of less than 1 km from a nearest infected farm (OR = 76.42, 95% CI = 7.17–814.06, p = 0.0003), and wild birds coming around the farm (OR = 6.12, 95% CI = 1.99–18.79, p = 0.0015) were risk factors for avian influenza type H9, whereas using apron or separate cloth inside the shed (OR = 0.109, 95% CI = 0.020–0.577, p = 0.0092) was shown to reduce the risk of farms being positive for AI subtype H9. These findings suggest that due consideration should be given to site selection while establishing the farms and the importance of implementing appropriate biosecurity measures, such as using separate cloth inside the shed and preventing the entry of wild birds inside the farm to reduce the potential risk of introduction of avian influenza type H9 to their poultry farms.


This study draws upon survey and administrative data on over 9,000 teachers in 336 Miami-Dade County public schools over 2 years to investigate the kinds of collaborations that exist in instructional teams across the district and whether these collaborations predict student achievement. While different kinds of teachers and schools report different collaboration quality, we find average collaboration quality is related to student achievement. Teachers and schools that engage in better quality collaboration have better achievement gains in math and reading. Moreover, teachers improve at greater rates when they work in schools with better collaboration quality. These results support policy efforts to improve student achievement by promoting teacher collaboration about instruction in teams.


Breastfeeding is the fundamental component of child survival strategy. It significantly influences neurological development of children. The study was conducted to assess whether exclusive and prolonged breastfeeding improves children's cognitive development, including low birth weight (LBW) babies, in a developing country setting like Bangladesh. This observational study was done on a cohort of newborn infants who were discharged from the special care baby unit of Dhaka Shishu Hospital during January 2006 to December 2008 with proper counseling about exclusive and prolonged breastfeeding. Their neuro-developmental follow-up was started at 4 weeks postnatal age and continued at 3-monthly intervals up to 1 year of age. At each visit, cognitive development was assessed using the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID II). Cognitive development was compared between the babies of exclusive vs. non exclusive breastfeeding, normal weight vs. low birth weight and male vs. female babies. A total of 105 cases were successfully followed-up during this period. Out of these 47(44.8%) babies were exclusively breastfed up to 6 month of age and 58(55.2%) were in nonexclusive group. Overall Psychomotor Development Index (PDI) was slightly more (108.40 ± 23.06 vs. 103.23 ± 19.87) in the exclusive breast fed babies in comparison to nonexclusive breast fed babies, but was significantly more in babies having birth weight >2.5 kg in comparison to those having birth weight of <2.5 kg. Other parameters of cognitive development were more or less same in both normal and LBW groups. Mental and motor development was same in both boys and girls. In behavior ratings, cooperation was significantly high (5.89 ± 2.54 vs. 4.71 ± 3.13, p=0.05) and vocalization (5.89 ± 1.07 vs. 4.58 ± 1.16) was also high, though not significant, in girls than boys.


Differences in the structure and semantics of data that is created and maintained by the various actors within a business network make its exchange and utilization a problematic task. This is an important issue facing organizations undertaking knowledge management initiatives. We argue that ontologies can contribute towards the solution of the problem by aiding the conceptualization and design of a translation service between business units. A model for the implementation of such a service is offered based on the process specification language (PSL).


in ten. In four the gonococcus has also been present. The chief clinical symptom which I have relied on in selecting cases for investigation has been the character of the discharge. This is " dirty white " (rather than yellow) and " frothy." I have recently been treating these cases with phenyl-mercuric nitrate, douching with 1 in 25,000 solution and swabbing with a 1 in 1,500 dilution. This appears to be definitely superior to devegan, and to cut short the period of treatment by an average of two weeks. The chief disadvantage of this method is that it entails a daily attendance at the clinic, whereas devegan treatment can be conducted by the patient herself. I have employed the " dark-ground " method of investigation, but do not find that this has much advantage over the ordinary microscope. With a 1/12 oil immersion lens the characteristic movements of the flagella can be plainly seen, and cannot be mistaken.-I am, etc.,


Purpose: The structural characteristics of life adjustments among lung cancer patients with decreased Performance Status (PS) were investigated.
Subjects and methods: Text analysis and cluster analysis were performed with data obtained from interviews of six lung cancer patients with PS 3 or 4 in one university hospital in Japan. The study was conducted from February to June 2009.
Results: The mean age of subjects was 73.6 years. The text data included 623 records, and the number of keywords was 1,398. Keywords that appeared with high frequency were, in order, People (51), now (47), Disease (45), and Doctor (32). Positive type (173) and negative type (366) were extracted from a sensitivity analysis. Life adjustments of lung cancer patients were divided with a linguistic method into 20 categories: "Time period", "Other people", "Actions in daily life", "Symptoms", "Lung cancer", "Place of treatment", "Medical treatment", "Adjustment", "Death", "Physical condition", "Feelings of difficulty", "Relationships with others", "Enjoyment", "Doing one's best", "Acceptance", "Living", "Attentiveness to others", "Belief", "Nursing care" and "Thankfulness." Four clusters were formed in the cluster analysis: Thoughts on receiving care, living on terms with one's physical condition, adjustments with awareness of death, and actions in daily life appropriate to the time.
Discussion: Life adjustments of hospitalized lung cancer patients with decreased PS are closely related to time period, treatment, symptoms and it is conjectured that patients make adjustments to their actions in daily life and thoughts with a positive attitude and feelings when they reach the state of sensing that they will not be cured.


Since the tragic shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012 there have been at least 159 school shootings in America (Everytown, n.d.). This chapter focuses on application of Deweyan thought to school shootings and aesthetic responses. Educational and aesthetic theories are used to understand the effects of school violence and inquiry includes analysis of artful works made in response to shootings. Common themes are noted across all 3 sites in various aesthetic responses and the steps toward reconstruction of associated living. Findings suggest engagement in responsive art works may ameliorate the disruption and trauma of school shootings. Within aesthetic response, there is potential for reclamation, restoration, and re-presentation of experience through the doubled reconstruction of communal spaces/places and of relational identity after shooting incidents. Considerations include the use of aesthetic response and associated living practices by activist and educators as a potential means to understand and work against gun violence.


In this work we establish a result of existence of periodic solutions for quasi-linear partial neutral functional differential equations with unbounded delay on a phase space defined axiomatically.


Blockchain technologies are facing a scalability challenge, which must be overcome to guarantee a wider adoption of the technology. This scalability issue is due to the use of consensus algorithms to guarantee the total order of the chain of blocks (and of the transactions within each block). However, total order is often not fully necessary, since important advanced applications of smart-contracts do not require a total order among
 all
 operations. A much higher scalability can potentially be achieved if a more relaxed order (instead of a total order) can be exploited.

 In this paper, we propose a novel distributed concurrent data type,
 Setchain
 , which significantly improves scalability. A Setchain implements a
 grow-only set
 whose elements are not ordered, unlike conventional blockchain operations. When convenient, the Setchain allows forcing a synchronization barrier that assigns permanently an epoch number to a subset of the latest elements added, agreed by consensus. Therefore, two operations in the same epoch are not ordered, while two operations in different epochs are ordered by their respective epoch number. We present different Byzantine-tolerant implementations of Setchain, prove their correctness and report on an empirical evaluation of a prototype implementation. Our results show that Setchain is orders of magnitude faster than consensus-based ledgers, since it implements grow-only sets with epoch synchronization instead of total order.

 Since the Setchain barriers can be synchronized with the underlying blockchain, Setchain objects can be used as a
 sidechain
 to implement many decentralized solutions with much faster operations than direct implementations on top of blockchains.

 Finally, we also present an algorithm that encompasses into a single process the combined behavior of the Byzantine servers, which simplifies correctness proofs by encoding the general attacker in a concrete implementation.


A novel method to distinguish between intron-containing and intronless DNA sequences has been proposed, based on different statistic behaviors between them. In this method, DNA sequences are first represented as Z curves. Three exponents alpha, beta and gamma for each given sequence are calculated based on the format of the Z curve for the DNA sequence. A three-dimensional space is spanned by the three exponents. Each DNA sequence may be represented by a point in this space. One hundred intronless and intron-containing genes, respectively, were selected randomly from the GenBank or EMBL database. It is shown that the 200 points are roughly distributed in different regions. The best separating plane to separate the two regions is obtained by using Fisher's discriminant algorithm. For any given sequence to be discriminated, calculate three exponents alpha, beta and gamma, corresponding to a point in the three-dimensional space. If the point is situated at the upper region of the separating plane, the sequence is discriminated as an intronless one; otherwise, the sequence is an intron-containing one. A test of the method for the sequences in an independent test set shows that the discriminant accuracy reaches as high as 89.0%.


SUMMARY Most numerical models of Asian deformation focus on rapidly deforming zones close to the Indian indenter, and seldom extend to its northern 'deformation front'. In this study, we examine the present-day deformation of the Amurian continental plate (northeast Asia) which faces stable Eurasia along the Baikal‐Stanovoy boundary. The present-day velocity and stress fields of the Amurian Plate are reproduced by means of thin-shell finite-element modelling. We first compile available GPS and focal mechanism data in and around the Amurian Plate in order to characterize the nature and geometry of its boundaries and its relative velocity with respect to adjacent plates. We then use the finite-element code SHELLS to model the plate deformation under different boundary conditions. Plate rheology, thermal state and crust and mantle thicknesses are fixed according to existing data. We first test the influence of body forces due to crustal thickness variations; then, we test the role of far-field conditions imposed by indentation and extrusion processes to the south, and subduction to the east. Our best-fitting model shows the following. (1) Assuming a relatively 'strong' classical mantle rheology, body forces play a minor role in plate deformation, since they predict velocities much smaller than boundary forces. (2) Transition from south‐north compression in the west, to west‐east extrusion in the east along the southern plate boundary satisfyingly explains the velocity and stress fields of the Mongolia‐Baikal region, suggesting that extrusion is the dominant driving force of the Baikal rift opening. (3) A low-friction fault with null relative Okhotsk‐Eurasia and Philippine Sea‐Eurasia velocities along the eastern plate limit explain observed stresses and velocities in Sakhalin and Japan, suggesting that eastern subduction processes do not play a major role in long-term plate deformation.