Cognitive dysfunction accompanied by neurofibromatosis type 1 is one of the significant characteristics of this neurocutaneous disorder and has a serious impact on patients' quality of life. Although studies on cognitive function in children with neurofibromatosis type 1 have revealed that attentional impairment is a key deficit in these patients, few studies have examined their neuropsychological profile, especially whether the attentional function is also abnormal and specific in adult patients with neurofibromatosis type 1. In this study, we used the revised attention network test to examine the function of three attentional networks-alerting, orienting and executive control-in 20 adult patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 in comparison to 20 normal controls. Adult patients with neurofibromatosis type 1 showed significant greater conflict effect for the executive control network, but no significant differences were found for alerting and orienting network relative to normal controls. These results provide evidence that there is an attentional deficit which is specifically associated with the executive control network in adult patients with neurofibromatosis type 1.


This study describes the use of mass spectrometry (MS), high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and chemical derivatization techniques for the identification of doxylamine and five rhesus monkey urinary metabolites. The analyses were performed using chemical ionization mass spectrometry with either methane or ammonia as the reagent gas. The confirmation of the structures of two of these urinary metabolites was aided by the synthesis of doxylamine N-oxide and desmethyldoxylamine and by the use of methylation and acetylation derivatization techniques. Doxylamine N-oxide, desmethyldoxylamine, didesmethyldoxylamine, and two metabolites which resulted from the cleavage of the aliphatic tertiary nitrogen side chain to the subsequent 2-[1-phenyl-1-(2-pyridinyl)ethoxy]acetic acid or 2-[1-phenyl-1-(2-pyridinyl)ethoxy]methanol compounds were isolated and identified from rhesus monkey urine. Additional data concerning the mass spectral analysis of derivatization or reaction products from the three chloroformate reactions with doxylamine, and the synthesis and separation techniques which afforded mass spectral identification of the urinary metabolites are also presented.


Serum and glucocorticoid-regulated protein kinase 1 (SGK1) that can promote the growth of tumor cells is highly expressed in many tumors. Sarcoma gene (Src), a class of oncogenes, plays an important role in the pathogenesis of cancer and is an important kinase in tumor cell expression pathways. Research has shown that SGK1, as a key regulator, is involved in Src-induced tumor formation, and tumor progression can be inhibited by inhibiting SGK1/Src in combination. In this study, SGK1/Src dual inhibitors were designed by computer-aided drug design. Seven million molecules were screened via the pharmacophore model and molecular docking. Finally, 6 compounds were selected. The results of molecular dynamics simulation of compound 1 showed that it has good binding stability to both receptors. According to the binding site of compound 1 with two receptors, corresponding modifications were made, and 6 novel designed compounds were obtained. The docking energies of the novel designed compounds were lower than that of compound 1.


This paper is based on a systematic and comprehensive review of the literature on the subject of systems' integration, trying to provide the most relevant definitions for the understanding of the concept of integration, processes and measures that can be used as instruments of planning, application and evaluation of the integration strategies that can be easily used by politics. Seen as a natural development of the society, not as a trend imposed by policymakers, integration is achieved in particular through an institutional and spatial dynamics, which usually results in network type configurations. The paper also presents an explanation related to the field of health. The first part represents a contextualization of the integration as phenomenon, followed by conceptual clarifications, and in the last part some coordinates of the mechanism of configuration of the networks in medical care systems are presented. From methodological standpoint this article resulted from the search, selection, evaluation and summaries of some papers focused on the economy and health policy systems in the field of health.


This study evaluates the feasibility of groundwater banking in the Central Basin. The Central Basin is located in Sacramento County in northern California, USA. The study basin is bounded by three rivers (the Sacramento, the American, the Consumes and Mokelumne rivers), and by the Sierra-Nevada mountain range. This study focuses on the potential for groundwater recharge in the Central Basin for three water years (critical, wet, above normal). For that purpose, a 3-D Groundwater Modeling System (GMS) with MODFLOW was created. Three recharge wells were added to the calibrated groundwater model to recharge the water table with 10,000 Acre-Feet (AF) of water to the Central Basin. The banking of 10,000 AF during the critical and wet years was effective in raising the water table elevation in the cone of depression area without causing any negative impact elsewhere in the basin. According to the findings of the Central Basin model, banking up to 10,000 AF of groundwater during any year type is feasible. More than 10,000 AF of groundwater banking might cause more negative impacts than positive benefits.


While the Bank of Canada's inflation-control target is specified in terms of the rate of increase in the total consumer price index, the Bank uses a measure of trend or "core" inflation as a short-term guide for its monetary policy actions. When the inflation targets were renewed in May 2001, the Bank announced that it was adopting a new measure of core inflation. This measure excludes the eight most volatile components of the CPI and adjusts the remaining components for the effect of changes in indirect taxes. In this article, the author discusses the definition of the new measure of core inflation and describes some of its advantages relative to the previous measure. He notes that the new measure has a firmer statistical basis, has a better correspondence with economic theory, and does a better job of predicting future changes in overall inflation. While the new measure has these advantages, the Bank will continue to monitor a broad range of indicators when assessing the likely future path for inflation.


The surging demand for high-definition video streaming services and large neural network models (e.g., Generative Pre-trained Transformer, GPT) implies a tremendous explosion of Internet traffic. To mitigate the traffic pressure, architectures with in-network storage have been proposed to cache popular contents at devices in closer proximity to users. Correspondingly, in order to maximize caching utilization, it becomes essential to devise an effective popularity prediction method. In that regard, predicting popularity with dynamic graph neural network (DGNN) models achieve remarkable performance. However, DGNN models still suffer from tackling sparse datasets where most users are inactive. Therefore, we propose a reformative temporal graph network, named semantics-enhanced temporal graph network (STGN), which attaches extra semantic information into the user-content bipartite graph and could better leverage implicit relationships behind the superficial topology structure. On top of that, we customize its temporal and structural learning modules to further boost the prediction performance. Specifically, in order to efficiently aggregate the diversified semantics that a content might possess, we design a user-specific attention (UsAttn) mechanism for temporal learning module. Unlike the attention mechanism that only analyzes the influence of genres on content, UsAttn also considers the attraction of semantic information to a specific user. Meanwhile, as for the structural learning, we introduce the concept of positional encoding into our attention-based graph learning and adopt a semantic positional encoding (SPE) function to facilitate the analysis of content-oriented user-association analysis. Finally, extensive simulations verify the superiority of our STGN models and demonstrate the effectiveness in content caching.


A novel form of variable hydrostatic restriction is proposed which will automatically achieve a high, infinite or negative static stiffness over a substantial load range. The restrictor is formed between the bearing body and a spring mounted conical plug. The steady state performance is analyzed and design curves presented which are valid for any cone angle from zero, i.e., fixed clearance, to 90 deg which is the normal diaphragm restrictor. The dynamic response to forced sinusoidal vibrations is examined in conventional vibration analysis form and it is found that the restrictor system may be designed to act as a vibration absorber.


In the United States, 25% or greater than 200 billion dollars of hospital spending accounts for administrative costs that involve services for medical coding and billing. With the increasing number of patient records, manual assignment of the codes performed is overwhelming, time-consuming and error-prone, causing billing errors. Natural language processing can automate the extraction of codes/labels from unstructured clinical notes, which can aid human coders to save time, increase productivity, and verify medical coding errors. Our objective is to identify appropriate diagnosis and procedure codes from clinical notes by performing multi-label classification. We used de-identified data of critical care patients from the MIMIC-III database and subset the data to select the ten (top-10) and fifty (top-50) most common diagnoses and procedures, which covers 47.45% and 74.12% of all admissions respectively. We implemented state-of-the-art Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) to fine-tune the language model on 80% of the data and validated on the remaining 20%. The model achieved an overall accuracy of 87.08%, an F1 score of 85.82%, and an AUC of 91.76% for top-10 codes. For the top-50 codes, our model achieved an overall accuracy of 93.76%, an F1 score of 92.24%, and AUC of 91%. When compared to previously published research, our model outperforms in predicting codes from the clinical text. We discuss approaches to generalize the knowledge discovery process of our MIMIC-BERT to other clinical notes. This can help human coders to save time, prevent backlogs, and additional costs due to coding errors.


THE AMERICAN PEDIATRIC SOCIETY has done me the greatest honor by presenting to me the John Howland Medal. My personal satisfaction is tremendous because your selection of me to receive this award is prophetic of the society's continuing interest in reaching out from the academic world of teaching and research to the practical world of community action where new knowledge is put to work in behalf of children. In fact as you honor me, you honor the scores and indeed thousands of people who have devoted themselves for many decades to improving the conditions of life for children in this country and the countries of the world. I am indeed proud to be among those who have received this John Howland Award, and I am glad that I was one of his students now some 50 years ago, when he was in the middle of his career at Johns Hopkins.


When injecting an electron beam with a significant pitch-angle in a magnetoplasma, one has to take care that the parallel velocity of the electrons measured in the plasma does not only depend on the acceleration potential between the anode and the cathode of the electron gun, but also on the amplitude of the ambient magnetic field. The latter can play an important role when the actual acceleration distance of electrons in the gun vicinity, determined partly by collective processes that lead to potential modification in the gun environment, is large enough. Consequently, the actual beam pitch-angle can be noticeably different from the orientation of the electron gun.


Ovarian cancer (OC) is one of the most common gynecological malignancies, with the highest mortality rate in women worldwide. LINC00662, a long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), was shown to play a vital role in many malignancies, while little is known about its role in OC. Firstly, our study determined the expression of LINC00662 in OC tissues and cells. Upregulation or downregulation of LINC00662 were performed in OC cells to explore its effects on cell proliferation and glycolysis of OC. The interaction between LINC00662 and miR-375 was verified using luciferase assays and RNA immunoprecipitation. Results showed that LINC00662 was highly expressed in OC tissues and cells, and patients with increased expression of LINC00662 were associated with shorter overall survival. Furthermore, functional assays proved that LINC00662 was essential for OC cell proliferation and glycolysis. Subsequently, our study further revealed that LINC00662 acted as a competitive RNA and it could modulate the expression of HIF-1α through directly binding with miR- 375. Collectively, upregulation of LINC00662 in ovarian cancer tissues is closely correlated to poor survival. LINC00662 might regulate HIF-1α expression via miR-375. These findings suggested that LINC00662 has the potential to be explored as a diagnostic biomarker for OC.


Millipede diversity in tropical regions, and in Mexico in particular, is still mostly unknown. A modest but recurrent source of new Mexican species is the colonization of exotic species, due to human activity. The invasive species Cylindrodesmus hirsutus Pocock, 1889 has spread from its area of origin in Indonesia or Melanesia and become a virtually pantropical species. Although long known from South and Central America, reports from the Caribbean are sparse and limited to some eastern islands and southern Central America. On 9 March 2016, two adult specimens were found on Cozumel Island, Quintana Roo, in an area of medium semideciduous tropical forest. This paper comprises the first record of this species from Mexico and the northern Caribbean. Given the intense commercial activity in the region, the presence of more populations both in Cozumel Island and in the mainland coast is highly probable.


In this study, a new practical method for fast fabrication of low-cost wearable antennas is introduced. The antennas are directly cut from woven conductive fabrics, while their terminals are connected to microchips by using a repair glue. Following simple trials to demonstrate the fabrication procedure, high-performance radio-frequency antennas that are suitable for the proposed method are designed in a simulation environment based on the multilevel fast multipole algorithm and genetic algorithms. Simulations and measurements on fabricated samples demonstrate very good agreement, showing the feasibility of low-cost, lightweight, flexible, and wearable antennas to be fabricated via the proposed approach.


To the Editor.— The article by Bray et al 1 concerning payment of hospitalization costs for motorcycle injuries addresses an important issue in public health, and I applaud the authors for their effort. Since motorcycles are an inexpensive form of transportation with special appeal for young, risk-taking males, it is not surprising that injured cyclists prove to have low rates of insurance and high reliance on public funds. Documentation of this fact is important if policy is to be influenced. After reading this BRIEF REPORT, however, I wished to comment on several issues it raises. First, and most important, the role of alcohol was not emphasized sufficiently. The fact that between 16 and 38 (31% to 75% ) of 51 drivers were legally intoxicated at the time of hospital admission is consistent with the belief that alcohol is a potent risk factor in motorcycle injury. Compared with automobiles, motorcycles are unforgiving


The aim of this study was to investigate, through the single-cell gel (comet) assay, whether vitamin C is able to protect against renovascular hypertension-induced genotoxicity in multiple organs. A total of 32 male Wistar rats were divided into four groups: negative control (n = 6); animals treated with vitamin C (n = 6); hypertensive rats (n = 10) and hypertensive rats and treated with vitamin C (n = 10). Hypertension was induced as a result of partial obstruction of the left renal artery by means of a silver clip during 6 weeks. Vitamin C was administered at 150 mg/kg during 7 consecutive days before the end of the experimental period. The results showed that vitamin C was able to protect blood cells against hypertension-induced genotoxicity. Brain, liver and heart cells were also protected by vitamin C following hypertension-induced genotoxic damage. Regarding blood pressure, vitamin C reduced the hypertensive state. In conclusion, our results suggest that vitamin C can prevent hypertension-induced DNA damage in blood, liver, brain and heart cells as well as to normalize the blood pressure of rats.


In a retrospective study the results of operatively treated ankle joints were critically discussed. In a period from January 1, 1977 to December 31, 1994, a total of 35 arthrodeses were carried out. Seventeen patients were followed up clinically, radiologically and with a gait analysis. Not only the radiological surgical result was of interest, but also the heel-toe movement of the stiffened foot in the individually adapted orthopedic footwear compared to standard footwear. A significantly improved heel-toe movement was found in orthopedic shoes, although there is a reduction of movement in the hindfoot in the sagittal plane.


Partner notification for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections is acceptable and feasible among female sex workers attending sexually transmitted infection clinics in Guatemala, especially for regular partners. Intention to refer the sexual partner was best predicted by attitude followed by social norms and baby's protection. Women preferred notification via patient-based referral.


This paper deals with the changing relationship between economic theory and accounting practice and theory. It argues that many of the basic problems encountered in practice cannot be avoided in any attempt to construct an economic theory adequate to handle dynamics. In particular problems of timing become critical. Furthermore, there are several critical problems concerning profit maximization, the nature of the rate of interest, agency problems within the firm and the payment of dividends which cannot be dealt with unless there is an adequate reconciliation of accounting and economic theory. Summary includes: history of accounting and economic theory; types and purpose of accounting; information, valuation and control; open problems in economic theory and accounting; a brief glance at the crystal ball; accounting, economics and organization.


Salivary gland hypofunction is a common sequela of Sjögren's syndrome and irradiation treatment of tumors in head and neck region. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the therapeutic effect of a recently developed hydroxy-propyl-methyl-cellulose (HPMC) containing artificial saliva and to compare it with that of the carboxy-methyl-cellulose (CMC) based saliva substitute. The therapeutic effects of both preparations were assessed by means of self-administered questionnaires which had to be completed before and after the use of each type of artificial saliva after one week treatment. We found significant improvement in symptoms of nocturnal discomfort and difficulty in speech, and results were better in case of HPMC based artificial saliva. The retention time in oral cavity and the frequency of daily administration also were better in case of HPMC containing preparation. It is concluded that the use of HPMC containing artificial saliva can be recommended in the treatment of salivary hypofunction.


Abstract Modern TRIP assisted steels contain retained austenite with carbon concentrations in excess of 1 wt-%. Some of their mechanical properties, in particular the toughness and ductility, rely on the diffusionless transformation of this austenite into high-carbon martensite, induced by stress and strain. The properties can be excellent in spite of the fact that freshly formed high-carbon martensite is brittle. This contradictory behaviour has yet to be explained. In the present paper, the authors propose and show experimentally that the tendency of the martensite to crack in a mixed microstructure of austenite and martensite depends on its absolute size. It is demonstrated that in these mixtures, it is more difficult to crack fine martensite. It is the fine scale of the retained austenite in TRIP assisted steels that permits the martensite to be tolerated without endangering their mechanical properties.


OBJECTIVE
The rising occurrence of drug-resistant pathogens accentuates the need to identify novel antibiotics. We wanted to identify new scaffolds for drug discovery by repurposing FDA-approved drugs against Acinetobacter baumannii, an emerging Gram-negative nosocomial drug-resistant pathogen.

MATERIALS AND METHODS
In this study, we screened 1040 FDA-approved drugs against drug-susceptible A. baumannii ATCC 17978 and drug-resistant A. baumannii BAA-1605.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Twenty compounds exhibited significant antimicrobial activity (MIC ≤8 mg/L) against ATCC 17978 while only five compounds showed such activity against BAA-1605. Among the most notable results, tyrothricin, a bactericidal antibiotic typically active only against Gram-positive bacteria, exhibited equipotent activity against both strains.

CONCLUSION
The paucity of identified compounds active against drug-resistant A. baumannii exemplifies its ability to resist antimicrobials as well as the resilience of drug-resistant Gram-negative pathogens. Repurposing of approved drugs is a viable alternative to de novo drug discovery and development.


OBJECTIVE
To observe the effect of biyuanshu oral liquid on the formation of pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms in vitro.

METHOD
Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm was established by plate culture and detected by Scanning electron microscopy and AgNO3 staining. After treated with different dosages of biyuanshu oral liquid and erythromycin, the pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms were observed by AgNO3 staining and the number of viable bacteria were measured by serial dilution.

RESULT
The pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms could be detected by SEM at the seventh culture day and it was consistent with the detection of AgNO3 staining. The biyuanshu oral liquid and erythromycin have the effect on inhibiting the formation of pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms. But with the already formed pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms the inhibition was not significant. The serial dilution method showed that the viable counts of bacteria of biyuanshu oral liquid and erythromycin treated groups were significantly lower than those untreated groups (P < 0.05).

CONCLUSION
The biyuanshu oral liquid and erythromycin can inhibit the formation of pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilms in vitro.


The article raises questions about the interpretation that Crelier makes of the Kantian ethics regarding conflicts of duties or moral dilemmas. We argue that, despite Crelier's conflicting statements, he fails to articulate an interpretation of Kant's ethics in which moral dilemmas are admissible. In Crelier's interpretation, we contend, the dilemmas that are eligible are only apparent or epistemic. But there is no room for those dilemmas in which none of the duties is objectively superior to another duty in conflict


In the nominal morphology of Modern Hebrew, the vowels [a] and [e] alternate with each other and syncopate in several contexts. These contexts have received separate phonological and/or morphological analyses in the past. The phonological analyses have yielded phonologically unnatural rules; the morphological analyses have turned to the unconstrained concept of stem-allomorphy. In the first part of this paper, a unifying account of these vocalic alternations is provided in the framework of CVCV-Phonology (Lowenstamm 1996), relating the contexts to one another. Specifically, it is proposed that some vowels are phonologically long, either lexically or through a rule of pretonic lengthening. In the second part of the paper, an alternation which resists the strictly phonological explanation is shown to follow from morpho-syntactic principles of derivation by phase (Embick 2010). While certain phonological processes apply whenever the domain of a category head is processed, only the merger of the head D triggers the realization of the underlying phonological string.


Gravity-induced non-Gaussianity can provide important clues to Modified Gravity (MG) Theories. Several recent studies have suggested using the Integrated Bispectrum (IB) as a probe for squeezed configuration of bispectrum. Extending previous studies on the IB, we include redshift-space distortions to study a class of (parametrised) MG theories that include the string-inspired Dvali, Gabadadze & Porrati (DGP) model. Various contributions from redshift-space distortions are derived in a transparent manner, and squeezed contributions from these terms are derived separately. Results are obtained using the Zel'dovich Approximation (ZA). Results are also presented for projected surveys (2D). We use the Press-Schechter (PS) and Sheth-Tormen (ST) mass functions to compute the IB for collapsed objects that can readily be extended to peak-theory based approaches. The cumulant correlators (CCs) generalise the ordinary cumulants and are known to probe collapsed configurations of higher order correlation functions. We generalise the concept of CCs to halos of different masses. We also introduce a generating function based approach to analyse more general non-local biasing models. The Fourier representations of the CCs, the skew-spectrum, or the kurt-spctra are discussed in this context. The results are relevant for the study of the Minkowski Functionals (MF) of collapsed tracers in redshift-space.


Process variation and prerouting interconnect delay uncertainty affect timing and power for modern VLSI designs in nanometer technologies. This paper presents the first in-depth study on stochastic physical synthesis algorithms leveraging statistical static timing analysis (SSTA) with process variation and prerouting interconnect delay uncertainty for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). Evaluated by SSTA using the placed and routed circuits, the stochastic clustering, placement, and routing reduce the mean delay by 5.0%, 4.0%, and 1.4%, respectively, and reduce the standard deviation of delay by 6.4%, 6.1%, and 1.4%, respectively for MCNC designs. The majority of improvements come from modeling interconnect delay uncertainty for clustering and from considering process variation for placement, while routing has less improvement on delay. In addition, we study the interaction between each individual design stage. When applying all stochastic algorithms concurrently, the mean delay and standard deviation are reduced by 6.2% and 7.5%, respectively. On the other hand, stochastic clustering with deterministic placement and routing is a good flow with little change to the entire flow, but the mean delay is reduced by 5.0%, the standard deviation is reduced by 6.4%, and the runtime is slightly reduced compared to the deterministic flow. Finally, while its improvement over timing is small, stochastic routing is able to reduce the total wire length by 4.5% and to reduce the overall runtime by 4.2% compared to deterministic routing.


A reduction in aerobic capacity and the shortening of telomeres are hallmarks of the ageing process. We examined whether a lower aerobic capacity is associated with shorter TL in skeletal muscle and/or leukocytes, across a wide age range of individuals. We also tested whether TL in human skeletal muscle (MTL) correlates with TL in leukocytes (LTL). Eighty-two recreationally active, healthy men from the Gene SMART cohort (31.4±8.2 years; body mass index (BMI)=25.3±3.3kg/m2), and 11 community dwelling older men (74.2±7.5years-old; BMI=28.7±2.8kg/m2) participated in the study. Leukocytes and skeletal muscle samples were collected at rest. Relative telomere length (T/S ratio) was measured by RT-PCR. Associations between TL, aerobic capacity (VO2 peak and peak power) and age were assessed with robust linear models. Older age was associated with shorter LTL (45% variance explained, P<0.001), but not MTL (P= 0.7). Aerobic capacity was not associated with MTL (P=0.5), nor LTL (P=0.3). MTL and LTL were correlated across the lifespan (rs=0.26, P=0.03). In healthy individuals, age explain most of the variability of LTL and this appears to be independent of individual aerobic capacity. Individuals with longer LTL also have a longer MTL, suggesting that there might be a shared molecular mechanism regulating telomere length.


Modern embedded computing platforms used within Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are nowadays leveraging more and more often on heterogeneous computing substrates, such as newest Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) devices. Compared to general purpose platforms, which have a fixed datapath, FPGAs provide designers the possibility of customizing part of the computing infrastructure, to better shape the execution on the application needs/features, and offer high efficiency in terms of timing and power performance, while naturally featuring parallelism. In the context of FPGA-based CPSs, this article has a two fold mission. On the one hand, it presents an analysis of the Damped Least Square (DLS) algorithm for a perspective hardware implementation. On the other hand, it describes the implementation of a robotic arm controller based on the DLS to numerically solve Inverse Kinematics problems over a heterogeneous FPGA. Assessments involve a Trossen Robotics WidowX robotic arm controlled by a Digilent ZedBoard provided with a Xilinx Zynq FPGA that computes the Inverse Kinematic.


The tumor immune microenvironment significantly affects tumor progression, metastasis, and clinical therapy. Its basic cell components include tumor-associated endothelial cells, fibroblasts, and macrophages, all of which constitute the tumor stroma and microvascular network. However, the functions of tumor stromal cells have not yet been fully elucidated. The three-dimensional (3D) model created by 3D bioprinting is an efficient way to illustrate cellular interactions in vitro. However, 3D bioprinted model has not been used to explore the effects of stromal cells on cholangiocarcinoma cells. In this study, we fabricated 3D bioprinted models with tumor cells and stromal cells. Compared with cells cultured in two-dimensional (2D) environment, cells in 3D bioprinted models exhibited better proliferation, higher expression of tumor-related genes, and drug resistance. The existence of stromal cells promoted tumor cell activity in 3D models. Our study shows that 3D bioprinting of an immune microenvironment is an effective way to study the effects of stromal cells on cholangiocarcinoma cells.


Apple flavor is characterized by combinations of ester compounds, which increase markedly during fruit ripening. The final step in ester biosynthesis is catalyzed by alcohol acyl transferases (AATs) that use coenzyme A (CoA) donors together with alcohol acceptors as substrates. The gene MpAAT1, which produces a predicted protein containing features of other plant acyl transferases, was isolated from Malus pumila (cv. Royal Gala). The MpAAT1 gene is expressed in leaves, flowers and fruit of apple. The recombinant enzyme can utilize a range of alcohol substrates from short to medium straight chain (C3–C10), branched chain, aromatic and terpene alcohols. The enzyme can also utilize a range of short to medium chain CoAs. The binding of the alcohol substrate is rate limiting compared with the binding of the CoA substrate. Among different alcohol substrates there is more variation in turnover compared with Km values. MpAAT1 is capable of producing many esters found in Royal Gala fruit, including hexyl esters, butyl acetate and 2‐methylbutyl acetate. Of these, MpAAT1 prefers to produce the hexyl esters of C3, C6 and C8 CoAs. For the acetate esters, however, MpAAT1 preference depends upon substrate concentration. At low concentrations of alcohol substrate the enzyme prefers utilizing the 2‐methylbutanol over hexanol and butanol, while at high concentrations of substrate hexanol can be used at a greater rate than 2‐methylbutanol and butanol. Such kinetic characteristics of AATs may therefore be another important factor in understanding how the distinct flavor profiles of different fruit are produced during ripening.


It was established that combined peroral effect of sulfonol, lead and nitrates at maximum permissible level produces more pronounced changes in the liver of white rats than when these agents are used separately. Addition of nitrates to sulfonol and lead has a tendency to potentiate the reaction of the body.


We offer here a narrative visualization entitled: Technology hot spots and the Office of Science and position its contribution within discussion of novel forms of communicating research results as an aid to maximizing use of research evaluation. In this study, patent co-citation analysis was used to systematically identify emerging high impact technologies in the US technology ecosystem and then to establish that Office of Science of the US Department of Energy (DOE) funds research that underpins these technology "hot spots." We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of this novel form of communicating evaluation results based our experience.


Topical research on hydrological behaviour of climate change in terms of downscaling of monthly precipitation is investigated in this paper by formulating an inclusive multiple modelling (IMM) strategy. IMM strategies manage multiple models at two levels and the paper uses statistical downscaling model, Sugeno fuzzy logic and support vector machine at Level 1 and feeds their outputs to a neuro-fuzzy model at Level 2. In the downscaling stage, large-scale NCEP (National Centres for Environmental Prediction)/NCAR (National Centre for Atmospheric Research) data are used for a station with local data record from 1961 to 2005 for training and testing Level 1 models. The results are found to be 'fit-for-purpose', but the variations between them signify some room for improvements. The model at Level 2 combines outputs of those at Level 1 and produces Level 2 results, which improve compared with those at the Level 1 models in terms of dispersion of residual errors. In this way, IMM provides a more defensible modelling strategy for application in the projection stage. The comparison between observed and projected precipitation indicates that precipitation will be likely to reduce compared with observed precipitation in cold seasons (October–February), but the projected precipitation will be likely to increase slightly in wet seasons (April and May).


In this multicenter cross-sectional study, we determined sensory profiles of patients with (NL-1) and without neuropathic pain (NL-0) after nerve lesion and assessed immune related systemic gene expression. Patients and matched healthy controls filled in questionnaires and underwent neurological examination, neurophysiological studies, quantitative sensory testing (QST), and blood withdrawal. Neuropathic pain was present in 67/95 (71%) patients (NL-1). Tactile hyperalgesia was the most prominent clinical sign in NL-1 patients (p<0.05). Questionnaires showed an association between neuropathic pain and the presence of depression, anxiety, and catastrophizing (p<0.05 to p<0.01). Neuropathic pain was frequently accompanied by other chronic pain (p<0.05). QST showed ipsilateral signs of small and large fiber impairment compared to the respective contralateral side, with elevated thermal and mechanical detection thresholds (p<0.001 to p<0.05) and lowered pressure pain threshold (p<0.05). Also, more loss of function was found in patients with NL-1 compared to NL-0. Pain intensity was associated with mechanical hyperalgesia (p<0.05 to p<0.01). However, QST did not detect or predict neuropathic pain. Gene expression of peptidylglycine α-amidating monooxygenase was higher in NL patients compared to healthy controls (NL-1, p<0.01; NL-0, p<0.001). Also, gene expression of tumor necrosis factor-α was higher in NL-1 patients compared to NL-0 (p<0.05), and interleukin-1ß was higher, but IL-10 lower in NL-1 patients compared to healthy controls (p<0.05 each). Our study reveals that nerve lesion presents with small and large nerve fiber dysfunction, which may contribute to the presence and intensity of neuropathic pain and which is associated with a systemic pro-inflammatory pattern.


The study intended to reduce car accidents due to driver fatigue by detecting and preventing their early signs. The device could detect the moment when the driver closes his or her eyes by means of eyewear. It is equipped with a sound alarm to wake the driver up and if it fails, a braking system will be triggered to activate car brakes. The study utilized the experimental development and descriptive research as methods. Five purposively chosen evaluators participated in the assessment of the dependability and efficiency of the device. Findings of the study showed that the whole system functioned properly as expected. The device was reliable in lessening road accidents through its ability to detect and prevent early signs of driver fatigue and its ability to decelerate the automobile which will at least lessen the fatal damages due to impact.


Objectives. Prognosis for glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) has remained poor. Th ere is almost always recurrence postresection and adjuvant treatment, the majority of which is local. Several preclinical models exist that recapitulate the essential features of GBM. Th e majority of these models treat GBM in the neoadjuvant setting. Here, we describe an imageable intracranial surgical resection model of GBM in the rodent. Methods . We implanted 106 U87 luciferase-expressing GBM cells into the right hemisphere of 6-week-old female rats at predefined stereotactic coordinates ( n  10). When the bioluminescence signal of tumours were in the exponential growth phase, the animals were randomised into surgical ( n 4) and non-surgical groups ( n 4). Under parenterally delivered anaesthesia, the animals were fixed in a stereotactic frame. A 4.5 mm craniectomy was performed with resection of the tumour using microsurgical techniques. Haemostasis was ensured. The cranial defect was repaired using a modified cranial window technique. No antibiotics were administered. Results. Immediate post-operative bioluminescence imaging revealed a gross total resection rate of 75%. At 4 weeks follow-up, Kaplan – Myer survival analysis revealed 100% survival in the surgical group compared to 0% in the nonsurgical cohort (p  0.01, HR  25.79). Th ere were no neurological defects or infections in the surgical group. High recurrence rate was observed by 4 weeks. Conclusions. We have established a novel, reproducible, cost eff ective, imageable and clinically relevant surgical resection model of intracranial GBM that recapitulates the natural history post-resection. Th is model can be used in the development of systemic therapeutics in the adjuvant or recurrent setting and in the development of novel therapeutics applied locally to the surgical resection cavity.


In this study, the authors evaluated aspects of criterion validity and clinical utility of the grandiosity and vulnerability components of the Pathological Narcissism Inventory (PNI) using two undergraduate samples (N = 299 and 500). Criterion validity was assessed by evaluating the correlations of narcissistic grandiosity and narcissistic vulnerability with established indices of normal personality traits, psychopathology and clinical concerns, and pathological personality traits. Overall, the pattern of correlations supported the convergent and discriminant validity of grandiose and vulnerable conceptualizations of pathological narcissism as measured by the PNI. Clinical utility was assessed by evaluating the extent to which clinicians without specific training in pathological narcissism as well as clinicians with expertise in pathological narcissism could accurately predict the correlates of PNI grandiosity and vulnerability with normal and pathological personality traits and psychopathology. The rcontrast-cv coefficient provided a global index of accuracy in clinicians' predictions that was more fully elaborated by examining systematic discrepancies across groups. Overall, novice and expert clinicians were generally able to predict criterion correlations, with some exceptions (e.g., counter to predictions, pathological narcissism was negatively associated with treatment resistance). These results provide further evidence regarding the validity and utility of the narcissistic grandiosity and narcissistic vulnerability constructs as measured by the PNI.


Receptive ecumenism is a new current in contemporary ecumenism. By focusing on unilateral learning and by dissociating itself from presuppositions of mutuality, receptive ecumenism inspires rethinking and provokes new thought in the field of ecumenical theology. This article pays special attention to the non-expectation of mutuality in receptive ecumenism and analyses its consequences with regard to asymmetrical relations. The analysis is carried out in consideration of other currents of contemporary ecumenism where mutuality is associated with the struggle for justice and equality. Guided by feminist philosophical and theological insights on negative and positive understandings of asymmetry, the article discusses the nature of receptive ecumenism in view of a wider ecumenical terrain. It explores the underlying understanding of asymmetry in receptive ecumenism. It moreover inquires into the receptive ecumenical approach to mutuality with a view to the roots of this new ecumenical current in spiritual ecumenism and interfaith engagement. Attending to the factors of agency, diversity, and listening, the article identifies challenges to the viability of receptive ecumenism. Simultaneously, it expounds the role of receptive ecumenism in revitalizing ecumenical theological reflection.


The purpose of this study was to investigate the current status of pre-service curriculums for child care teachers at universities and colleges in Korea. To accomplish this, a survey was implemented to gather the lists of courses from each department training pre-service child care teachers. A total of 225 departments at universities and colleges across Korea participated in the survey. The results showed that the 37 different courses offered for child-care teacher licensure were different by school type (university or college) and major. Departments in colleges with specific majors such as early childhood education and social welfare offer courses that are also required for other certificates, including kindergarten teachers or social workers, so pre-service child care teachers may not have the opportunity to take courses specifically designed for their specific teaching needs or interests. Accordingly, there may be a restricted number of courses from which to choose during pre-service training periods. Based on the findings from this study, several political implications for improving child-care teacher professionalism were suggested.


The interaction between drought and river regulation is monitored to better understand river flow mixing, evaporation and surface‐groundwater exchange in changing regional climates and in increasingly regulated waterways. This study compared Brazos River stable isotope (δ18O and δD) and electrical conductivity values with reservoir, creek and aquifer samples in the Brazos watershed, the largest watershed in Texas. The combination of tributaries, rainfall and the Brazos River Alluvium Aquifer, on the one hand, and the Lake Whitney reservoir, on the other hand, represent endmembers of dilute run‐off water and evaporated saline water, respectively. A simple isotope mixing model that uses monthly river discharge, Lake Whitney discharge, historical monthly precipitation δ18O and pan evaporation accurately reconstructs river δ18O (±0.5‰ on average). Data and isotope balance modelling support continued evaporation of 18O‐enriched Lake Whitney water as it flows downstream, although the most evaporation took place in Lake Whitney. The difference between river and precipitation δ18O, or Δ18ORIV‐PPT, here a measurement of degree of evaporation, ranged from −0.1‰ for a small creek, to 1.7‰ for the Brazos River, to at least 2.7‰ in Lake Whitney. This study indicates that drought in regulated rivers may enhance reservoir discharge dominance in river flows during peak drought conditions when combined run‐off and baseflow dominance would be expected in a similar undammed river. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.


This article offers a comparative study of three thinkers from almost as many intellectual and cultural traditions: Avicenna, Maimonides, and Gersonides, and discusses the extent of the knowledge of particulars which each one ascribed to God. Avicenna de-reified Aristotle's abstract and isolated Prime Mover and argued that God can know particulars but limited these to universals. Maimonides disanalogized divine from human knowledge, arguing that the epistemic mode predicated of mankind cannot be equally predicated of God, and that God knows particulars qua particulars even as his Knowing encompasses all of eternity in a single act of knowledge. Attempting an intermediate path between the former's highly discursive reasoning and the latter's more scriptural approach, Gersonides postulated that God can know particulars qua particulars—as is befitting a Perfect Being—but this He does 'mediately' as it were, via the emanative ordering comprising the separate intelligences and culminating in the Active Intellect.


Summary form only given. Information storage systems are the bedrock on which a modern company rests: data has to be available to whoever needs it, whenever they need it, from wherever they may be. As a result, emphasis is beginning to shift from a processor centric view of the world towards a storage centric one: it is the information that holds the real value-the processing merely exposes it. Realizing this model requires a storage system that can provide continuous, guaranteed accessibility to potentially vast quantities of shared information, with protection against both malicious attack and accidental failures, and scalability across a wide range of capacity and performance needs. Network based storage, combined with smart storage management, can provide it.


We investigate the role that self-control problems — modeled as time-inconsistent, present-biased preferences —and a person's awareness of those problems might play in leading people to develop and maintain harmful addictions. Present-biased preferences create a tendency to over-consume addictive products, and awareness of future self-control problems can mitigate or exacerbate this over-consumption, depending on the environment. Our central concern is the welfare consequences of this over-consumption. Our analysis suggests that for realistic environments self-control problems are a plausible source of severely harmful addictions only in conjunction with some unawareness of future self-control problems.


A dual-stimuli polarizer-free dye-doped liquid crystal (LC) dimmer is demonstrated. The LC composition consists of photo-stable chiral agent, photosensitive azobenzene, and dichroic dye in a nematic host with positive dielectric anisotropy. Upon UV exposure, the LC directors and dye molecules turn from initially vertical alignment (high transmittance state) to twisted fingerprint structure (low transmittance state). The reversal process is accelerated by combining a longitudinal electric field to unwind the LC directors from twisted fingerprint to homeotropic state, and a red light to transform the cis azobenzene back to trans. This device can be used as a smart dimmer to enhance the ambient contrast ratio for augmented reality displays.


Intergeneric crossing between Japanese pear Pyrus serotina Rehd. var. culta Rehd., and quince, Cydonia oblonga Mill., was made in 1972. From 60 Japanese pear flowers pollinated with quince pollen, 23 fruits were set and 97 fertile seeds were obtained from them. When the seeds were planted in a, greenhouse in the next spring, 47 seedlings were obtained with a germination percentage of 48.5. Among them, only 7 seedlings survive to the present time while the others of the seedlings died off at the young stages. One of 7 seedlings (No. PQ-5) flowered in the spring of 1983, and proved to be an intergeneric hybrid from the analysis of peroxidase isozymes. Morphological characteristics of this hybrid are as follows. Young leaf : Much pubescent on young leaves and upper part of current shoot. Ligh yellowish-green, slightly tinged with brown. Adult leaf : Ovate in shape with acute apex, truncate base and serrulate margin. Smooth on the backside. Petiole length intermediate between the parents. Flower : White in color, 5--7 petals per flower and 1'3 flowers per cluster. Many pollen sterile.


This article reexamines the use of the term naṣs , which since Marshall Hodgson has been used in modern historiography to refer to an indigenous Shīʿī mechanism of succession to the imamate. An alternative thesis is proposed here which situates the origins of the term in Shīʿī usage over the 8th to 11th centuries within the scholarly discourses of kalām and uṣūl al-fiqh . From the perspective of theological hermeneutics, classical Imāmī naṣṣ doctrines valorized revelatory specification ( naṣṣ ) of authority to the exclusion of opinion and interpretive effort ( ijtihād ). As is shown here, the elaboration of these doctrines was historically predicated on an attempt to explain the Shīʿī imamate as a solution to the problem of epistemological uncertainty in Islamic scholarship. This is illustrated with reference to Sunnī, Muʿtazilite, Zaydī, Imāmī, and Ismāʿīlī literature, documenting the earliest usage of the term naṣṣ within a broader intellectual milieu than has hitherto been the case.


This research was conducted to determine the effect of the extract of telang flower (Clitoria ternatea) as a natural antibacterial on the growth of Stapylococcus aureus bacteria in terms of the results of the inhibition test and phytochemical screening. This study used 5 treatments with 5 replications in positive control and negative control, for the extract treatment using duplo replication. P0 as a positive control using Amoxicillin antibiotic, P0 as a negative control using a blank disk, P1 as a treatment using a telang flower extract with a concentration of 80%, P2 as a treatment using a telang flower extract with a concentration of 90%, and P3 a treatment using a telang flower extract with a concentration of 100 %. The results of the inhibition zone measurements showed the highest average in the positive control. The average diameter of the inhibition zone using the Agar Well Diffusion Method showed a significant difference (P<0.05). These results are supported by the ANOVA test with H1 accepted so that it can be said that there is an effect of telang flower extract (Clitoria ternatea) on the growth of Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. The results of phytochemical screening showed that the telang flower extract contained antibacterial active compounds, namely flavonoids, tannins, saponins, alkaloids, steroids and terpenoids.


This paper examines the onto-epistemic status and understanding of contemporary material culture and of visual art, particularly in the context of gallery education. It does so through a case study of the response of 15 year-old school students in the Czech Republic and in England to a recent photographic exhibition, I.N.R.I., created by artists Bettina Rheims and Serge Bramly. It supports and develops further the proposition that the tradition grounded in the concept of a single 'objective' interpretation of a work of art has been significantly undermined by the paradigmatic change that has taken place in the last decades. In the course of this process the vocabulary of signification (e.g. doves, the royal blue, temptations of Christ, class struggle) inherited from the age of ideologies and grand narratives has been significantly weakened. In its place there emerged the vocabulary of signs born out of the language of high tech media. It takes the form of dynamically constituted units identifiable via daily exposure to techno processes, e.g. familiar from advertising and networking, at best mere fragments of traditional narratives. The recognition of reality is couched in terms of consumer units originating in objects (e.g. gadgetry) and object-based practices filling (indeed constituting) the living place of today. This shift is particularly apparent among English young people, brought up in a more consumer-oriented society, and to a lesser degree among Czechs. This is well in keeping with the concept of the post-modern 'empirical spectator' developed in recent literature on art and material culture education.


Perceptual decisions can be repelled away from (repulsive adaptation) or attracted towards recent visual experience (attractive serial dependence). It is currently unclear whether and how these repulsive and attractive biases interact during visual processing and what computational principles may underlie these history dependencies. In the current study, we disentangle repulsive and attractive biases by exploring the respective timescales over which current visual processing is influenced by previous experience. Across four experiments, we find that perceptual decisions about stimulus orientation are concurrently attracted towards the short-term perceptual history and repelled from stimuli experienced up to minutes into the past. We show that the temporal pattern of short-term attraction and long-term repulsion cannot be captured by an ideal Bayesian observer model alone. Instead, it is well captured by an ideal observer model with efficient encoding and Bayesian decoding of visual information in a slowly changing environment. Concurrent attractive and repulsive history biases in perceptual decisions may thus be the consequence of the need for visual processing to simultaneously satisfy constraints of both efficiency and stability.


enunciation of the Hardy-Weinberg Law in 1908, and the consequent establishment of population genetics, evolutionary thought was primarily concerned with the manifest characters of organisms. During the past half century, or roughly the period in which The American Naturalist has been devoted to the "Advancement of Biological Sciences with special reference to the Factors of Evolution," as the title page from 1912 to 1946 announced, there has been a growing tendency for evolutionary theorists to think in terms of genotypes and their frequencies, often regarding the phenotypic expressions as somewhat imperfect markers of little significance in themselves. This is true even in the field studies of ecological geneticists such as Ford (1964), who in his most remarkable work on Maniola jurtina and Panaxia dominula has been concerned with genes of varying selective significance which determine color patterns. There is, however, no known connection between these patterns and the adaptive significance of the various genotypes. A comparable set of cases is probably provided by the great series of experiments by Dobzhansky and his associates on the selective significance of various kinds of chromosomal rearrangement, though here the visible characters are harder to see. From the standpoint of the naturalist interested in the evolution and overall biology of any particular organism or group of organisms, we are in the curious position of having detailed explanations of some aspects of phenomena without knowing exactly what are the phenomena that we are trying to explain.


We use a renormalisation operator R acting on a space of vector fields on T, d ≥ 2, to prove the existence of a submanifold of vector fields equivalent to constant. The result comes from the existence of a fixed point ω of R which is hyperbolic. This is done for a certain class of constant vector fields ω. The transformation R is constructed using a time rescaling, a linear change of basis plus a periodic non-linear map isotopic to the identity, which we derive by a "homotopy trick".


This study examines institutional influences on the global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) actions of the Brazilian mining company Vale. The article combines the principles of Kostova, Roth & Dacin (2008) on the management of multinationals, the institutional factors proposed by Campbell (2007), and the ideas of Porter & Kramer (1999, 2006) on the interrelationship of companies and society. Using secondary data and interviews with people involved in the company's CSR actions, we find that Vale has a formal policy, integrated with its strategy and based on international standards. But it does not have a global governance model and its activities are legitimized by coercive isomorphism.


Despite enormous productivity increases during recent decades, it has been claimed that workers' engagement in non-work-related activities severely damages companies' productivity development. Currently, personal Internet usage seems to be the most upsetting of these activities. There is a widespread notion among management-friendly researchers, employers, and the media that all non-work-related activities are deviant and should be defeated at all costs. This conceptual article gives an overview of the organisational behaviour literature dealing with non-work-related activities at work. The prohibitive approach is both inconsistent and in practice unenforceable. This is especially true since an increasing proportion of today's private Internet usage at work is carried out by employees using their private smartphones, a fact that has not been considered in previous research. This article contrasts theories and ideas that private Internet usage at work is deviant with theoretical overviews arguing that non-work-related activities are an expression of normal action and behaviour, which can be explained with the help of both work-life balance theory and theories on resistance. An additional concept is recovery, which has not previously been used in the debate on Internet usage. Today's workplaces are populated by engaged employees who work at a fast pace and need recovery, well-deserved micro-pauses, and breaks from demanding work. Furthermore, some Internet surfing is actually a consequence of organisations' inability to come up with decent work tasks to fill the whole day. The aim of this article is to point out the recovery functions of personal Internet usage in today's working life, primarily in terms of employees' well-being and dignity. This article contributes to the debate by proposing eight situations in which the employee should be allowed to "cyberloaf" without being disciplined. The article also suggests empirical investigations that may be carried out with regard to the views and effects of personal Internet use at work in four different settings, that is, where employees' private Internet usage is officially forbidden, seemingly forbidden, allowed, or encouraged.


BACKGROUND Surgery, emergency medicine (EM), and pediatric resident physicians play an integral role in treating youth violence patients. We assessed these residents' behaviors, attitudes, and perceived barriers to youth violence prevention (YVP) in the acute care setting. METHODS A cross-sectional survey of EM, surgery, and pediatric residents at one large medical institution was conducted using a theory-based self-administered paper questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and Fisher's exact tests to examine differences between resident specialties. RESULTS Of 73 residents, 55 completed the questionnaire, composed of 23 EM (42%), 18 pediatrics (33%), and 14 surgery (25%) residents, with a response rate of 75%. Fifteen percent (n = 8) of the respondents received YVP training during residency. The majority (n = 49, 91%.) of the respondents reported consistently collecting a history of events leading to violent injury. A smaller percentage of residents reported consistent assessment of retaliation risk (n = 11, 20%), referral to social work (n = 37, 69%), and screening for substance abuse (n = 37, 69%) and mental health (n = 35, 65%). Surgery residents were more likely than pediatric and EM residents to refer to social work (100% vs. 72% and 45%, p < 0.01) and screen for substance abuse (93% vs. 78% and 45%, p = 0.01). While the majority of residents agreed that youth violence is preventable (n = 50, 91%) and physicians should play a role in prevention (n = 47, 85%), there was less agreement that YVP should be a resident task (n = 38, 69%). Less than half of residents (n = 26, 47%) felt competent discussing safety risks and plans. Residents cited lack of time and training as the top two barriers for conducting risk assessments and referring to support services. CONCLUSION While EM, surgery, and pediatric residents agree that YVP is essential and should involve physicians, many do not perceive this as part of their responsibilities, and they do not feel competent in this role. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Epidemiologic study, level III.


Induction motors have been traditionally used in industrial applications ranging from a fraction of horse-power up to several Megawatts due to their substantial benefits. Induction drives with more than three-phases are superior to the 3-phase induction drives in terms of overall-volume, torque fluctuations, current passing each stator-winding, ohmic-loss, efficiency and reliability in the case of stator-windings open-circuit fault. These benefits are especially more attractive in variable speed drivers due to the reduced capacity of power-electronics switches. This paper aims to develop an optimal electromagnetic-thermal design procedure of a high-power seven-phase induction motor suitable for variable-speed applications. In this multi-objective design approach, the objective function is defined aiming to increase the efficiency, power-factor, power-to-weight ratio, starting-torque as well as decrease the starting-current. Furthermore, the electrical, mechanical, dimensional, magnetic and thermal limitations are included in this optimization study in order to ensure practical realization of the designed machine. The coupled-circuit method is employed for nonlinear electromagnetic modeling while the current displacement phenomenon is considered in rotor parameters calculations. A lumped-parameter-thermal model is established for calculating heat rises of different parts in each iteration of optimization study. Finally, the performance characteristics of the optimally designed 1-MW 4-pole motor are verified using 2D-FE analyses.


Hyperspectral image processing techniques, with their ability to provide information about the chemical compositions of materials, have great potential for pavement condition assessment. This study introduces a novel age-based pavement assessment method, employing an integrated algorithm with artificial neural network (ANN) and spectral angle mapping (SAM) on hyperspectral images. In the proposed method, the resulting ANN prediction outputs are used to make a new prediction along with the results from SAM scores. Tests are performed on hyperspectral images that have 360 spectral bands between 400 and 900 nm, collected by a specifically designed vehicular system for proximal image acquisition. The acquired images have eight classes, including three different pavement classes (good (5-year), medium (10-year), and poor (25-year)), yellow dye, white dye, soil, paving stone, and shadow. Several experiments are performed to evaluate the robustness of the followed methodology with limited learning data that include 5, 10, 25, and 50 samples per class, selected randomly from our independent spectral database. For a fair comparison, the individual ANN, SAM, support vector machine (SVM), and stacked auto-encoders (SAE) algorithms are also evaluated. The classification performances of individual ANN and SAM are significantly increased with their joint use, demonstrating a 1.2% to 21% classification accuracy improvement in relation to the training sample size. The study proves that the proposed approach is quite robust in cases wherein few training data are available, while SAE and standard ANN algorithms are more successful in cases wherein more learning data are present.


The capability of massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) systems supporting the throughput requirement of as many users as possible is investigated. The bottleneck of serving small numbers of users by a large number of transmit antennas in conventional mMIMO is unblocked by a new time-fraction-wise beamforming technique, which focuses signal transmission in fractions of a time slot. Based on this time-fraction-wise signal transmission, a new user service scheduling scheme for multi-cell mMIMO, whose cell-edge users suffer not only poor channel conditions but also multi-cell interference, is proposed to support a large user-population. We demonstrate that the numbers of users served by our multi-cell mMIMO within a time-slot may be as high as twice the number of its transmit antennas.


Abstract Youth swimming performance may be influenced by anthropometric and body composition factors during growth. Propulsive force of the arm (PFA) is highly related to swimming performance as 85–90% of the propulsive power comes from the arms. The current study analyzed the mediating effect of biological maturation on the relationship between anthropometric variables and body composition with PFA in young swimmers. A total of 128 swimmers [boys: n = 53, age = 13.6 (1.8) y; girls: n = 75, age = 12.5 (1.8) y] were evaluated. Propulsive force of the arm was estimated by the tethered swimming test. Anthropometric characteristics (body mass, stature, sitting height, arm span, arm muscle area, %body fat, and fat-free mass) were evaluated. Biological maturation was estimated by the age of peak height velocity. Mediation analyses were performed using the Preacher and Hayes bootstrapping method, adjusted for chronological age and sex. All anthropometric and body composition variables, except %body fat, were positively associated with PFA, being mediated by biological maturation. Indirect effects and 95% confidence intervals were: body mass [.20 (.09-.34)], stature [.22 (.11-.43)], arm span [0.17 (.05-.31)], arm muscle area [.74 (.38-1.19)] and fat free-mass [.17 (.05-.34)]. In conclusion, biological maturation mediated the positive associations between body size and composition and PFA in young swimmers.


The blood taken from 35 patients with coronary heart disease and 30 healthy donors was irradiated with He-Ne laser, which resulted in a decrease in its count of segmented neutrophilic granulocytes. Lectins bound to various carbohydrate determinants onto the neutrophil surface were shown to affect changes occurring after luminol-depended chemiluminescence irradiation in patients and healthy persons in different ways. The patients' neutrophils contained lower levels of radiommunologically detectable leukotriene B4. Thromboxane B2 levels also dropped following the irradiation. The laser irradiation induced elimination of some less resistant cells from blood flow, i.e. "rejuvenation" of a cell population of neutrophilic granulocytes. The remaining cells differed in the composition and reactivity of surface lectin receptors and in the content of biologically active substances, which is likely to play the key role in the mechanism responsible for the therapeutical effect of He-Ne laser.


3D modeling of tunnel is an important research issue with the studying of the digital mine in China. In view of the deficiencies of present modeling methods, a new method named tunnel component is presented. The method mainly includes three steps: a) generate tunnel centric line model; b) create double line tunnel model; c) construct 3D tunnel model. In order to improve the flexibility and the interactivity of 3D visualization, a 3D interactive environment is provided. The application for 3D tunnel modeling and 3D visualization including 3D interactive visualization, aided design and spatial inquiry etc are introduced. A real-3D geosciences modeling system, GeoMS3D, is developed with VC++, OpenGL and SQL sever. An actual 3D tunnel model of china is shown as a case.


Increasingly important user based service on the smart media era, and increasing awareness about the user experience. In this study, by considering these realities, what impact location based constructs on smartphone environment, continuous intention to use you want to identification. Thus, this study conducted of preference the influencing factors for location based constructs. First steps, based constructs known empirical studies were categorized information, entertainment, safe&emergency, navigation&tracking and advertising& commerce. Second Steps, the categorized factors were analyzed preference relationship between constructs using AHP(analytic hierarchy process) technique. Questionnaire survey was conducted to those who employees S Telecom in Busan city and Gyeongnam province during 2000. 4. 15 and 2014. 4. 30. The result of the analysis might be summarized that the navigation(0.133) has the highest preference ran in the constructs. Based on these findings, several theoretical and practical implications were suggested and discussed.


In the period from January 1985 till January 1995 in the Clinic of Traumatology and Orthopedics of Military Medical Academy were treated 305 patients with 317 primary amputations of the lower extremities that were performed as the sequelae of ischemia and necrosis on the basis of occlusive changes, arteriosclerosis and diabetes. Out of the total number of operated patients, 210 were with diabetes mellitus. The amputations were performed at the level of: foot in 102 (32.17%), lower leg in 145 (45.74%) and upper leg in 70 patients (22.09%). Reamputations were performed in 52 patients (16.4%): at the level of foot in 22 (6.94%), lower leg in 17 (5.36%) and upper leg in 13 patients (4.10%). Tourniquet was used during the surgery of primary amputation in 56 patients.


Political discourse analysis is aimed at highlighting the emancipatory agendas of political actors who dialectically produce their discourses for the specific purpose of grasping "pro-ideologies" of masses without giving much room to their real interests. To a great extent the manipulation of language serves as a sturdy tool for political benefits and consequently it provides a strong base for the exploitations of the ideological assumptions of people on a large scale. A critical discourse analysis of Imran Khan's point of view on Islamophobia suggested that a good speaker always overwhelms the masses and changes the way of thinking of the public. The researchers have accentuated that Imran Khan has affected the mindset of the people regarding Islamophobia. Also an analysis has been done by the researchers of discourses examples in the Imran Khan's Speech. The researchers have explored various indicators of van Dijk in the Speech of Imran Khan. This paper aims to discuss the realization of the resistance of islamophobic ideology in Imran Khan Speech by means of language use in a political discourse, which is mainly grounded in Teun van Dijk"s assumptions in critical discourse analysis. For this aim, the discursive strategies of the Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan during a press conference in the United Nation General Assembly held on 25th September 2019. The Speech will be examined within the context of his ideological, cultural and language background.


A reliable Non-Destructive Testing approach is required for the inspection of polyethylene (PE) butt fusion joints in various material grades and pipe sizes. The nature of butt fusion joints is that the fusion zone is relatively small and the inspection solutions are often restricted by the existence of an external weld bead. This weld bead restricts the probe placement and the probe needs to be positioned in a non-optimal position for the weld inspection. The PE material grades have low velocity and high frequency dependent attenuation, which will complicate the inspection of thicker pipes. In this paper, phased array ultrasonic techniques are presented and their capabilities are evaluated. The techniques utilise customised water wedges to be able to generate forward angle beams to cover the weld within the PE pipe. Techniques have been developed for pipes with outer diameters between 220-710mm and thicknesses between 14-45mm. Probe and wedge parameters have been optimised for this range of pipes. The capability of detecting circular defects with diameters between 1.5-8mm on pipes with an outer diameter between 220-710mm using a phased array ultrasonic inspection solution, and the challenges overcome when working with this type of material, are presented.


We demonstrate a high yield method of functionalizing graphene nanosheets through nitrene addition of azido-phenylalanine [Phe(N(3))] to exfoliated micro-crystalline graphite (microG). This method provides a direct route to highly functionalized graphene sheets. TEM analysis of the product shows few layer (n < 5) graphene sheets. The product was determined to have 1 phenylalanine substituent per 13 carbons.


Continuously running systems require kernel software updates applied to them without downtime. Facilitating fast reboots, or delaying an update may not be a suitable solution in many environments, especially in pay-per-use high-performance computing clusters and mission critical systems. Such systems will not reap the benefits of new kernel features, and will continue to operate with kernel security holes unpatched, at least until the next scheduled maintenance downtime. To address these problems we developed an on-the-fly kernel updating system that enables commodity operating systems to gain adaptive and mutative capabilities without kernel recompilation or reboot. Our system, DynAMOS, employs a novel and efficient dynamic code instrumentation technique termed adaptive function cloning. Execution flow can be switched adaptively among multiple editions of functions, possibly concurrently running. This approach becomes the foundation for dynamic replacement of non-quiescent kernel subsystems when the timeliness of an update depends on synchronization of multiple kernel paths. We illustrate our experience by dynamically updating core subsystems of the Linux kernel.


The concept of market interdependence is defined in this paper as the innuence that public market quantity allocations and pricing decisions have on observed quantity and price in private markets. The existence of market interdependence violates an implicit assumption of minimal public market innuence when comparable private market prices are used to appraise resource value in public markets. Under interdependence, the comparable market approach becomes inappropriate for determining a fair market value in federal resource markets because government actions have the potential to affect observed prices in private markets. In this research, a case study of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (MNWR) is used to empirically estimate the existence of federal/private forage market interdependence. Statistical inferences from econometric modeling show strong support for interdependence between the MNWR grazing program and the alfalfa hay market in Hamey County, Ore. The results of this case study can be applied to federal grazing lands managed by BLM and FS for grazing fee policy recommendations.


Background: Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) has an important role in the oncogenesis of several malignant diseases. Reports even demonstrated the presence of Epstein-Barr virus in gastric carcinoma (GC). However, the pathogenic role of EBV in GC is uncertain. The present investigation was carried out to investigate a possible causal relationship between GC and EBV.
Statistical Analysis: The method of the conditio sine qua non relationship was used to proof the hypothesis whether gastric cancer is a necessary condition (a conditio sine qua non) of the presence of EBV in human gastric tissues. In other words without GC no EBV in human stomach. The mathematical formula of the causal relationship k was used to proof the hypothesis, whether there is a cause effect relationship between gastric cancer and EBV. Significance was indicated by a p-value (two sided) of less than 0.05.
Results: In toto 26 ISH based studies with a sample size of N = 11860 were re-analyzed. All the studies analyzed support the null-hypothesis without GC no EBV positivity in human stomach. In other words, gastric cancer itself is a conditio sine qua non of EBV positivity in stomach tissues while the cause effect relationship between gastric cancer and EBV was highly significant.
Conclusions: Epstein-Barr virus is neither a cause, nor the cause of human gastric cancer.


OBJECTIVE
To determine the optimal treatment of sylvatic cystic hydatid lung disease.

DESIGN
Retrospective case study.

SETTING
Five Edmonton hospitals serving northern Alberta and parts of the Northwest Territories.

PATIENTS
Fourteen patients with cystic (Echinococcus granulosus) hydatid lung disease.

INTERVENTIONS
Cyst enucleation, wedge resection and pulmonary lobectomy.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES
Eradication of pulmonary hydatid disease and complications of treatment.

RESULTS
Mean patient age was 32 years. Eight patients were symptomatic. Liver cysts were present in three patients. One of the three patients managed by observation required surgery for an expanding cyst. Surgery (13 procedures in 12 patients) was successful in eradicating pulmonary hydatid disease: 8 cyst enucleations, 3 wedge resections and 2 lobectomies were done. There was only one major postoperative complication (pneumatocele requiring repeat surgery). Intraoperative cyst rupture occurred in five cases, but anaphylaxis or seeding did not result. There were no bronchopleural fistulae.

CONCLUSIONS
Sylvatic cystic hydatid lung disease is more benign than pastoral hydatid disease. Patients with asymptomatic cysts should be managed by observation. Surgery, consisting of endocyst enucleation or wedge resection, is indicated for symptomatic, enlarging or infected cysts.


Changes in submerged vascular plant distribution since the 1950's were documented for the Galveston Bay system (excluding the Trinity River delta proper) using aerial photographs and substantiated field reports. Two major regions where seagrasses have declined extensively were compared with nearby sites where vegetation persists. Along the upper bay shoreline, evidence is presented for involvement of Hurricane Carla (1961) and a relative rise in sea level due to subsidence, which resulted in the disappearance of Ruppia maritima beds between 1960 and 1962. In the lower bay (West Bay), mixed beds of R. maritima and Halodule wrightii declined steadily from the 1950's and disappeared by the early 1980's. This area contrasts with Christmas Bay, a secondary protected bay 5 to 7 km south that still contains extensive beds of H. wrightii and small patches of Thalassia testudinum and Halophila engelmanni , In West Bay, urban development, wastewater discharges, chemical spills, and dredging activities, rather than subsidence and Hurricane Carla, are suspected as the principal deleterious agents. Similarities between submerged vegetation declines in Galveston and other bay systems are discussed.


A reversed-phase HPLC method was developed and validated for the determination of Bromazepam and its degradation products. The acidic hydrolysis of Bromazepam was carried out in 1N hydrochloric acid solution while the alkaline hydrolysis was carried out in 1N sodium hydroxide solution both at 95°C.Two degradation products were isolated and identi?ed by mass spectroscopy. Spectroscopic data indicated that (2-amino-5-bromophenyl)(pyridine-2-yl) methanone was the degradation product of this acid hydrolysis, whereas 4-bromobenzene- 1,2-diol was the degradation product of the alkaline hydrolysis. A mobile phase consisting Phosphate buffer pH 3.5 Acetonitrile (82:18 v/v) was used, and separation was done on a Zorbax Column C18 dimension 250x 4.6mm, particle size 5µ. Using A flow rate of 1 ml.min-1 while detection wavelength was 240.0nm.Retention times were 3.65, 2.60 and 1.85 for intact Bromazepam, acid and alkaline induced ion products respectively. The method showed good linearity in the concentration range of 20–100 µgmL−1. The intra- and interassay precision RSD% were 0.256 and 0.756 respectively .Statistical comparison between the results obtained for the analysis of Bromazepam in pure form and the reported HPLC method showed that values of the calculated t and F are less than the tabulated ones, which reveals that there is no significant difference between the compared methods with respect to accuracy and precision,


In the last three decades,sustainable development(SD)has been proposed and developed as a new development model.In China,SD has been confirmed as one of the two basic strategies(the other one is"Developing through science education")for national development.We define regional sustainability development as the continuous support of human quality of life within a region's ecological carrying capacity.To achieve regional sustainability development,one must first assess the current situation.Until now,studies on SD have been mainly focused on two domain,one is the concepts and theory of SD and the other is the effectively realizing processes of SD,while few studies were carried out on evaluation methods of SD.Recently the application of Geo-spatial information technology in SD assessment,has gained great attention,mainly because the conventional statistic methods cannot satisfy the requirements of SD assessments. A concept-ual model of regional SD assessment,using high spatiod-temporal resolution remote sensing satellites as an important data sources,was built based on some essential achievements such as Human Development Index(HDI)and ecological footprint.In the conceptual model,'development'and 'sustainability' were used as two primary criteria to evaluate the regional SD situation. Evaluation Information System for Regional Sustainable Development (EIS/RSD) was developed based on the above-mentioned conceptual model. The system has a number of application models,which can be used for further analysis of original data. The analysis result can be displayed using map and chart. This paper presents the aim,developing scheme,conceptual model,function and assessment method of evaluation information system for regional sustainable development.


Abstract Background and aims The Fear-Avoidance Beliefs Questionnaire (FABQ) is the most widely used self-reported measure of fear-avoidance beliefs about work and physical activity in low back pain (LBP). However, there is no Hausa version for use in patients with LBP. This study aimed to translate, cross-culturally adapt, and test the psychometric properties of the Hausa version of the FABQ in patients with LBP. Methods The Hausa form of FABQ was developed using a forward-backward translation procedure according to recommended guidelines. The pre-final version of the questionnaire was pre-tested on 10 patients with acute LBP and 10 patients with chronic LBP. Psychometric testing was performed in 70 patients with acute LBP and 130 patients with chronic LBP. Reliability was assessed using internal consistency (Cronbach α) and test-retest reliability through intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). Construct validity was assessed by exploratory factor analysis and divergent validity (Spearman rank correlation coefficient). Responsiveness was also investigated on 40 patients with chronic LBP. Results The Hausa version of the FABQ was successfully translated and proved to be well-understood. The internal consistency was adequate for the questionnaire (0.773) and its physical activity (0.816) and work (0.606) subscales. Test-retest reliability was excellent with an ICC value of 0.928 for the questionnaire and values of 0.901 and 0.863 for the physical activity and work subscales, respectively. Exploratory factor analysis yielded a three-factor structure in both acute and chronic LBP samples explaining 66.4% and 58.6% of the total variance, respectively. The first factor represents fear-avoidance beliefs due to work, the second factor represents fear-avoidance beliefs due to physical activity whereas the third factor represents the fear that pain aggravates due to work. Divergent validity showed moderate to weak correlation between the questionnaire and pain intensity (r=0.502), disability (r=0.415), lumbopelvic motion (r=0.00). The physical activity and work subscales weakly correlated (r=0.280). The effect size and standardized response mean were moderate to small with the work subscale having the lowest effect size (0.34) and standardized response mean (0.34) values. The MDC of the questionnaire was 5.4 points. The questionnaire had no ceiling or floor effects. Conclusions The FABQ was successfully translated into Hausa and cross-culturally adapted with acceptable psychometric properties similar to those of existing versions. The results suggest that the Hausa FABQ can be used to evaluate fear-avoidance beliefs about LBP in Hausa-speaking population for both clinical and research purposes.


Abstract Engineered tissue constructs have the potential to augment or replace whole organ transplantation for the treatment of liver failure. Poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG)‐based systems are particularly promising for the construction of engineered liver tissue due to their biocompatibility and amenability to modular addition of bioactive factors. To date, primary hepatocytes have been successfully encapsulated in non‐degradable hydrogels based on PEG‐diacrylate (PEGDA). In this study, we describe a hydrogel system based on PEG‐diacrylamide (PEGDAAm) containing matrix‐metalloproteinase sensitive (MMP‐sensitive) peptide in the hydrogel backbone that is suitable for hepatocyte culture both in vitro and after implantation. By replacing hydrolytically unstable esters in PEGDA with amides in PEGDAAm, resultant hydrogels resisted non‐specific hydrolysis, while still allowing for MMP‐mediated hydrogel degradation. Optimization of polymerization conditions, hepatocellular density, and multicellular tissue composition modulated both the magnitude and longevity of hepatic function in vitro. Importantly, hepatic PEGDAAm‐based tissues survived and functioned for over 3 weeks after implantation ectopically in the intraperitoneal (IP) space of nude mice. Together, these studies suggest that MMP‐sensitive PEGDAAm‐based hydrogels may be a useful material system for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res Part A: 103A: 3331–3338, 2015.


AIM: Various chemotherapy protocols, both cheap and costly are available for treatment of colon cancer. This study was carried out to analyze the five year survival probability with different protocols. METHODS: A total of 415 patients attending our oncology OPD from January 2002 to December 2008 who had biopsy-proven colon cancer were retrospectively accrued in this hospital based study. 65% patients were male. The patients were stratified according to treatment received (surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy), age wise and stage wise. Statistical comparison of different adjuvant chemotherapy protocols was performed on the basis of different age groups and stage using Kaplan Meier method. All statistical calculations were performed using Medcalc software for windows, version 12.5.0 (Osterd, Belgium). RESULTS: Five year survival probability with FOLFOX 4 protocol was 85% while with Mayo clinic protocol, it was 80% (p=0.0071). In all stages (except stage IV) and age groups (except >70 years), FOLFOX-4 protocol yielded above 80% five year survival (p<0.0001). Mayo clinic protocol gave comparable results till stage IIIA. However, survival probability dropped drastically stage IIIB onwards with Mayo clinic protocol. The five year survival with only surgery was 90% in stages I and II. Median survival of patients who developed metastasis to liver was about 20 months. Those who also had ascites besides secondary liver, median survival reduced to 12 months. CONCLUSION: Mayo clinic protocol is a simple, effective and affordable alternative to FOLFOX 4 protocol up to stage IIIA colon cancer, especially suitable for peripheral settings.


Abstract
A shift from a medical model to a social model of including learners with disabilities has occurred over the past 25 years (Stella, Forlin, & Lan, 2007). This shift has impacted both preservice teacher preparation and in-service teacher professional development. This chapter utilizes a conceptual framework built on the work of Forlin and colleagues (Forlin, Loreman, Sharma, & Earle, 2009; Sharma, Forlin, Loreman, & Earle, 2006; Stella et al., 2007) to guide teacher preparation and professional development. This conceptual framework provides a model for (1) addressing attitudes and perceptions; (2) increasing knowledge of disability policies, laws, and evidence-based practices for providing instruction in inclusive settings; (3) and increasing experiences with individuals with disabilities, including experiences within inclusive settings. In addition, the framework incorporates aspects of the context within which inclusion is to occur. Implications include recommendations for teacher training and professional development to improve inclusive education for learners with LID.


What role will the Fourth Amendment play in a world without police? As academics, activists, and lawmakers explore alternatives to traditional law enforcement, it bears asking whether the amendment primarily tasked with regulating police investigations would also regulate postpolice public safety agencies. Surprisingly, the answer is often no. Courts are reluctant to recognize protections from government searches or seizures outside criminal investigations, and they are even more reluctant to require probable cause or a warrant for such conduct. Thus, by removing most public safety functions outside the criminal sphere, abolitionists also move intrusive government conduct outside these traditional strictures and guardrails. This Article provides the first sustained evaluation of the Fourth Amendment's limited role in a postpolice world and examines the implications of this reality. In doing so, it makes three contributions to existing scholarship. First, Part I catalogues comprehensive abolitionist proposals to replace traditional police while situating these proposals within the various semipermanent and permanent abolitionist perspectives animating them. Second, Part II applies current Fourth Amendment "special needs" doctrine to these burgeoning postpolice agencies and explores the troubling implications of nonpolice public safety entities operating largely free of the amendment's search and seizure restrictions. Third, Part III suggests three novel lenses through which to view a postpolice Fourth Amendment—abolition subconstitutionalism, abolition endogeneity, and objective intrusion theory—that accord with the core purpose of the amendment and respond to potential privacy and liberty concerns in a world without police.


Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

Design/methodology/approach
This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Findings
What will ensure a startup becomes successful? For good reason, startups garner a lot of attention in the business press, although it often seems like it is for the wrong reasons. Startups make good copy as they are deemed as "sexy" – in other words, stories about them will be more likely to be read and shared than articles about more established firms. For the same reason, a story charting the rapid decline, huge losses, or ultimate failure of a startup will be even more interesting, with people attracted by the hubris dripping from such stories, of twentysomething entrepreneurs who dreamed big but flew too close to the sun.

Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.


Integration of distributed energy resources (DER) such as photovoltaics, electric vehicles (EVs) and battery energy storage systems (BESS) is expected to rapidly increase in distribution systems in India. These grid edge resources can have adverse impacts on the grid and can provide additional revenue streams as well. To mitigate these impacts distribution planning and analysis is required. So this paper presents a framework which can be used to complete all steps involved in distribution planning and analysis. This framework uses data in the same format as is readily available with Indian utilities and processes it to generate detailed feeder models and loading profiles. This framework already includes multiple DER use cases such as peak shaving for BESS and EV demand modelling and can be easily extended to simulate a number of additional use cases. All of these use cases can be simulated in parallel for multi-year time series simulations using an integrated command line interface. A suit of grid readiness metrics are then evaluated for each simulation to determine required network upgrades and associated costs.


We present a method to obtain the phase modulation characteristic curve of a spatial light modulator (SLM) under severe vibration conditions. The procedure is based on the well-known advanced iterative algorithm (AIA), which allows wavefront extraction from unknown phase-shifted interferograms. Generally, AIA is used to determine the wavefront and the determined phase shifts are of little interest. In contrast, in our method, the main goal of using AIA is to determine the unknown phase shifts induced by an SLM during the calibration procedure. Using a segmented approach to calibration, AIA enables successful calibration even in the presence of additional random phase shifts due to environmental changes. This method has the potential to calibrate SLMs integrated in complex optical instruments with little to no modifications to the optical setup, no matter the environmental conditions. We demonstrate our technique by calibrating an SLM under vacuum conditions (10-5mbar) in a common-path configuration compatible with usage of an SLM as a wavefront modulator at the pupil plane of an instrument. Our technique compensates for the vibrations produced by the vacuum pumps and reduces an order of magnitude the root-mean-squared error of the calibration curve evaluated with vibration errors. Our technique enhances the potential use of SLMs in complex optical systems, including aerospace optical instrumentation.


Contrained principal component analysis(CPCA)was proposed by Takane and Shibayama(1991)for structural analysis of multivariate data. In this method the data are first decomposed into several components according to external information. The decomposed submatrices are then subjected to principal component analysis(PCA)to explore possible structures within the submatrices. The method thus combines two major conventional multivariate analysis techniques, multiple regression analysis and PCA, in a unified framework. This paper illustrates the basic model, computational methods, various uses and extensions of CPCA. An illustrative example is given, and relative merits and demerits of CPCA are discussed in relation to the analysis of covariance structure(ACOVS)approach.


In this study, we have developed microalgae immobilized by polysulfone nanofibrous web (microalgae/PSU-NFW) for the removal of reactive dyes (Remazol Black 5 (RB5) and Reactive Blue 221 (RB221). Here, an electrospinning technique was used to produce polysulfone nanofibrous web (PSU-NFW) as a free-standing material on which microalgae Chlamydomona reinhardtii was immobilized on PSU-NFW. The decolorization capacities of microalgae/PSU-NFW were significantly higher than that of pristine PSU-NFW. The decolorization rate for RB5 was calculated as 72.97 ± 0.3% for microalgae/PSU-NFW, whereas it was 12.36 ± 0.3% for the pristine PSU-NFW. In the case of RB221 solution, decolorization rates were achieved as 30.2 ± 0.23 and 5.51 ± 0.4% for microalgae/PSU-NFW and pristine PSU-NFW, respectively. Reusability tests revealed that microalgae/PSU-NFW can be used in at least three successive decolorization steps in which the decolorization rate of the RB5 was found to be 51 ± 0.69% after the third reuse step. These results...


The use of photocatalysis for water purification and environmental protection is of key interest. However, the reaction kinetics can be limited by the restricted accessibility of electron acceptor oxygen and the low adsorption of organic compounds-crucial factors underlying photocatalytic performance. Here we simul-taneously alleviate these constraints via reaction inter-face microenvironment design using superhydrophobic (SHB) TiO2 nanoarrays as a model photocatalyst. The low surface energy and rough surface microstructure features of the SHB nanoarrays give the photocatalytic system long-range hydrophobic force and an air-water-solid triphase reaction interface. This simultaneously changes the adsorption model of organic compounds and the access pathway of oxygen, leading to markedly enhanced adsorption capacity and higher interfacial oxygen levels. These synergistic qualities result in over 30-fold higher reaction kinetics versus a normal diphase system. In addition, this photocatalytic system is stable via repeated cycling. Our findings highlight the im-portance of reaction interface microenvironment design and reveal an effective path for the development of effi-cient photocatalysis systems.