This paper investigates the coupled effect of the supporting soil flexibility and pounding between neighbouring, insufficiently separated buildings under earthquake excitation. Two adjacent three-storey structures, modelled as inelastic lumped mass systems with different structural characteristics, have been considered in the study. The models have been excited using the time history of the Kobe earthquake of 1995. A nonlinear viscoelastic pounding force model has been employed in order to effectively capture the impact forces during collisions. A discrete element model has been incorporated to simulate the horizontal and rotational movements of the supporting soil. Numerical simulations have been performed using developed software based on the Matlab code. The variation in storeys peak displacements, peak accelerations and peak impact forces for various gap sizes is presented in the paper and comparisons are made with the results obtained for colliding buildings with fixed-base supports. The results of the study indicate that the incorporation of the soil-structure interaction decreases both storey peak displacements and peak impact forces during collisions, whereas increase the peak accelerations at each floor level.


Human red cells (E) were specifically and singly coated with either C4, C3b, or C3d by using human serum as the source of complement, and the amount of each component fixed was measured quantitatively by antiglobulin consumption tests. The immune adherence (IA) of E-C4, E-C3b and E-C3d to peripheral blood monocytes and polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMN) was dependent upon the amount of the component on the red cell surface. The amount of adherence per molecule of component fixed was slightly greater with E-C4 than with E-C3b and much less than either with E-C3d. However, E-C3d adherence was more stable to washing or mechanical disruption than E-C3b adherence; E-C4 adherence was less stable than either. Unlike E-C3b when incubated with heated serum, resulting in E-C3d with continued IA activity, E-C4 incubated with serum completely lost IA activity.
 51Cr-labeled E-C4, E-C3b and E-C3d were not lysed during incubation with monocytes even though they readily adhere to monocytes.


In the present study, we used next-generation sequencing to investigate the impacts of two commercially available prescription diet regimens on the fecal microbiomes of eleven client-owned healthy pet dogs. We tested an anallergenic diet on 6 dogs and a low-fat diet on 5 dogs. Before starting the study, each dog was fed a different commercial diet over 5 weeks. After collecting pre-diet fecal samples, the anallergenic or low-fat diet was administered for 5 weeks. We then collected fecal samples and compared the pre- and post-diet fecal microbiomes. In the dogs on the anallergenic diet, we found significantly decreased proportions of Bacteroides, Ruminococcaceae, and Fusobacteriaceae, belonging to the phyla Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Fusobacteria, respectively. The proportion of the genus Streptococcus belonging to the phylum Firmicutes was significantly increased upon administering the anallergenic diet. In the dogs on the low-fat diet, although the phyla Actinobacteria and Bacteroidetes tended to increase (p=0.116) and decrease (p=0.147) relative to the pre-diet levels, respectively, there were no significant differences in the proportions of any phylum between the pre- and post-diet fecal microbiomes. The anallergenic diet induced a significantly lower diversity index value than that found in the pre-diet period. Principal coordinate analysis based on unweighted UniFrac distance matrices revealed separation between the pre- and post-diet microbiomes in the dogs on the anallergenic diet. These results suggest that, even in pet dogs kept indoors in different living environments, unification of the diet induces apparent changes in the fecal microbiome.


This paper presents the experimental validation of a readout circuit for the acquisition, amplification, and transmission of extremely weak biopotentials with a focus on electroencephalography (EEG) signals. The device, dubbed CochlEEG, benefits from a low-power design for long-term power autonomy and provides configurable gain and sampling rates to suit the needs of various EEG applications. CochlEEG features high sampling rates, up to 4 kHz, low-noise signal acquisitions, support for active electrodes, and a potential for Wi-Fi data transmission. Moreover, it is lightweight, pocket size, and affordable, which makes CochlEEG suitable for wearable and real-world applications. The efficiency of CochlEEG in EEG data acquisition is also investigated in this paper. Auditory steady-state responses acquisition results validate CochlEEG's capability in recording EEG with a signal quality comparable to commercial mobile or research EEG acquisition devices. Moreover, the results of an oddball paradigm experiment prove the capability of CochlEEG in recording event-related potentials and demonstrate its potential for brain–computer interface applications and electrophysiological research applications requiring higher temporal resolution.


Circular saws and angle grinders are two of the most dangerous pieces of electrical equipment on a worksite. Besides the danger that any high-powered, sharp piece of equipment possesses, these pieces use circular saw blades that can splinter into projectile fragments. A 60-year-old male was cutting a steel pipe with a circular saw when a fragment of the 12-inch blade flew off, impaling him in the upper face just to the right of the midline. He was wearing eyeglasses, the bridge of which was driven into his skull on impact of the fragment. He was brought to the trauma center where he underwent imaging of his face and head. This revealed that the blade and his glasses had penetrated 1.2 cm into the right frontal lobe of the brain, resulting in facial fractures and intraparenchymal hemorrhage. He underwent bifrontal craniotomy, removal of the blade and his glasses, evacuation of hematoma, and dural reconstruction. Postoperatively, he was awake with a Glasgow Coma Scale of 15 and no neurologic deficits. The complex nature of craniofacial injuries makes a multidisciplinary approach to these patients essential. Prompt diagnosis and treatment by the appropriate specialists are vital to optimize patient outcomes.


In this paper, a new performance enhancement algorithm for Space-Time Block Coding in OFDM System,which is an adaptive transmit optimization beam forming STBC-OFDM system based on Channel State Information(CSI), is proposed. And, the optimization beam forming weight vector is derived in case of maximal receiver Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). Theoretic analysis and computer simulation results of the system over wireless Reyleigh fading channels show that the system can e:rplore all the diversity resource and performance can be improved significantly compared-with traditional STBC-OFDM system. In addition, the performance of enhancement algorithm is better than STTC-OFDM system and TCM-STBC-OFDM system in the case of higher receiver SNR.


Network processors (NPs) are emerging as a cost effective network element technology that can be more readily updated and evolved than custom hardware or ASIC-based designs. Moreover, NPs promise support for run-time reconfiguration of low-level networking software. However, it is notoriously difficult to develop software for NPs because of their complex design, architectural heterogeneity, and demanding performance constraints. In this paper we present a runtime component-based approach to programming NPs. The approach promotes conceptual uniformity and design portability across a wide variety of NP types while simultaneously exploiting hardware assists that are specific to individual NPs. To show how our approach can be applied in a wide range of types of NPs we characterise the design space of NPs and demonstrate the applicability of our concepts to the various classes identified. Then, as a detailed case study, we focus on programming the Intel IXP1200 NP. This demonstrates that our approach can be effectively applied, e.g. in terms of performance, in a demanding real-world NP environment.


Clinical MRI is an important method for the delineation and characterization of gliomas for resection planning and therapy monitoring in neurosurgery. Here, we used a 3D curl- and phase-gradient based inversion algorithm in multifrequency magnetic resonance elastography (MRE) to generate maps of the mechanical tumor properties, wave speed and wave damping. Overall, our method improved the spatial resolution of MRE maps in glioma patients and allowed precise measurement of tumor mechanical properties. In the future, the method could help with characterization, surgical planning and treatment monitoring of neuro tumors.


Recent progress in studies of holographic dualities, originally motivated by insights from string theory, has led to a confluence with concepts and techniques from quantum information theory. A particularly successful approach has involved capturing holographic properties by means of tensor networks which not only give rise to physically meaningful correlations of holographic boundary states, but also reproduce and refine features of quantum error correction in holography. This topical review provides an overview over recent successful realizations of such models. It does so by building on an introduction of the theoretical foundations of AdS/CFT and necessary quantum information concepts, many of which have themselves developed into independent, rapidly evolving research fields.


Few studies have explored the role of failure and punishment as gameplay mechanics in games. The objective of this paper is to provide an exploratory study into the failure and punishment gameplay mechanisms present in games of the first-person shooter genre examined using a structured gameplay analysis approach in order to identify groupings of mechanics within the genre, the temporal effects of failure and punishment, and how failure and punishment can be used to provide feedback to the player in order for them to better fit an "ideal" player model.

Within this paper it was discovered that the majority of failure mechanics present within the games analysed were associated with the core gameplay mechanics, of a short term nature in their temporal effect and could be used by the player to progressively refine their mental model of the game.


The paper proposed an enhancement to cooperative transmit diversity based on uncoded detect-and-forward, by using so-called constellation rearrangement (CR) at the relay. With CR, the relay uses a bit-symbol mapping that is different from the one used by the source. The authors find the optimal bit-symbol mappings for both the source and the relay and the associated optimal detectors, and show that the improvement over conventional relaying with Gray mapping at the source and the relay can amount to a power gain of several dB. This performance improvement comes at no additional power or bandwidth expense, and at virtually no increase in complexity.


An unusual case of Burkitt lymphoma presenting with an osteolytic pelvic lesion in a homosexual man with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is reported. Computed tomography (CT) demonstrated unsuspected renal involvement and was used for guided percutaneous biopsy. The CT appearance of renal Burkitt lymphoma was similar to that of other types of renal lymphoma.


Seven adult mixed breed female dogs (17:4 2:9 kg) surgically ®tted with ileal T-cannulas were used in a 4 7 incomplete Latin square design experiment to evaluate oligosaccharide supplementation on dry matter (DM), nitrogen (N), ammonia, volatile fatty acid (VFA), bacteria, blood glucose concentrations, ileal pH, and fecal consistency. Fructooligosaccharide (FOS), mannanoligosaccharide (MOS), and xylooligosaccharide (XOS) were added at 5 g/kg of diet DM. There were no differences in DM digestibility, diet or fecal N, N digestibility, ileal or fecal ammonia, fecal consistency, ileal bacteria colony forming units, blood glucose, or ileal pH. Ileal butyrate proportion tended to be greater (P ˆ 0:07) in the control diet (0.076 of total VFA) compared with the oligosaccharide supplemented diets and lower (P ˆ 0:07) for the MOS diet compared with the FOS and XOS diets. Ileal propionate tended to be higher (P ˆ 0:09) in MOS (0.198 of total VFA) than FOS and XOS. Fecal bi®dobacteria numbers were unaffected by dietary treatment. Fecal Clostridium perfringens tended to be lower (P ˆ 0:09) in MOS when compared to FOS and XOS. Oligosaccharides had relatively minor effects on bacterial growth in the large intestine and VFA proportions in the small intestine of the canine. For oligosaccharide feeding to cause microbial changes in the canine greater amounts of oligosaccharide may be required, or it may require application in select dietary situations. # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


The purpose of this research is to explore and understand the various intrapersonal and interpersonal dynamics associated with the lives of female exotic dancers from an essentialist, social constructionist, and critical perspective. This study uses informal interviews and an autoethnographic field study approach as its primary methodological modes. The act of unearthing the intrapersonal experiences and motivations of female exotic dancers helps deconstruct their limiting and oppressive gender and sexual narratives, thereby exposing the negative influence on their self-concept, -esteem, and -efficacy. Throughout the process of collecting and analyzing data, a variety of recurrent interpersonal themes also emerged, such as: (a) the extent of anticipatory socialization experiences acquired by the dancers prior to their entering the profession, (b) their on-the-job socialization, (c) the typology of exotic dancers (career vs. transient) and reasons for entering the profession, (d) the management of their stigmatized identities through various neutralization and normalization techniques, (e) the various processes associated with becoming a good performer, and (f) the negative impact of their dancing careers on their relationships with their significant others.


The binding of phenylbutazone (I) and oxyphenbutazone (II) to human serum albumin over pH 6.9-9.3 was studied by difference spectrophotometry and equilibrium dialysis. At each pH tested, there was higher binding affinity of I to human serum albumin than II. Equilibrium dialysis showed that over the pH 7-8.2 range both agents had a single high-affinity site and several sites of lower affinity, with the highest binding constant and number of binding sites at pH 7.4 for both I and II. Both techniques showed that the affinity of both drugs to albumin was higher for the neutral form than for the basic form and this transition occurred in both cases around the neutral region (7-7.4). Both the ionized and unionized forms of I and II participated in the binding. In the neutral region, magnesium ion increased the affinity of both drugs to albumin while chloride ion decreased it slightly.


This research examines geographic differences in the availability of alcoholism treatment programs throughout the United States. Using a substantially complete national listing of alcoholism treatment programs, significant differences in treatment availability based upon state, division, and region were found. The variations in treatment availability were strongly related to the adoption of the Uniform Alcoholism Act, with the influence of the UAA being more pronounced in nonmetropolitan areas. Treatment availability was only weakly related to the extent of alcohol-related problems. It is suggested that the UAA may be adopted through the social mandates of metropolitan areas and that nonmetropolitan areas respond with increased treatment availability as a result of the legal mandate of the legislation. It is concluded that without the official redefinition of alcoholism as a condition requiring treatment, the establishment of an adequate treatment capability is severely impaired.


Trace metals like copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) are added to animal feed as dietary supplements, and trace metals
not assimilated by the animals gut are excreted in manure. The accumulation and movement of Cu and Zn in soils has not
been as well documented when compared to nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P). In cases where plant-available Cu and Zn concentrations
accumulate to phytotoxic levels, yield may decline for sensitive crops. We investigated the accumulation of Cu
and Zn in the topsoil (0 to 15 cm) and the soil profile (0 to 183 cm deep) and estimated uptake by Coastal Bermuda grass
(Cynodon dactylon L.) in a Coastal Plain spray field after 4 and 10 years of swine manure effluent application. Effluent was
initially applied to a 1 ha portion of this field, which was later enlarged to 5 ha. Top and subsoil samples were collected at
nearby control sites that received no swine manure. All soil samples were extracted using Mehlich 3 (M3) and double acid
reagent for plant-available and total Cu and Zn concentrations. Comparison of trace metal concentrations in the topsoil after
4 and 10 years of effluent application with control soils showed that total Cu, and M3 and total Zn had accumulated. Mehlich 3
and total Cu and Zn accumulation rates both declined after an increase in spray field area and decrease in effluent application
rates. In a 1 ha region of the field, total Cu and Zn concentration both increased between 45 and 90 cm deep after 4 years
of effluent applications. Across the 5 ha field, higher subsoil total Cu concentrations relative to controls suggest that Cu
leaching occurred; however, leaching of Zn into the total pool was not significant. Estimated times through Coastal Bermuda
grass uptake to reduce topsoil M3 Zn concentrations to background levels ranged between 21 to 152 years. Results from this
study show that after 10 years of swine manure effluent application, mean topsoil M3 Cu and Zn concentrations were far below
concentrations considered phytotoxic to sensitive crops.


Lithium-ion batteries have attracted considerable attention due to their high power density. The change in concentration of salt in the electrolyte solution in lithium-ion batteries during operation causes serious degradation of battery performance. Herein, a new method of in situ Raman spectroscopy with ultrafine multifiber probes was developed to simultaneously study the concentrations of ions at several different positions in the electrolyte solution in deep narrow spaces between the electrodes in batteries. The total amount of ions in the electrolyte solution clearly changed during operation due to the low permeability of the solid-electrolyte interphase (SEI) at the anode for Li+ permeation. The permeability, which is a key factor to achieve high battery performance, was improved (enhanced) by adding film-forming additives to the electrolyte solution to modify the properties of the SEI. The results provide important information for understanding and predicting phenomena occurring in a battery and for designing a superior battery. The present method is useful for analysis in deep narrow spaces in other electrochemical devices, such as capacitors.


We characterize the maximum throughput achievable for the up-link of a power-controlled WCDMA wireless system with variable spreading factor. Our system model includes multi access interference caused by users with heterogeneous data sources, and quality of service expressed in terms of outage probability. Inner loop and outer loop power control mechanisms are also explicitly taken into account. We express the system throughput as the sum of the users transmission rates, and propose a mixed integer optimization program where the objective function is the sum of the rates under outage probability constraints. Then, we solve the optimization problem proposing an efficient optimal approach based on two steps: firstly, a modified problem provides feasible solutions, and then the optimal solution is obtained with branch and bound criteria. Numerical results confirm the validity of our approach, and show how the throughput depends on the power control fluctuation, activity of the sources, and quality of service.


In this work, studies the changes in the crystal structure of the natural graphite of the Taiga deposit were carried out in the process of spheroidization. The spheroidization process consisted in giving the flat graphite particles of a quasi-spherical shape due to mechanochemical activation in a centrifugal mill of the shock-reflective principle of action. Spherical graphite obtained by mechanochemical spheroidization is currently the dominant anode material of lithium-ion batteries on the market. Currently, the problem of obtaining electrode materials based on domestic raw materials and using domestic processing technologies is becoming urgent. In the course of the work, it was found that the graphite under study consists of two graphite substructures with a greater and lesser degree of graphitation. During mechanochemical activation of graphite in a centrifugal mill of the shock-reflective principle, a significant change in the crystal structure of both substructures occurs, consisting in a decrease in the size of the crystallites, a decrease in the degree of graphitation and the formation of a rhombohedral phase. It is also noted that the changes in the structure are wave-like, and the less graphitized substructure is subject to stronger fluctuations. In the process of spheroidization, a decrease in the proportion of a more graphitized substructure and its transition to a less graphitized one was noted. In addition, it was found that the spheroidization process is accompanied by a decrease in the degree of texture of the crystal structure, expressed by a decrease in the ratio of the integral intensities of reflexes (002) and (110) corresponding to the crystallographic planes "c" and "a", respectively. An increase in the intensity of the impact from 55 m/s to 85 m/s makes it possible to intensify the ongoing processes, while no significant deterioration in the degree of graphitation was noted.


Contrary to what one might have expected from its title, Evaluation Practice Reconsidered by Thomas A. SCHWANDT is a highly theoretical and largely programmatic volume. Its focus is on an attempt to understand evaluation as a variant of practical hermeneutics, with the result that the book is not so much concerned with the actual practice as with a metatheoretical framework of evaluation. This framework is interesting and in some respects stimulating, and leads readers on to further issues, but those who are interested in methodological issues and expect answers to their practical research problems should not be misled by the title: evaluation practice, in the sense of the expectations, methods and challenges of everyday research practice, is mentioned only in passing.


The dystrophin–glycoprotein complex (DGC) links the extracellular matrix and actin cytoskeleton. Caveolae form membrane arrays on smooth muscle cells; we investigated the mechanism for this organization. Caveolin-1 and β-dystroglycan, the core transmembrane DGC subunit, colocalize in airway smooth muscle. Immunoprecipitation revealed the association of caveolin-1 with β-dystroglycan. Disruption of actin filaments disordered caveolae arrays, reduced association of β-dystroglycan and caveolin-1 to lipid rafts, and suppressed the sensitivity and responsiveness of methacholine-induced intracellular Ca2+ release. We generated novel human airway smooth muscle cell lines expressing shRNA to stably silence β-dystroglycan expression. In these myocytes, caveolae arrays were disorganized, caveolae structural proteins caveolin-1 and PTRF/cavin were displaced, the signaling proteins PLCβ1 and Gαq, which are required for receptor-mediated Ca2+ release, were absent from caveolae, and the sensitivity and responsiveness of methacholine-induced intracellular Ca2+ release, was diminished. These data reveal an interaction between caveolin-1 and β-dystroglycan and demonstrate that this association, in concert with anchorage to the actin cytoskeleton, underpins the spatial organization and functional role of caveolae in receptor-mediated Ca2+ release, which is an essential initiator step in smooth muscle contraction.


A solar cell or photovoltaic cell is designed to convert sunlight into electrical energy through the photoelectric effect. Solar cells are the most attractive source to harness solar energy; it is not only has high efficiency, but also protect our environment from pollution and producing zero greenhouse effect. There have been numerous studies on cadmium telluride (CdTe) compound in solar cell research as studies shows that CdTe can provide a good efficiency and yet cost effective. This paper presents a simple study investigating cadmium telluride solar cells structure by using MATLAB software. This study is aimed to investigate the parameters such as drift component, diffusion component, thickness also to analyse the efficiency of the cadmium telluride layer. The studies conclude that in order to achieve an efficiency of 28–30%, the thickness of the CdTe layer, the uncompensated acceptor concentration and carrier lifetime should be ≥12µm, ≥1016cm−3 and ≥ 10−11s respectively.


The potential of electron microscope tomography as a tool for obtaining three-dimensional (3D) information about large macromolecular assemblies is greatly extended by automation of data collection. With the implementation of automated control of tilting, focusing, and digital image recording described here, tilt series of frozen-hydrated specimens can be collected with the requisite low dose. Long chromatin fibers were prepared in 90 mM monovalent ions to maintain a fully compact conformation, and after vitrification were completely contained within the ice layer. Tilt series of this material were recorded at 5 degrees tilt increments between +60 degrees and -60 degrees, with a cumulative dose of approximately 35 e-/A2 for the series. This extremely low dose data was successfully aligned, then reconstructed by weighted backprojection. The underlying architecture of the fibers is an irregular 3D zigzag of interconnected nucleosomes, with the linker DNA between successive nucleosomes in a largely extended conformation. The visualization of this structural motif within long, frozen-hydrated chromatin fibers at relatively high salt extends our previous studies on small fragments at low ionic strength and is in agreement with the observation of this architecture in chromatin fibers in situ in sectioned nuclei.


When two surfaces are brought into contact or at small separations, the liquid between them forms meniscus, which contributes to adhesion and friction. The increased adhesive force and friction are always the substantial cause leading to micro/nanodevices's failure. In this study, a dynamic contact model of sphere-on-sphere surfaces during nanoscale separation is presented. A numerical analysis of meniscus and viscous forces based on the dynamic contact model has been carried out. During the separation process, the effects of separation distance, initial meniscus height, surface wettability and separating time on meniscus and viscous forces between the contact surfaces are investigated. The results of numerical solution revealed the adhesion mechanism of sphere-on-sphere surfaces during the separation with liquid mediated. The analyses provide a fundamental understanding of the separating process of two sphere surfaces. It is also useful for the design of the de-wetting and antisticking micro/nanoscale surfaces in various devices.


In this study, we investigate the performance of the variants of the induced dimension reduction (IDR) in large-scale electromagnetic scattering problems. Comparative numerical experiments, using IDR(s), GIDR(s, L), and ML(s)BiCGSTAB reveal that GIDR(s, L) shows the fastest convergence property among the three IDR variants. In a numerical experiment with a practical radiation problem, GIDR(s, L) with an s value of around 15 shows the best performance with respect to the balance between the convergence property and the tolerance to the spurious convergence.


BACKGROUND
We have recently discovered that administration of valproic acid (VPA), a histone deacetylase inhibitor, enhances nuclear histone acetylation and improves survival after lethal hemorrhage in rats. In the present study, neurons were subjected to severe hypoxic condition in vitro to test whether VPA would prevent hypoxia-induced apoptosis, and to explore the possible mechanisms.

METHODS
Primary hippocampal and cortical cultures dissociated from E18 rat embryos were plated in quadruplicate at a density of 2 x 10/well in neurobasal medium supplemented with B-27 on glass cover-slips coated with poly-l-lysine. On the 10th day after plating, cells were incubated in a hypoxia chamber (0.5% O2, 10% CO2, 89.5% N2) at 37 degrees C for 6 hour and 16 hour in the presence or absence of VPA (1 mmol/L). The cells were then fixed, stained with antiactivated caspase-3 and antiacetyl histone H3 lysine 9 (Ac H3 K9) antibodies and visualized under confocal microscope. The caspase-3 positive cells were counted as apoptotic. Ratio of the apoptotic to total cells stained with 4',6-diamidino-2-phenylindole was determined. Numerical data were subjected to t test analysis. p < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Western blot was performed to determine the level of acetylation of nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-kappaB) and phospho-JNK (c-Jun N-terminal kinase) in cells treated with or without VPA. Luciferase report assay was employed to analyze the activation of NF-kappaB after the cells were transfected with NF-kBLuc with or without VPA treatment.

RESULTS
Exposure of neurons to VPA prevented apoptotic cell death under hypoxic conditions (20% apoptosis). In contrast, about 95% cells underwent apoptosis at the same level of hypoxia. VPA treatment induced acetylation of histone H3 K9 and NF-kappaB lysine 310. NF-kappaB was activated at the same time as the protein acetylation. Moreover, JNK phosphorylation was inhibited after the cells were treated with VPA under hypoxia condition.

CONCLUSION
VPA enhances acetylation of histone 3 at lysine 9 and NF-kappaB at 310, induces NF-kappaB activation, reduces JNK activation, and protects the neurons from hypoxia-induced apoptosis in vitro.


We introduce a new benchmark task for coreference resolution, Hard-CoRe, that targets common-sense reasoning and world knowledge. Previous coreference resolution tasks have been overly vulnerable to systems that simply exploit the number and gender of the antecedents, or have been handcrafted and do not reflect the diversity of sentences in naturally occurring text. With these limitations in mind, we present a resolution task that is both challenging and realistic. We demonstrate that various coreference systems, whether rule-based, feature-rich, graphical, or neural-based, perform at random or slightly above-random on the task, whereas human performance is very strong with high inter-annotator agreement. To explain this performance gap, we show empirically that state-of-the art models often fail to capture context and rely only on the antecedents to make a decision.


This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of raw and autoclaved Amaranth grain on the performance and egg quality of layer hens. For this purpose 168 Leghorn laying hens strain Hyline W36 at 67 weeks of age were allocated in completely randomized design with 7 treatments and 6 replicates of 4 birds. Treatments include raw and autoclaved Amaranth each at 0, 5, 10 and 15%. The egg external an internal quality and productive performance of the hens were measured during the experiment. The results showed that, during the whole experiment period, the percentage of egg production, egg weight and egg mass were significantly lower in the birds fed the diets containing different levels of crude and autoclaved amaranth compared to the birds fed the control diet (P<0.05). Also birds fed diets containing different levels of crude and autoclaved amaranth had a significantly higher FCR than the control birds (P<0.05). Amaranth autoclaving reduces the anti-nutritional effects and improves bird performance (P<0.05). Hens fed with diets contain amaranth compared with control group had lower feed intake (P<0.05). Raw and autoclaved amaranth has no effect on egg external and internal quality. Overall, the results showed that with increasing of the Amaranth level in the diet, production performance reduced but autoclaving improved bird performance.


The aim of the study was to answer the question about changes in self-efficacy, coping strategies, and well-being during residential alcohol addiction psychotherapy. Correlations between these changes were also explored. The participants were 60 patients of a specialized alcohol addiction treatment center attending structural-strategic residential group therapy. Self-efficacy, well-being (two indicators: satisfaction with life and depression), and coping strategies (four indicators: problem-focused, emotion-focused, and meaning-focused strategies plus seeking social support) were assessed twice: at admission and then at the end of the treatment, i.e., six weeks later. The tools used for this purpose were, respectively: Schwarzer et al.'s Generalized Self-Efficacy Scale (GSES), Diener et al.'s Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), Beck Depression Inventory (BDI), and Gruszczy ska's Coping Questionnaire (KRS). The results of bivariate latent growth curve analysis with bootstrapping show a decrease in depression as well as an increase in strategies focused on problem, on meaning, and on seeking social support. All these changes were positively correlated, which indicates that the intensification of coping is connected with a decrease in depression. Additionally, pretest coping intensity was shown to moderate changes in satisfaction with life, which increased only in the "low copers" group. For the remaining variables, significant interindividual variances were found regarding both the starting points and the rates of change. Thus, results indicate the need for analyzing changes during treatment from two perspectives: in terms of group means and in terms of variance around these means, which capture interindividual variability in the change process.


ABSTRACT This review was undertaken for the Faculty and Institute of Actuaries as part of their programme to encourage research collaborations between health researchers and actuaries in order to understand better the factors influencing mortality and longevity. The authors presented their findings in a number of linked sessions at the Edinburgh conference (Joining Forces on Mortality and Longevity) in October 2009 and contributed to this overview. The purpose is to review evidence for the impact on adult mortality of characteristics of the individual's lifetime socioeconomic or psychosocial environment or phenotype at the behavioural; multi-system (e.g. cognitive and physical function); or body system level (e.g. vascular and metabolic traits) that may be common risk factors for a number of major causes of death. This review shows there is growing evidence from large studies and systematic reviews that these individual characteristics, measured in pre-adult as well as the adult life, are associated with later mortality risk. The relative contribution of lifetime environment, genetic factors and chance, whether these contributions change with age, and the underlying social and biological pathways are still to be clarified. This review identifies areas where further life course research is warranted.


Abstract. The anthropogenically forced expansion of coastal hypoxia is a
major environmental problem affecting coastal ecosystems and biogeochemical
cycles throughout the world. The Baltic Sea is a semi-enclosed shelf sea
whose central deep basins have been highly prone to deoxygenation during its
Holocene history, as shown previously by numerous paleoenvironmental studies.
However, long-term data on past fluctuations in the intensity of hypoxia in
the coastal zone of the Baltic Sea are largely lacking, despite the
significant role of these areas in retaining nutrients derived from the
catchment. Here we present a 1500-year multiproxy record of near-bottom water
redox changes from the coastal zone of the northern Baltic Sea, encompassing
the climatic phases of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA), the Little Ice Age
(LIA), and the Modern Warm Period (MoWP). Our reconstruction shows that
although multicentennial climate variability has modulated the depositional
conditions and delivery of organic matter (OM) to the basin the modern
aggravation of coastal hypoxia is unprecedented and, in addition to gradual changes
in the basin configuration, it must have been forced by excess human-induced
nutrient loading. Alongside the anthropogenic nutrient input, the progressive
deoxygenation since the beginning of the 1900s was fueled by the combined
effects of gradual shoaling of the basin and warming climate, which amplified
sediment focusing and increased the vulnerability to hypoxia. Importantly,
the eutrophication of coastal waters in our study area began decades earlier
than previously thought, leading to a marked aggravation of hypoxia in the
1950s. We find no evidence of similar anthropogenic forcing during the MCA.
These results have implications for the assessment of reference conditions
for coastal water quality. Furthermore, this study highlights the need for
combined use of sedimentological, ichnological, and geochemical proxies in
order to robustly reconstruct subtle redox shifts especially in dynamic,
non-euxinic coastal settings with strong seasonal contrasts in the bottom
water quality.


Due to the increasing number of mobile robots including domestic robots for cleaning and maintenance in developed countries, human activity recognition is inevitable for congruent human-robot interaction. Needless to say that this is indeed a challenging task for robots, it is expedient to learn human activities for autonomous mobile robots (AMR) for navigating in an uncontrolled environment without any guidance. Building a correct classifier for complex human action is non-trivial since simple actions can be combined to recognize a complex human activity. In this paper, we trained a model for human activity recognition using convolutional neural network. We trained and validated our model using the Vicon physical action dataset and also tested the model on our generated dataset (VMCUHK). Our experiment shows that our method performs with high accuracy, human activity recognition task both on the Vicon physical action dataset and VMCUHK dataset.


Background/Aims: Although individual contributions of TNF-α, LOX-1 and adiponectin to the regulation of endothelial function were previously studied, their interactions in the regulation of coronary endothelial function remain unclear. The aim of this study is to investigate the interactions between TNF-α, LOX-1 and adiponectin in endothelial dysfunction in atherosclerosis. Methods: Vasodilator function was assessed in coronary arterioles isolated from wild-type, apolipoprotein (ApoE) knockout (KO) mice, ApoE KO null for TNF-α (ApoE KOTNF-/TNF-) and ApoE KO mice treated with neutralizing antibodies to either TNF-α and LOX-1, or recombinant adiponectin. Western blot analysis and immunofluorescence staining were used for mechanistic studies. Results: Acetylcholine (Ach) dilation was impaired in ApoE KO mice. KO of TNF-α, anti-TNF-α anti-LOX-1 or adiponectin restored impaired ACh vasodilation without affecting endothelium-derived hyperpolarizing factor-mediated vasodilation. Immunofluorescence staining demonstrated colocalization of TNF-α with vascular smooth muscle cells, and adiponectin with endothelial cells. ApoE KO mice showed increased protein expression of LOX-1, NF-κB, NADPH oxidase subunit NOX4 and nitrotyrosine (N-Tyr) levels in coronary arterioles. Treatment with anti-TNF-α, anti-LOX-1 and adiponectin suppressed protein expression of LOX-1, NOX4, NF-κB and N-Tyr levels. Conclusion: Adiponectin, anti-TNF-α and anti-LOX-1 exert vasoprotective effects in atherosclerotic ApoE KO mice.


This paper engages with the theological discourse on the state of al-Mahdi in Shi'i tradition and the Peaceful Kingdom of Christianity. It focuses on two particular narratives, Quranic one focusing on Shi'i tafsir Qur'an 24:55 and Biblical one concerning on Isaiah 11:1-19. This study employs library research looking specifically at Qur'anic and Biblical commentaries. By comparing the texts, it is found out that the first insists on several requirements to realize the promise of God (the state of al-Mahdi) by performing active struggles i.e. possessing strong faith and doing righteous action. On the other hand, the latter provides the description of the ideal circumstance when Messiah comes to a region in which both the ruler and the ruled do active struggles. The first still emphasizes the importance of strong faith while the second doesn't. Yet, both narratives share that active struggles and righteous actions must be at stake.


Type Iax supernovae (SNe Iax) are the most common class of peculiar SNe. While they are thought to be thermonuclear white-dwarf (WD) SNe, SNe Iax are observationally similar to, but distinct from SNe Ia. Unlike SNe Ia, where roughly 30 per cent occur in early-type galaxies, only one SN Iax has been discovered in an early-type galaxy, suggesting a relatively short delay time and a distinct progenitor system. Furthermore, one SN Iax progenitor system has been detected in pre-explosion images with its properties consistent with either of two models: a short-lived (<100 Myr) progenitor system consisting of a WD primary and a He-star companion, or a singular Wolf–Rayet progenitor star. Using deep Hubble Space Telescope images of nine nearby SN Iax host galaxies, we measure the properties of stars within 200 pc of the SN position. The ages of local stars, some of which formed with the SN progenitor system, can constrain the time between star formation and SN, known as the delay time. We compare the local stellar properties to synthetic photometry of single-stellar populations, fitting to a range of possible delay times for each SN. With this sample, we uniquely constrain the delay-time distribution for SNe Iax, with a median and 1σ confidence interval delay time of $63_{- 15}^{+ 58} \times 10^{6}$ yr. The measured delay-time distribution provides an excellent constraint on the progenitor system for the class, indicating a preference for a WD progenitor system over a Wolf–Rayet progenitor star.


OSTEOPOROSIS, the most common disorder of the skeletal system, occurring chiefly in elderly persons, means literally an increased porosity of bone. This is to say that it refers to a decrease in the hard portions of bone substance in favor of a relative increase in the soft portions. It is commonly recognized as the end-result of loss in mass of the bones, ordinarily without any change in their volume or external configuration until pressures from without bring about collapse of the structures weakened from within. The diagnosis of osteoporosis is usually based on radiographic evidence of collapsed vertebrae, expanded intervertebral disks, and thinning of the cortex of the bones. Attention is frequently called to the condition by the pain and deformity incident to collapse of the vertebral bodies, or to pathological fractures in the spine; routine laboratory procedures give little information. The pathogenesis of this disorder is a subject of


In this work correlation integrals are used for the analysis of various EEG signals from rabbits in resting states and under the influence of an anesthetic. The comparison with surrogate data reveals nonlinear dynamics in all of the time series. Our attempt to determine the correlation dimension D(2) by the modified algorithm of Theiler [Phys. Rev. A 34, 2427 (1986)] failed since no saturation is reached with increasing embedding dimension. The hypothesis of low-dimensional chaos turns out to be inconsistent with our results, but we can still distinguish, at least qualitatively, between different states of brain dynamics. A quantitative characterization of the time series is possible by defining correlation parameters P(a) derived from correlation integrals reflecting also autocorrelation of the signal. (c) 1996 American Institute of Physics.


BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES
Streptococcus pneumoniae continues to be a major cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries. The emerging resistance to some common antibiotics compounds the problem. There arises a need to monitor the resistance pattern and map serotype distribution in different geographic locations. The present study was undertaken to determine the serotype prevalence and antibiotic susceptibility of clinically significant S. pneumoniae isolated from a tertiary care hospital in south India.

METHODS
A total of 150 clinical isolates from invasive and other clinically significant pneumococcal infections were serotyped and screened for susceptibility to commonly used antibiotics by standard and modified laboratory procedures.

RESULTS
Majority (59.3%) of the isolates belonged to one or other of the serotypes 1, 6, 19, 5, 23 and 7. Serotype 1 was the commonest isolate from patients of meningitis and empyema followed by pneumonia. Nineteen isolates (12.6%) were nonvaccine type. Eleven (7.3%) isolates were relatively resistant to penicillin (minimum inhibitory concentration was between 0.1 and 1 microgram/ml) and 64 were resistant to one or more antibiotics. Resistance was distributed equally among the predominant serotypes.

INTERPRETATION & CONCLUSION
The common serotypes responsible for significant infections were similar to those reported in some other studies from India, with minor variations. Resistance to cotrimoxazole and tetracycline was predominant followed by chloramphenicol. Low level resistance to penicillin was observed but no isolate had absolute resistance. This calls for monitoring of resistance and mapping of serotype distribution from various parts of India.


These days, hysteria is known as a discredited diagnosis that was used to group and pathologize a wide range of conditions and behaviors in women. But for a long time, it was seen as a legitimate category of medical problem-and one that, originally, was applied to men as often as to women. In On Hysteria, Sabine Arnaud traces the creation and rise of hysteria, from its invention in the eighteenth century through nineteenth-century therapeutic practice. Hysteria took shape, she shows, as a predominantly aristocratic malady, only beginning to cross class boundaries (and be limited to women) during the French Revolution. Unlike most studies of the role and status of medicine and its categories in this period, On Hysteria focuses not on institutions but on narrative strategies and writing-the ways that texts in a wide range of genres helped to build knowledge through misinterpretation and recontextualized citation. Powerfully interdisciplinary, and offering access to rare historical material for the first time in English, On Hysteria will speak to scholars in a wide range of fields, including the history of science, French studies, and comparative literature.


Prying into the sex lives of young people in the past has always proved a challenging exercise. Historians have often ended up relying on the testimony from adult observers or on the quantitative evidence provided by illegitimacy rates. This article adopts a more direct route by drawing on first-hand accounts of early sexual experiences written by French people in diaries, childhood reminiscences and autobiographies. As a preliminary, it analyses the way various authorities depicted young people as sexual (or non-sexual) beings, and the state of sex education in France before the mid-twentieth century. It then considers the way people depicted their first stirrings of sexuality during childhood and adolescence. Finally, it examines evidence from the "ego documents" on sexual relations in the run-up to marriage.


New application sorbent on the base of hydrogel and xerogel of methylsilicone acid with immobilized nitazole in connection with dimexide- imosdynit was investigated in experiment. High efficacy of imosdynit in the treatment of clostridial and non-clostridial anaerobic infection, caused by Klebsiella, was established. Proteus and blue pus bacillus are nonsensitive to imosdynit. Preparation was applied in 56 patients with purulent peritonitis. The frequency of wounds suppuration reduced by 2.4 times.


The current study examined the ability of participants to recall archetypal symbols that have been matched with either their corresponding meanings or mismatched meanings. This experimental design was based on earlier work in this area (Rosen, Smith, Huston, & Gonzalez, 1991) which tested the hypothesis that archetypal symbols that are properly matched with their one word meanings are more easily remembered than mismatched symbol meaning pairs. Their results provided the first scientific evidence of the collective unconscious and enhanced recall of the meanings of unconscious archetypal symbols. The present study took this relationship one step further by using Spanish-English bilingual participants (N = 103) and testing not only the matched versus mismatched dimension, but also the use of Spanish versus English meanings. The addition of the language dimension allowed for a test of the universality of the collective unconscious. The results revealed a significant difference between matched versus mismatched pairs, but no significant differences between recall of English versus Spanish meanings. Thus, these findings also support Jungian theory regarding recall of previously unconscious archetypal symbols and their meanings from the collective unconscious.


Abstract Multilingualism represents a global challenge and a goal of education in European states. This meta-analysis examines how research studies on multilingual educational policy documents on a macro-level (national/regional) in Sweden and Switzerland differ in terms of foci and how the discourses in the articles represent different treatments of multilingual educational language policies. These countries were selected because of their similarities regarding the societal context, but they are different in regard to language policy issues and political formation. The articles were systematically identified via two databases, ERIC and LLBA, and in order to examine the latest developments after the introduction of a new language act in Sweden and the harmonization of public education in Switzerland in 2009, only research articles published between 2009 and 2016 were included. The results of the study suggest that a monolingual habitus exists in the Swedish nation state context compared to a more pluralistic approach in Switzerland. The most noteworthy result is the diverging definitions of multilingualism and plurilingual students and how this understanding influences the treatment of educational policies in these two linguistically and culturally superdiverse European countries.


The nucleotide sequence preceding the ilvGEDA operon has been examined and compared in five enteric organisms. The sequence in Escherichia coli B was identical to the earlier-described strain K-12 sequence. The sequences of Salmonella typhimurium and Klebsiella aerogenes were remarkably similar to that of E. coli and identical in that part of the leader region that specified the putative 32-amino-acid peptide. Thus, identical secondary structures could be postulated for the leaders of all three organisms, and regulation of operon expression could be like that postulated earlier for E. coli. Different secondary structures had to be postulated for the leader transcripts of Edwardsiella tarda and Serratia marcescens. Control of attenuation of the operon in these organisms by the level of leucyl tRNA could be explained only if ribosome stalling occurred at a single leucine codon. In both organisms, that single leucine codon is the rarely used CUA rather than the CUG that is in E. coli, S. typhimurium, and K. aerogenes.


Leaf pubescence is widespread among higher plants. In bread wheat, a relationship was found between this trait and the efficiency of photosynthetic processes and productivity. In this work, we established the chromosomal localization of the gene for leaf pubescence introgressed from Triticum timopheevii into a bread wheat line 821 and studied its expression in the genetic background of two wheat cultivars differing in genetic control and phenotypic expression of pubescence. To obtain quantitative characteristics of pubescence in cultivars and hybrid populations, the LHDetect2 program was used, which makes it possible to estimate the length and number of trichomes on a leaf fold. A genetic analysis showed the dominant inheritance of the gene. Monosomic analysis F2 was used to establish chromosome localization and investigate the expression of the gene in cultivars Saratovskaya S29 (S29) and Diamant 2 (Dm2). As a result, the gene Hltt, introgressed from T. timopheevii, was identified and localized in the distal region of the long arm of 5A chromosome for the first time. In both F2 populations, the gene reduced the density of trichomes and formed long trichomes, uncharacteristic for the two recipient cultivars S29 and Dm2. A larger number of long trichomes was formed in the genetic background of S29, which carry the bread wheat gene Hl1 and Hl3 for leaf pubescence, than in Dm2. Development of substitution and isogenic lines with the fragment of introgression carrying the gene Hltt will allow determining function and assessing the adaptive significance of the gene more precisely.


Tissue-engineered oral mucosa holds a great prospect in urethroplasty and adipose tissue-derived stem cells (ADSCs) may play an important role in this field. In this research, canine oral keratinocytes (OKs) and ADSCs were harvested and cultured in vitro. The affinity between the two cell lines was evaluated by analyzing their migration and proliferation patterns in a co-culture environment. The results demonstrate that both canine ADSCs and OKs showed improved migration in the presence of the other cell line as a co-culture when compared to monoculture. Further, conditioned medium using the supernatant of one cell line accelerated the other cell line's proliferation rate. Hence, it was concluded that the affinity between OKs and ADSCs was fitting; the presence of ADSCs accelerated the migration and proliferation of OKs in vitro. These results indicate that it is practical to use ADSCs and OKs to construct a tissue-engineered oral mucosa, since the presence of the former could activate the latter in vitro, maybe even in vivo. This may help to build tissue-engineered oral mucosa, which may be a new method for urethroplasty. Key words : Urethroplasty, adipose tissue-derived stem cells, oral keratinocytes, tissue engineering.


The development of community psychiatry has modified the practice of psychiatry both with respect to place of practice (in the community) and mode of practice (focused on the multi-disciplinary team approach). Administrators, however, tend to evaluate the activities of teams working outside the hospital against the standards for a medical model based on a professional-patient relationship. These standards do not take into account activities carried out in the community. The purpose of this study is to present an instrument that will make it possible to evaluate the activities of the various professionals as a function of the time actually allocated to the various activities and the satisfaction of the different professionals involved. This demonstrates that the time spent outside clinics is very low except for the social workers, and that the professionals feel somewhat dissatisfied with this.


This paper examines the costs of unsustainable home ownership in Britain as manifested through mortgage arrears and possessions. It suggests that there are a widely drawn set of costs that have an impact on a range of different actors and institutions, and offers a simple conceptual framework for developing an analysis of such costs. Further, the paper suggests that an examination of these costs has the potential to contribute to some key debates within social policy, not least to a series of issues about the development and maintenance of social and economic inequality. This claim is illustrated via an analysis of the financial costs of arrears and possession. The paper concludes that the financial losses incurred cannot be regarded as marginal either in terms of the number of people affected, the sums of money involved or the continuing social disadvantages that follow possession. The article concludes with a discussion of whether these issues can be regarded as 'yesterday's' problem or whether they should be viewed as a continuing feature of the contemporary social and economic landscape.


In this paper, we propose a VLSI design of a 4×4 MIMO-OFDMA down-link baseband receiver for the mobile communications. The receiver consists of synchronization, channel estimation/compensation, precode codebook search, and MIMO detection. To realize the closed-loop MIMO system in the mobile environment, we utilize the MMSE-OSIC algorithm for MIMO detector and capacity selection criterion for precode codebook searcher, in which the Strassen's algorithm is employed to reduce their matrix inversion and multiplication complexity. The proposed MIMO-OFDMA receiver is designed and evaluated using a standard 90nm CMOS technology. The results show that the receiver achieves 150Mbps data rate and consumes HOmW power at 7.81MHz, which meets the requirement of Mode I∼III OFDMA modes for the 3GPP-LTE system.


The latency occurring from the load fluctuation in a real-time network games may be overcome by using an initial delay scheme on the client, and then play the game, it means that stability can be maintained, and the shortcomings of packet losses and errors on UDP communications are alleviated. In this paper, we suggest a retransmission algorithm using an N-Based game command history that supports End-to-End protocol, and retransmits data without alteration of existing protocols, and also supports video games based on multi-platform in wired-wireless network environments, and it can possibly work under multi-user games. As demonstrated in the simulations, we confirm that the suggested system is more stable than existing systems.


Two types of bioherms occur in the Pitkin Formation (Chesterian) of northern Arkansas. They are composed of a complex series of ovoid thrombolite heads intergrown with various other algal and bryozoan biolithites and are distinguished from each other on the basis of geometry and faunal and floral content. Type I mounds have sharp lateral margins and interfinger with horizontally bedded, contemporaneous, flanking strata owing to having expanded and contracted in size during upward accretion. They are interpreted as having had synoptic relief of 3 m or less during growth. Type II mounds occur slightly higher stratigraphically, to the east of type I mounds, and formed in deeper water, farther out on the Ozark shelf. They are interpreted as having had synoptic relief of 6 m or more during growth. Their margins are similar to those in type I mounds, but owing to higher synoptic relief, they interfinger with sediments derived from erosion higher on the mound.


We report on the current state of large-scale and high functionality photonic integrated circuits on the InP platform for transmitters, receivers, and other device applications.


Background: Outcome in the blast phase of myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN-BP) is extremely poor with a median overall survival (OS) of 3-6 months. Age > 65 years, transfusion need, platelet count < 100 × 109/L and high-risk karyotype adversely impact the prognosis in MPN-BP (Tefferi, Leukemia, 2018). Diploid karyotype has been rarely reported in patients with MPN-BP, and the outcome remains undefined. We sought to analyze clinical characteristics and outcomes of patients with MPN-BP and diploid karyotype (DP-k).
 Methods: We retrospectively evaluated patients (pts) with MPN-BP who presented to our center between 2000-2019. According to cytogenetics, pts were stratified into DP-k and all others (nonDP-k). Only patients with ≥10 metaphases were included. Molecular analysis was performed on some patients using 81-gene panel next - generation sequencing analysis (NGS) (Luthra, Haematologica, 2014). Categorical variables were compared by x2 test. Cox proportional hazards regression was used for associations between variables and OS. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to estimate OS, and it was measured from the date of MPN-BP, till the last follow-up or death. Separate OS analysis was done to censor for stem cell transplantation (SCT). Responses were assessed according to the ELN 2017 AML response criteria (overall response rate, ORR, combination of complete remission with and without counts recovery; CR/CRi).
 Results: A total of 223 pts with MPN-BP were identified, among them 58 pts (26%) had DP-k. The median age of entire cohort was 67 years and it was similar between groups (p = 0.55). Demographic and clinical data are summarized in Table 1. Among clinical features, we only observed differences in the frequency of palpable splenomegaly; less common in pts with DP-k (48% vs 65 %, p = 0.03). Patients with DP-k harbored less frequently: JAK2 (38% vs 62%, p = 0.02) or TP53 mutations (3% vs 25%, p=0.01), but enriched with epigenetic mutations (e.g., IDH1, ASXL1, EZH2; Table 1).
 Table 2 shows treatment details and outcomes. All patients received at least one course of induction therapy. Intensive chemotherapy (≥1 gram of cytarabine per m2; high dose, HD) was used less frequently than other approaches (low dose, LD), but it was not statistically significant (40% vs 60%, respectively; P=0.48). Intensity of treatment regimens also did not vary among groups (HD in DP-k vs nonDP-k, 35% vs 42%, respectively, p = 0.35). The ORR was 38.5% and it was comparable between groups (47% vs 36% for DP-k vs nonDP-k, p = 0.16). Patients with DP-k had higher ORR with HD therapy (65% vs 39%, respectively, p = 0.04).
 Among non-responders to induction (n=137), 67 patients (48.9%) received subsequent salvage therapy (similar for DPk vs non-DP-k, 58% vs 46%, p 0.30). However, more pts with DP-k were able to receive more than 1 salvage therapy or underwent SCT (Table 2).
 Early mortality (by day 30) was 9.8% for the entire cohort and was similar between groups (7% vs 11%, p = 0.34) regardless of the intensity of regimen (Table 2). Over the median follow-up of 6.3 months (range, 2-154), 204 (91.5%) patients died (88% vs 93% for DP-k vs nonDP-k, p = 0.28).
 The median OS for all pts was 6 months (95% CI 4.5-7.4 months). Pts with DP-k had superior OS than nonDP-k with respective medians of 11 [95% CI 7.8-14.1] and 5 months [95% CI 3.8-6.2], p = 0.001, HR = 0.61, 95% CI: 0.44-0.84), Figure 2. Pts with DP-k had higher survival rates at 6 and 12 months from MPN-BP than those with nonDP-k (Figure 2). OS censored for SCT showed similar results with medians of 11 and 4 months, respectively, p<0.001, HR 0.53, 95% CI 0.37-0.76. Intensity of therapy did not affect OS in either group (Figure 3).
 In univariable analysis, platelets < 50 × 109/L, mutations in DNMT3A, TET2, IDH1, TP53, and lack of response to induction therapy predicted for inferior outcome in patients with nonDP-k. We did not find any significant predictors for those with DP-k, but pts with no additional mutation, presence of single ASXL1 or IDH1/2 mutation had favorable OS with medians of 14, 12, and 11 months, respectively.
 Conclusions: Pts with DP-k MPN-BP appear to have distinct disease biology from those with other karyotypic abnormalities. Despite median age of 70 years, 47% of these pts were alive at 12 months from MPN-BP diagnosis. Careful therapeutic decisions are required to mitigate treatment-related toxicity and improve prognosis in this rare subgroup of patients with DP-k and MPN-BP.
 Figure 1

 Verstovsek: Sierra Oncology: Consultancy, Research Funding; AstraZeneca: Research Funding; Gilead: Research Funding; Celgene: Consultancy, Research Funding; NS Pharma: Research Funding; CTI Biopharma Corp: Research Funding; Genentech: Research Funding; Blueprint Medicines Corp: Research Funding; Novartis: Consultancy, Research Funding; Incyte Corporation: Consultancy, Research Funding; Protagonist Therapeutics: Research Funding; PharmaEssentia: Research Funding; Promedior: Research Funding; Roche: Research Funding; ItalPharma: Research Funding. Bose:Astellas Pharmaceuticals: Research Funding; Incyte Corporation: Consultancy, Honoraria, Research Funding, Speakers Bureau; Promedior, Inc.: Research Funding; Constellation Pharmaceuticals: Research Funding; CTI BioPharma: Honoraria, Research Funding; Kartos Therapeutics: Honoraria, Research Funding; Celgene Corporation: Honoraria, Research Funding; Pfizer, Inc.: Research Funding; NS Pharma: Research Funding; Blueprint Medicines Corporation: Honoraria, Research Funding. Pemmaraju:Affymetrix: Other: Grant Support, Research Funding; AbbVie: Honoraria, Research Funding; Daiichi Sankyo: Research Funding; Novartis: Honoraria, Research Funding; Incyte Corporation: Honoraria; DAVA Oncology: Honoraria; Samus Therapeutics: Research Funding; Plexxikon: Research Funding; Stemline Therapeutics: Honoraria, Research Funding; Celgene: Honoraria; Cellectis: Research Funding; MustangBio: Honoraria; Blueprint Medicines: Honoraria; LFB Biotechnologies: Honoraria; Pacylex Pharmaceuticals: Consultancy; Roche Diagnostics: Honoraria; SagerStrong Foundation: Other: Grant Support. Kantarjian:Immunogen: Research Funding; Agios: Honoraria, Research Funding; Ariad: Research Funding; Amgen: Honoraria, Research Funding; Actinium: Honoraria, Membership on an entity's Board of Directors or advisory committees; Jazz Pharma: Research Funding; BMS: Research Funding; Cyclacel: Research Funding; Pfizer: Honoraria, Research Funding; Novartis: Research Funding; Takeda: Honoraria; Astex: Research Funding; Daiichi-Sankyo: Research Funding; AbbVie: Honoraria, Research Funding.


Frugal innovation, well managed, offers numerous opportunities for the development of novel solutions with the participation of ordinary citizens, including those belonging to marginalized or vulnerable groups. Since it is about developing solutions that are not only useful and durable, but also affordable, with a clear economy of means, it is an option that cities and regions should consider, as they normally struggle with tight budgets and a lack of inspiring ideas while trying to keep up with a rapidly changing environment. Unlocking the creative potential of citizens in collaboration with the business sector through frugal innovation challenges, for example, can result in better services and products and help reposition the city or region as a hub of innovation, thereby attracting new talent and investments. The European project FRANCIS aims to develop frugal innovations through open innovation challenges involving different groups of citizens with the support of scientists and industry throughout the innovation process. Citizens can join the challenges through an online and face-to-face platform. Overall, FRANCIS does everything possible to activate and motivate civil society to participate in these challenges and ensure that potential barriers are overcome. In addition, behavioural testing and analysis is used to understand the most frequently encountered barriers at different stages of the frugal innovation process and to generate effective mitigation strategies. The project also aims to align the challenges with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) indicators. To maximize its impact, FRANCIS works consistently to encourage and engage interested cities and regions in the frugal innovation process together with their citizens. The city of Bielefeld in Germany is one of the pioneers that wants to increase its innovation potential through the establishment of international innovation partnerships, which in turn will attract and retain the highest level of talent and expertise. This paper will present the tools developed to date by FRANCIS project to guide and support the frugal innovation process with citizens so that it leads to a successful outcome, in addition to commenting on the Bielefeld case as an example for other cities interested in following the same path of innovation.


Aerotaxis is the ability of motile cells to navigate towards oxygen. A key question is the dependence of the aerotactic velocity with the local oxygen concentration c. Here we combine simultaneous bacteria tracking and local oxygen concentration measurements using Ruthenium encapsulated in micelles to characterise the aerotactic response of Burkholderia contaminans, a motile bacterium ubiquitous in the environment and present in living organisms. In our experiments, an oxygen gradient is produced by the bacterial respiration in a sealed glass capillary permeable to oxygen at one end, producing a bacterial band travelling towards the oxygen source. We compute the aerotactic response χ(c) both at the population scale, from the drift velocity in the bacterial band, and at the bacterial scale, from the angular modulation of the run times. Both methods are consistent with a power-law χ ∝ c−2, in good agreement with existing models based on the biochemistry of bacterial membrane receptors.


Introduction: Hyperpolarised 129-xenon (129Xe) MR spectroscopy (MRS) can be used as a quantitative marker of gas exchange in interstitial lung disease (ILD). The ratio of the uptake of 129Xe in the red blood cells to the tissue/plasma (RBC:TP) has been shown to be reduced by 70% in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) patients when compared with healthy volunteers (Kaushik, S.S. et al. J Appl Physiol 2014; 117:577-585). In IPF, a significant decline in 129Xe RBC:TP over 12 months has been demonstrated but no significant change in DLCO or KCO (Weatherley, N.D. et al. Thorax 2018 [Epub ahead of print]). Aim: To compare longitudinal changes in 129Xe RBC:TP with changes in FVC and DLCO between ILD subtypes. Methods: A prospective, multicentre study of ILD patients including drug induced ILD (DI-ILD), hypersensitivity pneumonitis (HP), IPF and connective tissue disease ILD (CTD-ILD). Hyperpolarised 129Xe MRS was performed on a 1.5 T scanner. Results: To date, 18 patients (5 DI-ILD, 5 HP, 6 IPF, 2 CTD-ILD) have undergone 129Xe MRS on two separate visits (6 weeks apart for DI-ILD/HP and 6 months apart for IPF/CTD-ILD). There was a significant difference in longitudinal change in RBC:TP between the HP and IPF groups (p=0.022). Median change in RBC:TP in the HP and IPF groups was 0.022 and -0.023 respectively. There was no significant difference in longitudinal change in FVC% predicted (p=0.79) or DLCO% predicted (p=0.39) between the ILD subtypes. Conclusions: Our findings demonstrate that 129Xe RBC:TP has sensitivity to longitudinal change with significant differences between IPF and HP patients, whilst FVC and DLCO showed no change, suggesting that RBC:TP is more sensitive to change than PFTs in ILD.


Early detection of anomalies in any system or component prevents impending failures and enhances performance and availability. The complex architecture of electronics, the interdependency of component functionalities, and the miniaturization of most electronic systems make it difficult to detect and analyze anomalous behaviors. A Hidden Markov Model-based classification technique determines unobservable hidden behaviors of complex and remotely inaccessible electronic systems using observable signals. This paper presents a data-driven approach for anomaly detection in electronic systems based on a Bayesian Hidden Markov Model classification technique. The posterior parameters of the Hidden Markov Models are estimated using the conjugate prior method. An application of the developed Bayesian Hidden Markov Model-based anomaly detection approach is presented for detecting anomalous behavior in Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistors using experimental data. The detection results illustrate that the developed anomaly detection approach can help detect anomalous behaviors in electronic systems, which can help prevent system downtime and catastrophic failures.


The HAP2/GCS1 gene first appeared in the common ancestor of plants, animals, and protists, and is required in the male gamete for fusion to the female gamete in the unicellular organisms Chlamydomonas and Plasmodium. We have identified a HAP2/GCS1 gene in the genome sequence of the sponge Amphimedon queenslandica. This finding provides a continuous evolutionary history of HAP2/GCS1 from unicellular organisms into the metazoan lineage. Divergent versions of the HAP2/GCS1 gene are also present in the genomes of some but not all arthropods. By examining the expression of the HAP2/GCS1 gene in the cnidarian Hydra, we have found the first evidence supporting the hypothesis that HAP2/GCS1 was used for male gamete fusion in the ancestor of extant metazoans and that it retains that function in modern cnidarians.


The website ESL Insight provides various resources to support teachers and pedagogical consultants in implementing the Elementary and Secondary English as a Second Language (ESL) Programs. You will find documents such as the Quebec Education Program and the Progression of Learning, strategies and functional language posters, handbooks and some Learning and Evaluation Situations (...)


The frequency-shift crystal oscillator and the crystal discriminator, which are vital to the channel equipment utilized, are described here. The former is used to generate the carrier signal and the latter is used in the receiver to reform the transmitted intelligence.


Here, we interpret malignant tissue transformation from the aging point of view, that is, as a result of insufficient cell adaptation to the needs of regeneration/repair and proliferation. A consequence of the aging (senescence) process is gradual loss of self-renewal potential. It limits lifespan and leads to death due to the decline of tissue/organ functions, failure of regulatory mechanisms, disruption of endogenous processes and increased susceptibility to exogenous factors. Recapitulation of the embryonic pathway of self-renewal/rejuvenation in adulthood is epigenetically determined. At the postembryonic stage, in the absence of immune privilege, this recapitulation is transformed into cancer (potency expansion of single structures composing the organism to the detriment of the whole organism or disintegrating growth). We suggest that the process of rebirth occurs in the same way as embryonic tissue growth. Thus, the idea to use the potential of the transformed cells to stop the aging process has been proposed.


CTA 102 is a blazar implying that its relativistic jet points towards Earth and emits synchrotron radiation produced by energetic particles gyrating in the magnetic field. This study aims to figure out the physical origins of radio flares in the jet, including the connection between the magnetic field and the radio flares. The dataset in the range 2.6-343.5 GHz was collected over a period of 5.5 years (2012 November 20-2018 September 23). During the data collection period, seven flares at 15 GHz with a range of the variability time-scale of roughly 26-171 days were detected. The quasi-simultaneous radio data were used to investigate the synchrotron spectrum of the source. We found that the synchrotron radiation is self-absorbed. The turnover frequency and the peak flux density of the synchrotron self-absorption (SSA) spectra are in the ranges of 42-167 GHz and 0.9-10.2 Jy, respectively. From the SSA spectra, we derived the SSA magnetic field strengths to be 9.20 mG, 12.28 mG, and 50.97 mG on 2013 December 24, 2014 February 28, and 2018 January 13, respectively. We also derived the equipartition magnetic field strengths to be in the range 24-109 mG. The equipartition magnetic field strengths are larger than the SSA magnetic field strengths in most cases, which indicates that particle energy mainly dominates in the jet. Our results suggest that the flares in the jet of CTA 102 originated due to particle acceleration. We propose the possible mechanisms of particle acceleration.


Sensor sensitivity is usually effected by crossed factors, thus its output characteristic is not only changed with object parameter, but also easily interfered with measurement circumstance such as temperature, humidity and supply voltage fluctuations etc. The method of monitoring these parameters synchronously with different sensors and fusing these data with wavelet neural network is proposed. Pressure sensor is chosen as a simulation example, and the upper method is used to improve its output performance. The simulation results show that the method can effectively eliminate the infection of circumstance. The rapid convergence rate and compensation accuracy are better than traditional methods and neural network. The infection of non-object parameters is eliminated, and measurement accuracy is improved. The algorithm can easily be extended to other kinds of intelligent sensors and has important practical application value.


In the neo liberal order, gender equality discourse has had a renewed impetus following the post global gender summits and conventions inspired by options to enlarge the participation of women in governance and decision making processes such as the Beijing 35% affirmative action. However, decades on, institutionalizing gender equality in the periphery societies such as Africa has been elusive. This paper explores some prevailing dimensions of inequality and efforts at women emancipation and transformation to understand the verity of the summits and their resolutions. It deploys historical approach based on secondary data sources to provide brief genealogical mapping of some global gender conventions and summits namely; the first World Conference on Women held in Mexico City, 1975, the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), Second World Conference on Women held in Copenhagen 1980, World Conference to Review and Appraise the Achievements of the United Nations Decade for Women 1985, the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in Beijing in 1995, Goal three (3) of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 2000 etc. Results from the findings suggest that women are still marginalised, evidences were provided within health, educational, cultural, political and socio-economic dimensions. The paper calls for mainstreaming gender in top political offices across Africa to redefine women's status and force a concomitant transformation.

 Key words: Gender inequality, sustainable development, global gender summits/ conventions, Africa.


Students, office workers, or other computer and mobile device users can suffer from decrements in alertness or productivity, but many intervention methods on these can be too distracting or even affect daily routines. Using heart rate (HR) to determine a fast and slow target frequency at which to oscillate light brightness stimulation on a laptop, thirty-six participants joined a cognitive task where we hypothesized that fast frequency stimulation would increase alertness and decrease relaxation, while slow frequency stimulation would have the opposite effects. We found that slow frequency stimulation produces a statistically significant delay in response time, users react more slowly (3.8e2 ± 5.5e1 ms), when compared to the no stimulation (3.7e2 ± 4.1e1 ms) (p = 9.0e-3) conditions. The (Slow - No Stimulation) response time (1.7e1 ± 2.7e2 ms) produced a statistically significant delay in response time versus the (Fast - No Stimulation) response time (-0.74 ± 2.4e1 ms) (p = .016). These delays due to slow stimulation occurred without influencing accuracy or subjective sleepiness ratings. We observed that frequency-dependent light stimulation can potentially influence HRV metrics such as the mean normal-to-normal intervals and mean HR. Future work will target breathing rate to determine light stimulation oscillations as we further investigate the potential of using the slow-frequency domain to unobtrusively influence user performance and physiology.


Neural network pruning offers an effective method for compressing a multilingual automatic speech recognition (ASR) model with minimal performance loss. However, it entails several rounds of pruning and re-training needed to be run for each language. In this work, we propose the use of an adaptive masking approach in two scenarios for pruning a multilingual ASR model efficiently, each resulting in sparse monolingual models or a sparse multilingual model (named as Dynamic ASR Pathways). Our approach dynamically adapts the sub-network, avoiding premature decisions about a fixed sub-network structure. We show that our approach outperforms existing pruning methods when targeting sparse monolingual models. Further, we illustrate that Dynamic ASR Pathways jointly discovers and trains better sub-networks (pathways) of a single multilingual model by adapting from different sub-network initializations, thereby reducing the need for language-specific pruning.


The purpose of this study was to determine the quantitative and qualitative portrayal of females and minorities in the illustrations of seven contemporary elementary science textbook series. An evaluation instrument was devised to determine the current status of the targeted groups. Illustrations were evaluated on the basis of minority/nonminority and male/female repesentation. The activity and assumed role of the individuals were also tabulated. More than 5900 human illustrations were evaluated. The results reveal that female children as a group are represented with greater frequency than are other child groups. Minority children are represented less often than nonminority children and female and minority adults are depicted less often than nonminority male adults. The textbooks evaluated in this study display science positively for most societal groups. However, minorities are underrepresented and illustrated in a limited number of career roles. Implications and suggestions for teachers, supervisors, and teacher educators are provided.


Abstract:  Mycosis fungoides is very rare in children. Hypopigmented lesions of this disease are usually observed in dark‐skinned individuals and often show a T supressor CD8(+) phenotype. Two Caucasian children with predominantly hypopigmented lesions of mycosis fungoides are presented here. Atopy was a concomitant feature in both.


The presence of entrepreneurial behavior of researchers is linked with a greater performance of research and development departments in pharmaceutical industry. The development of new molecules, in the case of prescription only medicines, and the assessment of existing ones regarding safety concerns and benefits when speaking about nutraceuticals are influenced by researchers' skills and performance. In order to intensify innovation in health, a possible approach could be to involve scientists in the world of start-ups, without leaving the university environment or the research institutes in which they operate.
Around 400,000 Europeans develop infections with multidrug-resistant bacteria each year, and 25,000 of them die after all therapeutic options are depleted. Although medical services are increasingly accessible and many categories of patients turn to specialized medical services, there are deficiencies in the proper administration of antibiotics and symbiotics prescribed by a doctor. The major role in limiting the appearance and development of multidrug-resistant strains is attributed to the pharmacist through appropriate counseling and through increasing the public awareness regarding the principles of scientific and rational pharmacotherapy. By these approaches, pharmacists can lower the impact of the false belief that antibiotics are good for any condition.
In addition, there are certain negative effects related to intestinal dysbiosis that require additional therapeutic intervention that puts pressure on the health insurance system.
The low incomes of patients are an important factor in disturbing a correct and complete treatment. The subsidy of symbiotics by the National Health Insurance System could limit the high costs of complications arising from antibiotic therapy.
Although the clinical trials conducted in the last decades have shown the benefits of probiotics in various conditions, there is a lack of knowledge about the side effects of probiotics.
The infectious complications related to the use of probiotics are rarely evaluated and monitored. Therefore, interventional studies are needed to evaluate the safety of probiotics.
The innovation in the field of pharmaceutical sciences has as final goal the improvement of the health status of people and, implicitly, the increase of the life expectancy. Thus, entrepreneurial initiatives must come from health professionals, because they possess the necessary resources to control, evaluate and increase the quality of medical services in the healthcare system in Romania.


Objectives: Post-traumatic growth (PTG) and post-traumatic depreciation (PTD) can be defined, respectively, as positive and negative changes in the aftermath of trauma. These changes can be assigned to the following domains: personal strength, relating to others, new possibilities, appreciation of life, spiritual and existential change. The aim of this study was to explore the possibility that positive and negative effects of trauma can coexist and explore the categories of effect. Methods: 72 participants were asked to recount their experience of trauma and answer questions about how it had affected their thinking about themselves and the world. Participants' narratives were analyzed by competent judges and using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count. Results: The domains in which positive changes were most frequently observed were Personal Strength (26.09%), Relating to Others (24.22%), and Appreciation of Life (21.12%). Negative changes mainly affected Relating to Others (33.33%) and Personal Strength (23.33%). The results were confirmed by quantitative analysis of narratives: participants' narratives of trauma and its consequences contained more words which expressing positive emotions (1.67%) than negative emotions (0.90%), paired-sample t(60) = 9.70, p < 0.001. There were correlations between the frequency of words referring to positive emotions and PTG, r(62) = 0.39, p < 0.01, and between the frequency of words referring to negative emotions and PTG, r(62) = 0.23, p < 0.05. Conclusion: PTG and PTD can coexist and they can be regarded as outcomes of two separate processes. The study results also suggest that although PTG and PTD can coexist, they may be considered different domains of psychological functioning.


BACKGROUND: Middle meningeal artery (MMA) embolization has been recognized as a promising treatment for patients with subdural hematoma (SDH). OBJECTIVE: To present the technical feasibility and efficacy of n-butyl cyanoacrylate (n-BCA) embolization in the largest consecutive cohort to date. METHODS: We retrospectively reviewed our consecutive cases of recurrent SDH treated with MMA embolization using diluted n-BCA with the "sugar rush" technique. In brief, a 2.1-Fr microcatheter was used to selectively catheterize the frontal and posterior branches of the MMA. 5% dextrose in water (D5W) was injected through an intermediate catheter while injecting n-BCA through the microcatheter. Complete obliteration of MMA and lack of SDH recurrence in a 3–6 months follow-up computed tomography scan were defined as efficacy outcomes. Cranial nerve palsy, vision loss, transient neurological deficit, and stroke were defined as safety outcomes. RESULTS: A total of 61 patients were identified with a mean (±standard deviation) age of 62.5 ± 9 years. In 6 patients (10%), coil embolization of the origin of the frontal or posterior branch was performed because super-selective catheterization of the branch was unsuccessful because of tortuous anatomy. Complete obliteration of frontal and posterior branches was achieved in 100% of the cases. Recurrent SDH was seen in 3 patients (5%). No incidence of cranial nerve palsy, vision loss, or stroke occurred. One patient suffered a transient neurological deficit. CONCLUSION: MMA embolization using diluted n-BCA with concomitant D5W injection is associated with a high degree of distal penetration and complete branch occlusion and minimal risk of cranial nerve palsy or other thromboembolic complications.


We study higher critical points of the variational functional associated with a free boundary problem related to plasma confinement. Existence and regularity of minimizers in elliptic free boundary problems have already been studied extensively. But because the functionals are not smooth, standard variational methods cannot be used directly to prove the existence of higher critical points. Here we find a nontrivial critical point of mountain pass type and prove many of the same estimates known for minimizers, including Lipschitz continuity and nondegeneracy. We then show that the free boundary is smooth in dimension 2 and prove partial regularity in higher dimensions.


The mode of action of the thermogenic inducers (salicylic acid, aspirin, and 2,6-dihydroxybenzoic acid) in the appendix of the Sauromatum guttatum inflorescence is poorly understood. Using ESI-MS and light scattering analysis, we have demonstrated that NAD(P) reductase like protein (RL) is the salicylic acid receptor in the Sauromatum appendix. RL was self-assembled in water into a large unit with a hydrodynamic diameter of 800 nm. In the presence of 1 pM salicylic acid, RL exhibited discontinuous and reversible volume phase transitions. The volume phase changed from 800 to 300 nm diameter and vice versa. RL stayed at each volume phase for ~4–5 min with a fast relaxation time between the 2 phases. ESI-MS analysis of RL extracted from appendices treated with salicylic acid, aspirin, and 2,6-DHBA at a micromolar range demonstrated that these compounds are capable of inducing graded conformational changes that are concentration-dependent. A strong correlation between RL conformations and heat-production induced by salicylic acid was also observed. These preliminary findings reveal structural and conformational roles for RL by which plants regulate their temperature and synchronize their time keeping mechanisms.


Purpose: To explore the knowledge of antibiotics use and resistance among medical and dental students. Methods: A 26-item online questionnaire on antimicrobial prescribing was distributed to Medical and Dental students at eight universities from the period of July to August 2020. Results: Five hundred three students completed the questionnaire; The mean age was 22.15 ± 1.99 and 66.4% were female students. The majority (91.5%) of the students were from governmental universities and (73.4%) were from medical colleges. It was found that 87% of students were not familiar with and unaware of the term antimicrobial stewardship. Overall knowledge about antibiotics identified that 30 (6%) students had good knowledge while 402 (80%) students have fair knowledge. Around 91% of the students agreed that the inappropriate use of antibiotics causes antibiotic resistance and that a strong understanding and knowledge of antibiotics is essential in their careers. Conclusions: To control the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, future prescribers' education related to the appropriate use of antibiotics is important. Efforts must be undertaken to educate medical and dental students about the practices of the appropriate use of antibiotics and principles of antimicrobial stewardship.


We introduced a novel semiconductor/superlattice AlAs/(GaAs/AlAs) distributed Bragg reflector (DBR), and the reflection spectrum of the DBR at 980nm wavelength is simulated by employing transfer matrix method. By adjusting the thickness of AlAs layer and the period of superlattice GaAs/AlAs, the DBR with center wavelength at 1500nm is also investigated theoretically. In experiment, this kind of DBR is grown on GaAs (100) substrate. From the measured reflection spectrum, the central wavelength is about 980 nm with high reflectivity.


In statistical thermodynamic analysis for condensed phase (either liquid or solid), atomistic (or microscopic) information of the condensed phase is derived from experimentally determined macroscopic equilibrium P-T-C (pressure-temperature-composition) relationships. This analysis procedure is especially adequate for non-stoichiometric compound containing at least one interstitial constituent. Atomistic information derived by statistical thermodynamics includes clustering pattern of metal atoms around an interstitial atom as well as pair-wise interaction among constituent atoms. Desired calculation in the statistical thermodynamic analysis is not very demanding and thence, compared with some other branches of computational materials science and engineering research, statistical thermodynamics requires only modest computational capacity of currently available advanced high-performance PC (personal computer). In this article, I would like to review aspects of atom clustering evaluation by statistical thermodynamics and also potentiality of statistical thermodynamics for predicting optimised material manufacturing condition.


The previous moral psychological research on educational institutions highlighted the influence on the development of moral orientation and competence. With the help of the present quantitative study, the influence of early childhood education on moral abilities has been explored. Since the moral education of children is often associated with religious norms and values, and religions are debated in relation to their general meaning and functionality, the religious moral education has been investigated. Therefore, students of various disciplines from Berlin were asked about their religious education in their early childhood and were examined on their current moral orientation and competence. The Moral-Competence-Test by Lind and a self-constructed and piloted questionnaire for the examination of religious education and religiosity have been used for the measurement. The results of the online study have shown that the moral skills of dogmatically educated students are significantly reduced, but not related to the differences in educational experience or the current preservation of religiousness.


Gom-chwi (Ligularia fischeri) is severely infected with Phytophthora drechsleri, the causal organism of Phytophthora root rot, an economically important crop disease that needs management throughout the cultivation period. In the present study, Phytophthora root rot was controlled by using bacterial isolates from rhizosphere soils collected from various plants and screened for antagonistic activity against P. drechsleri. A total of 172 bacterial strains were isolated, of which, 49 strains showed antagonistic activities by dual culture assay. In the seedling assay, six out of the 49 strains showed a predominant effect on suppressing P. drechsleri. Among the six strains, the ObRS-5 strain showed remarkable against P. drechsleri when treated with seed dipping or soil drenching. The ObRS-5 strain was identified as Enterobacter asburiae based on 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences analysis. The bacterial cells of E. asburiae ObRS-5 significantly suppressed sporangium formation and zoospore germination in P. drechsleri by 87.4% and 66.7%, respectively. In addition, culture filtrate of E. asburiae ObRS-5 also significantly inhibited sporangium formation and zoospore germination by 97.0% and 67.6%, respectively. Soil drenched bacterial cells, filtrate, and culture solution of E. asburiae ObRS-5 effectively suppressed Phytophthora root rot by 63.2%, 57.9%, and 81.1%, respectively. Thus, E. asburiae ObRS-5 could be used as a potential agent for the biological control of Phytophthora root rot infecting gom-chwi.


Purpose. To determine the role of Bartonella henselae in intraocular inflammatory disease and identify its clinical features. Methods. We retrospectively determined the serum immunoglobulin (lg)G and IgM antibodies against B. henselae and Bartonella quintana by enzyme immunoassays in stored sera of 138 consecutive newly referred patients with uveitis who, during the acute stage of their ocular disease, underwent a standardized screening protocol to determine the cause of uveitis. Results. For the entire series, the frequency of high positive levels of IgG (above 1:900) or IgM (above 1:300) antibody against B. henselae was 6% (8/138) and 3% (4/138), respectively. Except for cross-reactions between B. henselae and B. quintana, we did not find additional evidence for cross-reactions among the various bacteria tested (Coxiella burnetii and Chlamydia pneumoniae). All patients with proven infectious uveitis (n = 21) and those with established uveitic entities (n = 37) had negative B. henselae serology. High positive IgG levels were observed in 9% of patients (5/54) with unknown cause of uveitis, in two subjects with human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-B27 positive uveitis, and in one with sarcoidosis. Five patients with uveitis of unknown origin and highly elevated IgG levels against B. henselae exhibited clinical features characterized by papillitis with surrounding retinal focal lesions or edema. Conclusions. The serologic and clinical data indicate that uveitis in seropositive cases may be caused by B. henselae. We do not recommend including testing for B. henselae in initial screening of patients with uveitis, but consider it worthwhile for those with papillitis and screening results within normal limits.


To determine the mode of action of the beta-glucosidase from Trichoderma reesei a method was developed for synthesizing [1-3H]cello-oligosaccharides with specific radioactivities of approximately 3000 Ci/mol. The beta-glucosidase removed glucosyl residues from the non-reducing end of the [1-3H]cello-oligosaccharides in a multiple attack mode with little tendency to attack the substrates repetitively. Values of Km were lower for longer cello-oligosaccharides, whereas values of V remained essentially constant. A subsite map, constructed using values of V/Km for the cello-oligosaccharides, showed that the substrate-binding region comprises primarily three subsites.