The nursing workforce mirrors the trend in population; that is, it is aging. Subsequently, older nurses experiencing some aging effects themselves are caring for more elderly patients needing more assistance with illness and wellness problems. To meet the growing demand for care in this era of nursing shortage, predicted to last beyond 2020, these nurses are needed to remain in the workforce longer. Lack of nurses in the workplace compromises patient care and increases job stress. Therefore, retention incentives need to be implemented to assist aging, experienced nurses to delay retirement or prevent them from leaving the profession early, as well as encouraging younger and future nurses to work longer. This article focuses on aging nurses, describing their demographics and needs, explicating their value and listing the resources and benefits needed to prolong their vital services in the workforce. (For this article, aging, older and mature refer to experienced nurses in their 40s, 50s and 60s.)


Regulated rivers often have associated wetlands with declining ecological health due to reduced inundation frequency. One innovative option to improve the ecological condition of such wetlands is to use them as temporary off‐river water storages, where the water used to inundate them is subsequently allocated to consumptive use. The hydrologic feasibility of this option has yet to be demonstrated. We investigated three physical aspects of a floodplain wetlands system that must be considered, relative to irrigation demand, to determine feasibility: (a) historical inundation frequencies and the effect of regulation and climate change, (b) natural storage volumes and enhanced volumes using retaining walls, and (c) estimated loss rates. We found that inundation frequencies are reduced under regulation and that this reduction is even greater for projected climate change scenarios. Natural volumes were found to be 5% of annual irrigation demand, increasing to 20% with retaining walls; a small proportion at the system scale but significant at farm scale, especially with opportunities for multiple fillings per season. Losses are estimated at 36%–63% of the initial volume, depending on timing of wetland inundation and drawdown. Careful consideration must be applied to issues of frequency and timing of inundation, drawdown rates, and connectivity when considering the ecological benefits of using wetlands as storages. Environmental benefits will be a trade‐off with capital, operational, and maintenance costs and water pricing.


The rapid development of intervehicular communication technology, coupled with the United States department of transportation (USDOT)'s vehicle infrastructure integration (VII) initiative, will soon enable a new class of in-vehicle applications such as cooperative driving assistance systems (CDASs). An engine model with reasonable accuracy and excellent computational efficiency is called for to facilitate the development of such systems. This paper presents and formulates three candidate models (Models I, II, and III), among which Model I is an existing one, and the other two are new. Their performances are evaluated based on a system of metrics including accuracy, accessibility, computational efficiency, formulation, and the need for calibration. Overall, Model II outperforms the other two and appears promising to fit the need of the particular application.


A performance trial was carried out to evaluate the nutritional and economical analyses of feeding increasing dietary levels of pearl millet for growing and finishing pigs. Forty crossbreed pigs averaging initial body weight of 25.1 ± 2.1 kg were assigned to four treatments as a randomized blocks design with five replicates and two pigs (one barrow and one gilt) per experimental unit. The treatments contained the followign levels of pearl millet: 0, 25, 50 and 75%. No effects on daily feed intake (DFI), daily weight gain (DWG), and feed:gain ratio (FGR) in the growing phase was detected. However, in the finishing phase, quadratic effect on DWG and DFI was observed, showing that the inclusion of 26.44% of pearl millet increased DWG. The inclusion of pearl millet up to 75% in the diets of growing and finishing pigs meet animal requirements and it is economically viable for market value of 70% corn price.


A multifunctional masquerade-like protein has been isolated, purified, and characterized from hemocytes of the freshwater crayfish, Pacifastacus leniusculus. It was isolated by its Escherichia coli binding property, and it binds to formaldehyde-treated Gram-negative bacteria as well as to yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, whereas it does not bind to formaldehyde-fixed Gram-positive bacteria. The intact masquerade (mas)-like protein is present in crayfish hemocytes as a heterodimer composed of two subunits with molecular masses of 134 and 129 kDa. Under reducing conditions the molecular masses of the intact proteins are not changed. After binding to bacteria or yeast cell walls, the mas-like protein is processed by a proteolytic enzyme. The 134 kDa of the processed protein yields four subunits of 65, 47, 33, and 29 kDa, and the 129-kDa protein results in four subunits of 63, 47, 33, and 29 kDa in 10% SDS-PAGE under reducing conditions. The 33-kDa protein could be purified by immunoaffinity chromatography using an Ab to the C-terminal part of the mas-like protein. This subunit of the mas-like protein has cell adhesion activity, whereas the two intact proteins, 134 and 129 kDa, have binding activity to LPSs, glucans, Gram-negative bacteria, and yeast. E. coli coated with the mas-like protein were more rapidly cleared in crayfish than only E. coli, suggesting this protein is an opsonin. Therefore, the cell adhesion and opsonic activities of the mas-like protein suggest that it plays a role as an innate immune protein.


This paper probes the changing innovation status and resultant competitiveness in the context of global economy and questions the recent ranking improvements of India on the basis of hard economic facts. This paper has made use of secondary data comprising innovation indices and competitiveness rankings published by International organizations and reputed business schools from time to time since 1996 to analyze the changing status of India Internationally. Later, using secondary data on key macro-economic variables published by the Government of India, the recent ranking of India is closely examined as well as recent steps taken by the government of India to improve competitiveness is elaborated. The study throws light on the changing but improving innovation dimensions and competitiveness ranking of India since 1996 till 2010. From nowhere India emerges and occupies the second slot, after China, in the global competitiveness ranking. But hard core macro-economic variables do not justify India's elevation to the top in any way. Given this, the study throws light on the recent policy measures announced by the Government of India and its implications as well as policy imperatives.


A facile method for preparing porous polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) sponges is reported. The PDMS sponges are fabricated by the polymerization of the PDMS prepolymer and a curing agent in dimethicone using NaCl microparticles as the hard templates. The porous structure of the PDMS sponges is controllable simply by regulating the weight ratio of prepolymer to dimethicone and the size of the NaCl microparticles. The PDMS sponges feature high compressibility and stretchability, excellent superhydrophobicity/superoleophilicity, as well as high chemical and thermal stability. The PDMS sponge can completely recover its original shape even after 50 cycles of 90% strain. The elongation at breaking the sponge is as high as 97%. The PDMS sponge is superhydrophobic with a water contact angle of 151.5° but can be easily wetted by oils. The sponge also exhibits excellent repellency to corrosive aqueous liquids. The flexibility and superhydrophobicity of the sponge remain unchanged even after keeping in liquid nitrogen or at 250 °C for 24 h. Long-term immersion in various organics has no obvious influence on superhydrophobicity, oil absorbency, or weight of the sponge. The PDMS sponge can selectively absorb a large amount of floating oils on the water surface and heavy oils under the water, and furthermore, is reusable. Moreover, the PDMS sponge swells quickly after the adsorption of oils, which makes it a promising material for plugging oil leakages.


In this study, we examined the multi-stage piston-type air compressors typically used in a railroad vehicle, and the heat transfer efficiency was analyzed according to the design conditions of the heat exchanger (a compressor component module for cooling the compressed high temperature air). For the fin-tube heat exchanger used in the most air compressors, numerical analysis was performed to analyze heat transfer by defining the various rectangle tube sizes and the number of fin-per-unit area as design variables under the same flow rate of compressed air. Also, this analysis compared the temperature of the compressed air. Regarding environmental conditions for analysis, the flow rate of the external cooling air was measured and the mean value of the values was applied. And a `turbulence model` was considered in both the external flow of the cooling air and the internal flow inside the tube. From the results of analysis, it was found that the change of the aspect ratio value of the tube greatly influences the heat transfer efficiency of the compressed air, and influences if the fin density is relatively small. As a result, the optimum design specifications of the heat exchanger for air compressors were confirmed based on the analysis of the heat transfer efficiency, according to the design conditions of fin and tube by the operating temperature range of the compressed air.


Abstract Outstanding problems concerning mass-loss from evolved stars include initial wind acceleration and what determines the clumping scale. Reconstructing physical conditions from maser data has been highly uncertain due to the exponential amplification. ALMA and e-MERLIN now provide image cubes for five H2O maser transitions around VY CMa, at spatial resolutions comparable to the size of individual clouds or better, covering excitation states from 204 to 2360 K. We use the model of Gray et al. 2016, to constrain variations of number density and temperature on scales of a few au, an order of magnitude finer than is possible with thermal lines, comparable to individual cloud sizes or locally almost homogeneous regions. We compare results with the models of Decin et al. 2006 and Matsuura et al. 2014 for the circumstellar envelope of VY CMa; in later work this will be extended to other maser sources.


We previously reported a higher blood viscosity at corrected hematocrit (45%) (explained by a higher value of erythrocyte rigidity) in football players with low serum zinc (Zn) and thus presumably Zn deficiency; subjects with low serum zinc had also an impairment in performance. This interventional study was undertaken in order to assess the effects of zinc supplementation (compared to placebo) on blood rheology and performance either at rest or during exercise. Ten male healthy volunteers (age: 26+/-1.3 yr; weight 67.9+/-2.24 kg; height 177+/-3 cm) received at random order either zinc (20 mg/day) and placebo, according to a double blind cross-over procedure, during seven days. In each case on the eighth day they performed a 25 min submaximal exercise-test. At rest blood viscosity at corrected hematocrit 45% (gamma = 1000 s(-1)) was lower after Zn (3.56+/-0.14 vs. 4.13+/-0.16 mPa.s, p = 0.009), explained by a lower RBC rigidity index 'k' according to Quemada's equation (1.65+/-0.07 vs. 1.84+/-0.08, p = 0.03). Hematocrit and plasma viscosity were unchanged, but RBC aggregation was decreased (laser retrodiffusion-derived aggregation time 'Ta' 3.52+/-0.51 vs. 2.75+/-0.59, p = 0.02). The increase in blood viscosity during exercise is lower after Zn than placebo. Blood viscosity at corrected hematocrit 45% remains unchanged during exercise after Zn, yet it increases after placebo. RBC rigidity index 'k' remains lower during exercise after Zn. The rating of perceived exertion (Borg's scale) at the 20th minute of exercise is lower after zinc (5.6+/-0.4 vs. 6.6+/-0.4, p = 0.008). This study confirms that Zn improves erythrocyte deformability, decreases the exercise-induced acute increase in blood viscosity, and improves exercise tolerance. Since Zn deficiencies are not unfrequent in sportsmen, these findings may be potentially relevant to sports nutrition.


Gadolinium-enhancing lesions in brain magnetic resonance imaging of multiple sclerosis (MS) patients are of great interest since they are markers of disease activity. Identification of gadolinium-enhancing lesions is particularly challenging because the vast majority of enhancing voxels are associated with normal structures, particularly blood vessels. Furthermore, these lesions are typically small and in close proximity to vessels. In this paper, we present an automatic, probabilistic framework for segmentation of gadolinium-enhancing lesions in MS using conditional random fields. Our approach, through the integration of different components, encodes different information such as correspondence between the intensities and tissue labels, patterns in the labels, or patterns in the intensities. The proposed algorithm is evaluated on 80 multimodal clinical datasets acquired from relapsing-remitting MS patients in the context of multicenter clinical trials. The experimental results exhibit a sensitivity of 98% with a low false positive lesion count. The performance of the proposed algorithm is also compared to a logistic regression classifier, a support vector machine and a Markov random field approach. The results demonstrate superior performance of the proposed algorithm at successfully detecting all of the gadolinium-enhancing lesions while maintaining a low false positive lesion count.


The gene sequence of Decorsin which is extracted from a kind of North American leeches was synthesized. Two recombinant proteins, Annexin V plus Decorsin (AnnV-D39) and Annexin V plus the carboxyl terminal 27 amino acid residues of Decorsin(AnnV-D27), were constructed. And a 10 amino acids linker peptide of GGGGSGGGGS was inserted between Annexin V and Decorsin in AnnV-D39. Using pET-28(a+) as an expressing vector, both two recombinant proteins were expressed in E. Coli BL21(DE3) with high efficiency as inclusion bodies. The expression products were purified by DEAE-Cellulose 52 and Sepharose CL-4B chromatography under denaturing condition. Platelet Aggregation Assay (PAA) shows that AnnV-D39 has good anti-platelet aggregation activity. However, AnnV-D27 shows no such activities in any PAA test. AnnV-D39 shows good anti-platelet aggregation activity as a new antagonist of fibrinogen receptor, while Annv-D27 needs re-modification.


The reaction of readily available 1-substituted 2,3-allenols with Br-2, NBS, or I-2 afforded the not-easily-available but synthetically useful 3-halo-3-alkenals or 2-halo-2-alkenyl ketones in good yields via a sequential electrophilic interaction of X+ with the allene moiety, a 1,2-aryl or proton shift, and a H+-elimination process; the structures of the products were established by X-ray diffraction study.


In most ventilators used in anaesthesia tidal volume delivered during mechanical ventilation is different from the tidal volume preset at the respirator on the basis of respirator and circuit compliance and gas compression during inspiration. The error in ventilation due to the compressed volume is especially significant clinically when the tidal volume is very small or when the airway pressure is very high. In newborns and neonates in particular, decreasing lung compliance during a surgical procedure may contribute to marked hypoventilation. We therefore investigated ventilation in newborn piglets during decreasing lung compliance induced by tension pneumothorax. We used the anaesthesia ventilator CICERO (Dräger, Lübeck, Germany) and the SERVO 900 C ventilator (Siemens-Elema, Sweden). MATERIALS AND METHODS. Two anaesthesia ventilators, the CICERO (group I, n = 8) and the SERVO ventilators (group II, n = 8) were investigated following randomized selection in a group of 16 newborn piglets (Table 1). After normoventilation for 60 min a tension pneumothorax at +10 mbar was induced. After 15 min the pneumothorax was increased to +20 mbar and maintained at this level for the rest of the study. When hypercapnia (PaCO2 > 45 mmHg) resulted, the respiratory rate was increased by +10/min after 15 min with pneumothorax at +20 mbar. When hypercapnia continued, the respiratory rate was increased again 25 min and if necessary also 35 min after the induction of pneumothorax at +20 mbar. After normoventilation for 60 min (T1) (Table 2), after 15 min with pneumothorax at +10 mbar (T2) and after 15 min (T3), 25 min (T4), 35 min (T5) and 45 min (T6) with pneumothorax at +20 mbar the following parameters were obtained: central venous (CVP) and mean arterial pressure (MAP), heart rate (HR), arterial (PaCO2) and end-tidal CO2 tension (PetCO2), peak inspiratory pressure (PIP), respiratory frequency (RF) and expiratory tidal (Vtex) and minute volume (VE). RESULTS. In group I the pneumothorax resulted in a significantly smaller increase in PaCO2 (43.3 +/- 6.2 mmHg) than in group II (Fig. 1), and hypercapnia was present in only 3 piglets. Vtex (Fig. 2), VE (Fig. 3) and PIP (Fig. 5) increased significantly, with significantly higher values than in group II, while PetCO2 (Fig. 6) decreased significantly. In group II the pneumothorax was attributed to a significant increase in PaCO2 and a marked hypercapnia in all piglets (PaCO2 61.2 +/- 5.9 mmHg) (Fig. 1). Vtex (Fig. 2) and VE (Fig. 3) remained unchanged, while PIP (Fig. 5) and PetCO2 (Fig. 6) increased. Following the increase in RF (Fig. 4) in all piglets, Vtex and VE increased and PaCO2 and PetCO2 decreased. CONCLUSIONS. During ventilation of neonates with the SERVO ventilator a decrease in lung compliance will cause hypoventilation and hypercapnia. This reflected by an increase in peak inspiratory pressure and can be corrected by increasing the respiratory rate. In contrast, the CICERO is able to preserve ventilation by an internal correction for gas compression, but it does not guarantee normoventilation in all cases. In neither group does the end-tidal PCO2 reflect the true ventilation during decreasing lung compliance, so that arterial blood gas analysis seems to be mandatory for the diagnosis of hypercapnia in such situations.


It is shown that under certain conditions, Z-transform theory can be applied to simplify analysis and synthesis of unequally spaced antenna arrays. The approach provides significant advantages over other techniques since the method yields closed-form expressions for array factors that are otherwise often cumbersome and difficult to work with analytically. The method is useful for both broadside and endfire arrays and allows many of the results originally derived for equally spaced arrays to be applied.


BACKGROUND
Noninvasive ventilation (NIV) is commonly used to treat patients with acute cardiogenic pulmonary edema (ACPE), but the findings of a recent large clinical trial suggest that NIV may be less effective for ACPE than previously thought.

PURPOSE
To provide an estimate of the effect of NIV on clinical outcomes in patients with ACPE that incorporates recent trial evidence and explore ways to interpret that evidence in the context of preceding evidence that favors NIV.

DATA SOURCES
PubMed and EMBASE from 1966 to December 2009, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials and conference proceedings through December 2009, and reference lists, without language restriction.

STUDY SELECTION
Randomized trials that compared continuous positive airway pressure and bilevel ventilation with standard therapy or each other.

DATA EXTRACTION
Two independent reviewers extracted data. Outcomes examined were mortality, intubation rate, and incidence of new myocardial infarction (MI).

DATA SYNTHESIS
Compared with standard therapy, continuous positive airway pressure reduced mortality (relative risk [RR], 0.64 [95% CI, 0.44 to 0.92]) and need for intubation (RR, 0.44 [CI, 0.32 to 0.60]) but not incidence of new MI (RR, 1.07 [CI, 0.84 to 1.37]). The effect was more prominent in trials in which myocardial ischemia or infarction caused ACPE in higher proportions of patients (RR, 0.92 [CI, 0.76 to 1.10] when 10% of patients had ischemia or MI vs. 0.43 [CI, 0.17 to 1.07] when 50% had ischemia or MI). Bilevel ventilation reduced the need for intubation (RR, 0.54 [CI, 0.33 to 0.86]) but did not reduce mortality or new MI. No differences were detected between continuous positive airway pressure and bilevel ventilation on any clinical outcomes for which they were directly compared.

LIMITATIONS
The quality of the evidence base was limited. Definitions, cause, and severity of ACPE differed among the trials, as did patient characteristics and clinical settings.

CONCLUSION
Although a recent large trial contradicts results from previous studies, the evidence in aggregate still supports the use of NIV for patients with ACPE. Continuous positive airway pressure reduces mortality more in patients with ACPE secondary to acute myocardial ischemia or infarction.

PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE
None.


In contemporary liberal philosophy, the idea of Public Reason is intimately tied up with the liberal principle of legitimacy which postulates that only those laws that are based upon arguments and reasons to which no members of the society have a rational reason to object can boast political legitimacy, and as such can be applied coercively even to those who actually disagree with them. In this working paper I suggest the ways of fine-tuning the idea of Public Reason in such a way as to make it more immune to its critics. In particular, I explain what specifically it means for Public Reason to be an exclusionary, second-order rule about the exclusion of reasons which can figure in justifications for law (Part 1), how we can plausibly claim that Public Reason may be thought to be a feasible political imperative in pluralistic societies (Part 2), what should be its scope of application, both in terms of the types of laws to which it applies and the actors who should be bound by it (Part 3), and what specifically is at stake if we see the status of Public Reason as a legitimacy-conferring device (Part 4).


1. Intracellular recordings were made from vagal motoneurones identified by antidromic stimulation in the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus (d.m.v.) in slice preparations of rat medulla oblongata. 2. Noradrenaline (NA) applied by perfusion (0.01 microM to 1 mM) depolarized 55%, hyperpolarized 32% and produced a biphasic response (hyperpolarization followed by depolarization) in 9% of the d.m.v. neurones tested. 3. The NA effects persisted after complete elimination of synaptic inputs during perfusion with Ca2+‐free high‐Mg2+ solution, and therefore probably resulted from a direct action on the postsynaptic membranes. 4. The NA depolarization was blocked by prazosin and the NA hyperpolarization by yohimbine, but neither was blocked by propranolol or timolol. Phenoxybenzamine blocked both responses. The results indicate that NA depolarization is mediated by alpha 1‐adrenoceptors and hyperpolarization by alpha 2‐adrenoceptors. 5. The neurones which were depolarized by NA were also hyperpolarized by NA when the alpha 1‐adrenoceptors were blocked by prazosin (all of seven neurones tested). This result suggests that most vagal motoneurones in the d.m.v. have both alpha 1‐and alpha 2‐adrenoceptors. 6. The NA depolarization was accompanied by a decrease in membrane conductance and the hyperpolarization by an increase in membrane conductance, both of which were measured under manual‐clamp conditions. 7. The reversal potentials for the NA responses were around ‐85 mV in normal Ringer solution, and shifted as predicted by the Nernst equation when the extracellular K+ concentration was changed. 8. The inhibitory postsynaptic potentials evoked by focal electrical stimulation on the slice surface of the commissural part of the nucleus of the tractus solitarius (n.t.s.), which contains an A2 catecholaminergic cell group, were abolished by yohimbine. 9. The results suggest that NA modulates vagal output by decreasing or increasing the K+ conductance of d.m.v. neurones through alpha 1‐ or alpha 2‐adrenoceptors. In addition, the A2 noradrenergic cell group within the n.t.s. may send inhibitory inputs to the d.m.v.


A simple and low cost opto-mechanical mount is described. Two variations are shown, one for mirrors and another one for beam splitters.


The Argentine economic crisis of 1999-2003 caused GDP to drop precipitously and levels of poverty and unemployment to rise greatly. Although more profound, this crisis resembled three others since 1966, and it led Argentines overwhelmingly to reject the members of their political class. In 1999, the confidence of Argentine citizens in politicians and political institutions was already very low, reflecting in part the earlier crises and the fact that income distribution in the country had become far more unequal in the 1990s. Causes for the economic crisis include economic policies, political constraints, and the structure of Argentine society and values. Although some economic growth has returned under the presidency of Nestor Kirchner since 2003, the depth of the rejection of the political class is so great that it may lead to some change in Argentine values.


The majority of commercial extruders use preconditioners prior to feeding raw materials into an extruder for completion of cooking and expansion. The primary role of the preconditioner is to preblend, preheat, and partially cook the ingredients entering the extruder. The targets are the final moisture and temperature of the preconditioned product, in addition to other variables. Preconditioning results in a lower mechanical energy input requirement for the extruder, which can improve quality and will increase the capacity of and reduce wear on the extruder. The reduction in the mechanical energy requirement comes primarily from the injection of steam, which upon condensation provides moisture in the product. Some additional energy input can be obtained by feeding hot water into the preconditioner, but the effect of this heat input is small compared with the heat input obtained from condensing steam. This column describes the mass and energy requirements of this process.


patients studied off PPI (p=0.97 figure 1). There was no difference in MNBI between the 10 patients with persistent (>3 cm) Barrett ' s who had attempts at therapy (ablation, mucosal resection) compared to the 27 who had not received therapy (p=0.96). There was a moderately inverse correlation between Bar-rett ' s segment length (median 5 cm (3 cm,9 cm) and MNBI (r = -0.436; p=0.038). Conclusion This study suggests that the impact of reflux disease on mucosal permeability (MNBI) may have an influence on symptom perception. Both MNBI and symptom perception were significantly reduced in Barrett ' s compared to NERD. Furthermore, neither MNBI nor symptom perception are affected by use of acid reducing medication despite the difference in AET. This study provides further validation to the Lyon consensus definition of MNBI as a measure of reflux disease severity


A time-based successive approximation register (SAR) analog to digital converter (ADC) using a pulse width modulation is presented for scaled CMOS technologies. A binary search in the proposed ADC performs on time-domain signal processing using a pulse width modulation with a single capacitor. Since the ADC employs time-domain signal processing, the proposed ADC does not suffer from a process variation such as a capacitor mismatch. The proposed ADC also has low input capacitance, since it has the single capacitor, not the capacitor array in conventional SAR ADC. A feasibility of the proposed ADC is verified by simulations using ADC models having 10 bit resolution in ideal condition as well as in non-ideal condition.


The authors describe the design and formative evaluation of a sensor toolkit for Android smartphones and tablets that supports inquiry-based science learning. The Sense-it app enables a user to access all the motion, environmental and position sensors available on a device, linking these to a website for shared crowd-sourced investigations. The authors describe the four investigations with the toolkit: environmental noise, sunlight levels, air pressure and rainfall, and the speed of lifts elevators. These show a variety of methods to initiate, orchestrate and conclude inquiry-based science learning. Two of the missions are in the context of a study to develop a community of inquiry around weather and meteorology. The others are intended to engage members of the public in practical science activities. Analysis of the missions and the associated online discussions reveals that the Sense-it toolkit can be adopted for engaging science investigations, though the practical issue of calibrating sensors on personal devices needs to be addressed.


Background: To evaluate Endoscopy/Colonoscopy as a diagnostic modality in patients presenting with symptoms of Lower Gastrointestinal Tract Pathology. Material and method:  We studied 76 patients who were admitted in the OPD or emergency of M.L.B. Medical College, Jhansi and presented with the symptoms suggestive of lower Gastrointestinal pathology and colonoscopy was performed in the Department of Surgery between a period of one year from Nov 2012 to Oct 2013. Result and Discussion: The colonscopy was performed in most of our cases (93.42%) with tramodol (I/V) only after psychologically preparing the patients in rest of the patients (6.58%) diazepam (I/V) was given along with Tramadol(I/V). we were able to intubate the caecum (19.74%) in hepatic flexure in 47.37%,in the remaining cases we intubated splenic flexure in 18.42% and sigmoid colon in 14.48%, which were the areas containing the pathology and either we intentionally did not go beyond that or scope was not negotiable beyond that. In developing countries where infective diarrhea is still common, selecting patients for colonoscopy is more difficult. In this study, Of all the pathologies included non specific inflammation (23.69%) was the most common pathology encountered as in previous study(34.61%) followed by malignancy (14.46%), ulcerative colitis (10.52%), polyp (07.90%), solitary ulcer (5.26%),chrohn's disease(03.95%) and normal study in remaining (34.21%) cases, Where as in previous study after nonspecific inflammation Ulcerative colitis(13.46%) was the most common pathology followed by malignancy(9.61%) and solitary ulcer(3.84%), diverticular disease is not found in any of the cases. Out of 76 patients biopsy was taken in 34 (44.74%) patients. Abdominal distention and pain (07.89%) was the most common complication after colonoscopy which releaved spontaneously within one hour or two after passing flatus.one patient developed severe distention and required admission for 24 hours with nasogastric decompression. Bleeding (03.95%) following Minor traumatic injury to bowel mucosa that occurred during the procedure is next common complication which was managed with conservative treatment. Bacteraemia as evidenced by fever occurred in one (1.31%) patient who was managed with antibiotics. Out of 76 patients malignancy was found in 11patients all of which were adenocarcinoma. They constituted 14.46%, out of these 11 patients, 4 had carcinoma at rectosigmoid junction,2 in rectum and 3 in descending colon and 2 in ascending colon. Guillen and fordy study showed an incidence of carcinoma of 12%. So our study showed slightly more incidence of carcinoma. Conclusion: Colonoscopy is also the best modality for diagnosing malignancy of large bowel and for surveillance in high risk patients and also in those patients who have undergone previous colorectal surgery for malignancy and long standing inflammatory bowel disease


Who gets chills—a pleasurable feeling of goose bumps—in response to music, and why? The current study used experience sampling to examine within-person variability in aesthetic chills. For one week, 106 undergraduate participants responded to 10 daily surveys, delivered via their cell phones, about their momentary activities, emotions, and environment, with an emphasis on whether they were listening to music and were experiencing chills. At the within-person level, music listening context and emotional states during music listening influenced whether or not people got chills. Chills were more likely when people listened to music that they chose and that they were listening to closely. Chills were also more likely when people were listening to music while happy or while sad, but not while worried. Overall, the study illustrates how music listening context and other within-person differences contribute to aesthetic chills in people's everyday environments.


This article explores the proof theory necessary for recommending an expressive but decidable first-order system, named MAV1, featuring a De Morgan dual pair of nominal quantifiers. These nominal quantifiers called "new" and "wen" are distinct from the self-dual Gabbay-Pitts and Miller-Tiu nominal quantifiers. The novelty of these nominal quantifiers is they are polarised in the sense that "new" distributes over positive operators while "wen" distributes over negative operators. This greater control of bookkeeping enables private names to be modelled in processes embedded as formulae in MAV1. The technical challenge is to establish a cut elimination result from which essential properties including the transitivity of implication follow. Since the system is defined using the calculus of structures, a generalisation of the sequent calculus, novel techniques are employed. The proof relies on an intricately designed multiset-based measure of the size of a proof, which is used to guide a normalisation technique called splitting. The presence of equivariance, which swaps successive quantifiers, induces complex inter-dependencies between nominal quantifiers, additive conjunction, and multiplicative operators in the proof of splitting. Every rule is justified by an example demonstrating why the rule is necessary for soundly embedding processes and ensuring that cut elimination holds.


A comparative ocular tolerance study was undertaken with the topical carbonic anhydrase inhibitor (CAI) MK-927 (1% and 2%) and its S-enantiomer MK-417 (1% and 1.8%) in 20 healthy normal volunteers. In this randomized, double-blind cross over study, placebos were used for control over five periods. The subjects received one drop of placebo (common vehicle) or CAI in each eye in successive periods separated by a washout period of 1 week. Three hours after the dose, the IOP was found to be decreased by 5.3% to 9.1%, depending on the dose, with all four CAI treatments and significantly so with MK-417. Pupil-size and central vision were unchanged by CAIs. External and anterior segment examination revealed no changes following any of the treatments. The incidence of burning was significantly increased by 2% MK-927 (p less than 0.01) and 1.8% MK-417 (p less than 0.05) compared to placebo. The mean duration of burning placebo was 16.8 s, but it was significantly longer (23 to 37.1 s) following CAI application. Duration of tearing following CAI application was also significantly prolonged (p less than 0.05).


Users of a relational database must explicitly navigate between relations in order to establish a connection among a set of attributes spanning several relation schemes. While a universal scheme interface to a relational database provides users with automatic navigation, it usually imposes on the database a unique role assumption. This assumption requires every attribute name to represent a unique role in the database, so that connections among sets of attributes are unambiguous.


In this paper we present a procedure developed to assess the quality of building energy management systems (BEMS). To apply this procedure, the system to be tested is connected to a building emulator. This emulator consists of a numerical building and heating systems. The use of such an emulator makes it possible to perform detailed and reproducible tests on a wide range of BEMS functions like optimal start stop, boilers sequencing controllers, alarms management, etc. The paper presents the emulator, the procedure and results obtained in applying it to four different systems.<<ETX>>


In this study, we fabricated a p-channel FET-type NOx gas sensor by using multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs). Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have good electronic, chemical-stability, and sensitivity characteristics. In particular, gas sensors require characteristics such as high speed, selectivity, and sensitivity. The fabricated sensor was used to detect NOx gas for different values of the gate-source voltage (Vgs) and the electrode spacings (30, 60, 90, and 120 μm). The gas sensor that absorbed NOx gas molecules showed a decrease in resistance. The sensitivity of the gas sensor was increased by increasing the electrode spacing. Additionally, while changing the Vgs and the temperature inside the chamber for the MWCNT gas sensor, we obtained the sensitivity and the normalized response for detecting NOx gas. We also obtained the adsorption energy (Ua) by using Arrhenius plots based on the reduction of resistance due to voltage variations. The adsorption energy was found to increase with increasing applied voltage.


Inhalation of high concentrations of carbon monoxide (CO) is known to lead to serious systemic complications and neuronal disturbances. However, it has been found that not only is CO produced endogenously, but also that low concentrations can bestow beneficial effects which may be of interest in biology and medicine. As translocation of CO through the human organism is difficult, small molecules known as CO-releasing molecules (CORMs) deliver controlled amounts of CO to biological systems, and these are of great interest from a medical point of view. These actions may prevent vascular dysfunction, regulate blood pressure, inhibit blood platelet aggregation or have anti-inflammatory effects. This review summarizes the functions of various CO-releasing molecules in biology and medicine.


High-strength concrete is vulnerable to high temperatures due to its high density. The use of polypropylene fibers could prevent structure explosion by forming canals due to melted fibers during fire, thus release its thermal stress. This study aims to determine the effect of polypropylene fibers on compressive strength of high-strength concrete after combustion at 400oC for five hours. High-strength concrete was made by w/c-ratio 0.3 with cement amount 550 kg/m 3 and added with silica fume 8% and superplasticizer 4% by cement weight. The variations of polypropylene fibers were 0%, 0.2% and 0.4% of concrete volume. The compression test was carried out on standard cylinders O15/30 cm of combustion and without combustion specimens at 7 and 28 days. The results showed that compressive strength of high-strength concretes without using polypropylene fibers decreased in post-combustion compared with specimens without combustion, i.e., 0.81% at 7 days and 23.42% at 28 days. Conversely, the use of polypropylene fibers can increase post-combustion compressive strength with a maximum value resulted in adding 0.2% which are 25.52% and 10.44% at 7 and 28 days respectively. It can be concluded that the use of polypropylene fibers is effective to prevent reduction of high-strength concrete compressive strength that are burned at high temperatures.


This article studies a series of provocative references to Spinoza by Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben. For both contemporary philosophers, the context is discussions of eating, a subject matter that turns out to involve such central issues as subjectivity, nature, ethics, and teleology. Each situates Spinoza in a counter-history of philosophy and suggests that Spinoza constitutes an important resource for contemporary reflections. Through an analysis of the three philosophers' texts about eating, nutrition, and being metabolized, I argue that Spinoza's nonteleological, nonhumanistic conception of nature remains a radical possibility, even in the face of contemporary attempts to think outside the canonical discourses of transcendental subjectivity, technological reason, and teleological ethics. Spinoza's position is, in the end, more uncompromising than that of Derrida or Agamben.


Central fatigue is the term used to describe when muscle contractions become limited by the ability of the central nervous system to recruit motor neurones. Central fatigue becomes manifest when the effort is intense and is associated not only with reduced strength but also with an inability to maintain the contraction. The contractions thereby resemble those developed during partial neuromuscular blockade that mainly affect slow twitch muscle fibres. We suggest that central fatigue also manifests as a reduction in the ratio between the brain's uptake of oxygen relative to that of carbohydrate from 6 to less than 3. This imbalance between oxygen and glucose plus lactate uptake remains unsolved, but glycogen and accumulation of intermediates of metabolism are likely to play a key role.


Tramadol is a powerful analgesic medication with antidepressant effects like venlafaxine. Hypomanic features were reported in patients with psychiatric history of mood disturbance when tramadol was prescribed for them. However, it is extremely rare to notice such mood-elevating effect in patients who have no previous psychiatric history. We report on the observation of a distressing mood-elevating effect for tramadol in a patient with no previous psychiatric history. We present the case of a 26-year-old female patient who developed accelerated flow of speech, overactivity, and difficulty in sleeping following intake of tramadol 50 mg dose. These symptoms resolved four hours later and recurred as she retook tramadol. The patient has no history of mood disorder or any other psychiatric comorbidity. Clinicians should exercise caution when prescribing tramadol.


In this paper we will show that using the cosmological constant as a new thermodynamical state variable, the differential and integral mass formulas of the first law of thermodynamics for asymptotic flat spacetimes can be extended to (2+1) dimensional charged BTZ black holes and charged de Sitter space.


There is growing interest in large-scale machine learning and optimization over decentralized networks, e.g. in the context of multi-agent learning and federated learning. Due to the imminent need to alleviate the communication burden, the investigation of communication-efficient distributed optimization algorithms - particularly for empirical risk minimization - has flourished in recent years. A large fraction of these algorithms have been developed for the master/slave setting, relying on a central parameter server that can communicate with all agents. This paper focuses on distributed optimization over networks, or decentralized optimization, where each agent is only allowed to aggregate information from its neighbors. By properly adjusting the global gradient estimate via local averaging in conjunction with proper correction, we develop a communication-efficient approximate Newton-type method Network-DANE, which generalizes DANE to the decentralized scenarios. Our key ideas can be applied in a systematic manner to obtain decentralized versions of other master/slave distributed algorithms. A notable development is Network-SVRG/SARAH, which employs variance reduction to further accelerate local computation. We establish linear convergence of Network-DANE and Network-SVRG for strongly convex losses, and Network-SARAH for quadratic losses, which shed light on the impacts of data homogeneity, network connectivity, and local averaging upon the rate of convergence. We further extend Network-DANE to composite optimization by allowing a nonsmooth penalty term. Numerical evidence is provided to demonstrate the appealing performance of our algorithms over competitive baselines, in terms of both communication and computation efficiency. Our work suggests that performing a certain amount of local communications and computations per iteration can substantially improve the overall efficiency.


Nucleic amplification using quantitative polymeric chain reaction (qPCR) has become the gold standard of molecular testing. These systems offer both amplification and simultaneous fluorescence detection. An ultrafast microfluidic module (allowing 30 PCR cycles in 6 minutes) based on the oscillating fluid plug concept was previously developed [1,2] allowing the amplification of native genomic deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecules. This abstract presents the actual status of the advanced system. The upgraded system generates high quality qPCR amplification plots and additional sensitive melting point analysis comparable to data obtained from commercial real-time cyclers. These features provide the user with all information needed to analyze PCR products. The system uses light emitting diodes (LED) for illumination and a low cost Charge-coupled Device (CCD) camera for optical detection. Image data processing allows the automated process control of the overall system components. The system enables the performance of rapid and robust nucleic acid amplifications together with the integration of real time measurement technology. This allows the amplification and simultaneous quantification of the targeted pathogens. The integration of duplex amplification performance allows the incorporation of the necessary controls into the device to validate the PCR performance. This demonstrator can be run either as fully autonomously working device or as OEM part of a sample-to-answer platform.


The identification on blue-queen algae which were collected from paddy rice fields of the whole nation was carried out in 1991. The blue-green algae identified were 20 species in 5 families including 7 species in the Chroococcaceae. 1 species in the Chamaesiphonaceae. 1 species in the Pleurocapsaceae, 6 species in the Nostocaeae and 5 species in the Oscillatoriaceae. Among the blue-green algae, 6 species in 4 genera including Cylindrospermum, Anabaenopsis, Anabaena and Nostoc were characterized by heterocysts concerning with nitrogen fixation capacity. A concentrated population of Oscillatoria spp. induced soil flakes with blue tint in paddy rice fields. The genera. Spimlina and Oscillatoria, showed their specific motility.


Dating methodology by the electron probe microanalyser (EPMA) of (Th, U)-bearing minerals, highlighting monazite, acquired greater than ever importance in literature, particularly due to its superior spatial resolution, as well as versatility, which allow correlating petrological processes at times registered only in micro-scales in minerals and rocks with absolute ages. Although the accuracy is inferior to the one achieved with conventional isotopic methods in up to an order of magnitude, EPMA is the instrument that allows the best spatial resolution, reaching a few μm3 in some conditions. Quantifi cation of minor and trace elements with suitable precision and accuracy involves the own instrumental and analytical set-ups and data treatment strategies, signifi cantly more rigorous when compared with those applied in conventional analyses. Th-U-PbT dating is an example of these cases. Each EPMA is a unique machine as for its instrumental characteristics and respective automation system. In such a way, analytical procedures ought to be adjusted for laboratory specifi cities. The analytical strategies and data treatment adopted in the Electronic Microprobe Laboratory from Instituto de Geociências of Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil, with a JEOL JXA8600S EPMA, and a ThermoNoran-Voyager 4.3 automation system, are presented and compared with the ones used in other laboratories. The infl uence of instrumental factors and spectral overlaps on Th, U, and Pb quantifi cation is discussed. Applied procedures to interference correction, error propagation, data treatment, and fi nal chemical age presentation as well as to sampling and analyses are emphasized. Some typical applications are discussed, drawing attention to the most relevant aspects of electron microprobe dating.


This study attempts to improve our understanding of the nature of mergers and
their timing. It is motivated by the inability of empirical evidence at the microlevel
to provide strong statistical results for the motivation of mergers in different
periods. At the macro-level, the apparently stronger results of some studies have
been insufficient to form the basis for a widely accepted theory of merger timing.
Although the predictions are closer to the observed procyclical and episodic
behaviour of the process, the findings of the macro-literature have been limited,
in most cases, to confirmation of what is evident by casual observation.
This study purports to create a framework that encompasses both the macro- and
micro-environment of a company which may enhance understanding of the
dynamic behaviour of merger activity in the UK. At the macro-level, we use
frequency domain techniques to empirically examine the existence of merger
waves and their relation to economic fundamentals. The empirical approach
taken allows the identification of merger waves with different duration,
regularity, and power, and reports their relation to macro- and financial factors
along these waves. Having identified the explanatory power of macro- and
financial factors, as well as the timing pattern of aggregate mergers, we search
for complementary driving forces of the process at the micro-level.
At the micro-level, a theoretic-decision model is constructed to explain merger
timing which incorporates the most prevalent theoretical and empirical
explanations, suggested by industrial organization and finance literature, into a
dynamic framework. The model exploits the dynamics of the merger process by
assuming that motives change over time because of changes in firm-specific
characteristics and in merger activity per se. The model stresses the endogenous
character of mergers by explicitly incorporating past, current, and future mergers.
The theoretical model is estimated, using merger data from the UK from 1990 to
2004. The empirical approach taken is survival analysis. Such an approach
explicitly allows for dependency over time, in that it estimates the conditional
probability of merger; that is, the probability of merger by time t, given that is
has not occurred by time t-1. It is ideally suited to empirically examine the
merger timing, since it allows us to investigate whether, given that a firm has survived up to a certain point in time, changes in firm-specific characteristics or
changes in merger activity per se will lead to a change in the timing of a merger.
Findings of the macro-level provide evidence that fairly regular long waves as
well as a less regular, less powerful waves of mergers exist. Even though no two
merger waves are identical, they usually have some important features in
common. Their coherence with macro- and financial factors varies in strength
over waves of different duration and regularity. The findings at the micro-level
provide strong evidence of the endogenous character of mergers. A combination
of a range of micro-forces is the driving force within a wave which keeps the
bandwagon rolling at full speed. As a consequence, macro-factors may pave the
way for the development of initial merger activity, while micro-forces fuel
merger diffusion and build the dynamics within a wave.


Previous work is summarized on the biosynthetic pathway for polyamines in Escherichia coli. Deletion mutants have been obtained in the various biosynthetic steps, resulting in cells with no polyamines. These mutants grow at one-third the rate of polyamine-supplemented cultures and can serve as suitable hosts for bacteriophages T4, T7, Q beta, and f2. The major effects of polyamine deficiency in these polyamine-deficient strains are: (i) these cells do not serve as hosts for bacteriophage gamma and (ii) polyamine-deficient male strains have defects which are attributable to a decrease in the stability of the male pili, namely, decreased numbers of recombinants in Hfr crosses and poorer adsorption of the male-specific bacteriophages f1, f2, and Q beta. One polyamine-deficient strain has been developed which becomes absolutely dependent on polyamines for growth if it also contains a specific rpsL (strA) mutation.


In this paper we derive two iterative joint precoding and power allocation methods for downlink MC-CDMA systems with multiple transmit antennas at the base station. The first method optimally solves the so called assigned target SINRs problem, i.e. determines the precoding coefficients and the minimum sum-power allocation under a constraint on the SINR of each user. The second method instead solves the maximum sum-rate problem, i.e. maximizes the system throughput under a constraint on the overall transmit power. The main result of this paper is that the proposed joint precoding and power control solutions provide an advantage with respect to suboptimal solutions for a fully loaded system, i.e. when the number of users is equal to the spreading factor times the number of transmit antennas. For lower loads, performance of the various schemes becomes closer.


This paper is part of a focused paper panel discussion addressing the results of an invited workshop conducted in Orlando, Florida in February, 1997. The workshop addressed the question: What makes a modeling and simulation professional? The workshop's results included a consensus ideal modeling and simulation professional characterized by eight categories and subsequent elements. Each of the eight categories and elements are presented as well as contextual narrative. The author provides an interpretation of the workshop results and implications for modeling and simulation professionals. Panel members were asked to respond to the goals and results of the workshop, as well as, the author's interpretations and comments of this paper. The paper and panel discussion are an attempt to spark debate on the modeling and simulation profession.


We herein report a case of a 73-year-old man with lung cancer who underwent thoracoscopic right upper lobectomy with combined resection of the superior chest wall. His tumor was 48 mm in diameter and located in the posterior right lung apex involving the chest wall between ribs 1 and 3. The anterior aspects of the ribs 2 and 3 were separated using forceps under thoracoscopic vision. The first rib could be released from the tumor by peeling off the parietal pleura. An 8 cm incision was made posteriorly between the scapula and vertebrae to obtain the posterior aspect of the ribs 2 and 3. After separating the pulmonary vessels and bronchus, en bloc resection of the superior sulcus tumor was completed. Thoracoscopic chest wall resection of the superior sulcus tumor can be an alternative to the Paulson posterolateral-paravertebral thoracotomy approach, which can cause severe postoperative pain and limited range of motion of the shoulder joint.


Rectanus, Mark W. Culture Incorporated: Museums, Artists and Corporate Sponsorship. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002. 288pp. $22.95 paperback. This study is one of the first in English to address the influence of corporations on art, cultural entities, and audiences in the US and Germany. Rectanus pairs the US and Germany because for him they epitomize how corporate influence on cultural politics is advancing in what he calls "globalized societies." The US represents the societal setting in which philanthropy evolved into contractual sponsorship in the 1960s and where the corporatization of the arts and cultural entities continues to be most entrenched. A special focus on Germany is justified, according to Rectanus, because the economic strains of unification accelerated the turn to foundations and corporate sponsors, markedly expanding corporate influence on culture. This makes Germany an excellent example of "many European countries, which are embracing combinations of public, corporate and foundation funding schemes" (5) to compensate for government cuts. Differences between individual cultures, while acknowledged, are ultimately not the book's focus. Since "recent developments in cultural politics ... are strikingly similar across nations" (5), tendencies manifest on one side of the Atlantic can be expected to resemble those on the other. Rectanus analyzes the salient dynamics behind those tendencies in three sections. Part 1 focuses on the connection of corporate identity and culture and globalization to corporations' embrace of sponsorship. Part 2 positions sponsorship within numerous case studies of lifestyle and event culture, a kind of cultural marketplace that Rectanus analyzes following the work of sociologist Gerhard Schulze. Part 3 examines museums that employ corporate strategies and alliances as a means of surviving in the cultural marketplace. Particularly with cutbacks in government funding, these dynamics produce a convergence of interests marked by corporate and cultural entities commonly seeking legitimacy, audience acceptance and financial stability. Rectanus insists on interrogating sponsored culture as a function of corporate interests. By entering into sponsorships, corporations are understood to expose themselves to forces that contest and reshape their interests as well as further them, a notion supported partly by Rectanus' belief that corporations' loss of legitimacy and influence in public policy pushes them to become "cultural producers." Sometimes, contestation takes the form of art that subverts (Hans Haacke) or critiques sponsorship (Jean-Claude and Christo). The book also recognizes instances when sponsorship invigorates culture. However, its leitmotifs are that corporations exert disproportionate influence on cultural production, generate conflicts of interest by not disclosing the terms of their relationships to nonprofits, and typically use sponsorship to deflect attention from and/or control interpretation of questionable past and present policies and products. …


In our multicultural society, faiths formerly seen as exotic have become attractive alternatives for many people seeking more satisfying spiritual lives. This is especially true of Buddhism, which is the focus of constant media attention--thanks at least in part to celebrity converts, major motion pictures, and the popularity of the Dalai Lama. Following this recent trend in the West, author James Coleman argues that a new and radically different form of this ancient faith is emerging. The New Buddhism sheds new light on this recent evolution of Buddhist practice in the West. After briefly recounting the beginnings and spread of Buddhism in the East, Coleman chronicles its reinterpretation by key Western teachers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, ranging from the British poet Sir Edwin Arnold to the Beat writer Alan Watts. Turning to the contemporary scene, he finds that Western teachers have borrowed liberally from different Buddhist traditions that never intersect in their original contexts. Men and women practice together as equals; ceremonies and rituals are simpler, more direct, and not believed to have magical effects. Moreover, the new Buddhism has made the path of meditation and spiritual awakening available to everyone, not just an elite cadre of monks. Drawing on interviews with noted teachers and lay practitioners, as well as a survey completed by members of seven North American Buddhist centers, Coleman depicts the colorful variety of new Buddhists today, from dilettantes to devoted students and the dedicated teachers who guide their spiritual progress. He also details the problems that have arisen because of some Western influences--especially with regard to gender roles, sex, and power. Exploring the appeal of this exotic faith in postmodern society and questioning its future in a global consumer culture, The New Buddhism provides a thorough and fascinating guide to Western Buddhism today.


CEPI represents the first step towards Joseph Stiglitz's vision, cited by Gubby, of a fund which provides large rewards for cures to common diseases such as malaria, and smaller rewards for rarer diseases or less innovative 'me‐too' drugs (Stiglitz, BMJ, 333, 2006, pp. 1279–1280). As a fledgling organization facing a Goliath, it deserves international support in its dual goals of incentivizing innovation and ensuring equitable access to biomedical advances.


Background: Keratoconus (KC) is a complex corneal disorder with a strong genetic component. The present study aimed to identify candidate genes related to KC in Chinese families. Methods: Family-based exome sequencing was performed in ten patients suffering from KC who belong to five families with two affected members in each. The candidate rare variants were identified with multi-step bioinformatics analysis. The STRING website was used to perform the protein interaction of the identified genes. Results: Our analyses identified 32 candidate rare variants in 13 genes by family-based exome sequencing. The molecular analyses of identified genes showed that EPCAM directly interacted with CTNNB1 of the Hippo signaling pathway and focal adhesion pathway, and directly interacted with CTNNB1, CDH1 of the WNT signaling pathway. SHROOM3 directly interacted with ROCK2, ROCK1 of the focal adhesion pathway. SYNE1 directly interacted with MUSK of the extracellular matrix organization pathway. TEK directly interacted with VEGFA, SHC1, PIK3R1, GRB2 of the focal adhesion pathway. TTN directly interacted with CAPN3 of the extracellular matrix organization pathway. Conclusion: The EPCAM, SHROOM3, SYNE1, TEK, and TTN genes were potential high-risk candidate pathogenic genes of familial KC. The findings might significantly improve our understanding of the genetic etiology of the disease, providing novel insights on KC pathogenesis.


SUMMARY This paper examines the contribution of products derived from baobab (Adansonia digitata), shea (Vitellaria paradoxa) and néré (Parkia biglobosa) to rural livelihoods in Burkina Faso. A survey was conducted in northern and southern regions to identify and understand the social and environmental factors influencing the utilization of tree products by rural households for home consumption and commercialization, and to explore the contribution of tree products to food security. Emphasis was placed on the roles and responsibilities of women for tree product utilization. Inter- and intra-household relationships governing tree foods were found to vary between regions and tree species, and with gender and household composition. Collection and utilization of tree products differed between north and south because of contrasting ecological contexts and evolving social mores. Household decision making processes were negotiated and consensual in both regions. The results suggest that domestication and dissemination of planting and regeneration technologies, and product processing and marketing initiatives, need a gendered and tree-specific approach in order to build on local norms and capacities. Measures for the conservation and management of tree resources are most important where ecological constraints are most severe but dependence is greatest for sustaining food security.


We report the case of an emergency caesarean section 5 days following the onset of a right‐sided hemiparesis due to an intracerebral haemorrhage. Computerised tomography imaging in the postoperative period revealed an isolated cortical vein thrombosis as the likely cause. The caesarean section was conducted under general anaesthesia following consideration of the risks and benefits and discussion of these with the patient. No peri‐operative complications occurred and neuro‐rehabilitation was commenced as an inpatient. This case highlights the importance of maintaining a targeted systolic blood pressure whilst avoiding increased intracranial pressure in the obstetric patient with an intracerebral haemorrhage, and that the mode and conduct of anaesthesia can have a profound impact on these measurements. To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of a patient having an emergency caesarean section after subacute intracerebral haemorrhage caused by an isolated cortical vein thrombosis and it demonstrates that general anaesthesia can be used safely in this context. In this complex obstetric case, the role of multidisciplinary team collaboration in the peri‐operative period was essential to optimising the patient's outcome.


In this paper we present an original approach to natural language query interpretation which has been implemented withinthe FuLL (Fuzzy Logic and Language) Italian project of BC S.r.l. In particular, we discuss here the creation of linguisticand ontological resources, together with the exploitation of existing ones, for natural language-driven database access andretrieval. Both the database and the queries we experiment with are Italian, but the methodology we broach naturally extends to other languages.


Abnormalities involving the 14q32 region are recurrent chromosomal changes in plasma cell malignancies. Recent preliminary molecular analyses found IGH rearrangements in almost 100% of human myeloma cell lines and in 75% of patients. However, no systematic study analyzing the nature of the partner chromosomal regions have been reported thus far. To define the exact incidence of illegitimate IGH rearrangements and the respective incidence of partner genes cloned to date, we analyzed 141 patients with either multiple myeloma (MM, n = 127) or primary plasma cell leukemia (PCL, n = 14) using fluorescence in situ hybridization. The overall incidence of illegitimate recombinations was 57% (80 of 141 patients). Analysis of this incidence according to Durie and Salmon stage, patients' status, i.e., MM versus primary PCL and diagnosis versus relapse, immunoglobulin type and subtype, and beta2-microglobulin value, did not show any correlation. To analyze the nature of the partner chromosomal region, we selected probes specific for the following genes: FGFR3 (4p16), MYC (8q24), CCND1 (11q13), MAF (16q23), and BCL2 (18q21). These probes, combined with differentially labeled 14q32 probes, were used for dual-color fluorescence in situ hybridization on interphase plasma cells. Among the 80 patients with illegitimate IGH rearrangement, we identified 23 IGH-CCND1 fusion cases [i.e., t(11;14)], 17 IGH-FGFR3 fusion cases [i.e., t(4;14)], 3 IGH-MYC fusion cases [i.e., t(8;14)], and only one IGH-MAF fusion case. No IGH-BCL2 fusion case was detected. In 37 of 80 patients, none of these partner genes was involved. Analysis of cases with specific translocations according to their bioclinical features at diagnosis did not show any correlation. This study demonstrated that CCND1 and FGFR3 genes are involved together in about 50% of MM and primary PCL patients with illegitimate IGH rearrangements.


In order to obtain further performance improvement concerning UV-shielding materials with good comfort and safety, a ball-milling assisted three-step coating method was carried out. First, the calcia-doped ceria (CDC) nanoparticles were prepared using co-precipitation method at pH12.0. Secondly, the as-prepared CDC powder was dispersed by ball-milling to break the big agglomerations of CDC. Thirdly, the colloid of ball-milled CDC particles was used to coat the CDC on plate-like titanate (PLT) substrate at a low pH of 6.5 to obtain the PLT/CDC composite. The effect of ball milling on the dispersion of CDC nanoparticles was checked by a laser diffraction particles size analyzer (SALD-7000, SHIMADZU). The morphology of PLT/CDC composites were evaluated by a field-emission scanning electron microscope. The oxidation catalytic activities, the UV-shielding ability and the dynamic friction coefficient of the obtained PLT/CDC composites were characterized. PLT/CDC composite with good comfort and low oxidation catalytic activity was successfully synthesized by the combination of PLT and CDC dispersed by ball-milling.


This paper critiques several recent works on the history of the mass media in Germany by contextualizing them within the wider wave of interest in the subject since the 1990s. It highlights the limited extent to which the findings of this research on the history of mass communications have been integrated into broader structures of interpretation for the period since the middle of the nineteenth century. Although we have long had a reasonably detailed understanding of the technological, commercial and aesthetic development of the media, the works under review reflect the more recent trend towards investigating their immense social and political impact in the broadest sense. For the twentieth century in particular, the mass media played an absolutely central role in social, cultural and political life. They both reflected and helped to generate profound changes in all of these spheres, and approaching the media as an integral part of 'mainstream' history thus furnishes a powerful tool for analysing the multiple interconnections between them.


Introduction
Men play a significant role in health-seeking behaviour of their families. While determinants of men's involvement in reproductive health matters have been studied, the same are likely to vary on the basis of social context. The objective of this study was to determine socio-demographic, cultural and health facility factors influencing male partner involvement in Antenatal Care (ANC) and Postnatal Care (PNC). Moreover, the study intended to determine perceived benefits of male involvement in ANC and PNC services.
Methods
This was a cross-sectional household survey. Simple random sampling was used to select 398 men and women participants out of 1,716 households in Bumula Sub-County. The men and women interviewed were not necessarily couples. Questionnaires were administered to participants within the households by face-to-face interview. The data collected through the questionnaires were on their sociodemographic, cultural, and health-related factors, and perceived benefits of male involvement in ANC and PNC. Key informant interviews were conducted among 14 health workers.
Results
Participants having college education were more likely to report male involvement (adjusted Odds Ratio (AOR) = 3.25, 95% CI [1.03-10.25], p=0.044) compared to those with no education. Participants who made joint decisions with partners (p<0.0001) and who viewed PNC as necessary (p=0.021) were more likely to report male involvement. Cultural practices were a major impediment to male involvement because of the portrayal of male dominance in roles of financial support and inferiority if a male accompanies a spouse to a clinic.
Conclusion
Education had a favorable influence on male involvement. Cultural practices were a major impediment to male involvement due to its portrayal of male dominance in roles of financial support and inferiority if male accompanies spouse to PNC and ANC. The study recommends intensified health education messaging to increase support for male involvement and a further study to explore specific societal norms and beliefs that undermine male partner participation in ANC and PNC.


To effectively investigate the fundamental characteristics of two-dimensional (2D) photonic crystals (PCs) with arbitrary 3D material anisotropy under the out-of-plane wave propagation, we establish a full-vectorial finite element method based eigenvalue algorithm to perform related analysis correctly. The band edge diagrams can be conveniently constructed from the band structures of varied propagation constants obtained from the algorithm, which is helpful for the analysis and design of photonic ban gap (PBG) fibers. Several PCs are analyzed to demonstrate the correctness of this numerical model. Our analysis results for simple PCs are checked with others' ones using different methods, including the transfer matrix method, the finite-difference frequency-domain (FDFD) method, and the plane-wave expansion method. And the validity of those for the most complex PC with arbitrary 3D anisotropy is supported by related liquid-crystal-filled PBG fiber mode analysis, which demonstrates the dependence of transmission properties on the PBGs, employing a full-vectorial finite element beam propagation method (FE-BPM).


Tree perception is an essential building block toward autonomous forestry operations. Current developments generally consider input data from lidar sensors to solve forest navigation, tree detection and diameter estimation problems, whereas cameras paired with deep learning algorithms usually address species classification or forest anomaly detection. In either of these cases, data unavailability and forest diversity restrain deep learning developments for autonomous systems. Therefore, we propose two densely annotated image datasets—43 k synthetic, 100 real—for bounding box, segmentation mask and keypoint detections to assess the potential of vision-based methods. Deep neural network models trained on our datasets achieve a precision of 90.4 % for tree detection, 87.2 % for tree segmentation and centimeter accurate keypoint estimations. We measure our models' generalizability when testing it on other forest datasets, and their scalability with different dataset sizes and architectural improvements. Overall, the experimental results offer promising avenues toward autonomous tree felling operations and other applied forestry problems. The datasets and pre-trained models in this article are publicly available on GitHub (https://github.com/norlab-ulaval/PercepTreeV1).


Study Design. A cross-sectional study to examine the sagittal kinematics of spine and lower limb movement during sit-to-stand (STS). Objective. To describe the sagittal kinematics of the spine and lower limb in healthy older adults during STS from 2 seat heights. Summary of Background Data. Older adults with age-related changes in the neuromusculoskeletal system are likely to have difficulty in STS. However, little is known about movement of the spinal regions and their interaction with the lower limb during STS, and the effect of seat height. Methods. Thirty-two healthy older adults aged over 60 years were videotaped performing STS from 2 seat heights. A 2-dimensional video motion analysis system with a revised sagittal model was used to measure angular displacement and velocity for the cervical, thoracic, lumbar spine, and the lower limb joints. Results. Concurrent flexion in the hip joint and lumbar spine was accompanied by extension in the thoracic, lower, and upper cervical spine as the trunk leaned forward. After the buttocks lifted off (LO) the chair, the movement interaction in the spine and hip joint was reversed. Some significant age-related changes during STS included downward head tilt at LO, decreased lumbar range of motion, and a large between-participant variation in the movement ratios. Statistically significant differences in the temporal parameters, angular displacement, and velocity were also found when standing from a lower chair. Conclusion. This study provides a detailed description of STS in healthy older adults, which has implications for rehabilitation of elderly patients who have difficulty with this activity. Clinicians need to be aware of the concurrent contribution of the hip joint and lumbar spine to trunk forward lean, the importance of thoracic extension during the pre-LO phase and the downward gaze at LO in healthy older adults.


Contamination of domestic water sources is a major concern in estuarine islands of coastal Karnataka. Awareness about practices for waste management and protection of water sources on these islands is poor. Using water having bacterial presence for domestic purposes can lead to various health risks in humans. The research investigates various factors leading to bacterial contamination of domestic water sources at Mudukudru island of Swarna river, in the Udupi district of Karnataka. Samples were collected during the Pre-monsoon (December–May) and Monsoon (June–September) seasons from 43 wells of individual houses on the island. The total concentration of bacteria, in the water samples was determined from microbial analysis. The multiple tube, most probable number (MPN), fermentation technique was adopted to determine the total coliform in the samples. Factors like the presence or absence of well lining, well housing, wellhead above or below ground level, the distance of well from sewage pits, and the distance of livestock from the wells were correlated. The results indicated bacterial contamination in 32 wells during the monsoon as compared to pre-monsoon data, with the total coliform count exceeding the standard of 500 MPN/100 mL. A significant relation between total coliform count in the water samples and the absence of well lining with sanitary protection is observed with p-value = .00 (p ⩽ .05) and wells located near (<10.0 m) to sewage pit with p-value ⩽ .05, were recorded respectively during both the seasons of sampling. The study highlights the major factors leading to bacterial contamination of wells on the island. Awareness about the planning of domestic wells through community-driven programs and hygiene education can be beneficial for the sustainable future of these islands.


Purpose
Clients in Nigeria have continuously questioned the quality of services being rendered by architectural firms in building projects. This study aims to investigate the areas of service responsible for determining client satisfaction.

Design/methodology/approach
The study uses questionnaire for data collection on perceived service quality and indicators of clients' satisfaction.

Findings
The results of descriptive statistics suggest that efficient analysis and compliance with client brief along with buildability, flexibility and comprehensiveness of the design are the main technical determinants of clients' satisfaction. Management measures for engendering clients' satisfaction include team communication and collaboration as well as regular site visits when required. The study established a significant relationship between the perceived service quality and client satisfaction. At technical level, economical design and compliance with budget, buildability, optimal and error-free design and timely delivery have significant correlation with the perception of service quality, which could engender client satisfaction. At management level, collaboration and coordination, integrity and trust, regular site visits and project management knowledge and skills had significant relationships with perceived service quality.

Originality/value
To improve overall client satisfaction, architects are expected to focus on these factors in the process of service delivery. Architects' expertise and skills can be further harnessed through continuous training and understanding of the project environment.


This paper describes how scheduling is the process of allocating resources to activities over time. In a scheduling problem, resources are scarce and constrained in various ways (e.g. in the order of activities and the capacity of resources), and the passenger is looking for a schedule of the activities that both satisfies the constraints and is optimal according to some criterion. Over the last decade, constraint-based scheduling (CBS) has become the dominant form of modeling and solving scheduling problems. This paper deals with a CBS model of real time management of train traffic through junctions, it focuses on the use of state resources to improve the model of conflicts between trains running in opposite directions.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES
The present study investigated pain trajectories of husbands and wives over their mid-later years, the grouping of these trajectories, and differences in baseline biopsychosocial profiles and health and well-being outcomes in later years across the pain trajectory groups.

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS
Growth mixture modeling was used to identify latent classes of 244 husbands' and wives' physical pain trajectories over their mid-later years (1994-2015, average ages of 44-65 years). Analyses were conducted to identify how these pain trajectory classes were associated with respondents' biopsychosocial profiles in 1994 and health and well-being in later years (2017, (>67 years).

RESULTS
The individual pain trajectories of husbands and wives were clustered into three heterogeneous groups with differing trajectory patterns. Non-normative pain trajectory groups (with either a high pain level and/or persistent pain) were associated with adverse baseline biopsychosocial characteristics. These groups also experienced poorer health and well-being outcomes in later years (2017) compared to those with consistently low pain after controlling for lagged measures in 2015.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS
The identification of pain trajectory groups and characteristics of group members provides a potentially useful prognostic tool for early preventive intervention efforts, treatment, and policy formation. Such interventions can promote and develop resiliency factors, thereby aiding in the redirection of middle-aged husbands' and wives' adverse pain trajectories.


This paper provides a critical examination of the approach of the European Court of Human Rights to the process of extradition. It focuses upon the application of the European Convention of Human Rights to the processes of extradition, in the recent cases of Mamatkulov and Abdurasulovic v. Turkey and Shamayev and Others v. Georgia and Russia, in order to reveal the inconsistencies and difficulties of the position of the European Court of Human Rights. These difficulties and inconsistencies are shown, in turn, to be the product of a broader, two-fold characterisation of extradition. This characterisation defines extradition as a process that involves the individual in an essentially administrative, non-criminal procedure. This definition is the result of the application of the Court's earlier case law, in particular, Maaouia v. France. This application is one in which formal extradition proceedings are held to belong, together with deportation and expulsion, to a wider category of state procedures that, as an integral part of state sovereignty, control the entry, residence and expulsion of aliens.


To clarify whether nicotine stimulates the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and thermogenesis in brown adipose tissue (BAT) and whether it promotes the resting metabolic rate (RMR), with resulting mitigation of obesity, we measured norepinephrine (NE) turnover (an indicator of SNS activity), guanosine-5'-diphosphate (GDP) binding (a thermogenic indicator), oxygen consumption in BAT, and RMR in monosodium-L-glutamate (MSG) obese and saline control mice after 2 weeks treatment with nicotine. Nicotine significantly increased NE turnover, GDP binding, oxygen consumption in BAT, and RMR, and significantly reduced body weight in MSG obese mice as well as in control mice without affecting food intake. These results suggest that nicotine stimulates NE turnover and thermogenesis in BAT, and promotes RMR, all of which contribute to the mitigation of obesity.


Abstract In the past several years, a fungal epidemic has devastated hibernating bat populations in eastern North America, with an estimated loss of 5.7 to 6.7 million bats as of January 2012. The potential for the disease to spread to bat populations in the western states and Canadian provinces remains unknown, but is cause for significant concern. This wildlife health crisis has been dubbed white-nose syndrome (WNS), for the distinctive white fungal growth that appears on the muzzles, ears, and wing membranes of affected bats. This fungus, the recently named species Geomyces destructans, has been determined to be the causal agent of WNS. However, relatively little is currently known about the ecology of this organism, its potential for invasiveness in the Northwest, and about how disease spreads within and between bat populations. Our purpose here is to summarize current epidemiological knowledge about WNS, in an ecological context relevant to efforts to understand the epidemic and predict its potential to spread to western bat populations. Because of strong similarities between WNS and some invasive fungal diseases of crops and forests, our approach is to incorporate epidemiological perspectives borrowed from the field of plant pathology as well as from wildlife pathology. We highlight research needs that will help to understand, predict, and manage this devastating wildlife disease.


Repetitive losses from natural disasters are a multi-billion-dollar problem, and climate change threatens to make it worse. However, the problem is avoidable, and this Article offers a new analytical framework to explain how.

While some disaster losses are inevitable, we argue that recurrent losses are a preventable consequence of real-estate market failures and policy shortcomings. By applying the concept of "adjustment failure costs," a recent contribution to property theory, we present a fresh perspective for understanding and alleviating the economic and human costs of disasters.

Adjustment failure costs describe the costs (or losses) that arise from difficulties in markets reaching efficiency. We contend that the problem of repetitive-loss properties is a manifestation of high adjustment failure costs. Vulnerable areas experience wave after wave of death and destruction before investments in disaster-prone properties slow. Meanwhile, federal disaster policies impede market adjustments by subsidizing hazardous redevelopment. Thus, the real estate market's response to disaster risk remains laggard despite a painfully pricey set of lessons.

Appreciating recurrent disaster losses as a symptom of high adjustment failure costs informs both when policies should intervene in real-estate markets and how such interventions can prevent future losses. In particular, adjustment-failure-cost analysis can guide deployment of risk reduction efforts like buyouts. Additionally, policies seeking to prevent recurrent losses should aim to lower adjustment failure costs by altering how vulnerable real estate is treated as a market commodity.

Based on these insights, the Article suggests specific changes to federal disaster laws to avoid repetitive disaster losses and inform climate-change adaptation efforts.


Tuber borchii is an ectomycorrhizal edible truffle,
commonly called "bianchetto"
(whitish truffle) to distinguish it from the more valuable white truffle found
in Italy (T. magnatum). Although Tuber borchii also has a fairly high
commercial value, information on its ecology, and especially its optimum
rainfall and temperature values are lacking. In recent years the issue of
climate change has steadily grown in importance, not only in the scientific
world, but also politically and in civil society. Over the last century there
has been a general increase in the temperature in Italy of about 1°C. Several
studies have underlined how climatic changes influence the optimum growth and
distribution of various species of truffle. This contribution aims to
illustrate the fluctuation of T. borchii sporocarps
production in different timescales and show how these alterations are driven by
rainfall and temperature factors. The research, carried out in five different
natural T. borchii production areas,
reveals that the production of truffles is significantly higher after autumn
months characterized by abundant rainfall and cold temperatures.


Proceedings: AACR 101st Annual Meeting 2010‐‐ Apr 17‐21, 2010; Washington, DC

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are caused by activating mutations in the KIT or PDGFRA receptor tyrosine kinase genes. While GISTs can successfully be treated with imatinib mesylate, many patients retain detectable tumor mass during treatment and experience relapse following termination of treatment. We wanted to determine whether these clinical observations result from direct, imatinib-induced effects on GIST cells. We have shown that imatinib can directly induce tumor cell quiescence in a proportion of GIST cells through an increase of nuclear CDH1, an activator of the anaphase-promoting complex (APC). This event was associated with downregulation of the F-box protein SKP2 and subsequent upregulation of its target, the CDK inhibitor p27(Kip1). Exit from the cell division cycle was reflected by reduced BrdU incorporation and reduced cyclin A protein expression. Quiescent tumor cells were able to re-enter the cell division cycle five days after removal of imatinib as indicated by enhanced BrdU incorporation, decrease in p27(Kip1) expression and increase of cyclin A expression. Furthermore, high SKP2 and low p27(Kip1) levels correlated with an increased risk of progression. Mechanistically, imatinib was found to modulate components of the human DREAM complex, a key regulator of quiescence. Imatinib treatment resulted in upregulation of p130 and downregulation of E2F4 as well as LIN37 and LIN9. After removal of imatinib, levels of p130 decreased, whereas E2F4, LIN37 and LIN9 levels increased, as a reflection of the cells re-entering the cell cycle. Our results indicate that GIST cells that do not undergo apoptosis in response to imatinib enter quiescence and are hence temporarily removed from the proliferative pool However, cells were found to readily re-enter the cell division cycle in the absence imatinib. Our results encourage further studies to target the quiescence pathway in GISTs therapeutically.

Citation Format: {Authors}. {Abstract title} [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 101st Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2010 Apr 17-21; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2010;70(8 Suppl):Abstract nr 1647.


A single-server queue concatenated with a multilayer channel encoder is considered. The main focus of this work is on minimization of the expected delay of a packet from entering the queue until completion of successful service. Tight bounds are derived for the expected delay for different numbers of coded layers. Numerical optimization is applied to find the optimal resource allocation minimizing the average delay. Similar bounds are also derived for the case of continuous layering. It is demonstrated that code layering may give pronounced performance gains in terms of delay, which are more impressive than those associated with throughput. This makes layering more attractive when communicating under stringent delay constraints.


Energy is an important factor in boosting and sustaining the economic growth level of a country. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between energy consumption and the economic growth of selected developed and developing countries from 1993–2019. For this purpose, we used the Pedroni co-integration method to determine the long-term relationship between economic growth and energy consumption. To estimate the long-term parameters, the panel fully modified OLS method and the Dumitrescu and Hurlin heterogeneous panel causality estimation technique were used, and the causality direction between variables was considered. The results showed that energy consumption had a positive and significant effect on the economic growth of both groups of countries. The causality analysis revealed the existence of a protection effect between renewable energy consumption and economic growth in developed countries. Hence, policies that lead to an increase in independent growth in these countries can effectively impact their growth. On the other hand, the existence of the feedback effect in developing countries shows that storage policies and reduced energy consumption may pose a threat to economic growth in these countries.


Hypertension developing after liver transplantation is nearly universal and likely reflects several pathogenic mechanisms. Foremost among these are altered vascular reactivity and vasoconstriction related to CSA, and probably FK506, administration, impaired GFR and sodium excretion, and the effects of steroids. This disorder is of both theoretical and practical importance in understanding blood pressure regulation in humans. Most importantly, it poses a considerable long-term cardiovascular risk for the transplant recipient. Recognition of acquired hypertension and timely intervention are among the primary management challenges for the transplant clinician.


This study analyzed the impact of the COVID‐19 pandemic on the detection of new cases of leprosy in the state of Bahia, Brazil. The periods January–September 2019 and January–September 2020 were compared. There was a 44.40% reduction in the diagnosis of leprosy when comparing the two periods (1,705 in 2019 and 948 in 2020). There was a reduction in the number of municipalities with reported cases: 251 municipalities in 2019 and 202 in 2020, expressing a reduction of 24.25%. Considering only the months following the arrival of the virus (April–September), the reduction was 51.10%. An inverse correlation was observed between the number of new cases of leprosy and the cumulative number of cases of COVID‐19 (Spearman's correlation coefficient = −0.840; P < 0.001) and the number of new monthly cases of COVID‐19 (Spearman's correlation coefficient = −0.817; P < 0.001). A slight increase was also observed in the proportion of multibacillary cases in the state (70.38% in 2019 and 72.69% in 2020) as well as in the proportion of individuals with the degree of physical disability not assessed at diagnosis, whose proportion rose from 16.39% in 2019 to 22.53% in 2020. The negative impact of COVID‐19 in tackling leprosy should be seen as a warning sign for health and political authorities.


Abstract : In the late 198Os the Marine Corps procured the M9O0 series 5-ton truck. Within four years of this acquisition, a serious corrosion problem developed with the M900 series truck. Efforts to control this corrosion have proven to be unsuccessful. The current maintenance budget does not adequately fund the corrosion program nor are the facilities and procedures able to handle the workload. The objective of this thesis was to identify the most immediate and cost effective way to handle corrosion control in Hawaii by analyzing the environment in which the Marine Corps units in Hawaii operate and recommend the most reasonable solution given the constraints. Research included an analysis of the background of Marine Corps equipment in service in Hawaii, as well as an identification of alternative measures of corrosion control management. Four alternatives were identified and evaluated in terms of the associated costs, manpower requirements, vehicle turnaround time, throughput capacity, and USMC controls. It was determined that the current corrosion control process is not adequate, and if left unchanged, the Marine Corps will face an overwhelming amount of deadlined vehicles before the replacements are available. The analysis concludes that the current method of corrosion management is inefficient. Alternative recommendations are then provided for more efficient use of the resources.


Because survey respondents may not be representative of the population being studied, the external validity of many research conclusions may be of concern. Nonresponse analyses helps address this concern. The purpose of this article is to identify how frequently nonresponse analyses are reported and what variables are related to these rates. The authors find that less than one third of the survey studies include nonresponse analyses. A number of journal and article quality measures and sample characteristics were found to be related to the reporting of nonresponse analyses.


We describe the case history of a 9-year-old boy who developed Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) following concomitant use of valproic acid and lamotrigine. He presented with rash and fever several weeks after introduction of lamotrigine, having been on valproic acid for seizure disorder. SJS happens to be one of the rare adverse reactions of antiepilepsy drugs (AED). Management is mainly supportive with care escalation when necessary because of the significant morbidity.