Background Hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis(HLH) is a rare frequently fatal group of immunodeficiencies that mostly present with cytopenias and infections. It is characterized by an immune dysregulation that results in excessive cytokine expression, phagocytosis of blood cells by activated macrophages, and end-organ damage. There are familial forms ("primary HLH"), typically presenting in childhood, and sporadic forms ("secondary HLH"), often presenting in adults. While primary HLH is often limited to mutations affecting perforin dependent cytotoxicity, limited data are available on secondary HLH which is associated with conditions, such as malignancy and infection, without identifiable genetic abnormalities. We reviewed diagnoses of HLH in adult treated at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis since 1998. We hypothesized that serum ferritin – which is elevated in most HLH cases – can help in differentiating HLH etiology and might predict outcome. Methods We identified 56 adult patients with HLH seen during inpatient and outpatient visits using HLH ICD-9 billing code 288.4. Clinical and laboratory/hematopathology records were reviewed; 12 cases were excluded from the analysis – 9 for missing data and 3 for insufficient diagnosis of HLH. We followed the 2004 Histiocyte Society Criteria for HLH. All results were presented as median plus range, mean +/- standard deviation, or percentages as indicated. We compared clinical and laboratory parameters between HLH groups by using the Student T-test, Mann-Whitney, or Chi square test, where appropriate. Predictive/prognostic factors were evaluated by univariate analysis. Results were considered significant at p Results Among the included 44 cases, the median age was 45 years (range, 20-80); 21 patients were male. Fever and splenomegaly were seen in 77.3% and 52.3% of patients, respectively. The most common laboratory abnormalities during hospitalization were hyperferritinemia (95.3%; median 17,414; range 225-684,000), pancytopenia/bicytopenia (72.7%), elevated triglycerides (52.5%; median 267.5; range 71-857), and low plasma fibrinogen (30.8%). Pathology revealed the characteristics hemophagocytosis of HLH in most cases. The recognized causes of HLH were: 29.5% malignancies (B-cell lymphoma [n=3], T-cell lymphoma [n=6], acute myeloid leukemia [n=1], myeloproliferative/myelodysplastic syndromes [n=2], metastatic breast cancer [n=1]), 25% viral (HCV [n=5], HIV [n=2], HBV [n=1], EBV [n=1], CMV [n=1], influenza [n=1]), 11.4% rheumatologic (systemic rheumatoid arthritis [n=3], Still9s disease [n=1], lupus-like syndrome [n=1]), 4.5% bacterial sepsis, 4.5% post solid organ transplantation (liver [n=1], lung [n=1]), 2.27% fungal infection, 2.27% histoplasma infection, 20.4% unknown. Corticosteroids were frequently used in treatment; few patients received cyclosporine, etoposide, intravenous immunoglobulins, or stem cell transplantation. Thirteen patients died, 9 (69%) of septic shock. The cohort was then dichotomized based on disease etiology into malignancy- and infection-associated HLH; this resulted in 13 and 15 cases in each category, respectively. Patients with malignancy-associated HLH had higher serum ferritin levels than those with infection-associated HLH but the different was not significant (84,592.8 +/- 185,009.4 vs. 23,262 +/- 19,090.5 ng/mL) (p = 0.23). Triglycerides were higher in the infection-associated HLH group compared to the other group with a difference approaching significance (358.6 +/- 201.7 vs. 233.8 vs. 124.6; p = 0.076). Overall, patient with higher ferritin levels were more likely to have a poor prognosis. At a cutoff ferritin level of 60,000 ng/mL, 62.5% of patients with higher levels died compared to 22.8% who died while having lower ferritin levels (p = 0.042). Conclusion HLH in the adults is associated with a wide spectrum of underlying diseases. It has a high mortality rate, particularly in patients with markedly elevated ferritin levels. Further studies are needed to develop prognostic criteria for outcomes in adult HLH. Analysis of additional cases is ongoing and will be presented at the meeting. Disclosures: No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.


Intracellular Notch (ICN) initiates DNA transcription in cooperation with CSL that acts as repressor in the absence of ICN. The ICN mediates recruitment of MAML protein, leading to the formation of minimal transcriptional complex, MAML/ICN/CSL/DNA. Crystal structure reveals that different conformations exist between the free (CSL/DNA) and bound (ICN/MAML/CSL/DNA) forms. The significance of this modulation of the CSL/DNA molecular complex can be better understood by experimental approaches that aim to elucidate the cause and timing of these events. There are four orthologues of human ICN (ICN1-4). We studied interactions between human full-length ICN1 and CSL/DNA without involvement of MAML, in vitro, and found that 1) the EMSA profile of CSL/DNA is altered in the presence of ICN1 as a consequence of an intrinsic change(s) in CSL/DNA, and not due to the formation of an ICN/CSL/DNA molecular complex; 2) ICN1 destabilizes CSL/DNA. These findings indicate that human ICN1 functions to modulate the CSL/DNA molecular complex for subsequent recruitment of MAML, and that modulated CSL/DNA cannot accommodate ICN1 in the absence of MAML. The latter in turn, implies that the formation of the MAML/ICN1/CSL/DNA is likely to be a collective event, wherein preassembly of MAML and ICN1 as a binary complex co-localizes at the CSL/DNA promoter site, or the MAML/ICN1/CSL complex is pre-assembled prior to binding to the promoter, rather than ICN1 arriving at CSL/DNA ahead of MAML and/or other associated transcription factors. The novel finding that ICN1 destabilizes the CSL/DNA complex opens new possibilities of transcriptional regulation by Notch.


There is substantial heterogeneity across industries in the level of interdependence between new and old technologies. I propose a measure of this interdependence–an index of sequentiality in innovation–which is the transfer rate of patents in a particular industry. I find that highly sequential industries have higher profitability, higher variance of firm growth, lower exit rates, and lower rates of patent expiry. To better understand these trends, I construct a model of firm dynamics where the productivity of firms evolves endogenously through innovations. New innovators either replace existing technologies or must purchase the rights to existing technologies from incumbents in order to produce, depending on the level of sequentiality in the industry. Estimating the model using data on US firms and recent data on US patent transfers, I can account for a large fraction of the cross-industry trends described above. Because innovation results in larger monopoly distortions in more sequential industries, there is an overinvestment of research inputs into these industries. This misallocation, which amounts to 2.5% in consumption equivalent terms, can be partially remedied using a patent policy featuring weaker protection in more sequential industries, producing welfare gains of 1.7%. JEL classification: L11, O31, O33, O34, O38


The influence of overall treatment time in the results of fractionated radiation treatment was initially established in experimental tumors and, subsequently, in the clinic. The availability of techniques (antibodies against halogenated thymidine analogues and flow cytometry) which permit determinations of the duration of the synthesis phase, the labeling index, and the tumor potential doubling time (Tpot) in a short period of time and requiring only a small biopsy of tumor tissue, has expanded interest in the relationship between tumor cell proliferation and response to irradiation. A valuable tool in the study of this relationship are human tumor xenografts. Previous studies have shown a substantial intratumoral heterogeneity in the determinations of Tpot. Different methods of calculation of the kinetic parameters have been published. We have conducted a heterogeneity analysis and an evaluation of the different calculation methods in order to define the validity of Tpot as a proliferation rate measurement in human tumor xenografts. Results show the intertumoral variability in Tpot [between different types of human tumor xenografts systems (coefficient of variation = 88.2%)] to be greater than mean intratumoral variation (coefficient of variation = 30.8%); this suggests that this variation is potentially adequate to serve as a predictor of response. The diverse calculation methods provided significantly different absolute values but not different tumor ranking, probably because the time interval between labeling and sampling was maintained, for all the samples, between 6 and 8 h. Our study has found significant differences between the labeling index and the S-phase fraction determined with the DNA profile in 9 out of 10 tumor types. No correlation was found between the DNA index of the tumors in this series and their proliferation rate.


wrote in the wake of one another (Zola, Maupassant, Flaubert). The study itself relies — paradoxically, perhaps, but effectively — on adopting the mosaic form, each chapter engaging with a particular set of issues relating to the adaptive process, with one canonical author, and with one or more media. In this way Griffiths and Watts's work illustrates how thinking or writing about adaptation may be viewed as adaptive processes in which the theory of adaptation is always transformed.


Becketts late works for film, theatre, and television approach the condition of installation pieces, minimalistic and iterative texts that resemble instruction manuals more than theatre. At the same time, these works are preoccupied with archival themes: personal and public memory, history, documents and their technical media. While his works interrogate the condition of archives, Becketts own archive is characterized by the increasing visibility in Becketts later texts of elaborate instructions, maps, and charts, as in the diagrams that fill the text of Quad. Yet, Becketts authorial control over his works became known for its insistence on media specificity, the reluctance to translate a work from one medium to another. Becketts extraliterary texts (as Gontarski and Chris Ackerly have described them) strive to become their own archive, not as a definitive version recorded in film or technical media, but as sets of instructions to be repeated, and thus capable of producing their own series of iterations. These iterations, in fact, characterize contemporary media archives, as they become organized according to the modular logic of a database over and against the temporal logic of the traditional archive. This essay conceptualizes the archive of Becketts works in a transmedia context in which concepts of work and author no longer function to authorize discrete versions of Becketts extraliterary texts.


ABSTRACT With regard to improving higher education feedback practices, there is an increasing interest in using the efficacy of dialogue rather than the more traditional unidirectional approaches. We build on this impetus by considering how the ethics of care can be used to analyse the dialogical aspects of feedback. By diffractively reading insights of Boud and Molloy [2013a. "What is the Problem with Feedback?" In Feedback in Higher and Professional Education: Understanding it and Doing it Well, edited by D. Boud, and E. Molloy, 1–10. London: Routledge; Boud, D., and E. Molloy. 2013b. "Rethinking Models of Feedback for Learning: The Challenge of Design." Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education 38 (6): 698–712] on dialogic feedback through the moral elements of care ethics, this paper proposes a novel way of discerning the extent to which the dialogical giving and receiving of feedback contributes to learning. To illustrate this, we draw on experiences from an Emerging Technologies professional development course for higher educators. We examine our own dialogical interactions of giving and receiving feedback using the moral elements of care ethics – attentiveness, responsibility, competence, responsiveness and trust, to provide a concrete example of how the ethics of care can be used productively for evaluating feedback practices.


Abstract The development of optimal weed management strategies that rely, in part, on crop interference will require an understanding of how weeds compensate for limitations in above- and belowground resources. Trade-offs in the leaf morphology and biomass partitioning of rice and late watergrass were investigated under glasshouse conditions in 1999 and 2000. Both species responded to shade with increased height, reduced biomass, greater partitioning of biomass to leaves, and greater leaf area ratios. At the lowest light level (18% sunlight), plants of both species showed little response to nitrogen (N). However, height, tillers, biomass, and leaf area increased for plants grown at 50% and full sunlight as N increased from 0 to 224 kg N ha−1. Late watergrass exhibited more plasticity in specific leaf area and root weight ratio than rice in response to shade. This plasticity contributed to the ability of late watergrass to maintain a higher percent of its tillers and total dry weight than rice when sunlight was reduced by 50%. These results support the hypothesis that except at low light levels, limited N further reduces the growth of shaded late watergrass plants. Thus, weed management strategies that limit the plasticity of late watergrass by manipulating light and N availability are likely to be more effective than strategies that rely on manipulating a single resource. Nomenclature: Late watergrass, Echinochloa phyllopogon (Stapf) Koss ECHPH; rice, Oryza sativa L.


Background and objective
A successful family physician program needs ongoing and full cooperation between people and the organizations in charge. Ensuring the satisfaction of family physicians through improvement of the underlying factors could motivate them to provide high-quality services. This study aimed to determine the family physicians' satisfaction level with the factors affecting the dynamism of the urban family physicians program in the Fars and Mazandaran provinces of Iran.

Method
This cross-sectional study was carried out in urban areas in the Fars and Mazandaran provinces in 2016. The sample consisted of 143 and 96 family physicians, respectively, in Fars and Mazandaran provinces and was selected using the stratified random sampling method. Data were collected using a questionnaire and included both sociodemographic variables and factors assessing the family physicians' satisfaction levels. Each factor was scored based on a Likert scale from 0 to 5 points, and any satisfaction level higher than 3 out of 5 was equated with being satisfied.

Results
The overall satisfaction levels among family physicians in Fars and Mazandaran provinces were 2.77±0.53 and 3.37±0.56, respectively, revealing a statistically significant difference between provinces (p<0.001). Moreover, the mean satisfaction scores for the performances of healthcare centers, insurance companies, specialists, healthcare workers, and the population covered were 2.78±0.1, 2.54±0.9, 2.52±0.8, 4.24±0.07, and 2.96±0.8, respectively. The family physicians' levels of satisfaction were significantly correlated with population size (p=0.02, r= -0.106), and willingness to stay in an urban family physician program (p<0.001, r= +0.398).

Conclusion
This study revealed that family physicians exhibited a low level of satisfaction with the urban family physician program. Given the direct association between family physicians' satisfaction levels and retention in the program, it is expected that family physicians will no longer stay in the program, and it is likely to have subsequent executive problems.


Lanthanide doped/based oxide thin films were deposited by liquid injection metal organic chemical vapor deposition or atomic layer deposition. Frequency dispersion is often found in the capacitance-voltage measurements. After taking the extrinsic frequency dispersion into account, the frequency dependence of the dielectric constant (k-value), that is the intrinsic frequency dispersion (dielectric relaxation) has been successfully theoretically modeled. For the physical mechanism of the dielectric relaxation, it was found that the effect of grain sizes for the high-k materials structure mainly originates from higher surface stress in smaller grain due to its higher concentration of grain boundary. Variations in the grain sizes of the samples are governed by the deposition and annealing conditions and have been estimated using a range of techniques including Scherrer analysis of the X-ray diffraction patterns. The relationship extracted between grain size and dielectric relaxation suggests that tuning properties for improved frequency dispersion can be achieved by controlling grain size, hence, the strain at the nanoscale dimensions.


Chronic heart failure (CHF) is a major contributor to cardiovascular disease and is the leading cause of hospitalization for those over the age of 65, which is estimated to account for close to seventy billion dollars in healthcare costs by 2030 in the US alone. The successful therapies for preventing and reversing CHF progression are urgently required. One strategy under active investigation is to restore dysregulated myocardial calcium (Ca2+), a hallmark of CHF. It is well established that intracellular Ca2+ concentrations are tightly regulated to control efficient myocardial systolic contraction and diastolic relaxation. Among the many cell surface proteins and intracellular organelles that act as the warp and woof of the regulatory network controlling intracellular Ca2+ signals in cardiomyocytes, sarco/endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+ ATPase type 2a (SERCA2a) undoubtedly plays a central role. SERCA2a is responsible for sequestrating cytosolic Ca2+ back into the sarcoplasmic reticulum during diastole, allowing for efficient uncoupling of actin-myosin and subsequent ventricular relaxation. Accumulating evidence has demonstrated that the expression of SERCA2a is downregulated in CHF, which subsequently contributes to severe systolic and diastolic dysfunction. Therefore, restoring SERCA2a expression and improving cardiomyocyte Ca2+ handling provides an excellent alternative to currently used transplantation and mechanical assist devices in the treatment of CHF. Indeed, advancements in safe and effective gene delivery techniques have led to the emergence of SERCA2a gene therapy as a potential therapeutic choice for CHF patients. This mini-review will succinctly detail the progression of SERCA2a gene therapy from its inception in plasmid and animal models, to its clinical trials in CHF patients, highlighting potential avenues for future work along the way.


The article "MiR-1269a acts as an onco-miRNA in non-small cell lung cancer via down-regulating SOX6, by R.-H. Jin, D.-J. Yu, M. Zhong, published in Eur Rev Med Pharmacol Sci 2018; 22 (15): 4888-4897- DOI: 10.26355/eurrev_201808_15625-PMID: 30070324" has been withdrawn from the authors to some technical reasons (there are some errors and incorrect data). The Publisher apologizes for any inconvenience this may cause. https://www.europeanreview.org/article/15625.


Reports of fatal and severe liver injury associated with treatment of latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) with the drug combination rifampin and pyrazinamide (RZ) prompted CDC to issue revised guidelines for the use of this regimen on August 31, 2001. To determine if these revised guidelines were effective in reducing morbidity and mortality, CDC has continued to collect reports on adverse effects associated with this regimen. This update summarizes the results of this ongoing investigation.


This study examines the surface morphology, microstructure, and chemical composition of titanium surfaces treated by anodic spark oxidation in phosphate buffer solution at pH 2, 7 and 12. The pH of the electrolyte was found to play a substantial role in the formation of different morphologies, chemical compositions, and pore dimensions with microporous structures. SEM revealed variation in the topologies of the anodized surface with electrolyte pH. Porous structures with uniform pores and high roughness were obtained in pH 12 solutions. However, intense anatase crystal was obtained at pH 7. The relationship between surface characteristics of titanium and initial interactions of titanium-osteoblasts was also in vestigated. Our findings demonstrated the cell viability and proliferation on the anodic oxides produced at pH 12 to be superior to those produced at pH 2 and 7 as well as on the control titanium surface. This study also provides evidence of enhanced osteoblast adhesion on anodized metal substrates under in vitro conditions.


Hypocalcaemia is a possible sequela of thyroidectomy, the causes of which are not fully understood. Today, correct surgical technique is the most important factor in decreasing the incidence of hypocalcaemia. We analysed 1223 patients (930 total thyroidectomies, 293 hemi-thyroidectomies) treated in our institute from January 1995 to July 2003. Serum calcium, ionized calcium, parathyroid hormone and phosphoraemia were screened pre- and postoperatively. Hypocalcaemia, as defined by a serum calcium concentration below 8.5 mg/dL, occurred in 241 patients (25.1%). In 90.9% of these patients, serum calcium was normal 7 days after thyroidectomy. In three patients we registered permanent hypoparathyroidism 180 days after thyroidectomy. We found a statistically significant difference in the incidence of hypocalcaemia between patients treated for benign disease and those treated for malignant disease with a greater incidence in the latter group (P < 0.05). Several factors are important in determining the incidence of post-thyroidectomy hypocalcaemia but the inadvertent excision of the parathyroid gland, ischaemia and injury are the main causes of the lowering of serum calcium concentrations.


In the potential theory, isochrony was introduced by Michel Henon in 1959 to characterize astrophysical observations of some globular clusters. Today, Michel Henon's isochrone potential is mainly used for his integrable property in numerical simulations, but is generally not really known. In a recent paper [29], we have presented new fundamental and theoretical results about isochrony that have particular importance in self-gravitating dynamics and which are detailed in this paper. In particular, new characterization of the isochrone state has been proposed which are investigated in order to analyze the product of the fast relaxation of a self-gravitating system. The general paradigm consists in considering that this product is a lowered isothermal sphere (King Model). By a detailed numerical study we show that this paradigm fails when the isochrone model succeeds in reproducing the quasi-equilibrium state obtained just after fast relaxation.


Aerosol samples have been collected at three stations on the coast of Antarctica. At Dumont d'Urville Station, samples have been collected for 4 years, at Halley Station for 2 years, and at Neumayer Station for 12 years. Fresh snow samples have also been collected at the three sites. At Halley, daily surface snow samples were taken, as well as firn cores covering the sampling period. Meteorological (including upper air) data are available at the three sites. In the subsequent papers of this special section, the data from the three stations have been combined in order to make general statements about the chemistry of aerosol in coastal Antarctica, about the differences between sectors of Antarctica, and about the relationship between air concentrations and the chemistry that is eventually seen in ice cores. This paper summarizes the samples collected and the sampling methods used at the three sites. It also highlights the main role of each paper in this special section.


This study aimed to evaluate the growth of two species and one eucalyptus hybrid irrigated with different wastewaters. The experiment was carried out in a greenhouse in a completely randomized split-plot experimental design with three replications. The effluent included: Urban source, beef cattle slaughterhouse, poultry/swine slaughterhouse and soy processing/dairy plant from the wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). In the subplot, the wastewater was diluted to the concentrations of 0, 25, 50, 75 and 100%. In the subplot, two species (Eucalyptus citriodora and Eucalyptus urophylla) and a eucalyptus hybrid (Eucalyptus urophylla x Eucalyptus grandis) were tested. The following physiological attributes were evaluated: mortality, root area, leaf area, stem diameter, plant height, green matter mass and dry matter weight. The results showed that the water from the beef cattle slaughterhouse WWTP, at 50% concentration, impaired growth of genotypes and promoted higher mortality values. As the concentrations of the four wastewater types increased, there was a significant variation for all characteristics except for: leaf area, plant height and dry matter weight with the soy processing/dairy WWTP water. The tested waters might be used in seedling irrigation of the two Eucalyptus plant species and the hybrid.

 Key words: Sewage sludge, water reuse, seedling production.


Expressions for the heat and momentum transport are obtained for a dilute gas in a steady state with both temperature and velocity gradients. The results are derived from a kinetic model recently proposed: the Liu model [Phys. Fluids A 2, 277 (1990)]. This model improves the well-known Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook (BGK) model equation. At a hydrodynamic level, the solution is characterized by a constant pressure, a linear profile of the flow velocity with respect to a space variable scaled with the local collision frequency, and a parabolic profile of the temperature with respect to the same variable. The shear viscosity and thermal conductivity coefficients are explicitly obtained. They are nonlinear functions of the shear rate and their only dependence on the temperature gradient is through their zero shear-rate values. In addition, the shear-rate dependence of the viscometric functions is also analyzed. A comparison with previous results derived from the BGK equation is carried out.


In insulators, the method of Marzari and Vanderbilt [Phys. Rev. B 56, 12 847 (1997)] can be used to generate maximally localized Wannier functions whose centers are related to the electronic polarization. In the case of layered insulators, this approach can be adapted to provide a natural definition of the local polarization associated with each layer, based on the locations of the nuclear charges and one-dimensional Wannier centers comprising each layer. Here, we use this approach to compute and analyze layer polarizations of ferroelectric perovskite superlattices, including changes in layer polarizations induced by sublattice displacements (i.e., layer-decomposed Born effective charges) and local symmetry breaking at the interfaces. The method provides a powerful tool for analyzing the polarization-related properties of complex layered oxide systems.


Summary: Harmonizing quality control (QC) of large-scale second and third-generation sequencing datasets is key for enabling downstream computational and biological analyses. We present Alfred, an efficient and versatile command-line application that computes multi-sample QC metrics in a read-group aware manner, across a wide variety of sequencing assays and technologies. In addition to standard QC metrics such as GC bias, base composition, insert size and sequencing coverage distributions it supports haplotype-aware and allele-specific feature counting and feature annotation. The versatility of Alfred allows for easy pipeline integration in high-throughput settings, including DNA sequencing facilities and large-scale research initiatives, enabling continuous monitoring of sequence data quality and characteristics across samples. Alfred supports haplotagging of BAM/CRAM files to conduct haplotype-resolved analyses in conjunction with a variety of next-generation sequencing based assays. Alfred's companion web application enables interactive exploration of results and comparison to public datasets. Availability and implementation: Alfred is open-source and freely available at https://tobiasrausch. com/alfred/. Contact: email@example.com or firstname.lastname@example.com Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.


This paper presents a decentralized load frequency control (LFC) based on H∞ optimal control theory with an observer. A few LFC schemes have been proposed based on the optimal control theory, but they have not considered the change of system parameters in operation and the characteristics of load disturbances in a target system. In this paper, H∞ robust control is introduced to address such problems. Owing to its practical merit, the proposed control scheme is a decentralized LFC. Employing observer theory, the proposed method requires only frequency and tie‐line power deviation in each area. Numerical simulations are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. H∞ control was proven to show greater effectiveness of damping disturbance over the conventional optimal control by the design of control systems aimed at restricting the H∞ norm of its transfer function. In particular, when a decentralized LFC is applied, by reducing the system size, H∞ norm is easier to dampen; thus H∞ control is more effective in the decentralized control. Future research topics include the design of H∞ control system with a weight on frequency response. © 2001 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 136(3): 28–38, 2001


Folate deficiency is implicated in human colon cancer. The effects of feeding rats a folate-deficient diet for 24 weeks on DNA damage (8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine), DNA repair [O6-methylguanine-DNA methyltransferase (MGMT) and 8-oxoguanine-DNA glycosylase (OGG-1) activity], and epigenetic parameters (genome-wide cytosine methylation and indices of cellular methylation status) were investigated. Relative to control diet, the folate-deficient diet resulted in significantly reduced levels of serum (∼80%; P < 0.0001), whole blood (∼40%; P < 0.0001), and tissue folate (between 25% and 60% depending on the tissue sampled; P < 0.05); increased plasma total homocysteine (∼35%; P < 0.05); and decreased S-adenosylmethionine to S-adenosylhomocysteine concentrations (∼11%; P < 0.05). There was no significant change in the levels of 5-methyldeoxycytidine in liver or colon DNA, nor in the activity of liver DNA cytosine methyltransferase. However, there were significant increases in 8-oxo-7,8-dihydroguanine (P < 0.001) in lymphocyte DNA and in levels of the DNA repair proteins OGG-1 (∼27%; P < 0.03) and MGMT (∼25%; P < 0.003) in the liver, but not in the colon. This may reflect the ability of the liver, but not the colon, to upregulate DNA repair enzymes in response to either elevated DNA damage or an imbalance in the nucleotide precursor pool. These results show that folate deficiency can significantly modulate DNA damage and DNA repair, providing mechanisms by which it plays a role in the etiology of human cancer. We speculate that the inability of colon tissue to respond to folate deficiency occurs in humans and may increase the potential for malignant transformation. Cancer Prev Res; 3(1); 92–100


Merging decisions from different modalities is a crucial problem in Audio-Visual Speech Recognition. To solve this, state synchronous multi-stream HMMs have been proposed for their important advantage of incorporating stream reliability in their fusion scheme. This paper focuses on stream weight adaptation based on modality confidence estimators. We assume different and time-varying environment noise, as can be encountered in realistic applications, and, for this, adaptive methods are best suited. Stream reliability is assessed directly through classifier outputs since they are not specific to either noise type or level. The influence of constraining the weights to sum to one is also discussed.


Out of the 90, 000 doctors that practised in Germany under the Third Reich, about 350 committed medical crimes. In 1939, out of the 16, 300 dentists with a diploma, no more than a hundred were working in concentration camps; administrative dentists included. Who are they? What about the famous medical code published in Nuremberg in 1947? Which role for the dentists in this medical code of ethics? .


The case of a 56-year-old man with contemporary benign granular cell tumour of the oesophagus and stomach is reported. Surgical resection of the oesophagus and stomach was performed after the diagnosis of squamous cell carcinoma on a superficial oesophageal biopsy which showed a pseudo-epitheliomatous hyperplasia of the stratified squamous epithelium covering the oesophageal Granular Cell Tumour (GCT). Hyperplasia was also found in the overlying gastric mucosa. Eight GCTs of the oesophagus, observed between 1980 and 1985, were reevaluated to compare the neoplastic characteristics and the occurrence of overlying epithelial hyperplasia. Only one patient was female; three had multiple oesophageal tumours and four showed pseudo-epitheliomatous hyperplasia. A review of the literature is included with emphasis on the rare cases of multiple GCTs. The association of chronic alcoholism with GCT of the gastro-intestinal tract is also stressed.


Based on the concept of constructivism and CDIO engineering education, teaching reform of "microwave circuits and devices" course is carried out by dividing it into two parts, 32 hours for knowledge teaching and 8 hours for design practice, and the latter part is discussed in this paper. Several design tasks related to the course knowledge are arranged, and the students are required to finish the design tasks on the team-based approch. i.e., one task for each team. It is shown that this reform can improve the ability of students in creative thinking and engineering implementation, and it is a useful attempt of CDIO engineering education applying in this course.


Acidithiobacillus thiooxidans is of paramount importance in the development of biomining technologies. Being widely recognized as an extreme acidophile, extensive research has been dedicated to understanding its significant role in the extraction of several ores in recent years. However, there still exist significant molecular uncertainties surrounding this species. This study focuses on developing a taxonomic assignment method based on the sequencing of the 16S-5S rRNA cluster, along with a qPCR-based technology enabling precise growth determination. Additionally, an approach to understanding its response to acid stress is explored through RT-PCR and MALDI-TOF analysis. Our findings indicate that when subjected to pH levels below 1, the cell inhibits central (carbon fixation and metabolism) and energy (sulfur metabolism) metabolism, as well as chaperone synthesis, suggesting a potential cellular collapse. Nevertheless, the secretion of ammonia is enhanced to raise the environmental pH, while fatty acid synthesis is upregulated to reinforce the cell membrane.


In this study, an unsupervised neural network model is proposed for fingerprint classification. The proposed model uses directional flow or local ridge orientation (LRO) information and the relative locations of the fingerprint singular points as features for the neural network. The LRO is obtained by storing the directional data in a neighborhood from the raw fingerprint and this data is filtered to prevent the flow errors due to noisy sections of the scanned fingerprint. From the resulting LRO data, the singular points are extracted and the information is used as the input to the SimNet unsupervised neural network model and the fingerprint is classified accordingly. For identification, the raw image is passed through a band-pass filter and the minutiae are extracted from the processed and thinned fingerprint image. The fingerprint identification is performed within the obtained class by comparing the minutiae of the input fingerprint to the other existing prints in that class. The number of classes can be adjusted by the number of the singular points and the distance between these points. The results show that the model can generate a hierarchical classification model that can reduce the search space for identification which could be used in small to mid size fingerprint database applications.


Groups of weanling pigs (5 castrated males, 5 females per group) were fed purified diets containing the NRC's requirements for nutrients and 0, 1.1, 4.4 or 7.7% olestra for 12 wk. Graded concentrations of vitamins A, D2 and E were added at each olestra concentration. The primary purpose of the study was to establish relationships between dietary concentration of olestra and the amounts of vitamins A, D2 and E needed to restore tissue concentrations of these vitamins to control concentrations. A secondary purpose was to confirm that olestra does not affect the status of vitamin K or water-soluble nutrients. Liver concentrations of vitamins A, E and B12, iron and zinc and bone concentrations of ash, zinc, calcium and phosphorus, were measured in a group of pigs killed at the start of the study and in all pigs killed at wk 12. Growth, feed efficiency, hematology, clinical chemistry, blood concentrations of retinol, alpha-tocopherol, 25-hydroxyergocalciferol, 25-hydroxycholecalciferol, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D, folate, iron, total iron-binding capacity, zinc and calcium and adipose concentration of vitamin E were measured at 4-wk intervals. Prothrombin time was measured weekly for the control and 7.7% olestra groups, monthly for others. Relationships derived from measured tissue concentrations of vitamins A and E showed that constant amounts of the vitamins were required per unit mass of olestra in the diet to restore tissue concentrations to control values. Such a relationship could not be determined for vitamin D because exposure of the pigs to UV light resulted in an apparent interaction between vitamin D2 and vitamin D3. Olestra did not affect growth, digestible feed efficiency, vitamin K status or the status of the water-soluble micronutrients, in agreement with other studies in the pig.


Modern electric power systems can be considered as the consequence of the continuous technological evolution, often pushed by economical, political and social requirements. As an example, the main transformations in electric distribution systems arise from the diffusion of
"Distributed Generation" (DG), i.e. small production plants, often supplied through renewable energy sources, whose presence has significant implications on both energy management (since "active networks" are needed to take into account bidirectional energy flows by means of innovative devices) and protection systems (since adaptive protections can be used to automatically reconfigure the network in the case of fault occurrence). In general, in both transmission and distribution networks, monitoring, control and protection tasks are usually performed by Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs), which can be, by their nature,
connected to each other by suitable communication links. A famous example of this approach is represented by the series of Standard IEC 61850 (Communication Networks and Systems in Substations). These standards are related to networks and communication systems within the substation, but are used as a reference in all those circumstances in which an electrical system is managed through the use of IEDs communicating with each other (as in the case of active
distribution networks). In this way, control and protection schemes practically become algorithms, whose correct
behavior is determined firstly by the availability of data measured in strategic points of the network. The critical role of the above mentioned applications, which clearly emerges from their implications on safety, as well as from economical considerations, makes it of fundamental importance the evaluation of correctness and trustworthiness of the information on which such actions are based. Many of these applications implemented for control and protection purposes in electric power
networks require the acquisition of information by Wide Area Monitoring System (WAMS) from strategic points of the system and need that the acquired data have an extremely accurate common time reference. Generally, amplitudes and phases of the positive sequence voltages are the
quantities to be estimated in the network nodes. Because of the extension of power networks, suitable measurement devices should be used to ensure proper synchronization between the collected data. Thus, the key components of WAMSs are represented by Phasor Measurement Units
(PMUs) designed to measure synchronized phasors (synchrophasors). Typical synchronization specifications for synchrophasors measurement are in the order of
few microseconds. Such a tight synchronization requirements lead to the need of highly accurate clock settings, such as the ones bases on satellite systems. Currently, the Global Positioning System (GPS) is the only system to provide a time reference with sufficient availability and accuracy for
most distributed monitoring and control applications in power systems. As an alternative, in situations where many devices are located in a geographically limited sub-area (e.g. a substation) of the system and are connected to each other by suitable communication networks (as described by the series of standard IEC 61850), it could be advantageous to distribute the time reference of a high accuracy clock to the devices through suitable network synchronization protocols. Between them, the PTP (Precision Time Protocol)
defined in the Standard IEEE 1588 offers the best accuracy performance. It is worth mentioning that the Standard IEC 61850-9-2 practically indicates Ethernet as a preferred communication solution, thus offering an optimal support to implement 1588 synchronization in electric power plants. In this context, it should be recalled that the IEEE 1588
profile for power system applications (project PC37.238) is being developed under IEEE Power System Relaying Committee (PSRC) and Power System Substation Committee (PSSC). The scope covers all power system applications, including Synchrophasors. The group works in close coordination with TC57 WG10, which plans to adopt the PTP profile in the next revision of IEC 61850. In the first part of this thesis, the state of the art regarding power system evolution, IEEE
Standard on synchrophasor measurements and synchronization system is presented. In particular, the problems related to the evolution of the power system along with some possible advantages due to the implementation of Phasor Measurement Units in Wide Area Monitoring Systems are introduced. After a general description of the architecture of a distributed measurement system based on PMUs, the new synchrophasors standard is analysed, highlighting the differences with
previous versions, the requirements for the measurement of synchrophasors and the definition of synchrophasor under steady-state and dynamic conditions. Moreover, a summary of the possible synchronization solutions is introduced. For each solution, advantages and disadvantages are highlighted. In particular, satellite system and network based protocol are analysed in detail. In the second part of the thesis, a synchronization solution able to exploit the worldwide availability of the GPS and the possibility to disseminate the synchronization signal with high
accuracy by means of the network synchronization protocol IEEE 1588 is proposed. This solution is used for the synchronization of PMUs. The objective of this work is to analyse the possibility to synchronize PMUs via PTP and to study the impact that such a synchronization solution has on the performance of measurement systems under both steady-state and anomalous operating conditions,
as well as its effects on the applications that make use of their data. Two different versions of the PTP are used: the first one uses hardware-assisted time-stamp mechanism whereas the second one uses software-only time-stamp mechanism. Two experimental systems are characterized in detail with an accurate description of all the used hardware and software components, and their synchronization performances under different operative conditions are analysed. Finally, among all the sources which may contribute to the uncertainty introduced by PMUs, the last part of this thesis analyses the impact of the phasor estimation models on the accuracy of these devices, with particular attention to algorithms proposed in literature for the estimation of dynamic phasors and studies their performances under several different conditions.


Between 1937 and 1940 the Taxonomic Principles Committee of the newly-founded Association for the Study of Systematics in Relation to General Biology (later the Systematics Association) attempted to define the relationship between evolution and taxonomy. The people who took part in the discussion were W.T. Caleman, C.R.P. Diver, J.S.L. Gilmour, J.S. Huxley, W.D. Lang, J.R. Norman, R. Melville, O.W. Richards, M.A. Smith, T.A. Sprague, H. Hamshaw Thomas, W.B. Turrill, B.P. Uvarov, A.F. Watkins, E.I. White, and A.J. Wilmott. Most of the botanists asserted that taxonomy was a practical matter to be kept distinct from phylogenetic speculation, and most of the zoologists insisted that taxonomists must strive to represent evolution if they wished to be scientific. The disagreement seemed to be hardening rather than approaching compromise when World War Two stopped the committee's work.


Most commonly used data transfer protocols assume that every packet loss is an indication of network congestion. This interaction between the error recovery and the congestion control procedures results in a low utilisation of the link when there is an appreciable rate of losses due to link errors. This issue is significant for wireless links, particularly those with a long propagation delay. A solution for this problem of inability to separate congestion packet loss from other types of packet loss has been presented and analysed using simulation techniques.


Hyperlipidemias represent a group of metabolic disorders characterized by an increase in plasma cholesterol or triglycerides, or both. Cutaneous or tendon xanthomas may or may not be present, depending on the severity of the lipid abnormality. A high incidence of coronary heart disease is a prominent feature in some forms of familial hyperlipidemias. Besides plasma lipid levels, the determination of plasma lipoprotein patterns adds a new criterion to the identification of this group of heterogeneous disorders. On the basis of abnormal lipoprotein patterns, five types of familial hyperlipidemias have been recognized. The interpretation of abnormal lipoprotein patterns is not only of diagnostic importance but also may reveal useful information as to the possible mechanism of a lipid metabolic derangement. Furthermore, a correct diagnosis is of the utmost importance to arrive at the proper treatment.


A case report of a pregnancy in a patient with end-stage renal disease on chronic dialysis is presented. The epidemiological data regarding this rare event and the factors influencing and limiting fertility in uremic women are discussed. The outcomes of pregnancy in dialysis as reported in national registries and literature series are analyzed. For the management of pregnancy in dialysis several practical problems have to be dealt with: the type of dialysis, sterilization of dialysis materials, dialysis dose, dialysis bath composition, extracorporeal circuit anticoagulation, and the diet of the pregnant woman. All these issues are discussed, with special attention to solutions facilitating the best outcome of pregnancy. Finally, the main complications of both normal and uremic pregnancies, anemia and hypertension, are discussed together with the solutions proposed in this particular condition.


A novel and facile Cu-catalyzed addition/cyclization cascade of o-cyanoarylacrylamide was developed. The process exhibits significant functional group tolerance, and provides an efficient and straightforward pathway for the synthesis of various phosphonylated quinoline-2,4(1H,3H)-diones.


Marco Polo is a sample return mission to a Near-Earth Object (NEO) which was originally proposed as a joint European-Japanese mission for the scientific program Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 of the European Space Agency (ESA) in June 2007 and selected for an assessment study until fall 2009. The main goal of this mission is to return a sample from a dark taxonomic type (low albedo) NEO for detailed laboratory analysis in order to answer questions related to planetary formation, evolution and the origin of Life. In addition, it will provide detailed information on the physical and chemical properties of a body belonging to the population of potential Earth impactors, and therefore it is also directly relevant to the problems of risk assessment and mitigation. We review basic information on NEOs, potential targets for a sample return mission and the Marco Polo mission, with emphasis on their relevance to impact risk assessment and mitigation. More details on the Marco Polo mission and scientific objectives can be found in [1].


This case study takes the reader through the journey of Dhaval Udani and danamojo, a social enterprise founded by Dhaval in 2016, that is looking to harness digital technology to expand the space of charitable giving between individuals and nonprofits in India. In so doing, it is also trying to strengthen its underlying idiom: that of trust, transparency and commitment. danamojo is representative of an emerging breed of organizations, and individuals behind them, that are trying to bring highly specialised expertise in a form relevant to civil society at large without affecting its core ethos. The case is unusually detailed for a seven-year-old organization. But in detailing the motivations of its founder, the digital platform that danamojo has built, the challenges of sustaining quality with thin resources, and the pressures of nurturing a culture centred on integrity, the case seeks to highlight that it takes much more than a sound idea, funds and expertise to sustain an enterprise that is relevant and delivers value day on day. In the case of danamojo, it is the likes of diligence and determination, integrity and intensity, creativity and commitment that have been the source of its real enterprise value.


A new concept for constructing explosive-driven primary power sources is proposed. The power source is designed as a sequence of identical elementary miniature explosive-driven primary power cells that connect to each other in series or in parallel. Each explosive-driven cell contains a miniature ferromagnetic generator (FMG) based on the effect of transverse shock-wave demagnetization of an Nd2Fe14B hard ferromagnet. Experimental results are presented for high-voltage system utilizing FMGs containing 12.9 cm3 ferromagnet energy-carrying elements. The developed two-cell system produces a high voltage pulse with an amplitude of 32 kV and rise time of 3.5 mus.


We studied the resorption, the distribution, the duration of retention, as well as the routes of elimination by the organism of the complex antibiotic medicine (novobiocin salt of the oleandomycin). It was proved that after a single muscular injection of doses 20 and 50 mg/kg t the medicine, unlike its constituting components, possesses a retained action and keeps up bacteriostatic concentrations of blood in sheep, rabbits and chickens for a period of 12, respectively 24 hours. No substantial differences were observed between the blood levels created of the different species after the use of equal doses. No resorption was observed (or practically an insignificant one) in the digestive tract of rabbits. After its resorption from the place of its application the 'novoolean' penetrates into all organs studied, tissues and liquids of the organisms of guinea pigs, except for the brain. The longest period of retention is that in the lungs and in the kidneys. It is eliminated by the organism mainly through the urine and the bile secretion, and in the case of the lactating mammals-through the milk. The organism of the treated animals is practically free from 'novoolean' after the fourth day and as to the milk--after the second day of the last intramuscular injection.


The main aspects of severe COVID-19 disease pathogenesis include the increasing hyper-induction of proinflammatory cytokines, also known as 'cytokine storm', that precedes acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and often leads to death. COVID-19 patients often suffer from lung fibrosis, a serious and untreatable condition. There remains no effective treatment for these complications. Out of the cytokines, TNFα and IL-6 play crucial roles in cytokine storm pathogenesis and are likely responsible for the escalation in disease severity. These cytokines also partake in the molecular pathogenesis of fibrosis. Therefore, new approaches are urgently needed that can efficiently and swiftly block TNFα, IL-6, and the inflammatory cytokine cascade in order to curb inflammation and prevent fibrosis, and lead to disease remission.Cannabis sativa has been proposed to modulate gene expression and inflammation and is under investigation for several potential therapeutic applications against autoinflammatory diseases and cancer. Here, we hypothesized that the extracts of our novel C. sativa lines may be used to modulate the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and pathways involved in inflammation and fibrosis. To analyze the anti-inflammatory effects of novel C. sativa lines, we used a well-established full thickness human 3D skin artificial EpiDermFTTM tissue model, whereby tissues were exposed to UV to induce inflammation and then treated with extracts of seven new cannabis lines.We noted that out of seven studied extracts of novel C. sativa lines, three (#4, #8 and #14) were the most effective, causing profound and concerted down-regulation of TNFα, IL-6, CCL2, and other cytokines and pathways related to inflammation and fibrosis. Most importantly, one of the tested extracts had no effects at all, and one exerted effects that may be deleterious, signifying that cannabis is not generic and cultivar selection must be based on thorough pre-clinical studies.The observed pronounced inhibition of TNFα and IL-6 is the most important finding, as these molecules are currently considered to be the main actionable targets in COVID-19 cytokine storm and ARDS pathogenesis. Many currently trialed agents, such as anti-TNFα and anti-IL-6 biologics are expensive and cause an arrays of side effects. On the other hand, anti-TNFα and anti-IL-6 cannabis extracts that are generally regarded as safe (GRAS) modalities can be a useful addition to the current anti-inflammatory regimens to treat COVID-19, as well as various rheumatological diseases and conditions, and 'inflammaging' - the inflammatory underpinning of aging and frailty.


The high-performance liquid chromatographic resolution of the enantiomers of amphetamine, methamphetamine, ephedrine, and pseudoephedrine is described. The sugar isothiocyanate, 2,3,4,6-tetra-O-acetyl-beta-D-glucopyranosyl isothiocyanate (GITC), is used as a chiral derivatizing agent, with chromatographic separations of the diastereomers formed with each amine made using a standard achiral C18 stationary phase.


The plant family Rosaceae consists of over 100 genera and 3,000 species that include many important fruit, nut, ornamental, and wood crops. Members of this family provide high-value nutritional foods and contribute desirable aesthetic and industrial products. Most rosaceous crops have been enhanced by human intervention through sexual hybridization, asexual propagation, and genetic improvement since ancient times, 4,000 to 5,000 B.C. Modern breeding programs have contributed to the selection and release of numerous cultivars having significant economic impact on the U.S. and world markets. In recent years, the Rosaceae community, both in the United States and internationally, has benefited from newfound organization and collaboration that have hastened progress in developing genetic and genomic resources for representative crops such as apple (Malus spp.), peach (Prunus spp.), and strawberry (Fragaria spp.). These resources, including expressed sequence tags, bacterial artificial chromosome libraries, physical and genetic maps, and molecular markers, combined with genetic transformation protocols and bioinformatics tools, have rendered various rosaceous crops highly amenable to comparative and functional genomics studies. This report serves as a synopsis of the resources and initiatives of the Rosaceae community, recent developments in Rosaceae genomics, and plans to apply newly accumulated knowledge and resources toward breeding and crop improvement.


Abstract This paper focuses on the murders of the Afzaal-Salman family in London, Ontario (Canada) in June, 2021. Immediately after the murders were reported, several hashtags on different social media emerged, focusing attention on the victims and commenting on the Islamophobia that resulted in their deaths. Through a critical discourse analysis of one of these hashtags, #OurLondonFamily that was used on Twitter and Instagram, this paper examines how grief becomes a conveyor of subjugated histories and experiences of Islamophobia, and a conduit through which the politics of identity surface. The paper argues that social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram allow for affective expressions of grief, demonstrating a networked sociality and articulating politics of opposition from the ground up. The affective publics that are engendered include activists and NGOs, whose social worthiness, high number of followers, coordinated and committed attention provides traction that allows for collective grieving that can be politically mobilized. As tactical trajectories, social media posts rupture the spectacle of a harmonious multicultural Canada.


Aims
The determinants of discrepancies among two-dimensional echocardiographic (2D-E) methods for left atrial volume (LAV) assessment are poorly investigated.

Methods and Results
Maximal LAV was measured in 613 individuals (282 healthy subjects,180 athletes, and 151 hypertensives; age 45 ± 20 years, 62% male) using the ellipsoid model (LAVEllips), the area-length method (LAVAL), and the Simpson's rule (LAVSimps). On the basis of a mathematical model, two left atrial (LA) geometry indexes were tested as predictors of discrepancies between methods: the ratio between LA medial-lateral diameter (MLD) and LA anteroposterior diameter (APD); and the ratio between LA area in the four-chamber view and that of an ellipse with the same diameters [deviation from ellipse (DE)-coefficient]. Discrepancies among methods were consistently present in the overall population and across all study groups. MLD/APD and the DE-coefficient together predicted 76 and 68% of differences between biplane LAVAL and LAVEllips, and between biplane LAVSimps and LAVEllips, respectively. The DE-coefficient was the only determinant of LAVAL/LAVSimps difference (β = 0.167, P < 0.0001). Body mass index was the strongest predictor of discrepancies between single-plane and biplane approaches of LAVAL (β = 0.427, P < 0.0001) and LAVSimps (β = 0.424, P < 0.0001). In additional analyses, biplane LAVAL showed the best agreement with LAV obtained by three-dimensional echocardiography and the best reproducibility and repeatability.

Conclusion
LA geometry is the main determinant of inconsistencies between 2D-E methods for measuring maximal LAV. Body mass index is the strongest determinant of differences between single-plane and biplane approaches. Different 2D-E methods cannot be used interchangeably for diagnosis and follow-up. The biplane area-length method should be preferred, particularly in overweight-obese subjects.


Microprogramming has become a widely used technique which brings versatility to the control unit of a digital system. However, since all microcommands contained in a microinstruction are changed simultaneously, this form of control requires the coding of all possible combinations of parallel commands as separate microinstructions. This causes the resulting microprograms to become space- and timewise inefficient and makes it very difficult to control and/or synchronize independent processes. A new approach to modeling and implementing the flow of control in hardware systems is presented in this paper. Here a control flow is realized by a set of independent control operators that pass control to each other according to the precedence relationships defined by the control function which is implemented. The detailed architecture of a VLSI chip to implement a control unit as a hard- programmable control unit (HPCU) is also given. An HPCU contains many independent control operators and allows mask-programmable connections to be made among the operators to implement any given control function. Examples included in the paper demonstrate the effectiveness of an HPCU in implementing complex parallel control flows.


This article proposes redefining the child's right to identity as a right to state protection of ties meaningful to the child. Its main arguments are, in essence: (1) Such a right should protect the development of an authentic individual by seeking the child's wishes and feelings concerning their ties. (2) Protection of an individualized identity necessitates exploration of culture as a context of personal meaning which cannot be equated with cultural sensitivity as commonly perceived. (3) Consequently, preferential protection of the child's ties to a minority culture or to individuals affiliated to it is seen as violating the proposed right. (4) The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child reaffirms commitment to a dynamic child-constructed identity. (5) Protection of the proposed right reflects, protects and creates a social reality in which children's lives may be imbued with personal meaning. A discussion of two English cases demonstrates these arguments.


The fictive temperature (Tf) is widely applied to understand the relaxation thermodynamics of a glass; however, its atomic structural origin is still unclear. Here, we report two novel AZnP3O9 glasses obtained by melting the composition identical single crystals. These glasses exhibit structural inheritance within 5 Å from the single crystal counterparts that is quantified by δ = nglass/ncry (0 ≤ δ ≤ 1, n is the number of pair correlation functions). Among the available glass-formers, glassKZnP3O9 exhibits the highest structural inheritance (δ = 1, nglass = 8). More insightfully, a reverse correlation between δ and the relaxation thermodynamic parameters is observed in glassAZnP3O9, revealing for the first time the atomic structural origin of fictive temperature.


I present a comparative analysis of the cave fauna composition for two karst areas in the Atlantic tropical rain forest: the extensively studied Ribeira Valley, southeastern Brazil, and the small and poorly known Rio Pardo region, southern Bahia state, northeastern Brazil. These regions also are compared to other Brazilian karst areas. The cave fauna from Rio Pardo appears to be more similar to the fauna of other tropical caves in the Caatinga and Cerrado domains than to the cave fauna of the subtropical Ribeira Valley. Ecological data, including probable trophic relationships, are presented, and special conservation problems related to karst areas, with examples from the Atlantic rain forest cave taxa, are discussed.


Cutinases are extracellular enzymes that are able to degrade cutin, a polyester protecting plant leaves and many kinds of lipids. Although cutinases are mainly found in phytopathogenic fungi or bacteria, 7 genes related to the cutinase family have been predicted in the genome of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. These genes may encode proteins that are involved in the complex lipid metabolism of the bacterium. Here, we report on the biochemical characterization of two secreted proteins of M. tuberculosis, Rv1984c and Rv3452, belonging to the cutinase family. Although their amino acid sequence shows 50% identity with that of the well‐characterized cutinase from Fusarium solani pisi, and a high level of homology has been found to exist between these two enzymes, they show distinct substrate specificities. Rv1984c preferentially hydrolyzes medium‐chain carboxylic esters and monoacylglycerols, whereas Rv3452 behaves like a phospholipase A2, and it is able to induce macrophage lysis. The tetrahydrolipstatin inhibitor, a specific lipase inhibitor, abolishes the activity of both enzymes. Site‐directed mutagenesis was performed to identify the catalytic triad of Rv1984c. Structural models for Rv1984c and Rv3452 were built, based on the crystal structure of F. solani cutinase, with a view to investigating the contribution of specific residues to the substrate specificity. Our findings open new prospects for investigating the physiological roles of cutinase‐like proteins in the lipid metabolism and virulence of M. tuberculosis.—Schué, M., Maurin, D., Dhouib, R, Bakala N'Goma, J.‐C., Delorme, V., Lambeau, G., Carrière, F., Canaan, S. Two cutinase‐like proteins secreted by Mycobacterium tuberculosis show very different lipolytic activities reflecting their physiological function. FASEB J. 24, 1893–1903 (2010). www.fasebj.org


This paper presents a control scheme which allows minimization of dc-link capacitance in switched reluctance drives. In SRMs the demagnetization energy of the outgoing phase causes a voltage increase in the dc-link. Therefore, large dc-link capacitors are required in conventional drives to absorb this energy to avoid overvoltages. The proposed control scheme balances the power flow between phases in such a way that the demagnetization energy of the outgoing phase does not flow back into the dc-link but directly into the incoming phase. Using this scheme, electrolytic capacitors can be replaced by film or ceramic capacitors leading to longer life-time and higher reliability.


Secondary achalasia may result from diseases that either infiltrate or compress the lower esophageal sphincter to create an increased high-pressure zone and subsequent esophageal body changes. With bariatric surgery, a potential high-pressure zone is created by a sleeve, band, or bypass just distal to the esophagus. We report four patients who years after a bariatric procedure developed dysphagia followed by esophageal body radiographic and/or manometric features of achalasia. In addition, each of these patients responded symptomatically to endoscopic or surgical therapy either which lowered this high-pressure zone. Furthermore, review of prior cases in the literature suggests this has occurred before. Physicians should be aware of this association but further study is needed on its true prevalence.


Buffaloes have a strong population of rumen microorganisms that can utilize different feeds. Other features that make this animal unique are its compatibility with nature, its ability to withstand difficulties, and the nutrient richness of animal products. Today, the emergence of residues such as animal origin diseases, pesticides and antibiotics in animal food products has led organic products to be preferred more by consumers. Due to the increase in consumption demand of natural products, the share of buffalo products in the world market is gradually increasing. Focusing on the use of natural additives in buffalo feeding is important for the diversity of healthy products. Examples of natural additives are cumin and fenugreek seeds. In addition to being natural products, these seeds are reported to have versatile functions in the animal body. The purpose of this chapter is to show how to use aromatic seeds as feed additives in the feeding of Anatolian water buffaloes. The chapter also includes various articles on the use of aromatic seeds in buffalo rations in international fields. This review focuses on the current research relating to the use of aromatic seeds as feed additives to improve the production of Anatolian water buffaloes. Based on the scientific results presented in this chapter, authors drew the following main conclusions: (1) The use of aromatic seeds as feed additives of Anatolian water buffaloes feeding enabled in enhancing milk production, without changing the taste and chemical composition of the milk. (2) Milk production can be improved up to 0.67 kg and 0.85 kg day-1 by adding 50 g Fenugreek seeds and 30 g Cumin seeds to the ration of buffaloes in the early lactation period. (3) The use of aromatic seeds in the feeding of water buffaloes has been proven therefore, their use in the buffalo sector should be encouraged.


We report on the syntheses of magnetoresponsive, superparamagnetic nanostructures with highly anisotropic shapes, i.e., nanochains of controlled length and their bundles (nanobundles). These nanochains and nanobundles were obtained by the simultaneous magnetic assembly of superparamagnetic nanoparticle clusters (SNCs) and the fixation of the assembled SNCs with an additional layer of deposited silica, produced by a sol-gel process. This low-cost approach provides excellent length control of the short nanochains (approximately 6 or 14 SNCs per nanochain) and fine-tuning of the spacing between the neighboring SNCs inside an individual nanochain. Our magnetically responsive superparamagnetic nanostructures have a controlled aspect ratio, a uniform size, and a well-defined shape, and they express good colloidal stability. This general approach should lead to new, advanced applications of the nanochains and nanobundles in the treatment of cancer and in the ability to magnetically manipulate liquid and photonic crystals.


The authors present a new analytical performance model of the IEEE P1596 Standard Coherent Interface, which is a distributed cache-coherency protocol for shared-memory multiprocessors. The paper focuses upon an implementation of the protocol on a unidirectional ring architecture (the 'default' architecture for SCI systems). The authors identify the possible memory and cache-line states and corresponding processor actions for a memory access, and derive the equilibrium line state probabilities by solving a Markov model expressed as a set of fixed-point equations. The probabilities of a processor performing a particular action then follow, from which the message transmission profile for each processor is derived. These traffic equations are then fed into an M/G/1 model for the ring architecture, in which the ring traffic at a node has priority over traffic originating in that node. Further analysis then leads to the mean message transmission time, and hence the mean memory access time and processor utilisation. The application of the model is illustrated by undertaking a performance comparison of two alternative node architectures and report some numerical results are reported for various parameterisations.


Dr. Roslyn Muraskin (Roz as we all called her) was a legendary national scholar who ignited others to excel in the discipline of criminal justice. Roz was a competent, consistent, and reliable colleague with an unprecedented commitment to work. She was a tower of strength and wisdom, and teaching was her passion. As an outstanding mentor, Roz successfully mentored students and junior faculty members, of various races, genders, cultures, and ethnicities. She was a transformational leader for women's rights who hosted numerous workshops, lectures, forums, and networking opportunities on pay equity, sex discrimination, health and wellness, and financial investment strategies. Extending her work beyond the academy into the community, she founded the Long Island Women's Institute (LIWI) in 1991 to encourage women to become successful leaders and to break the proverbial "glass ceiling." Through both her scholarship and teaching, Roz made significant contributions to the disciplines of criminal justice and criminology. These contributions are nationally recognized and widely appreciated. The ramifications of her numerous publications are still felt today among young scholars. Her gifts as a teacher have been outstanding, and her abilities as a scholar have been remarkable. For these, she received numerous awards. Roz Muraskin was a person endowed with a sound judgment and exemplifies the highest ideals and standards of a professional. Her life symbolizes professional excellence and brilliance. Because of these qualities, each encounter with her strengthens the characters of others and enriches their experiences. All those individuals who have had the privilege and honor of working with her and learning from her will continue to remember her for her professional sacrifice, vision, and lifetime achievements. She was a cherished colleague, a scholar, and friend who is missed by many, but will never be forgotten by those who were fortunate enough to have known her. We miss her energy, creativity, and charismatic personality. On a personal level, she was incredibly kind, and I feel honored to have been one of the many beneficiaries of her generosity of spirit. So I thank


Superconducting technology has made progress with nuclear fusion development for about 30 years as an indispensable element of nuclear fusion technology. Some technologies that come from nuclear fusion development are applied to industrial applications. For example cable-in-conduit technology is applied to SMES (Superconducting Magnetic Energy Storage) project. On the other hand, superconducting magnets for MRI system and silicon single crystal growth become practical industries and another technologies that come from these industrial applications are applied to nuclear fusion development. In this report, superconducting products and superconducting technologies are presented at the point of synergy effects of nuclear fusion development and industrial applications.


This thesis focuses on the research of RTDI policies (research, technology, development and innovation), and the main theme of this thesis is to link the three variables together: RTDI policy-making process---the contents of RTDI policies---the appropriateness of RTDI policies on configuration of the national, the sectoral and the technological innovation systems. We assume the policy-making process of RTDI policies would shape the contents of the RTDI policies. Once the contents of RTDI policies are implemented, the RTDI policies would influence, whether appropriate or inappropriate, on configuration of the three innovation systems. We define the configuration of the three innovation systems as national, sectoral and technological innovation system (NSTIS). We use the Taiwanese biotechnology and related sectoral policies as the empirical examples. Biotechnology in Taiwan configures with three sectors, i.e. pharmaceuticals, agriculture and medical device. Between 2000 and 2008, the Taiwanese government intensively promoted many policies in order to support the development of biotechnology and related sectors. Among the various policies, we choose the National Science and Technology Programs and the regulation policies (in terms of Law of Pharmaceutical Affairs and the Agro-pesticides Management Act) as our two empirical cases and set up the in-depth discussion for the policy-making process of the two policies.On the basis of the empirical cases of Taiwan, we explore the influence of the RTDI policy-making process on the contents of RTDI policies which further shapes the development of the NSTIS.


We report here the identification of a novel human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-B*9524 allele that was detected by polymerase chain reaction sequence-based typing.


Attention is the important ability to flexibly control limited computational resources. It has been studied in conjunction with many other topics in neuroscience and psychology including awareness, vigilance, saliency, executive control, and learning. It has also recently been applied in several domains in machine learning. The relationship between the study of biological attention and its use as a tool to enhance artificial neural networks is not always clear. This review starts by providing an overview of how attention is conceptualized in the neuroscience and psychology literature. It then covers several use cases of attention in machine learning, indicating their biological counterparts where they exist. Finally, the ways in which artificial attention can be further inspired by biology for the production of complex and integrative systems is explored.


Various services are required in the different stages of any processing cycle. These include electricity and water supply as well as water treatment. All services and service-related expenditures are direct expenses and the efficient management of these services contributes to a company's bottom line.


In this article, the authors drew from the epistemological and methodological considerations of neighboring social science fields (i.e., counseling psychology, education, sociology, and women's studies), which suggest a reevaluation of reflexive research practice(s). In discussing the implications this reevaluation may have for future sport management research, the authors contend that such dialogue may encourage scholars to understand that, while adopting a reflexive approach is good research practice, it may also mean taking a closer look at how our biases, epistemologies, identities, and values are shaped by whiteness and dominant ways of knowing and, in turn, serve to affect our research practice. Thus, this may allow all researchers, with explicit consideration for those in positions of conceptual, empirical, and methodological, as well as cultural and racial, power, to acknowledge and work toward a more meaningful point of consciousness in conducting sport management research.


Solid‐state batteries (SSBs) are promising candidates to significantly exceed the energy densities of today's state‐of‐the‐art technology, lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs). To enable this advancement, optimizing the solid electrolyte (SE) is the key. β‐Li3PS4 (β‐LPS) is the most studied member of the Li2S‐P2S5 family, offering promising properties for implementation in electric vehicles. In this work, the microstructure of this SE and how it influences the electrochemical performance are systematically investigated. To figure this out, four batches of β‐LPS electrolyte with different particle size, shape, and porosity are investigated in detail. It is found that differences in pellet porosities mostly originate from single‐particle intrinsic features and less from interparticle voids. Surprisingly, the β‐LPS electrolyte pellets with the highest porosity and larger particle size not only show the highest ionic conductivity (up to 0.049 mS cm–1 at RT), but also the most stable cycling performance in symmetrical Li cells. This behavior is traced back to the grain boundary resistance. Larger SE particles seem to be more attractive, as their grain boundary contribution is lower than that of denser pellets prepared using smaller β‐LPS particles.


Deep neural networks have shown their vulnerability to adversarial attacks. In this paper, we focus on sparse adversarial attack based on the $\ell_0$ norm constraint, which can succeed by only modifying a few pixels of an image. Despite a high attack success rate, prior sparse attack methods achieve a low transferability under the black-box protocol due to overfitting the target model. Therefore, we introduce a generator architecture to alleviate the overfitting issue and thus efficiently craft transferable sparse adversarial examples. Specifically, the generator decouples the sparse perturbation into amplitude and position components. We carefully design a random quantization operator to optimize these two components jointly in an end-to-end way. The experiment shows that our method has improved the transferability by a large margin under a similar sparsity setting compared with state-of-the-art methods. Moreover, our method achieves superior inference speed, 700$\times$ faster than other optimization-based methods. The code is available at https://github.com/shaguopohuaizhe/TSAA.


According to the electric potential of oblique five-needle electrodes (OFNE) in biological tissue, the discrete equations based on the indetermination linear current density were established by the boundary element integral equations (BEIE). The non-uniform distribution of the current flowing from five-needle electrodes to conductive biological tissues was imaged by solving a set of linear equations. Then, the potential generated by OFNE in biological tissues at any point can be determined through the boundary element method (BEM). It means that this method has an important referenced significance for computing the potential generated by OFNE in bio-tissue.


Grooves arranged in one-dimensional quasiperiodic patterns are prepared by mechanical method. Drag reduction experiments are performed by R/S plus rheometer and the results show that there is a novel drag reduction effect compared with periodic grooves. An equivalent grating model is proposed to investigate the mechanism. It is found that, in comparison with periodic grating, the intensity distributes more uniform in a limited area when the coherent wave gets through quasiperiodic grating. Corresponding to the quasiperiodic grooves, the energy transfers more uniform, which could inhibit the generation of large vortices.


In this paper the possibilities of the viscous voided shell approach for deriving bending/membrane finite elements for sheet metal forming problems are presented. These elements can be selectively used for membrane or full bending analysis of some parts of the sheet according to the nature of the deformation. Numerical aspects of this approach are discussed and some examples of application are also given.


The present review aimed to assess the networks of transcription factors regulating the Oct4 expression in mice. Through a comprehensive analysis of the binding sites and the interrelationships of the transcription factors of Oct4, it is found that transcription factors of Oct4 form three regulating complexes centered by Oct4-Sox2, Nanog, and Lrh1. They bind on CR4, CR2, and CR1 regions of Oct4 promoter/enhancer, respectively, to activate Oct4 transcription synergistically. This article also discusses the mechanisms of fine-tuning the Oct4 expression. These findings have important implications in the field of stem cell and developmental biology.


The aging building stock in Europe and regulatory requirements to decrease energy consumption make sustainable refurbishment a valuable alternative to other construction activities. The construction industry appears to suffer from low productivity growth, and the construction productivity debate concludes that productivity measurement is difficult, not least due to changes in input and output qualities. Building certification schemes are one way to measure sustainability. However, existing schemes focus mainly on environmental sustainability and new construction, while refurbishment differs from new construction. The purpose of this research is to analyse the relation between the theoretical concepts of sustainability and productivity in the context of measurement, and to investigate the performance measures used in housing and office refurbishment projects.

This thesis is based mainly on literature reviews in the areas of sustainability, productivity, performance measurement and building refurbishment. The empirical data were collected through eight semi-structured interviews - five with site managers employed by large contractors, and three with general or site managers from small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). All the interviewees were involved in housing refurbishment projects.

The findings of this thesis suggest that current methods of measuring productivity in the construction industry are unsatisfactory. Simple area-based methods and measurement of labour productivity do not capture changes in input and output qualities. Most existing building certification schemes have not taken account of the overall sustainability of the refurbishment process. They reflect the fundamentals of sustainability very poorly, and they tend to hide conflicts between sustainability and productivity. They mostly lack a clear refurbishment focus, even in schemes that are supposed to include refurbishment. Lack of time is a frequent excuse for not measuring productivity on sites, although perceived time pressure might be a symptom of complex resource allocation. SMEs pay little attention to sustainability measurement because they do not see it providing economic benefits, while large contractors invoke lack of client demand.


Existing theories of migration either focus on micro- or macroscopic behavior of populations; that is, either the average behavior of entire population is modeled directly, or decisions of individuals are modeled directly. In this work, we seek to bridge these two perspectives by modeling individual agents decisions to migrate while accounting for the social network structure that binds individuals into a population. Pecuniary considerations combined with the decisions of peers are the primary elements of the model, being the main driving forces of migration. People of the home country are modeled as nodes on a small-world network. A dichotomous state is associated with each node, indicating whether it emigrates to the destination country or it stays in the home country. We characterize the emigration rate in terms of the relative welfare and population of the home and destination countries. The time evolution and the steady-state fraction of emigrants are also derived.


The high incidence of phytophthora pod rot and mirids resulting from high rainfall and relative humidity in cocoa producing areas of Nigeria necessitated the use of fungicides and other pesticides on cocoa. This is causing increased worldwide concern about heavy metal contamination of the soil environment and cocoa beans. Thus the objective of this study is to evaluate the status of some heavy metals in selected cocoa farms in Ikom, Etung and Boki local government areas of Cross River State - the highest cocoa producing state in eastern Nigeria, where farmers use a lot of pesticides to combat pests and diseases. The results indicated that the soil contents of the heavy metals were in the order (Cr > Pb > Co > Ni > Se > Cd > As) in the selected farms evaluated in the three local government areas. The values ranged between 0.88 and 1.33 mg/kg for chromium and between 0.59 and 0.86 mg/kg for lead. The soil contents of the heavy metals in the adjacent forest were similar to that obtained in the cocoa farms. The values of chromium ranged between 1.01 and 1.02 mg/kg soil while that of lead ranged between 0.5 and 0.74 mg/kg soil in adjacent forest. This suggests that heavy metal contents of the soils in the cocoa farms evaluated were not primarily due to chemicals being sprayed but probably naturally occurring. Their concentrations were also below the optimum limit allowed in the soil.


ABSTRACT Xi, X.N., and Zhang, H.G., 2020. The logic and mode transformation of water environmental management legal systems in the big data era. In: Guido Aldana, P.A. and Kantamaneni, K. (eds.), Advances in Water Resources, Coastal Management, and Marine Science Technology. Journal of Coastal Research, Special Issue No. 104, pp. 291–295. Coconut Creek (Florida), ISSN 0749-0208. With deteriorating eco-environment, it has gradually become the priority of modern social development to manage environment, which is closely related to not only the establishment of legal systems in our country, but also correlative specific law enforcement. China has made significant achievements in the past several decades with respect to environmental management due to its constant exploration, which, however, still can't match up to the goals of environmental protection. In the big data era, there're diversified research methods in allusion to legal management of environment. Legal systems in our country are now flourishing and the difficulty of environmental management is also that of the implementation of Chinese environmental law, to solve which it's required to discuss current situations of environmental management with the systematic logic of legal enforcement set as the entry point.


Intra- and para-bulbomedullary hemangioblastomas are a relatively frequent topographic variety and represent about one third of the spinal cord cases. The surgical approach is particularly difficult in this location, because of adhesion or infiltration of the brain stem by the hemangioblastoma. The authors correlate the angiographic signs and the anatomical findings obtained during surgery. Four topographic types are described: intra-bulbomedullary tumors, usually allowing partial resection only; tumors of the floor of the IVth ventricle extending between the cerebellar tonsils without any infiltration of the brain stem, allowing complete resection; tumors of the cerebellar tonsils with a lateral para-bulbar extension which should allow complete resection, but present with difficult diagnostic problems on angiography; tumors of the cerebellar tonsils with a midline extension present with a particular difficult angiographic diagnosis, but should also allow complete resection.


Streptomycin is the treatment of choice in developing countries for patients suffering from tuberculosis or other infectious diseases. However, it produces incapacitating vestibular symptoms whose onset is delayed and gradual. This observation led to the notion that a streptomycin metabolic derivative and not the antibiotic itself is the damaging agent for the inner ear. To study further the existence of this ototoxic metabolite, chronic treatment with streptomycin or its putative derivative streptidine was carried out in young male Long Evans rats. The presence of streptomycin or streptidine in the blood of animals of either experimental group was assessed by high performance liquid chromatography and analysis of swimming behavior was used to evaluate vestibular damage. Features of the sensory epithelium and quantification of hair cells were attained in sections of the utricular organ of all groups by light microscopy. After 25, 35 and 45 days of treatment with streptomycin, a metabolite with the same chromatographic properties as the streptidine standard run in parallel was identified in the blood of rats. Concentrations of the metabolite were 2.26 microg/ml on the 25th day and around 8.0 microg/ml in both the 35th and the 45th day of treatment, while streptomycin was below its detection level at either period. In streptidine-treated rats, the concentration of this compound was 1.0, 1.84 and 4.94 microg/ml on the 25th, 35th and 45th treatment days, respectively. Treatment with either streptomycin or streptidine resulted in similar abnormal swimming patterns and histological alterations of the utricular epithelium. Loss of hair cells was roughly equivalent even though streptidine was administered in a dose 90% lower than streptomycin. The gradual appearance of streptidine as a metabolic derivative of the antibiotic in the blood of rats or the administration of this compound alone, causing similar functional and structural vestibular deterioration seen in streptomycin-treated animals, supports the notion that streptidine is a potential contributor to ototoxicity after prolonged antibiotic administration.


Synthetic routes toward the synthesis of some novel 1-(2,3,4-tri-O-acetyl-alpha-L-arabinopyranosyl)-azetidin-2-ones are described. Antimicrobial screening of three selected compounds revealed their activity against Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli


ABSTRACT A small but growing number of studies has explored the attitudes about this campus carry policy held by campus community members. The current study expands on the literature on this topic by examining criminologist attitudes. More specifically, this study aimed to investigate the level of support for permitting firearms on campus and to what degree do specific predictors impact criminologists' views towards the policy. Using survey data collected from a total of 1,554 criminologists, we found that the criminologists in our sample were overwhelmingly opposed to the idea of permitting concealed carry on college campuses. Results showed that while criminologists' attitudes toward concealed carry on campus were generally negative, the attitudes varied depending on their university affiliation status and state campus policy, with faculty working in states where campus carry is prohibited reporting the strongest degree of opposition and graduate students in states where campus carry is permitted reporting the strongest support. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses also revealed that attitudes toward the policy could be partially predicted by prior socialization with firearms, fear of campus crime, and current campus safety measures. These results are discussed in terms of implications for policy and future research.


In recent years, a wide variety of stakeholders have been working for the development of Intelligent Transportation System solutions. Cooperation among the various actors of transportation (vehicles, but also pedestrians, roads and infrastructure, traffic control centers, etc.) is seen as promising to enhance the efficiency of transportation and reduce its negative impacts (e.g., fatalities). However, it means that all communicating entities have to talk the same language, hence the need for Cooperative Intelligent Transportation Systems standards. There are now lots of standards being produced by standardization organizations, e.g., International Standardization Organization (ISO) and European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and there is a real need to understand how these standards can be implemented. This paper overviews the Intelligent Transportation System station reference architecture and presents a way of practical implementation of a toy Android application based on these standards as a proof of concept implementation. To our knowledge, this is the first implementation description compliant with these standards.


Background Microvesicles are cell membrane–derived vesicles that have been shown to augment inflammation. Specifically, monocyte‐derived microvesicles (MDMVs), which can express the coagulation protein tissue factor, contribute to thrombus formation and cardiovascular disease. People living with HIV experience higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease and also exhibit increased levels of plasma microvesicles. The process of microvesicle release has striking similarity to budding of enveloped viruses. The surface protein tetherin inhibits viral budding by physically tethering budding virus particles to cells. Hence, we investigated the role of tetherin in regulating the release of MDMVs during HIV infection. Methods and Results The plasma of aviremic HIV‐infected individuals had increased levels of tissue factor + MDMVs, as measured by flow cytometry, and correlated to reduced tetherin expression on monocytes. Superresolution confocal and electron microscopy showed that tetherin localized at the site of budding MDMVs. Mechanistic studies revealed that the exposure of monocytes to HIV‐encoded Tat triggered tetherin loss and subsequent rise in MDMV production. Overexpression of tetherin in monocytes led to morphologic changes in the pseudopodia directly underneath the MDMVs. Further, tetherin knockout mice demonstrated a higher number of circulating MDMVs and less time to bleeding cessation. Conclusions Our studies define a novel regulatory mechanism of MDMV release through tetherin and explore its contribution to the procoagulatory state that is frequently observed in people with HIV. Such insights could lead to improved therapies for individuals infected with HIV and also for those with cardiovascular disease.


The electric utility industry in India is undergoing fundamental changes. Cogeneration, independent power production and competition from utility marketers is emerging. Larger industrial customers are opting to produce power themselves. Some of them may even opt for quality power by wheeling from distant sources. In this environment, the electricity industry's perception of its customer should change. The role of an electric utility as a power service provider is becoming critical. Rapid restoration of power supply to power distribution customers is an essential service responsibility of electric utilities. Utility response to a customer during an outage is a major factor in determining the overall customer attitude towards the utility. This requires reengineering of utility operations in this area. Process redesign potential stems from IT innovations which are available in abundance. The need for faster service restoration and one-call-response to enquiries motivated the use of computer-aided techniques like AM/FM, trouble call analysis, automatic service restoration techniques, etc. Motivated by these needs to improve customer service, the Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board introduced its Trouble Call System, a computer-based complaint handling system. This is a modest start in the direction of better customer service.


Several researches have pointed the hybridization of metaheuristics as an effective way to deal with combinatorial optimization problems. Hybridization allows the combination of different techniques, exploiting the strengths and compensating the weakness of each of them. MAHM is a promising adaptive framework for hybridization of metaheuristics, originally designed for single objective problems. This framework is based on the concepts of intelligent agents and Particle Swarm. In this study we propose an extension of MAHM to the multi-objective scenario. The proposed framework is called MO-MAHM. To adapt MAHM to the multi-objective context, we redefine some concepts such as particle position and velocity. In this study the proposed framework is applied to the multi-objective Symmetric Travelling Salesman Problem. Four methods are hybridized: PAES, GRASP, NSGA-II and Anytime-PLS. Experiments with 12 bi-objective instances were performed and the results show that MO-MAHM is able to provide better non-dominated sets in comparison to the ones obtained by each of the hybridized algorithms.